Bet you thought you'd seen the last of me

I would like to point out that I don't watch the show to which my title alludes but I'm alluding to it anyway.

Right, so I said I had made my last post and I have! Sort of. Not really. Let's just say that my previous post was the last of the school year, the last of the project. However The Rose of No-Man's Land is still a novel and has places to go in the world. Also, I thoroughly enjoyed blogging this year and I intend to do it recreationally.

However, I will not be using this blog. I've created a new one! I haven't posted to it yet but I will get around to that. I'll put a link to the other one in my Links page and I'll link this one in my new blog somewhere. I'm keeping this blog around to notify the progress of this particular novel. If I get lazy and decide only to update on my main blog, someone slap me, please and thank you. Really, the comments section is there for a reason. Please comment "slap" if you believe I have failed this blog. Or "you have failed this city" as I have recently started watching Arrow and I will understand that reference.

Don't expect there to be any news anytime soon. The writing and editing and publishing processes all take lots of time and, let's be honest, I'm not sure I'm even done with the first one yet. So this blog will probably sit here for a while without much activity.

Regardless, it will be here. Thanks for reading to anyone that sees this.

P.S. My presentation for this project went very well. I didn't have it recorded because I am afraid of public speaking but it went much better than expected.

Last Post

I had planned on doing this in class but then I got distracted by the rad party we had in fourth period. Granted, the party was tinged with melancholy, due to the fact that it was our intern's last day. We will miss you, Ms. G. Come back and see us. Watch me fail at presenting this project. Follow me on Instagram.

So this week in Lang we spent all week working on our presentation for the project. We watched many TED talks and evaluated them. As a person that's absolutely terrified of public speaking or interaction, I have not been anticipating this with any amount of excitement. I don't know what I'm going to talk about, first of all. Secondly, how am I going to talk for five minutes about nothing?

Okay, a rant is not what you signed on for when you opened this blog. I will try to talk about what I learned from this project. 

For starters, I learned that I have it in me to write a good story. I've written before and this is the first story where I'm genuinely confident in the storytelling. Also the writing is good. There's good imagery, good depth. I managed to properly develop characters for the first time—ever.

I've learned a lot about history. Like more than I ever expected to know. I know how a trench was designed in WWI and the agriculture of the Loire Valley in France. I know about Edwardian dress fashions and how they changed when the war started and progressed. As Stephen Sondheim once said, "I know things now, many valuable things, that I hadn't known before". (If you didn't sing that, I pity you.)

Most importantly, and this is debatable, I learned how to challenge myself. Now this begins with time management. There were times when I managed my time well and there were times when I didn't. I learned how to cope with the consequences of both. I challenged myself to stay within my deadlines, which worked most of the time, but not always. Sometimes it meant writing 2 chapters in 2 days, but I did it. I challenged my ability to storytell and to do so effectively. Sometimes it meant being cruel to my characters, by telling them to make the hard decisions, and sometimes it meant completely changing the main idea of an entire chapter. But all of it was worth it. 

My project is unconventional. It's not life-changing, but it's not unimportant. I'm glad I did it, although my presentation grade might not be. But this has been a journey for me, and for you, my 2-3 readers. Thank you for taking it with me. 

Thanks for reading. 

Much reflection. Such thoughtful. Wow.

Creds to Yanes for this killer title. 

So basically I have nothing to blog about because I finished my project like 2 weeks ago so my teacher told me to blog about reflection stuff. In other words, I will attempt to supply you quite a lot of backstory in like 10 minutes because I need to go to bed and I have the ACT tomorrow morning. 

Okay so last year as in sophomore year I decided I wanted to write a novel about WWI because it was pretty important to our history and is heavily overshadowed by WWII. I had a few friends talk with me about things I could do with it and they get a lot of credit for developing the story. I had done my history fair project on women's rights in the Great War so I knew a lot about a bunch of random stuff that no one else knew or cared about. 

I decided to change that perspective. 

Being relatively obsessed with Sherlock at the time (let's face it, I still am) I even named a character "Benedict" in honor of the great Cumberbatch. Regarding the story, I knew for sure I wanted to include the Hello Girls because they were really awesome. Due to plot twisting, I added the Red Cross in and the plot twist became part of the third major setting for Elsie. This third setting is the Chateau d'Azay-le-Rideau. 

In other words, I came up with the beginning of the story last year. Shortly thereafter, I began writing. Now this writing was not the same story as the one I just finished. I have since scratched and replotted what I previously had, for the sake of good story telling and the project. When my Lang teacher introduced this project and said it was about passion, I decided to tell a story about which I was passionate. I replotted and started anew, and let me tell you it has been worth it. 

Research was a big, big part of this project. I got a fashion book for Christmas which allowed me to perfectly envision the styles (and social circumstances surrounding those styles) from the Edwardian and WWI era. I received multiple WWI books, giving me insight into the actual war and some of the notable people in it. A few of the people I've even included in the novel, such as Grace Banker, one of the number one Hello Girls, and Mata Hari, an infamous double agent that was executed in 1917. My former history teacher lent me a battle book so I could research uniforms and battles. I should probably return that to her sometime soon. 

To sum up, this story has come a very long way from the little inkling of a thought germinating in my brain in the middle of sophomore year. I've since named it after a song from the WWI era, The Rose of No-Man's Land, which I think is appropriate for the story; assuming I publish it, you'll see why. 

Anyway, that's my reflection. It took 20, rather than 10, minutes. I hope you're happy. Next week will be my last blog post for this project. By then, I'll have been working on my presentation for the class so I will have something more entertaining to share. 

Thanks for reading. 

Novel=Edited

french.

