Happy Thursday! Or should I say, Thursgivingday? Because yes. Yes it is Thursgivingday.
What a busy Thursday. I worked all evening so Thanksgiving had to happen early and fast. Our turkey was HUGE and I don't know why, there was just the three of us. And yams and green beans and sooo much stuffing and olives and I made mashed potatoes which is super easy. I had a whole turkey leg.
Stupid Face Cat came by and I gave him some turkey skin.
It was a clear clear day and almost warm in the sun. We took a quick walk around the block and in my two shirts and a snow vest I was quite content.
Before that I played some guitar to my dad's piano. We tried O Suzanna, because it has three chords that I know. Will keep working on that.
Then I squeezed in a good thousand words and then it was off to work. Since my all-nighter last week, I've been super behind in NaNo. But, currently, I'm only 451 words behind, so that just means one of these days I need to pop out a full 2k and then I'll be caught up. Which is nothing since I slapped down nearly 3k both yesterday and the day before. None of these thousands of words are any good, but they'll do for now. Only four days and 9 thousand words to go!
Remember last year, when I was lazy writing, I would get up and sew? Aprons, specifically. My diversion this year has definitely been baking. But what Thursgivingday would be complete without pumpkin pie? I made two batches of the little guys, one set for my co-workers. The rest are mine all mine! But no, you can have some.
So then I went to work and watched as people started lining up outside of Toys-R-Us at 5 PM. When I left at 10, their lot was full, spilling over into ours, and we're literally across the street. Hello, Black Friday.
I'm supposed to go shopping with me buds tomorrow, but they're getting started at 4:30 AM so I wonder if I'll ever see them. I still have 2k to write, and work at night, too. So busy busy.
This week I played a touch of Borderlands at Carolyn's, we watched a terrible comic book adaptation, and an ep of old school Batman. So it all worked out.
What else? Oh, baking, of course. I made stroganoff straight out of a foodnetwork video (ie, no recipe) as well as a Cheerwine bundt cake, which is a pound cake flavored and colored with a North Carolinian cherry soda. Thanks to my local Rocket Fizz, the cake was a success. Burned it a bit so it has a crust, but that sugary crunch is delightful. I'll make you one it was crazy easy. I've been eating cake for days.
Oh, the other thing I did of any note was that I drove out to my dad's office. Haha. BECAUSE some kids were shooting a scene for an upcoming webseries out back. The director was a screenwriter's assistant on Heroes, of all things. It was very indie guerrilla filmmaking, less crew than my own student film. But it was cool. When it comes out I'll link it to you and say "I was there! I know them!"
Well I'd better get back to writing. Gotta get a jump start on tomorrow. I don't think this novel will be done this month, either, but at least it's a little closer. A little more real.
-Steph
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Stickers
Happy Thursday! Guess who spent 10 hours out of the last 24 at work! It was epic.
I got back at 6:30 this morning, and I almost wrote this then. But my last guitar class was tonight and I didn't want to disappoint you all and not include one last update on how College Guitar and Thinks She Can Play.
Except I got called back in to work! So guitar class is behind me, and I'll never see Nine-Year-Old again. It's probably for the best. A clean break. He can't try to get me to find him on Facebook.
What else did I do this week. I can't think back past the stickers. (We put stickers on DVDs for 8 hours and then some) I even dreamed of stickering during my vampire-day sleep.
OH.
I've read Twilight and New Moon. Started New Moon some time on Sunday, and finished it in a marathon on Monday from when I woke up to 4 pm. It was a bizarre day which, much like today, started in the afternoon.
Got a little behind in the writings, but I wrote a Batman fic one day to make up for it. Beh, I still have another 1500 to go today. :<
Work, Twilight, writing. Um. That's about it.
-Steph
I got back at 6:30 this morning, and I almost wrote this then. But my last guitar class was tonight and I didn't want to disappoint you all and not include one last update on how College Guitar and Thinks She Can Play.
