the lofty goals of manic me

So I looked it up, and I've written 47 poems this year* (49 now)**. The past two years, I wrote 196 poems each year, so this is a big step down for me. I could just accept the fact that this just wasn't a poetry year, but I like being defined as a poet, and the competitive part of me can't accept that. If anyone actually read this blog regularly (or at all), they may remember my poetry goal a few months ago, which was to write 2 poems a day for the rest of the year. I'm not good at long term goals. I'm a sprinter, not a marathoner, which is why I can do NaNo, but not WriYe.

theft of thought

I wonder, if I really was a crazy complete recluse (by which I mean without the internet; I'm already a crazy recluse) if I would have any good ideas at all? I mean, I know I would--I'm just being depressed (and depressing)--but I see things that my friends do or think of, and am utterly amazed at their creativity.

the problem with finishing

So I made it to 135k this NaNo, which is more than 500 pages written in a month. I still remember, when I was younger and working on Captive and Powers (two novelish things I spent a good deal of my teen years poking at), being amazed when I made it to 300 pages. This took several years, because I only wrote when I was 'in the mood for it'.

NaNo 2010!

Hmm. I can't believe I haven't written in my blog for all of November! Shame on me; this is supposed to be my writing blog, after all. I'll just say I've been crazy busy with school and NaNoWriMo, and have been trying to ignore most of the internet.

So anyway, I hit 50k on day 10 this year, chasing after my cousin bobtheenchantedone, who hit it a few days earlier even than that. My biggest day I wrote 14,755 words--which was my first Sunday--and last Sunday I wrote 11,405 words, so not shabby at all! I'm making 'Epic Sundays' a part of my NaNo experience from now on, where I either try to write at least 10,000 words, or the equivalent of 1000 words an hour from waking up (after sleeping in) to bed. This started out as I tried to catch up to bob, and had my crazy 15k day (though she updated right before midnight with about 200 words, thus beating me for the day. . . gah!). The second Sunday I did 8k words, which is close enough to epic to count, says I (esp since I did 5k the day before).

Merlin, and the Book of Making Danica Want to Kill Things

Below follows a long and badly worded rant about a movie I watched, which is filled with spoilers and fangirl-ing. You have been warned.

Willow Kitteh

Hmm, I've been updating fairly often. Does that mean I should change the name? Nah, I think I'll leave it as a precaution against later inevitable non-posting.

Today, I was in a relationship for four hours, but I'm not going to post about that here, so instead I'll talk about my kitten Willow. I'm trying to leash train her, which is going pretty well; she comes to my writing group every Thursday and gets passed around and loved, which since she loves being the center of attention, she's fine with. She doesn't like the car as much, because she feels secure while on my shoulders and she can't sit there very easily if I sit in the front seat, but if I sit in the back she can perch on the back of the seat and balance against the back of my neck. She's very cute like that, and she likes to watch the cars around us. I have to wonder what the people in the other cars think when they see her. You just don't see cats on leashes very often.

Hmm, that was not very interesting. Maybe some pictures of her would improve this post:

Poetry Goal

So for the past two years, I've written around 200 poems per year. I think it was actually 240 each, coincidentally enough. But this year, I've only written about 40 poems the whole year, so I'm setting myself a new goal: there's 127 days left in the year; times by two, that's 254. So if I make the goal to write two poems per day, I can make it, leaving room for my inevitable laziness/forgetfulness. Random thoughts were poking me in the brain last night when I was trying to go to sleep, so I already have ideas for today's poems, and yesterday's that I wrote right before going to bed only need to be polished.

127 days from now, I hope not to look back upon this and go, "oh yeah, whatever happened to that goal?"; I want to look back and be happy I completed something I set myself to do for once! So, present self that will become past self, don't make future self curse you once again! :)

I hope to get them all up on Allpoetry too, but that goal is far secondary to my first goal: to just get them written! Warning, may contain copious amounts of German! :D

Du bist ein guter Lehrer, Meister Frollo. . . .

I am bounce off the walls happy right now, besides being lactose intolerant and filled with way too much mac and cheese. Not only am I finally taking German (though getting money worked out to buy my textbooks is still in the works), but I also finally found the complete score for Der Glöckner von Notre Dame!! So I now have all the proper spelling and (somewhat) translations for all those parts in the songs that I've memorized by ear! I am so so so very happy about this. I want to learn most of the songs in German, because not only will that probably help my pronunciation/comprehension for my class, it'll also be completely awesome to be able to burst into "Das Feuer der Hölle" at random times throughout the day.

I will only quote you if I can punctuation you as I please!

I figure since I took the time to make this blog all pretty, I should actually make a new post. I haven't been sticking anything up here A: because my life is boring, and B: because I have a separate journal on here just for me, which is where I've been doing most of my journaling. But I actually thought of something to write about just now, so here it goes: I've been noticing lately that I actually have more things weird about me than I thought. I won't say "wrong with me", because they aren't flaws; they're just more weird parts of what makes me me. But anyway:

The amazingly applicable "5 stages of grief"

I've decided today that the 5 stages of grief can be used for all situations, preferably for comedic effect. This all started when I was discussing with my mom what would have happened had I lawn-mowered my foot today, besides the fact that it would have sucked because I don't have health insurance. Mainly, I would have clenched my teeth, limped to the door silently, then said, very calmly, "Mom, I ran my foot over with the lawnmower." That's just how I deal with extreme pain. When I dislocated my shoulder, I acted like nothing had happened for the first twenty minutes. I, quite literally, tried to "walk it off". But anyway, that's how I deal with any sort of pain, except for menstrual cramps.

Of Pasta (which sounds really odd juxtaposed with that first paragraph, but it'll all make sense in the end, I promise! Or not.)

Today is one of those days I just want to curl up under the shower and cry for a while. Except that that would involve getting up off the sofa and my anti-abs hurt way too much for that, thanks to my overenthusiastic kickboxing teacher.

Really. I'm not drunk. I promise.

There was just a street cleaner on my street just now. A street cleaner. On a narrow little residential street in West Jordan with cars parked up both sides as a sort of half-barricade in case we need to go all Les Mis on the mayor for some reason.

It didn't even really clean the street. It just left a wet streak down the middle like a giant motorized slug.

I could have had a point, but that's been done before. So instead, I have a gorilla!

I have a guitar final in roughly two weeks that I'm in no way prepared for. I also have to actually paint some of my final project for watercolour by Saturday morning. I'm also behind thousands and thousands of words on my self-imposed writing goal for the month. So what have I spent my afternoon doing? Well, once I ran out of things to watch on hulu, I turned to Facebook, and was linked from there to hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com. I may never be the same. . . .

January Synopsis

14540 is the grand failure total of words for January, but I blame the fact that I was quite depressed for most of the month. I'm feeling a bit brighter this month, and getting a better idea of Captive (the 170,000 word novel of doom that I still have yet to finish), so I hope I'll actually start to catch up to my goal, and make up some for the bad last month. I can still do this! I just have to be more committed to it.

So far this month I've written around 6000 words. I'd have to triple that to reach my goal for today. I don't expect to get anything near that written today, but I hope a just adding a few more words a day can get me the distance. If I pretend I'm going for 100k like I did for NaNo and try for 3000 a day, I'll be in good shape!

Wordcount Widgets

These are my widgets: I'm using two of them, one for the full year, and one for the 50k goal for the month. So if you ever want to know just how far behind I am, I sometimes update these :)







Oh, and here's some links:
*Info on WriYe
*The Big Yellow Board
This is an optional part of WriYe, a year long workshop that I hope will help me get through my story!