This was not how I intended to start this blog post but that's just how it happened. When I set a book down on my laptop, it typed "fr" and I decided to keep it. French is pretty integral to the project. It's half the reason Elsie goes to France. I have a French test today on the imperative, meaning I now know how to give commands in French! I kind of already knew, picked it up while learning, but now it's official and I have no excuse for being wrong. I would like to now formally apologize to any native French speakers that ever read this book because I am but a simple American that pretends to know more than she does. Just like the rest of my country.

That said, GUESS WHAT KIDS. I finished editing the novel. I'm sure, after shutting it up for a few weeks or a month or however long, I will likely look at it and cringe and strongly desire to destroy it and start anew, or maybe I'll have an epiphany and decide to change something. I don't know what will happen. Until then, I will simply brag about my stats.

The final page count comes to 174 Microsoft Word pages. Final word count is 43,669 words (I just added 3 extra words due to superstition; don't judge).

Let's have a profound quote from the end of the novel.

Life is a constant problem. People live in constant darkness. Happiness isn’t a place we want to get to but an event we want to enjoy. And just as the tiny stars speckle the black night sky, happy moments erupt from a dark existence to make the light shine brighter.

I got happiness, just as I got misery. And I’m content with the life I’ve lived, just as I’m content with the people that lived it with me. I’d never trade my dark sky if it meant I’d lose my bright stars.

I’d never trade those stars for anything.

Yay, deep thing.  Anyway this will be one of my last posts. It is now time for me to stress about my test next period.

Thanks for reading.

I AM SO DONE WITH MY WIFI

Is there any feeling better than a Friday afternoon with no obligations and pure, vast freedom on the horizon? One could argue about the thrills of a wedding or the sight of a newborn child but I advocate Friday appreciation.

The title and opening paragraph of this post are unintentionally juxtaposing each other. The title relates to the fact that my bloody WiFi at home refuses to upload my blog posts half the time. So today you will be receiving two posts but one of them is a week old. This is not entirely true because my WiFi cut out yet again last night and I couldn't load blogger. By now, my opening paragraph is irrelevant because it's Saturday evening. Sorry about that.

Moving on, this week I've accomplished two chapters (yay, one more than last week). I have 2 chapters and the epilogue left to finish and then I am done. I think I'm going to go back and change things in act 1 later but I'll get to that eventually.

So lately I've decided to force myself into exercising which is a) an excellent excuse to procrastinate homework and b) the perfect opportunity to read. I'm still on that Stephen King memoir and he says interesting things about writing. He recommends not plotting, which I thought was totally weird. It makes sense for him because he's a suspense writer and the less he knows, the less the reader knows, which ups the suspense.

Personally, I feel it's important to know what you're doing with your story because otherwise it could go in weird directions and there could be lulls and I find it too risky to simply wing it. But if you disagree, that's totally up to you. Enjoy your obscure plot twists; maybe they'll work for you. 

Well that was nice and random. The novel is up to 172 pages and at least an additional 1000 words. Yay. Success. I'll be done soon and maybe I'll publish it or something crazy. Who knows?

Thanks for reading. 

I edited one chapter this week

I am sOoOoO done with obligatory blogging. Mostly because it just highlights my inability to do anything. I've seriously edited one chapter this week. One. I shouldn't complain though. Plenty of people I know haven't even started their projects yet. And I'm practically done. Of course that means my productivity level is way down for the ending which also means I have nothing to blog about. 

Wow coming up with 300 words is impressively difficult. Last week I just talked about nerd things and what do you know, I'm still a nerd. I started Dollhouse because I love Joss Whedon and I believe him to be a very helpful person when it comes to inspiration and learning. Stephen King writes that you should destroy your television if you know what's good for your writing career (I'm paraphrasing, here) but I think it can be a useful tool if you know how to use it. For instance, in Dollhouse, there is a plot twist in every episode that makes me curse Joss Whedon's name. In later seasons of Supernatural I've learned what not to do when trying to develop characters. 

So I should probably talk about something other than writing. I don't know what that subject is but I should probably talk about it. 

Also I think I might do camp NaNoWriMo next month so that means less work with Elsie. 

I really have nothing else to say so here's a picture that I stole from Pinterest that has a relevant quote from Stephen King which is relevant because it's from the book I'm reading. Thanks for reading. 

Spring break 2k15

Hello, I did not update this blog on Friday. However, the requirement for spring break was that you post and it didn't specify when. Since I am still on spring break, this blog is within the time parameters. 

So spring break. I've found it's nearly impossible to try to do anything productive during a time when you're not required to do anything at all. That said, I've been editing my way through the first draft. I've decided that right now I'm editing the story and then I'll go back through and edit the writing. This is likely the only way to stretch out the project until it ends. 

I have done some editing over break but, mostly, I've been doing nothing. I've watched quite a lot of Dan and Phil on YouTube, which has been incredibly unproductive but very worthwhile and entertaining. I took the SAT and later tried to meet an actor from Buffy who didn't show because he'd been arrested. I finished all of Supernatural so I don't have that distracting me anymore.  Oh, I passed my drivers test today. Congrats me. Now I have absolutely no excuse for sitting at home and not leaving the house. But I'm gonna do it anyway. 

I realize that this post is pretty much not at all about writing but that's okay. One of Veronica Roth's (or maybe it was Cassandra Clare's) writing tips is that after finishing your manuscript, you take a break from it for a week. While I didn't last an entire week before beginning my editing, I have been taking breaks. I suppose I just need to let the story simmer before diving back into it. 

Well, I don't think I have anything else to say. I'll probably come back while editing act 3 and whine about how hard editing it. Please bear with me. 

So spring break was chill. Break from school and break from work. I don't wanna go back to school but I don't really have a choice, do I? Oh, well. I'll cry later, I'm sure.  

Thanks for reading.