Except I got called back in to work! So guitar class is behind me, and I'll never see Nine-Year-Old again. It's probably for the best. A clean break. He can't try to get me to find him on Facebook.
What else did I do this week. I can't think back past the stickers. (We put stickers on DVDs for 8 hours and then some) I even dreamed of stickering during my vampire-day sleep.
OH.
I've read Twilight and New Moon. Started New Moon some time on Sunday, and finished it in a marathon on Monday from when I woke up to 4 pm. It was a bizarre day which, much like today, started in the afternoon.
Got a little behind in the writings, but I wrote a Batman fic one day to make up for it. Beh, I still have another 1500 to go today. :<
Work, Twilight, writing. Um. That's about it.
-Steph
Thursday, November 11, 2010
NaNo 2010
Happy Thursday! We've got a winter's freeze goin' on, and I do not approve. Here's hoping for a freak double summer!
Today is the 11th, which means it's the 11th day of the National Novel Writing Month, and we should be about a third of a way through our novels. How far am I? Last night I got to... 18,348 words. What's 1/3 of 50,000? 17,000.
Actually, they recommend 1,667 words a day because that's 50k divided by 30 days. So 1,667 at 11 days is 18,337. So I didn't have to do anything today, haha!
Now all I know about NaNo is what I learned from doing it last year, and I find that this year feels so totally different. Last year I didn't know if I could write 50,000 words on one topic, or 15k a day, every day. And according to my progress graph that I saved, I stuck with it for a full week, and then dropped behind for the second, then pulled through and finished a day early.
What had happened was this. In the spring of 2009 I accidentally watched an episode of Smallville which gave me an idea. I thought about this idea and spun it and molded it, and changed my thought processes and eventually it became a few pages about a deathmatch between two people who had once been as close as two people could be.
That summer I filled out that idea and added a whole pack of characters and made it a story in its own right, called Epoch. And when my sister dared me to do NaNo, I thought I might as well try it, or else this full-blown story would never see the light of day. (I'm very lazy)
That first week last November, I spent writing an elaborate flashback, a murder mystery. I had put a lot of thought into the plotting, the order of events, what was important to reveal and when. That's not something I'm very good at. What caught me up was thinking too much. Since it had to happen in a logical, mystery order, I spent a lot of time working out plot holes when I could have been writing.
The next big thing that slowed me down was after I'd finished the mystery flashback. This was uncharted territory, and I didn't know what needed to be said and when. I hadn't spent three months thinking about it. The words just didn't come. I ended up writing a bunch of tangential things just for word count, and speeding through scenes in order to reach an event I did know slightly better. And then that was 50k and I just stopped, practically mid-sentence.
And then I didn't write anything for this for an entire year. I'm not joking, I was all WHAT November's here again? And then I got really antsy "I'd better do it again or this story will never get written AGAIN" "I don't have enough time!" "I don't know if I can do it" "But I don't have anything planned!"
But what I didn't account for was the full year I'd had to marinate these characters and their world and their situation. Day one and the words just poured out, no problem.
My tack this time was this: after thinking about it for a year, I realized that the segment that I'd started after the murder mystery segment was really important. And because I was floundering, I really didn't do it justice last time. So instead of just picking up where I left off, I jumped back in time and started from the first night after the time jump.
And I had no plans, no great schemes, just a general idea sketched out in a page of writing about what the atmosphere was during that time. The purpose of this segment is to hype inter-character tensions and give detail to the world they inhabit, so they just went and did that, I just guided the way. I still am, and I'm learning new stuff all the time.
Doing it this way makes it feel like there's no pressure. I don't have to get it right, just something like it. And if I'm going to finish this, it'll have to be edited anyway, so I don't need to put the perfect words down, either (just 50k of them will do). And after a year of living with these people buzzing in the back of my mind, I realized that I've got to finish it no matter what, NaNo is just an excuse to not put it off.
