Back to School...A Rambling of Sorts

Blog post inspired by Jodee for bugging me and Shaundee to get it together and write something, even if it's nonsense.

I've had four days of classes so far and it's been...interesting. I love school. I've been called a nerd. I've embraced that. It's cool. But this semester has started off a little rocky. First of all, I'm taking statistics. Anyone who knows me knows that math is not my thing. I would say that math and I really do not get along. We met and things were okay, then math turned on me and made my life horrible. I haven't taken a math class in three years. I'm hoping it will go better after having given it a little space, but I'm also aware that it could be a complete train wreck. I guess we'll see. I love all of my other classes so far, but found out that a lab I needed won't be offered next semester so I might need to add it this semester. Long story. Anyways, basically I had it all planned and now it's all completely different. But I guess that's life. This semester is going to be insane between possibly 17 units, college apps, and teaching a musical theater class, but one thing that will keep me somewhat sane is my group message with Taunya, Shaundee, and Jodee. In addition to writing encouragement we also offer each other funny pictures/memes, advice and the occasional coffee and coloring. Where would we be without memes? Probably much more focused and studious, but oh well. In addition to the scheduling confusion, I got to a part in the book I've been reading where one of the main characters is about to die so I've been avoiding finishing that all week. Just when you start to trust an author and think the story will have a happy ending they kill someone off. It's a murder mystery, so I probably should've seen it coming. In spite of the slightly rocky beginning, I am truly excited for this semester and the prospect of transferring next fall.

Camp NaNoWriMo Part Two/Word Count

July Camp NaNoWriMo has officially started! I'll be continuing to work on Mary, Queen of Scottsville Academy and I set my word count goal at 20,000 this time which will (hopefully) be reasonable considering all of the stuff I have to do. So far I have 2,208 out of 20,000 words.

I have about 50,000 words in Mary, Queen of Scottsville Academy right now, which is around 190ish pages. I'm aiming for 350 pages so I have a good bit to go still. Hopefully this month's Camp NaNoWriMo will help me get to 300 or 350. I have the rest of the book fairly plotted out so now it's just a matter of actually writing it.

This summer has been creatively a little all over the place for me, but I feel like overall I've made some good progress so far. I started to do this thing where I have three jars, one labeled genre, one labeled character, and one labeled random, and I choose a slip of paper from each one and I have to write something about whatever I get. For example, Mystery, Girl, 16, City. Then I have to write a short story or whatever it decides to be, about those things. The random factor can be places, formats, perspectives, etc. The genres are mystery, fiction, historical fiction, romance, fantasy, thriller, sci-fi, etc. I've found that it's a really nice way to remind myself that writing is fun when I get stuck in the depths of the novel I'm working on.

Here are the jars. Please ignore my terrible chalk handwriting.

Untitled Experimental Thing I Wrote

She let her eyes flutter open slowly, lazily even.  As her eyes blinked, she felt the sunlight on her toes.  She wiggled them, letting the sunlight creep into every crook of her skin.  It was peaceful. Then, she opened her eyes, and what she saw before her made her jump.  And just like that, all of the sunlight had gone from her toes, and with it, the warmth, and with the warmth, the peace.

She spoke, “Hello Jonathan.”

“Hello Penelope.” Finally, the silence was broken, but was the curse?

Since the great year of 1902, Penelope Elizabeth Summerton had been alone.  Not physically, but mentally, she was alone. Her father, brave though he was, had died trying to defend her and her sisters.  You see, family names were everything in Tottenheim, England and her father had died defending theirs. The curse? Well that’s another tale for another time. For now, we’ll start at the beginning.

“Penelope! Give that back!”  Jonathan chased her with a fury in his eyes. His heart was pounding, partly because she had stolen his favorite crimson handkerchief and partly because at the age of eleven, Jonathan Percival Marcello was already falling irreversibly, deeply in love with Penelope Elizabeth Summerton.

“Oh Jonny, when I was but six years of age you stole my pink satin bonnet and it landed in the mud.  Don’t you think I deserve a little justice?”

She jumped to the side, avoiding his swipe for the hankie.

“No.  I believe that justice is a privilege, not a right.” He jumped to the right, reaching his hand up high to capture it. Penelope ducked.

