Sporadic Blogging

Sounds a bit like a weird disease. Hmm.

I did, actually, get 58k words written during NaNoWriMo for deAngelis, which was a lot less than I thought I would get, but still actually pretty good all the same. I then hit a bit of a lag and haven't written much, if at all, for the last month, but there's been a few changes going on that I think will enable me to write more and better. I do, actually, finally have the plot FIXED. I know I said that several times over the last half-dozen posts or so, but it's actually true this time. The plot is finished.

There's really not a whole lot to say. I'm cleaning up what I wrote during NaNoWriMo and then moving on to finish the rest of the novel (looks like we're going to end up at about 100k words, which really ain't bad at all).

Currently reading Thunderer by Felix Gilman. Usually I have a hard time reading books like this. His prose is wonderful and the world-building is fantastic and the characters are GREAT, but the whole "city of filth" theme really gets to me. It's the main reason I didn't care for Perdido Street Station. China Mieville is brilliant, but it was just so... crude, in a way. I needed more hope in the writing, and I didn't get it. Hoping that I get something different out of Thunderer.

At any rate, suppose I should get some food in me, get some writing done, and then get ready to go MST Season of the Witch with some friends.

Noveling! ...without pants.

Well, Spring Break is over and I am cured of my particularly vindictive sinus infection, so now it is back to the daily grind of being an English major and aspiring author. At just-past two in the morning, I did in fact manage to finish writing chapter four of deAngelis, so that's always news of the good sort. My goal is still May 1st, to have the entire thing in its final draft. Still not entirely sure how likely that is, given the way that I've spent the last six weeks struggling through the first four chapters; the last three were spent on the fourth chapter alone.

I intentionally left my computers in my room when I went home for vacation, knowing that the best way for me to get past a rut in a scene or a chapter is to just walk away from it for a while - I've never been one of those people who can just "skip it" and then go back to it later; I always feel as if I'm trying to pretend the entire scene or chapter just didn't happen.

Here's my Spring Break, in a nutshell: working at Dairy Queen for a little over fifteen hours, getting foot rubs from Adam, going to see Shutter Island with Adam (which, long story short, we decided to give 4/5, Leonardo diCaprio has really improved since being king of the dorks), watching cartoon with Alek, and sitting around the new condo crocheting granny squares in psychedelic colors. The only words that I wrote the entire time were in my personal journal, which I'm not sharing here. Also I went to see my mom and that wasn't really that exciting, but all things considered it definitely could have been worse, given that the woman is batshit insane.

At any rate, more work on deAngelis tomorrow after class and gym and hot tub.

Anyone have a good cure for chronic heartburn?

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Happy Valentine's Day!

I hope everyone, whether they're single or dating or whatever, is having a wonderful day. It really doesn't have to be about romance. Adam and I watched Galaxy Quest and played Magic: The Gathering for two hours. He kicked my ass. Other cinematic attempts involved Appaloosa, which just wasn't nearly as good as I was hoping - there's a reason Jeremy Irons isn't on the cover of the DVD, and that's because he's barely in the movie at all! And to be honest, that's the entire reason I wanted to see the damn thing. Also, Renee Zellweger is just difficult to look at - she doesn't really belong, visually, in a western. We watched maybe the first half hour of the film and then gave up. By then it was too late to start another movie, so once again we are putting off watching La Vie en Rose. Eventually we'll get to that one. Eventually.

I found this wonderful organizational word processing program, geared specifically toward novelists. So far I've had lots of fun playing around with it, and I've actually gotten some, you know, work done. It's called yWriter5 and pretty much rocks, although I am still getting used to the controls and the organization. Unfortunately, it doesn't work on macs, so I was unable to share its pure awesomeness with my other writer!geek friend, Katie.

We finally got the computer recovered from its massive grand-mal seizure, which was nice, because my laptop was having periodic aneurysms, also known as the horrible BSOD, every so often and for no apparent reason. So now Sharp Tooth is running Windows 7 and so far I love it. Little Foot is going back into hibernation.