My other tactic which has really proven effective is taking bites. I mean, 50k already seems like so much, and the day-word-count already does this, chops it up into manageable pieces for the time allotted. What I just started out doing was writing some, getting up and going away for any amount of time, coming back to write some more, going away again. The pattern started being in the morning, some point during the day, and evening or night. So that's only like 500 words per sitting, and that's only like a page. Very very manageable. No pressure, you just have to write one scrawny little page.
So when I stop because I haven't thought about this or what happens next, I wander off and it doesn't even matter if I think about it or not, an answer filters up and when I go back I'm ready to continue on. It's sort of awesome. I just finished a fight scene which ate a lot of words and added some much needed excitement to my angsty angsty emo drama.
And the cool thing about not planning this part? The things that are happening are just slightly off from what I thought had happened. So their effect is not what I expected. In one particular area, it's transformed a weak narrative device into a plot-driven encounter. It's changed the attitude of one character so that what I was going to have her do anyway makes every kind of sense in the world.
I guess what's happening is by loosening the reigns, the narrative is developing more organically. And while I still have an eye on the outcome, the journey we're taking to get there is spontaneous and based more in these characters and their choices. Instead of just what I would like to happen. It's very exciting to be me.
Last year I made up a playlist of songs that I thought evoked qualities of my stories. Quite a bit of Linkin Park: Runaway, Easier to Run, What I've Done, and Leave Out All The Rest fit squarely with Bentley's arc. But my favorites on the list are Savior by Rise Against which is exactly what I'm writing
and The Adventure by Angels and Airwaves, which is exactly the tone I want.
One of the reasons I think the new Linkin Park album resonated with me was because I was gearing up into the Epoch mindset, and these songs come along and fit right into it. I mean:
is exactly where Bentley is. And so on. All these songs--the whole thing--is just the sort of dark dark darkest before dawn apocalyptic hopeful epic cinematic...thing that I want Epoch to be. I see the soul of my story within this album.
And then I watch Twilight and New Moon back to back and want to punch myself in the throat for my similarities to Stephenie Meyer. Vampires, a hard-pressed relationship that no one approves of, listening to Linkin Park while writing. Please someone punch me in the throat.
But I assure you, Epoch is not a ridiculous thing about highschoolers and vampires vs. werewolves. It's about highschoolers vs vampires, if your highschool was like Hogwarts and nobody knew about it. And then if you were there to team up with other kids and train to fight demons, but lots of times demons killed your classmates. And then if your one remaining partner SIDED with the vampires and your school was totally destroyed. And then if your partner shows up three years later and is dying from a vampire curse...what do the survivors do with him?
Harry Potter meets Battlestar Galactica, is what I call it. Well I call it Epoch because Bentley here sold his school (for powers that are only gonna put him in the grave); ending one era and beginning another. But it's about second chances, because Huxley here won't let him give up so easily. But what right does she have to try to save the life of a traitor when everyone else wants justice? It's very complicated, and very angsty.
Well I'll gladly chat your ear off about this if you want to know more. But this is how I'm spending my November. How's yours going?
-Steph
Today is the 11th, which means it's the 11th day of the National Novel Writing Month, and we should be about a third of a way through our novels. How far am I? Last night I got to... 18,348 words. What's 1/3 of 50,000? 17,000.
Actually, they recommend 1,667 words a day because that's 50k divided by 30 days. So 1,667 at 11 days is 18,337. So I didn't have to do anything today, haha!
Now all I know about NaNo is what I learned from doing it last year, and I find that this year feels so totally different. Last year I didn't know if I could write 50,000 words on one topic, or 15k a day, every day. And according to my progress graph that I saved, I stuck with it for a full week, and then dropped behind for the second, then pulled through and finished a day early.
What had happened was this. In the spring of 2009 I accidentally watched an episode of Smallville which gave me an idea. I thought about this idea and spun it and molded it, and changed my thought processes and eventually it became a few pages about a deathmatch between two people who had once been as close as two people could be.
