Thursday, August 27, 2009
WiP update
I GOT 600 WORDS YESTERDAY!!!!
Nothing could possibly convey my excitement about actually getting something written better than CAPS right now. Except possibly this: --->
Oh yea, that was totally me after FINALLY ignoring my homework and putting in some MUCH needed writing time.
I've divided my schedule up and I'm not going to lie, I have homework time and practicing time and even workout time. All other free spots in my schedule will be split between my buddies (yes, I have IRL friends!) and writing. :D
I'm a happy panda right now. Seriously. Look at that picture again and tell me it doesn't make your day better.
Of course, I've also realized that I'm not entirely sure of my ending at this point for Rise of the Phoenix and that's more than likely why I only managed 600 words. This means I'm actually going to have to do some outlining *gasp* and figure out who dies or ya know whatever.... :)
I think I'll go do that now, instead of reading for class because frankly I'm tired of reading required material right now. Yay procrastinating for a good reason! :)
Have you been behind on your writing goals? Have you put your other responsibilities on hold to get some writing time in?
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
WiP Wednesday, College, Life, Fraternity, and Supernatural
I mean it.
College is awesome. Really it is. I'm a nerd, I love school. My only problem with it is the other people. They tend to lose all of their manners and become rude little pricks who are so wrapped up in drama that sometimes I feel like I've been physically run over by the train of lies, accusations, and angst that trails behind them.
Yay college. :) On the other hand, my classes FREAKING ROCK. Except Psychology, he just preaches straight outta the book. It's dull. But everything else is amazing. :D
All of my free time lately has been going to homework, my friends and/or the fraternity to which I have pledge my soul (it's music, so it to a good cause). What's left of my time after all of that? Quality roommate bonding time over Supernatural on DVD. What better way to de-stress than by watching Jared Padelecki and Jensen Ackles battle supernatural forces?
Absolutely. Nothing. (Unless you throw in some Jiffy Pop and Dr. Pepper or sweet tea.)
So that's what I've been doing. Taking life one day at a time and trying to figure out when I'll have time to write. Speaking of which, I'm down to an hour and twelve minutes so I'm gonna gonna go now.
Hopefully the rest of you have had MUCH more success and progress this week than I have. I know life has been getting in all of your ways as well so here's to hoping she'll stop being so needy and clingly and let us get some work done.
QUESTION of the DAY: What do you do to de-stress after a long and tiring, or possibly just nerver-wracking, day?
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Falling Behind
Dear College,
Stop interfering with my writing.
Yours truly,
Amanda
However, it looks like I'll have plenty of time to balance classes, lessons, homework, practicing, a social life, SAI meetings, AND writing so it's all good. I'll jump back on the writing later today and might catch up on the last two days' posts. Might.
On another note, I'm super excited about the Mythology class I'm taking. It reminded me how much I love school, and we haven't even started yet! Haha. Yay for nerdery. :D
Well, I'm off to try writing since I don't have my reading glasses and reading tiny text from a book is harder on my eyes than typing is. Here's to hoping the week off will let me fly through this!
Is your life getting in the way of your writing lately?
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Monday, August 17, 2009
Life/Update
There was a funeral on Thursday. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were let's see how much packing, hanging out with mom, and spending time with friends I can cram in to each day kind of days. And today is let's haul all of Amanda's crap up to Russellville, sign in, unpack, go eat, go shop, say goodbye, and organize the new room day.
Hopefully life will not continue to come between me and the WiP and I will be able to finish the first draft soon. Hopefully.
Has life gotten in the way of your writing this week?
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
WiP Wednesday
On RotP I've written a whopping 5,366 new words since last Wed. but I'll admit I'm working on it now. So, as of this particular moment I have a total of 51,764 words. Sadly I'm not happy with this number, I thought I'd make more progress this week. :(
In other news, this week I:
- had a root canal (lots of fun there!)
- had one of my best friends lose his father to a heart attack
- ordered flowers for said friend's family
- picked figs
- took pictures of wedding decorations (for my brother's)
- took pictures of me in possible dresses for wedding (for his fiance's other bride's maids)
- started talking to an old friend/ex-boyfriend
- read Rachel Vincent's My Soul to Lose
- added even more books to my TBR list
- packed/organized stuff for moving back to the dorm
What have you done this week? Been super busy or totally bored?
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Teaser Tuesday
The Yanti are a race of aliens remarkably similar to humans.
Shiani is the girl Tom is in love with/Connected to.
Tom is the MC and though he was raised on Earth, is not human.
“So you take the Yanti to Earth, then what?” This was it; this was what was bothering her. I was leaving, and she wasn’t coming with me.
“You’re staying here.” My voice was breathy, a whisper. She inclined her head slightly.