But yes, I'm back up there with my Google Chrome and my Trillian Astra and my iTunes, and as I'm typing this, World of Warcraft is downloading, just in time for my last day (tomorrow) of playtime before my account expires. I'm absolutely broke, but then again, Blizzard Entertainment has given me the month away from writing that I needed, so kudos to them.

I'll leave you with this picture of my favorite actor of all time. He captured my heart when I was seven years old and he was bossing around hyenas. Since then he's just been pretty frakking awesome. I love Adam with all my heart, but Jeremy Irons, I wish you were my valentine. XD

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Kayla's First Day of School

GEEZE. Hollywood is fully of borderline crazy people, let me tell you. While I'm sure that goes without saying, let me tell you of the two things that struck me as particularly nuts today.

Image via Wikipedia

1. Breaking Dawn. They already made the third movie, and they're already talking about the forth, which is funny, because the two actors playing the main characters aren't even signed on for that many films. (I can't confirm it, but someone told me that the actors actually didn't want to return even to do New Moon, because they can't stand the characters... but I'm reporting that on hearsay, so don't take me that seriously.) The baffling part about this fourth movie (SPOILER ALERT... like I care) is that, in order to portray Bella and Edward's baby girl, they are using A CGI BABY.

Just let that sit for a moment. Then re-read that sentence. I'm pretty sure that's all that really needs to be said.

(I will make it clear, though, that I absolutely abhor the Twilight series, and that anyone who thinks (1) that Stephenie Meyer is anywhere near a decent writer and/or (2) that the Bella/Edward 'ship is any synonym of "healthy" or "pleasant" or "desirable" is a complete idiot and should have their brain rewired and their reproductive organs removed.)

2. Spiderman 4. Literally, three hours ago I tweet'd about finding out that The Vulture was confirmed to be played by John Malkovich. Then, two hours after that, I found out that the movie had been scrapped, and Sam Raimi had walked away from the entire franchise. WHOA. Literally six days after confirming Malkovich, they CANCELLED THE MOVIE.

Don't get me wrong - I think Sam Raimi was the worst thing to happen to Spiderman. I mean, just look at this scene from Spiderman 3, where they gave him more control than he'd had in the previous two movies. I think everyone would agree with me that, in 3, our beloved Peter Parker just had way too much eyeliner and estrogen. The entire movie was a joke.

Image by Mirka23 via Flickr

They're talking reboots now, which look like they're going to be handled by Marvel - and if that's the case, then it's pretty definite that they're going to do it the right way. Spiderman was actually pretty good, and 2 was decent, even though it definitely fell short of the pure awesome that was its predecessor. But as we saw with The Hulk, Marvel knows how to handle its own shit. Here's hoping that they manage to get their hands on Spidey, and hopefully one day clean up the mess that Fox created with its three X-Men films and the travesty that was Wolverine.

(NOTE: The first X-Men film was pretty good, but the next two were horrendous, and don't even get me started on Wolverine. ALL of them were about Wolverine, really, and I didn't appreciate that... although I adore Patrick Stewart as Professor Xavier. Sigh.)

So, yeah, there's your two major Hollywood "WTF?"s for the day.

In other news, today was the first day of classes. I lived. My directing class may make me want to kill myself, but I just have to grit my teeth and get through it, I guess. Part of me wants to drop my theater major entirely and just say the Hell with it, but I know that means I would have wasted a BUNCH of time here, and I want to get something out of it. I am thinking about picking up a creative writing major, though, which would enable me to teach it when I get my license (and a job).

For the rest of the evening, I plan on possibly getting out another chapter or two of deAngelis, making a cup of tea (possibly green, not in the mood for black tonight...), and curling up with my Sherlock Holmes anthology. Ahhh.

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Last Morning at Home

After staying up until 3am to watch a ridiculous amount of Fruits Basket, which is, embarrassingly, my guilty pleasure among anime, I managed to drag myself out of bed six hours later, since I knew I needed to get a jump on packing and asking my stepmom if she would pleeeease write out a check for 300 bucks or something so that I could buy my textbooks for school. After getting an answer of "of course!" from her, I promptly made a cup of tea (earl grey), and plopped down in front of my computer to read my feeds and to blog.