That summer I filled out that idea and added a whole pack of characters and made it a story in its own right, called Epoch. And when my sister dared me to do NaNo, I thought I might as well try it, or else this full-blown story would never see the light of day. (I'm very lazy)
That first week last November, I spent writing an elaborate flashback, a murder mystery. I had put a lot of thought into the plotting, the order of events, what was important to reveal and when. That's not something I'm very good at. What caught me up was thinking too much. Since it had to happen in a logical, mystery order, I spent a lot of time working out plot holes when I could have been writing.
The next big thing that slowed me down was after I'd finished the mystery flashback. This was uncharted territory, and I didn't know what needed to be said and when. I hadn't spent three months thinking about it. The words just didn't come. I ended up writing a bunch of tangential things just for word count, and speeding through scenes in order to reach an event I did know slightly better. And then that was 50k and I just stopped, practically mid-sentence.
And then I didn't write anything for this for an entire year. I'm not joking, I was all WHAT November's here again? And then I got really antsy "I'd better do it again or this story will never get written AGAIN" "I don't have enough time!" "I don't know if I can do it" "But I don't have anything planned!"
But what I didn't account for was the full year I'd had to marinate these characters and their world and their situation. Day one and the words just poured out, no problem.
My tack this time was this: after thinking about it for a year, I realized that the segment that I'd started after the murder mystery segment was really important. And because I was floundering, I really didn't do it justice last time. So instead of just picking up where I left off, I jumped back in time and started from the first night after the time jump.
And I had no plans, no great schemes, just a general idea sketched out in a page of writing about what the atmosphere was during that time. The purpose of this segment is to hype inter-character tensions and give detail to the world they inhabit, so they just went and did that, I just guided the way. I still am, and I'm learning new stuff all the time.
Doing it this way makes it feel like there's no pressure. I don't have to get it right, just something like it. And if I'm going to finish this, it'll have to be edited anyway, so I don't need to put the perfect words down, either (just 50k of them will do). And after a year of living with these people buzzing in the back of my mind, I realized that I've got to finish it no matter what, NaNo is just an excuse to not put it off.
My other tactic which has really proven effective is taking bites. I mean, 50k already seems like so much, and the day-word-count already does this, chops it up into manageable pieces for the time allotted. What I just started out doing was writing some, getting up and going away for any amount of time, coming back to write some more, going away again. The pattern started being in the morning, some point during the day, and evening or night. So that's only like 500 words per sitting, and that's only like a page. Very very manageable. No pressure, you just have to write one scrawny little page.
So when I stop because I haven't thought about this or what happens next, I wander off and it doesn't even matter if I think about it or not, an answer filters up and when I go back I'm ready to continue on. It's sort of awesome. I just finished a fight scene which ate a lot of words and added some much needed excitement to my angsty angsty emo drama.
And the cool thing about not planning this part? The things that are happening are just slightly off from what I thought had happened. So their effect is not what I expected. In one particular area, it's transformed a weak narrative device into a plot-driven encounter. It's changed the attitude of one character so that what I was going to have her do anyway makes every kind of sense in the world.
I guess what's happening is by loosening the reigns, the narrative is developing more organically. And while I still have an eye on the outcome, the journey we're taking to get there is spontaneous and based more in these characters and their choices. Instead of just what I would like to happen. It's very exciting to be me.
Last year I made up a playlist of songs that I thought evoked qualities of my stories. Quite a bit of Linkin Park: Runaway, Easier to Run, What I've Done, and Leave Out All The Rest fit squarely with Bentley's arc. But my favorites on the list are Savior by Rise Against which is exactly what I'm writing
(That's when she said I don't hate you boy
I just want to save you while there's still something left to save),
and The Adventure by Angels and Airwaves, which is exactly the tone I want.
