Just gotta!

I know I shouldn't be blogging right now ... I should be doing my exam paper, but I really really just felt like blogging and lately my blogging has been so few and far between that I thought what the heck, it's now or never.

Anyways, the reason I feel like blogging is the despite the major stress I'm feeling about my exam, I'm feeling really happy about everything else. Life is good :)

I'm enjoying TAFE so much more than I did last year, and I'm SO grateful to God for that. I kept doubting about whether or not I should even go this year, but even when I thought it wasn't the right decision, God knew it was. I'm glad I was able to leave it up to him to make that choice for me, because he always knows what's best.

So, I have three things to share with you:

1. The sun has shone for the past two days, so I'm hopeful that God will answer my prayer and keep the sun shining for my birthday party on Saturday. Praise God for the beautiful weather! I'm so geared up for this party - cannot wait. :)

2. I've recently discovered a TV show from the 80's called Family Ties. I think my fascination/new love for this show stems from A) the fact that Michael J Fox is the main character (and I have a teeny bit of a crush on him in his Back to the Future Days), and B) the fact that his character, Alex P Keaton, graduated high school the year before my Mom did. Thus a fascination that my parents used to live in a world that was a bit like what's in that show. Like whoa. Not to mention, it's pretty hilarious. I rewarded myself for getting a good bit of my paper done last night by Youtubing a couple of episodes, one where Tom Hanks shows up as a guest star (and he's pretty darn amazing), and another one where Alex and Mallory (who are aged 17 and 15 in the show) argue over who's babysitting their little sister. It's Mallory's turn to do it but she's organized a date to the movies with her new boyfriend, so when he walks in the door to pick her up the dialogue between Alex and the boyfriend (who is rather an insecure fellow) goes like this:


Alex: Jeff, you've got to be crazy, driving around on a night like tonight! 
Jeff: What?
Alex: I'm serious, I don't think you should go out. It's far too dangerous to drive. 
Jeff: What're you talking about? It's a beautiful night! 
Alex: That’s what makes it so dangerous – all the people who are afraid to drive in the rain are out there!

Yeah. I laughed out loud. Anyway, I love sitcoms for their humorous dialogue like that. There are some episodes of Family Ties that cover some pretty heavy issues like commiting crimes and sexual abuse and yet it's always light-hearted so that after the serious moment, you're laughing again. :) 


3. This morning before TAFE I went out to Newtown with my classmate, Hannah, to take some photos of buildings and landscapes as homework for one of out classes. We took some pretty good ones while we were out walking, but as we were driving back, we saw an angle of a building that we'd missed before, and quickly wound down the window and took a snapshot as we drove past. It turned out to be the best photograph we got. Pretty awesome. :) 

 Okay, back to work for me! Hope you have a beautiful evening :)

Procrasination to the max!

Yup. I've got a 3,000 word exam staring down at me through the barrel of a gun and I really ought to get started. I've been doing all the gearing up for the past week or two and unfortunately I think I'm as ready as I can get.

So, here I am, armed with nothing but my Plutarchs, my lecture notes, a huge bottle of cold water and a box of tissues for my oncoming cold that seems to be taunting me about all the work I have to get done this week.

Look out, social life. You might not get a chance to come out of the bedroom until the weekend ... but that's okay, because on Saturday it's time to party! See you then. :)

Wah.

You know those weighted blankets you can get for kids with autism to calm them when they're feeling overloaded? I wish I had one of those right now. I've been having trouble falling asleep lately, and I wish I had something to keep me in a tiny space where I could relax. I don't have a weighted blanket but when I came home from TAFE today I was feeling totally overwhelmed and distressed for absolutely NO reason whatsoever. Not even homework. Anyway, I needed something to calm me, so after dinner I started taking some chairs into my bedroom, and I borrowed the little fan from my parents room ... Dylan is sleeping over and he and Justin saw me doing this. The conversation we had went a bit like this:

Justin (watches me take chairs into my bedroom): What're you doing?


Me: Um ...


Dylan (light hearted sarcasm): She's building a cubby house, of course!


Me (looking awkward): Actually, I am...


The boys look at each other. Then look at me. We all laugh hysterically.

