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. 

Deliverable 5

So get this: I finished the first draft of my novel! After a long and arduous struggle, I finished chapter 19 over the weekend, chapter 20 on Tuesday, and the epilogue on Wednesday. It's terribly unedited and needs a lot of help. Everyone's been asking me what I'm going to do for the duration of the project. I don't understand. Do people believe books are perfect after the first draft, or that spelling and grammar errors don't occur ever or that plotholes don't spontaneously occur as you're writing? As an amateur writer, I can assure you all of this happens--and often. So I have my work cut out for me. The project isn't finished and neither am I.

Anyway, here's my clever photo of the entire novel.

That should be every page included and the whole pages wouldn't all fit so some of them are halves. Current, unedited stats are 168 pages on Microsoft Word, since there are no page breaks for chapters, and 42,291 words.

Yay for deliverables! Also I'm posting late because my laptop lost its mind last night so I tried to update it and it froze on 17/44 updates for like 5 straight hours so I had to hard  shut it down and then it was 11pm when I tried to restart it and it decided not to work at all and I had the SAT this morning at 8am and I wanted to sleep and evidently so did my laptop. But it's working now. Remind me to update my laptop more often.

Thanks for reading.

Not a deliverable week

Do you remember the times when I would blog and I wouldn't have writers block? Yeah, I don't either. I have a deliverable due next Friday and it happens to be the entire rough draft of the entire novel and I'm entirely too stressed about it. I probably shouldn't be.  I should be finished with chapter 19 by tonight. Then all that's left is chapter 20 and the epilogue. 

So Elsie goes through some pretty heavy stuff during the war and I figure, since we've been studying mental disorders in psychology, why not give her PTSD? Of course in order to write the PTSD, I have to give her some serious psychological damage in previous acts. There was a split second where I considered changing my deliverable to a rewrite of act 3 but I'm not going to be a weak writer. You're not supposed to reread your writing before you're finished because then you'd only spend time editing and never get anywhere. It's best to have something to edit and then return to it then spend all your time going in circles in the same spot. 

So I will be continuing with the original plan. Finish this act by next Friday and spend the time editing until the next deliverable. Strange to think that I'm nearing the end of my little ink journey with Elsie. But there's always editing. And there could be the possibility of a sequel (there won't be one--probably). Actually if I wrote a sequel, it would be about someone else in WWII, maybe with ties to Elsie. But I'll cross that bridge when I get there and I haven't even finished paving the road I'm currently on. 

But yeah I'll probably finish chapter 19 tonight, which I'm starting to like as much as chapter 14. It's really cute. 

Maybe another snippet next week. Acually I have to have proof of my deliverable and I have a clever idea for that so who knows what could happen. Thanks for reading.