One of the reasons I think the new Linkin Park album resonated with me was because I was gearing up into the Epoch mindset, and these songs come along and fit right into it. I mean:
"I'm swimming in the smoke / of bridges I have burned
So don't apologize / I'm losing what I don't deserve"
is exactly where Bentley is. And so on. All these songs--the whole thing--is just the sort of dark dark darkest before dawn apocalyptic hopeful epic cinematic...thing that I want Epoch to be. I see the soul of my story within this album.
And then I watch Twilight and New Moon back to back and want to punch myself in the throat for my similarities to Stephenie Meyer. Vampires, a hard-pressed relationship that no one approves of, listening to Linkin Park while writing. Please someone punch me in the throat.
But I assure you, Epoch is not a ridiculous thing about highschoolers and vampires vs. werewolves. It's about highschoolers vs vampires, if your highschool was like Hogwarts and nobody knew about it. And then if you were there to team up with other kids and train to fight demons, but lots of times demons killed your classmates. And then if your one remaining partner SIDED with the vampires and your school was totally destroyed. And then if your partner shows up three years later and is dying from a vampire curse...what do the survivors do with him?
Harry Potter meets Battlestar Galactica, is what I call it. Well I call it Epoch because Bentley here sold his school (for powers that are only gonna put him in the grave); ending one era and beginning another. But it's about second chances, because Huxley here won't let him give up so easily. But what right does she have to try to save the life of a traitor when everyone else wants justice? It's very complicated, and very angsty.
Well I'll gladly chat your ear off about this if you want to know more. But this is how I'm spending my November. How's yours going?
-Steph
Thursday, November 04, 2010
November = summer
Happy Thursday! This has got to be one of the best Thursday's I've come across in a while. Lemme tell you about my journey.
Here is a link to a map of my adventure. I started in the parking structure downtown, dropped off my books at the library, trekked over to Rocket Fizz (IBC Black Cherry and a Look!), and then made the long walk over to where my band hangs out.
Or hung out, because they ripped most of it out? There's a road that dead ends there (you can see it on the map) and at the end of the rocks (which is officially where my band hangs out) there's like this little electrical building? Well. Not today. They ripped out that building and the road and leveled everything in between that and the edge of the surfer's parking lot.
I think they must be putting in a new/better bike path, because years ago, they built a bike path there that goes all along the board walk, and out along the beach to the river where it turns up and goes up the valley into Ojai. But forever ago, the ocean washed out that stretch along the beach, so they'd routed it into the parking lot there until it met up with the river. So now that whole parking lot is gone, as well as the frontage road that ran between it and the back of the fairgrounds.
I took pictures.
So that was a little bit of a shock. Especially since the weather was sooo nice and just like the summer I never had. I was going to hang out there and do some writing, but there was all that chain link and also a biker. So I just took pictures and moved along.
I did end up chilling off the boardwalk for a while. Listening to all the Linkin Park albums on my Zune. I was halfway through Meteora, and if I wanted to get through Minutes to Midnight before I got back to my car, which was loaded with A Thousand Suns, I needed to stretch out my walk a little longer.
So I went down the pier. There I met Fisherman Albert.
"What are you listening to?" he asks.
"Linkin Park," I say, taking off my giant headphones.
"Oh yeah?!" He's shocked, because what adorable 16-year-old girl listens to such a hardcore band like that?
"Yeah," I say.
"Which one?" he asks. He's very friendly.
"Minutes to Midnight," I dutifully reply.
"Oh, you like that song?"
".......yes."
"That's cool. I saw you rocking out to it," he says, clearly having no idea about Linkin Park. He mimes me smashing my headphones to my ear, which I had been doing.
"Oh yeah," I say, "I was listening to the bass part, trying to see if I could learn it."
"I bet you can," he says. He's very confident in me. We have a little conversation about fishing (the tide is out super far, but when it comes back in he'll be rolling in fish), and about Halloween (Transformers and Tinkerbells were all the way out here until like 2 in the morning), and about how nice Ventura is (what he considers Midtown I consider Downtown; what I consider Midtown he considers the East End). When I say my Halloween was quiet, he asks my age. How old do I guess he is? Turns out I'm a month older, and we're both surprised. He also guesses my weight at 90-100 pounds (while commenting that if I wanted to jump off the pier for a swim, he's got a net he could pull me back up in), so he's a charmer.