“I’m home. I’ve been running for years, Tom. Take a heart from a body and it can only survive for so long. Planets, well, we live quite a bit longer than people, and so do their hearts. I won’t leave again. Every moment away was agony, as if each breath sent ice into my lungs and every second that I moved further away felt like being torn apart limb by limb. I’m not going anywhere. This is my home, this is where I belong.”
I didn’t know what to say. No thoughts came to mind, no witty remarks. But my heart hurt, it physically hurt, because I didn’t know what came next. I didn’t know what would happen after I left to get the Yanti. I didn’t know if they would want to go to Earth or if humans would even have them. I wasn’t sure of anything. At least I hadn’t been before I met her.“I’ll be back. I promise, I’ll come back. You’re my home now; I never really had a choice.” I touched her cheek and pulled her closer. “I’ve been yours since day one.” I whispered against her lips; I knew it was cheesy, but it was the truth.
Saturday, August 8, 2009
TBR and a Link to a Kewl Contest
Unfortunately, My Soul to Take isn't among the prizes, :( which makes me sad because I really want to read that book and have no money to buy it. I'd check it out from the library, but they didn't have it when I looked; they never have any of the books I want to read. Yay Arkansas.
Anyway, whether you enter the contest or not, you should check out her site. I know I can't wait to get my hands on her Shifters series either.
I don't get much time to read. I go to school in Russellville, AR and I try to stay away from the campus library, the people always bug me and the computers hate me, it's sad really. Of course, I don't get much reading time for me anyway, but still. So I've been trying to catch up this summer and boy am I feeling small.
So, I went to Hastings earlier today and was looking for Rachel Vincent's book (it wasn't at Target or Walmart) and found a handful of others I'd heard about and some that just sounded really interesting. I had my phone out taking a picture of My Soul to Take (how many times do you think I can cram that title into one post?) and decided to take pictures of all the other ones while I was at it, how else was I going to remember the titles later? :)
Needless to say I ended up with 21 new pictures on my phone (including the one for the contest). My TBR list is now about 70 books long, most of which are YA and fantasy, and I know that isn't all of them, but here's a sample (let me know if you've read any of them and what you thought!):
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Shifter*
Nekropolis
Evermore
Leviathan*
City of Ashes
Bones of Fearie
Skinned
Generation Dead
The Da Vinci Code
Hush, Hush*
Wings
Ink Exchange
Simple Wishes
*indicates books not yet released
So many books, so little time. *sigh*
How long is your TBR list/pile/stack? Do you have a particular genre you stick to? Is there a particular book you're waiting on to be released?
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Broken Comments and the Lovely Tess
It turns out that sometime in the last month my comments decided to get stupid and stop working. I didn't know this until I got an email from the fantastic Tess Hilmo telling me she'd tried and tried but my blog just wouldn't let her comment.
I jumped on the interwebs and immediately started messing with settings and changing things, because what else are you gonna do at 1:10 in the morning when you can't sleep? So I checked my comments and everything said it was fine but it wouldn't actually let you post one, hmph.
I changed my template and reset my cookies (not the good kind) and caches and I even deleted the 'blogs I follow' widget to see if maybe that's what was causing it to be stupid; it wasn't. Everything was just the way it was supposed to be, I'd never changed any settings, but for some reason blogger still wasn't letting me comment. so I changed the format of the comment to not be at the bottom of my posts and for some reason that just cleared everything up.
Twenty minutes after I'd started, I wondered why I hadn't just tried that in the first place. *sigh*
Anyway, this post has absolutely nothing to do with writing and everything to do with saying a HUGE
Thank you!!
to you Tess! You're awesome and I appreciate you emailing me to let me know something was up.
Also, the picture has nothing to do with anything, or it could be a response to the tiny monkeys from Tess' post yesterday O.o, but either way they're lemurs and they're adorable so you should go here and check out the best site EVER for cute or here for the next best thing. :)
Enjoy!
to you Tess! You're awesome and I appreciate you emailing me to let me know something was up.
Also, the picture has nothing to do with anything, or it could be a response to the tiny monkeys from Tess' post yesterday O.o, but either way they're lemurs and they're adorable so you should go here and check out the best site EVER for cute or here for the next best thing. :)
Enjoy!
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
WiP Wednesday
My senior year in high school I started wearing reading glasses, I was 17 by the way. Anyway I've gone up in strength every year since and I
I'm only a few chapters away from being finished with the 1st draft and I'm getting giddy about writing a certain scene that is going to seriously challenge my MC. Oh I can't wait!
In other news, I've been reading The Bourne Identity, I've always enjoyed the movies, but the book is incredible! And so much different than the movies, it's great.
How are things going for you this week? Did you encounter any set backs or did you accomplish more than you'd hoped? Are you super excited about anything? Read any good books lately?