Anyone who has read any of my fiction would be more than a little confused if they found out that I've spent a ridiculous amount of time watching Fruits Basket and d'awwwing over the characters. Let's be honest - it's very shojo. Very. And my choice of anime to-date has generally been things like Deathnote, Full Metal Panic!, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, and FLCL. I did watch Blood + for a while, but there were a lot of "everything is my fault" and people not expressing their feelings (which I guess is the thing in Japan, but still, half the conflict could have been avoided if people would just fucking TALK to each other), and three episodes away from the end I finally gave up and just started watching Law & Order: SVU. About as shojo as I really get is Kino's Journey, which really isn't that shojo at all. Okay, yes, part of me is something of a hopeless romantic - or something - but I think really what appeals to me most about Fruits Basket is the whole concept of all of these guys being protective of her, and not just because half of them are in love with her.

From the time I was six years old, I desperately wanted an older brother. I'm the oldest of three girls, and while I've always been kind of a take-charge-and-get-it-done sort of girl, even from that age, I wanted someone strong to care about me, too. Or something. At any rate, if ever I form a relationship with a male, it tends to be on the level of family. My best friend Alek and I are... special. As time goes by and I relate stories of our gallivantings, I'm sure you'll come to see that our relationship is a bit past "just friends" but quite below "lovers" and hanging out somewhere in between, which I've decided to dub "family." Luckily (I guess?) I don't really have that many close relationships with anybody, so really the only people I actually give more than two damns about are Adam, Alek, and Colt. Everyone else has pissed me off at some point. (Not that Adam hasn't pissed me off, but I'm actually, you know, engaged to him, so he gets a little more tolerance than other people.)

So really, Fruits Basket has me more or less hooked for that reason. Also, I like cats.

But enough about anime! I have other things to talk about this morning besides anime!

Cool Thing: apparently some divers found some computer thing on a shipwreck from 150 B.C. I know that completely fails to explain it, or even convey how awesome it is, so just go read the freaking article.

Next order of business...

I like movies. A lot. I also like my fandoms... a lot. And there are some pretty awesome movies coming out in the next couple of years that I'm probably going to pee my pants over at least once.

From Paris With Love looks pretty awesome, even though I am definitely not a fan of John Travolta ever since he went L. Ron Hubbard-style batshit crazy, and the last movie of his that I enjoyed was Michael. However this movie just looks ridiculously fun. Of course, I could be suffering from action-withdrawal, given that I've been more or less drowning in shojo for the last week. At any rate, the NOT WORK SAFE trailer looks awesome, and I have a lot of faith in the director... I really liked Taken. Also, John Travolta with his shaved head, goatee, and big earring looks a lot like my cousin Jon, whom I'm particularly close to. Also, so far the characters seem relatively similar.


NOTE: Imagine my uncontrollable giggling when Adam saw the poster for this in the theater and thought it was a James Bond movie. I, who have only seen the new Casino Royale, had to explain to him, who has watched every single one multiple times with his father as quality time, that the movie he was thinking of was From Russia with Love.

NOTE 2: I really can't mention James Bond without mention Prince Philip, either. This man makes me laugh, but aside from that, I actually admire his ability to say whatever is on his mind. He isn't malicious about it, and really there's nothing wrong with what he says... it's just kind of shocking that the husband of, you know, Queen Elizabeth would say the things he says, in public.

Moving on...

Kick-Ass just looks cute, is really all I have to say about that. I love superhero films - I'm a Marvel girl at heart - and one of my first loves was Mystery Men (although that may have possibly been helped by the fact that I had a crush on Kel Mitchell... also people say I remind them a lot of Janeane Garofalo in her stand-up...). Nicolas Cage is generally pretty good, and Mark Strong is still on that aforementioned Top Ten List of mine. See the also NOT WORK SAFE trailer here.

Clash of the Titans looks epic, which may be its downfall. As long as they get rid of that stupid owl from the original movie, I'll be happy, but I'd be ever so pleased if Sam Worthington turns out to be a better actor than he proved to be in Avatar. At any rate, Liam Neeson rocks my freaking world. Also, supplemental music by Massive Attack? That's gonna be pretty cool, too.