Tomorrow should be a 7.0, whatever that is, and the water should be about 64 degrees.
I had to re-listen to Minutes to Midnight on my way back down the pier.
The internet said I walked almost 4 miles. It was a great day for strolling and meeting strangers.
And I did do a spot of writing, foooooooooooooor...
NaNoWriMo!
Yep, it's November AGAIN! Crept up on me! Time to write another novel! Or finish the one you started last year and never touched again!
I actually want to tell you all about my process and this year vs. last year, but I just told you all about my epic summer, so maybe it'll wait til next week.
Basically, so far it's gone deceptively smoothly. Maybe I just know how to deal with the pressure this time? Maybe this part of the story is easier to write? Maybe sitting on an idea for a year gave it time to marinate? Maybe I don't care about the quality of writing anymore? I know it's only four days in, but I'm quite optimistic about making this 2 for 2.
Guitar class today was a joke, now that I've had two weeks off to learn by myself. 9-year-old was back, but I basically ignored him. Class was real small, just me and him and Middle Schooler and Overzealous Mom and Blind Girl and Confused Dad and Thinks She Can Play and Youth Group Girl and College Guitar. When he showed us something new, he eventually stopped checking in on me and Niner, because he knew I had it and the kid was a lost cause.
We learned the riff to Pretty Woman and it confused the heck out of EVERYONE but I was all doot doot doot bass line weeee and mostly just wanted to punch Thinks She Can Play in the throat.
Well. Only one more class. I'd say it was worth it, over all, though. I've picked up The Times They Are A-Changin' and it uses almost only chords he taught us. So I have to say the class taught me how to play the guitar. But the rest of it I can do on my own, just by playing, you know?
Over the weekend me and Carolyn saw the Owls of Ga'Hoole or whatever it's called, and Despicable Me, and I don't know I'd recommend them. Owls is super violent and the story is very very very poorly explained; but Owls are freaking adorable and some of that computer graphic work is outstanding. Despicable Me was cute enough, but the jokes were not that funny and just made me angry because the theater we were in was BUSTING UP every thirty seconds. No. Just no. The secondary characters were also rather bland and I have narrative objections to how the third act played out.
But speaking of bad movies, Twilight III is coming to DVD December 4th and I literally cannot wait. We're playing the trailer nonstop at work and I just keep looking over at it and giggling. Oh Edward. Oh KStew.
Okay. Unless something majorly exciting happens this week, look forward to an in-depth look at how I feel about writing a novel for next Thursday. WAY EXCITING YAY.
-Steph
Here is a link to a map of my adventure. I started in the parking structure downtown, dropped off my books at the library, trekked over to Rocket Fizz (IBC Black Cherry and a Look!), and then made the long walk over to where my band hangs out.
Or hung out, because they ripped most of it out? There's a road that dead ends there (you can see it on the map) and at the end of the rocks (which is officially where my band hangs out) there's like this little electrical building? Well. Not today. They ripped out that building and the road and leveled everything in between that and the edge of the surfer's parking lot.
I think they must be putting in a new/better bike path, because years ago, they built a bike path there that goes all along the board walk, and out along the beach to the river where it turns up and goes up the valley into Ojai. But forever ago, the ocean washed out that stretch along the beach, so they'd routed it into the parking lot there until it met up with the river. So now that whole parking lot is gone, as well as the frontage road that ran between it and the back of the fairgrounds.
I took pictures.
So that was a little bit of a shock. Especially since the weather was sooo nice and just like the summer I never had. I was going to hang out there and do some writing, but there was all that chain link and also a biker. So I just took pictures and moved along.