“Well Jonny that would make sense since you live quite the privileged life.  You’ve no need to worry about rights when you can simply buy them!”

“You’ve no idea what my life is like Penelope. Or me, for that matter.”

“Is that so?”

He paused. He stared at her so intensely, he thought he may go blind from facing such a beauty. And out of the blue, he leaned in quickly and kissed her on the cheek.

It was soft and warm. Her free hand moved as if by some unseen force of nature to her cheek where his lips had been. She blushed. Shock and the fluttering in her chest overcame her. In a moment of disbelief and intense distraction, Penelope lost the handkerchief to Jonathan’s grip.

“Got it!” He shouted and ran away. He ran and ran through the tall, overgrown summer grass.  The wind whipped at his cheeks as he ran faster and faster, his smile growing with each and every stride. He had kissed Penelope Elizabeth Summerton on the cheek! And she smiled.  He thought perhaps he had even seen her blush, but it could have been his imagination.

“Jonathan!” He could hear her calling in the distance. She sounded irritated, but in a pleased way. And although he had no idea, her smile was growing with every step she took, just as his was.

Penelope ignored the feeling of the wind whipping against her cheeks. She had never enjoyed wind. It was much too chaotic. She liked still, warm sunlight. She liked to feel it on her toes while the rest of her body remained in the shade of an old oak tree. Suddenly, the wind stopped.

“Penelope! Get up!”

She sat up quickly. Oh yes. Home. It had only been a dream, a reliving of the past. But it was just that, past. She and Jonathan hadn’t spoken for….how long was it? Five years now. It was April sixth, 1902 and Penelope’s life was nothing like she had expected it to be.

“Penny!” Her younger sister Alice was shaking her by the arm. “Penny, you promised to take me in to town today.”

“Yes, Alice I know. I’ll be up in a moment.”

Word Count Wednesday

What am I working on?

Fixing up my portfolio and writing a couple of experiments.

Word Count: 1,200 (new stuff)

How do I feel about the process?

I'm so busy I will be glad when the semester ends and I can work on writing more.

What am I reading?

History of American Women textbook. Fun stuff.

Word Count Wednesday

What am I working on?

Mary, Queen of Scottsville Academy and my drama scene which will be more of a TV episode.

Overall Word Count for Mary: 37,446

Word Count for Screenplay: 1,146

How do I feel about the process?

I met my goal for Camp Nanowrimo with an hour to spare. I knew I would be really busy this month so I intentionally set the low goal of 15,000 words and I guess I was right to do so.  I'm happy that I met my goal though.  I'll be really glad when the semester's over so I'll have more time to write. Then again, I'm taking a summer class and teaching musical theater camps so we'll see how that goes.

What am I reading? 

Nothing at the moment.

I've been watching Lost and I thought it might be cool to do sort of a similar thing for a TV show, but on one of the habitable planets in space in the future. And maybe they go there intentionally as the first people to inhabit the planet and there could be a lot of things to go wrong or interesting or crazy like aliens or other species of humans that have evolved there.

Word Count Wednesday--twelve

What am I working on?

I'm working on choosing and editing the part of Mary, Queen of Scottsville Academy I want to turn in for narrative 2.  I haven't really written anything new this week.

Word Count: I honestly don't know. I need to figure out a system to keep track of when I write what, but it definitely wasn't much this week.

How do I feel about the process?

I knew that at this point in the semester I would be doing ten million things at once, which is why I made my camp nanowrimo goal only 15,000.  I still don't like that I haven't written that much though. I've written 12,370 this month so I need to write 2,630 more words to meet my goal so hopefully I can do that soon.

What am I reading?

I just binge read (is that a phrase?) Fallen. It was good, but I thought the ending was a little forced. It was very obvious that it went from a contained story to a grand, epic, crazy series in about ten pages. I probably won't read the sequel, but I liked the first book for what it was.

Choose Your Own Adventure-fixed link(?)

Here's the link to my very much work in progress choose your own adventure story, The Mystery of Castle Solstice. Spring and Fall are the most developed so far. I'll be working on finishing it over the weekend.

I think this link should work (maybe) you just have to copy and paste it.

http://writer.inklestudios.com/stories/98jx