Daybreakers looked vaguely interesting, although I'm pretty sick of the vampire genre right now. Most I just have a huge crush on Willem Defoe, and Ethan Hawke was amazing in Gattaca way back when.

I can't say I'm nearly as excited about Iron Man 2 as I was about the first one, but then again, that could just be because the trailer wasn't put together nearly as well as the first movie. I would still totally do Robert Downey Jr., let alone Anthony Stark. Robin Hood looks vaguely stupid, but I'll wait for a new trailer before I make any decisions, and even though I am very afraid of Disney and Jerry Bruchkeimer butchering it, I am still pretty stoked for the Prince of Persia movie that's coming out in May. Last summer I picked up Rival Swords (or whatever it's called) for the PSP and still haven't gotten past the second-to-last boss. Let's face it, my PSP is, in my hands, an MP3 player that also happens to play games, and the last time I beat a game, it was Blazing Dragons on the Sega Saturn. Hell, it took me two and a half years to get my main toon on WoW to level 60. My guild bestie, Boom, says that I'm possibly the most casual gamer he has ever met, and by casual he means "almost dead."

Speaking of Blazing Dragons, I really wish I had the cash to see this movie...

Enough of that, I guess I should get a shower and then actually start packing. Writing this has taken a good hour out of my day and, let's face it, I actually would like to get to school. :-)

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Writing, Returning to School, Etc.

Well, I finally put up another article over at Steam-Vents, which I haven't done for months. Our writing staff kind of wandered off, so we have to get some new people, but Adam's plenty enthusiastic enough to get new people who will be willing to pitch in and participate. As the chief Editor, I just hope the new batch spells, punctuates, and conjugates English verbs better than the last one.

Aside from writing a pretty lengthy an in-depth review on both Guy Ritchie's film Sherlock Holmes and James Cameron's Avatar, I managed to get another chapter finished for deAngelis, which is nothing to sneer at. I'm into chapter twelve or so, barely halfway into the story I believe, and the story is already rocking out at 45,000 words. The bad news is that I'm coming up on some plot points that I'm going to have to write completely from scratch, and I'm afraid that I'll fall behind again, especially with the work load that this semester's classes promise to shove upon me.

Here's the classes that I'll be taking this spring semester:

1. US History to 1877. The professor who teaches this is actually the sponsor for the Role Players Guild on campus, of which I'm the secretary and the house officer (the combination of the two offices results in the title of "PR Bitch"). He's a pretty cool guy, with a dry sense of humor that I definitely appreciate, and I know he's enthusiastic about the class, so this really shouldn't be any trouble, especially because it's a 200-level class.
2. Directing. This is one of those classes that I'm dreading. I have to take it if I want to finish out my theater minor, but I really wish I didn't. It's taught by the former head of the theater department. He's strict and thinks that theater, and his class, are the most important things on the entire earth. Obviously I don't agree, but what can you do?
3. Modern American Lit. And by "modern", I mean every from WWII to the present day. The reading list isn't too bad, but the responses that we'll have to prepare for every class may just wipe me out.
4. Multicultural American Lit. How this is different from the above, I have no clue, but it says I have to take it, so I guess I'm gonna.
5. Theater Theory. My advisor told me I shouldn't take this class until I'm a senior, but since I'm (hopefully) transferring to IUPUI next fall, I decided that it really doesn't matter. Also I just don't like my advisor.
6. Advanced Creative Writing Workshop. This is essentially what I took this past semester. It's three hours long and one night a week, but I don't mind, because it's actually a fun class. Let's just hope that a massive bout of writer's block doesn't hit me mid-semester.
7. Women's Choir. This actually is a zero-credit class, and I joined it because I miss singing. I don't think  it's anything more than just singing (no final, no classwork, no homework, etc.), so hopefully it will just feel like an extracurricular.

Shyeah... I have a full workload this semester. And that's if I didn't have a novel I was trying to finish at record speed.

On top of this I have my Dungeons & Dragons 4th ed game that I'm running (kind of), and preparations to try and transfer the hell out of Terrible Terre Haute. Also, at some point, I probably ought to take my PRAXIS I, ya think?

Time to do a little crochet and watch some more anime. Going to be a long day tomorrow... sigh.