So yeah, I'm here in my blanket cubby typing this right now, still wishing I had a weighted blanket but feeling much better now, especially because I am accompanied by my beautiful little paperback copy of Never Let Me Go, which FINALLY arrived in the mail. I am only five chapters in and quite enjoying it. It's beautifully written; a little dark; very curious.

So, feeling stressed? Build a blanket cubby! Hide yourself away from the world for a little while. I promise, it will do wonders for your mental stability in times of stress. :)

"There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at the typewriter and open a vein."

Hi again. Between uni work and rewriting I've been reading over the manuscript of my one-and-only complete work of novel length, The Seven Stones of Caliger. As you might expect from the title, I wrote it when I was about thirteen or fourteen. I keep a full copy of it in my room and take it out occasionally to remind myself that my writing has indeed improved over the last four years. I have to say, I'm incredibly proud of this 100,000+ word fantasy novel, because it assures me that I really can write a book and finish it, despite how awful and utterly unpublishable this particular book is. I'm yet to make it through a whole paragraph without thinking 'what?' in reference to sentence structure, character's emotional reactions, word choice, or even just the plot in general. Rather, the complete lack of plot. And the info-dumping! I'm on page 14 and already I've got a character explaining to the other leads why the bad guys are attacking and what will happen if they win ... literally while the characters are standing just outside the city gates because the city is CRUMBLING TO PIECES. *facepalm*

The beloved manuscript.

I feel slightly better knowing that my printed copy is not the latest draft, and thankfully Mr. Info-Dump was scrapped from the story. Unfortunately there are still many other appalling things that I am reading that I am sorry to say, still exist in draft thirteen. (No exaggeration on the draft number there - my younger self had not quite grasped the concept of "rewriting" and hence each "draft" only differed very slightly from the previous one, aside from random drastic changes such as killing off Mr. Info-Dump.)
Anyway, you'll be pleased to know that I no longer write like my thirteen-year-old self, and though I'm no Wodehouse by any stretch of the imagination, there is definitely evidence of a great improvement in my pen-wielding. You have my permission to celebrate that the literary creations of the thirteen-year-old Erin will never again be seen by the public, but hopefully something better. I apologize if you were one of the unfortunate souls who had to endure reading through this grueling manuscript a few years ago and probably cringed inwardly as you told a starry-eyed me, 'Yes dear, it's wonderful. With a little editing I think you could look at publishing it.'

Pretty thick book, huh?

Ahem. Yes. I'm terribly sorry for the pain I put you through, but please know that I am now thanking you from the bottom of my heart, because your words of encouragement were the ones that made me push on at my dream to become a writer. Now, four years later, my beloved Caliger is now called Collinsmere, and dear Christian, the MC, is not the bumbling pre-adolescent servant boy he started out as, but a dashing 19th century detective with a bit of a genius streak, and I am finally beginning to write the story that I have always wanted to.
You might be familiar with Eloquence, one of my current projects, and though they are yet to get the formal introduction they deserve, three of the stars from Caliger appear in this new book as the beautiful characters I'd always wished they could be. Back then my young self just didn't have the creational talent that they were demanding. But now things are different!
I really do hope in a year's time (or two) I'll be writing again on this blog about writing, and I'll be able to tell you that if you walk into a particular bookstore and go to a particular shelf you will see a book with my name on it. It probably won't be Eloquence ... that story took four years to formulate and I expect it will need another four to become a real work of art, but I'm telling you, the time is coming! I'm getting there. It's rather exciting. It will still take time, of course, but I'm finally get to the point where I can say, this will happen. And it's pretty darn awesome. :)
I suppose the funny thing about this post is that one day I'm going to look back on the stories I wrote when I was seventeen/eighteen and still be going 'what?', but hey, I'll only have something to look back on if I keep writing now. :)

All my story idea notebooks, dating from 2006 to the present.

I'll leave this post with one last thing - you might notice some new additions in my sidebar. Yes, I've got word count progress meters! You can see my current projects and how much I've written on each one, and what the current goal for them stands at. Please leave a comment for me if you notice that the bars haven't moved for a while ... it'll urge me to keep writing!