I did end up chilling off the boardwalk for a while. Listening to all the Linkin Park albums on my Zune. I was halfway through Meteora, and if I wanted to get through Minutes to Midnight before I got back to my car, which was loaded with A Thousand Suns, I needed to stretch out my walk a little longer.
So I went down the pier. There I met Fisherman Albert.
"What are you listening to?" he asks.
"Linkin Park," I say, taking off my giant headphones.
"Oh yeah?!" He's shocked, because what adorable 16-year-old girl listens to such a hardcore band like that?
"Yeah," I say.
"Which one?" he asks. He's very friendly.
"Minutes to Midnight," I dutifully reply.
"Oh, you like that song?"
".......yes."
"That's cool. I saw you rocking out to it," he says, clearly having no idea about Linkin Park. He mimes me smashing my headphones to my ear, which I had been doing.
"Oh yeah," I say, "I was listening to the bass part, trying to see if I could learn it."
"I bet you can," he says. He's very confident in me. We have a little conversation about fishing (the tide is out super far, but when it comes back in he'll be rolling in fish), and about Halloween (Transformers and Tinkerbells were all the way out here until like 2 in the morning), and about how nice Ventura is (what he considers Midtown I consider Downtown; what I consider Midtown he considers the East End). When I say my Halloween was quiet, he asks my age. How old do I guess he is? Turns out I'm a month older, and we're both surprised. He also guesses my weight at 90-100 pounds (while commenting that if I wanted to jump off the pier for a swim, he's got a net he could pull me back up in), so he's a charmer.
Tomorrow should be a 7.0, whatever that is, and the water should be about 64 degrees.
I had to re-listen to Minutes to Midnight on my way back down the pier.
The internet said I walked almost 4 miles. It was a great day for strolling and meeting strangers.
And I did do a spot of writing, foooooooooooooor...
NaNoWriMo!
Yep, it's November AGAIN! Crept up on me! Time to write another novel! Or finish the one you started last year and never touched again!
I actually want to tell you all about my process and this year vs. last year, but I just told you all about my epic summer, so maybe it'll wait til next week.
Basically, so far it's gone deceptively smoothly. Maybe I just know how to deal with the pressure this time? Maybe this part of the story is easier to write? Maybe sitting on an idea for a year gave it time to marinate? Maybe I don't care about the quality of writing anymore? I know it's only four days in, but I'm quite optimistic about making this 2 for 2.
Guitar class today was a joke, now that I've had two weeks off to learn by myself. 9-year-old was back, but I basically ignored him. Class was real small, just me and him and Middle Schooler and Overzealous Mom and Blind Girl and Confused Dad and Thinks She Can Play and Youth Group Girl and College Guitar. When he showed us something new, he eventually stopped checking in on me and Niner, because he knew I had it and the kid was a lost cause.
We learned the riff to Pretty Woman and it confused the heck out of EVERYONE but I was all doot doot doot bass line weeee and mostly just wanted to punch Thinks She Can Play in the throat.
Well. Only one more class. I'd say it was worth it, over all, though. I've picked up The Times They Are A-Changin' and it uses almost only chords he taught us. So I have to say the class taught me how to play the guitar. But the rest of it I can do on my own, just by playing, you know?
Over the weekend me and Carolyn saw the Owls of Ga'Hoole or whatever it's called, and Despicable Me, and I don't know I'd recommend them. Owls is super violent and the story is very very very poorly explained; but Owls are freaking adorable and some of that computer graphic work is outstanding. Despicable Me was cute enough, but the jokes were not that funny and just made me angry because the theater we were in was BUSTING UP every thirty seconds. No. Just no. The secondary characters were also rather bland and I have narrative objections to how the third act played out.
But speaking of bad movies, Twilight III is coming to DVD December 4th and I literally cannot wait. We're playing the trailer nonstop at work and I just keep looking over at it and giggling. Oh Edward. Oh KStew.
Okay. Unless something majorly exciting happens this week, look forward to an in-depth look at how I feel about writing a novel for next Thursday. WAY EXCITING YAY.
-Steph
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