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Teaser Tuesday
A little back story: Tom was living a normal life when he was abducted my aliens, only to find out that he wasn't exactly native to Earth himself. The race of people that abducted him, lytuha, are the last of their kind and one of only two groups of survivors from their home planet; the other group, the Jetan, is responsible for their world's destruction. This scene takes place after the war between the two peoples, in which the enemy race was annihilated and only a handful of lytuha remain.
My stomach growled. I didn’t bother putting on socks or shoes, heading for the kitchen barefoot. The halls were eerily quite; before the war with the Jetán they would have been relatively empty but there had still been a sense of life onboard. Now, people were dead or hurt; now people were heartbroken. The kitchen was packed, but no one spoke, no one touched there food.
I sat down at the bar and the cook walked over to me; she stared at me with hollow eyes.
“You alright?”
“Do I look alright to you, Fynx? Do any of us look alright?” I glanced around the room.
“No, you all look like shit. Ya look like you lost someone, probably more than one someone, and I imagine you all blame me for that. Right?” There were grunts and nods throughout the room. It figured; everything was always my fault. I’d left the only planet I’d ever known and traveled halfway across the galaxy and things were still my fault; I didn’t think I’d ever fit in.
“Of course you blame me. I was the one who destroyed your planet and killed the rest of your kind. And I was the one who kidnapped Shiáni. I’m the one responsible for killing even more of you. It’s all my fault.” They hung their heads as I talked and I felt bad for it, but I was tired of being hated for things I hadn’t done. “Only none of it’s my fault. I didn’t ask you to fight for Shiáni or her planet, you did that all on your own. You came to me, remember? I was living my own life, I had a home and a sister who was my best friend. I didn’t know about aliens or that I was one and I sure as hell didn’t ask to be a part of your war. I didn’t ask to have my life turned upside down or to Connect with a girl who isn’t just from another planet, but who is a planet. I never wanted any of this.
“I’m sorry you’ve lost people that you love and care about. I’m sorry there’s only a handful of you left in the universe. But thanks to you guys, I only know of one other person who’s like me. Just one. So believe me when I say I understand what you’re going through, but you’ve got to stop putting all the blame on me.” The room was awkward and silent; my stomach rumbled like thunder and a few of the lýtúha gave me hesitant smiles.
“What would you like?” The cook met my eyes and I could feel the apology she extended on the edge of my mind; I nodded, acknowledging it.
Alright, so blogger really doesn't like me copying and pasting stuff; it requires a bit of a fight and there are still some things that aren't showing up right (especially that last line of dialogue), but it's all good, the words are all there. Hopefully, I'll have everything worked out by next week so I won't have to fight just to post a snippet.
Monday, August 3, 2009
Being True to Yourself
I started playing the cello the summer before 6th grade and I picked up the horn in the 7th; I couldn't imagine my life without either of them. But I'd always had a love for English and writing and reading that I didn't think I'd ever out grow. I wanted to double major but I thought that would be too much as a freshman trying to get a hold on college life so I picked Music Ed. I was told by every music instructor that I had that I would be fantastic at it and I loved music and music theory, which is apparently odd but anyway. I never really thought that that was the thing for me but with so many people that I trusted telling me that it grows on you, I thought I'd try that.
I told my AP English teacher that I was going with Music Ed. and I swear it's like he knew what I would do before even I did. He made me promise to at least minor in English or Creative Writing because I was too good and talented not to. I assured him that I would.
Low and behold a year later I'd figured out that teaching music really wasn't for me, something I'd thought I could over come but I couldn't. I knew that I still wanted to play my instruments and I refused to go another year without my cello (my school doesn't have an Orchestra :() so I took up lessons and was happy again. I was a double major in music and English and I thought it was great.
The next semester my music teachers just kept getting under my skin and I found myself dreading going to every class. I hated the music we played in band, I despised sight-singing. Two days into classes and I realized I couldn't do it anymore. I loved my instruments more than anything, but I couldn't finish getting a degree in them, and we don't have a minor.
I filled out the paperwork and got the signatures and became an English major only. I called my mom up the moment I walked out of the building and it was quite possibly the happiest moment of my life. I was finally being true to myself and what I wanted to do and be. I was downright giddy. It took me a year and a half to listen to my heart and it was a time during which I was rarely happy. My friends were freaked out at how much different I was after turning in a piece of paper and declaring English as my only major. I am still excited about it.
Now, I'm doing everything I ever wanted to do. I'm playing both of my instruments, taking classes that get me excited just by thinking about them, I'm writing a book that has been in my head since the 8th grade, and most of all I'm being myself.
I know, I know, that's more than you ever wanted to know about me but I needed to share how I got here and why I'm doing what I do. I can't not play my horn and cello, or take English courses; I can't not write; and I will not go another day trying to be something and someone that isn't me.
How did you know you wanted to do whatever it is you do: write, teach, be a mom? Have you ever tried to be something you're not? How did it make you feel?
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