Man, it feels like it's been forever since I've done this.
1) So last night was the NPP's first show, and it went great. We had a full house, and everybody seemed to really enjoy it. Only downside was that because of stupid university rules, we couldn't film it. So lame.
3) Did you even realize that the Deathly Hallows movie is less than a month away? I know. Sneaking up like a ninja. A magic ninja.
4) I'm really loving this 750 Words site. As an experiment, I wrote all my 750 words before, then copy and pasted it into the browser. This is what it said about the time:
Writing started at 19:12pm and stopped immediately, bam.
So funny.
Anyways, that's all I really have to say this week. Have a good weekend, everybody! :)
Guess I'm bringing this up because there is a small faction of people in class who want to kill off the president. Well, the character, I mean. (As a side note, it's ridiculous what we can get away with saying just because we're writers. Such as, "Let's kill the president!")
I've got this reputation for killing at least one character per story, and I'm not sure where it came from, because that's really not accurate. I mean, I get really attached to my characters! Even the villains, bless their evil hearts. If I'm gonna kill them off, it's gotta mean something.
And then we have stories where it seems like everyone is dying left and right. I'm sure we can all think of a couple examples. *Cough*Deathly Hallows*Cough*Hunger Games*Cough* And it's like, never-ending sorrow. And it can be really, really difficult to see the point in some of these deaths. Not saying that it can't be used effectively, but there's just that little part of you that got really attached and... yeah. You know.
Oh my gosh, you guys. Blogspot/Blogger just hated me this past week. Every time I tried to go to Blogspot, I got this:
So annoying. But then I tried blogger.com instead today, and that decided to work. Tech is so weird.
Anyways.
Happy Memorial Day to those who are celebrating it. :) For everybody else, Happy Monday! ...Yeah, sorry about that.
I actually wanted to tell you guys about this really awesome website called 750words.com. It's kind of like Write or Die, but more reward-centered instead of punishment-centered. It encourages you to write at least 750 words every day, and you can get these neat badges. It also analyzes what you write to show a bunch of things. Here's a link to one of my analyses.
So yeah, you should definitely check it out! It's really cool.
A few book/series/whatever that are pretty excellent and, if you are so inclined, you would do well to check out.
1) Airborne (The Matt Cruse Trilogy) by Kenneth Oppel
Book One: Airborne
Book Two: Skybreaker
Book Three: Starclimber
I read the first two books in high school, and they were the first steampunk books I'd ever come across. This world is just captivating and has this magical quality, even though it's technically sci-fi, and the characters are so much fun. So yeah, there's this spirit of adventure, but it also manages to cover some pretty interesting issues that steampunk is known for.
2) Other Electricities by Ander Monson
This is a collection of short stories that kind of tell one big story. It's really interesting. It's about this town in Michigan that's responding to a girl's death. The voice is kind of odd and the prose is more poetic than in most stories. There are no real "main characters", exactly. It's a strange story, but a good strange.
And yeah, I had to read it for class last fall.
3) Geektastic by an assortment of writers
This book is amazing and pretty much a must-read if you're a nerd or a geek in any way, shape, or form. Sara Zarr's "This is My Audition Monologue" pretty much makes the whole book. It has all the geeky fun things like conventions and RPGs and such, but there are some pretty deep themes explored, too.
And, if you're into fanfic like my friend Kirstin and me:
The Very Secret Diary. (Harry Potter/ Chamber of Secrets)
Dear. God. This story is terrifying in the best possible way. It starts off slow, but of course it gets exciting right around the October 31 entry (and you probably know why). My friend and I both read it in one night.
But just a warning, it gets really dark and disturbing. This is basically CoS from Ginny's perspective.
So I told you guys about how in the New Play Project, we're writing about a group of super sexy scientists that have to stop a spacecano from destroying earth. Professor Feffer has been telling us that we shouldn't be afraid to be deep and really explore the characters.
Cue him walking in on the Episode Three team (the team I'm on) discussing character histories, personality flaws, and vulnerabilities.
"You know what I said earlier about not being afraid to be deep?"
"Yeah?"
"Not for this group. Don't be afraid to be shallow!"
He's started implying that we're the special group because while all the other teams have stuff written, it took us 2 1/2 hours to even start writing. We were too busy discussing character arcs and motivations and... and chips.
Well I was going to post yesterday, but Blogspot seemed to be having... issues. (I think I'm going to have to temporarily change the update schedule, by the way, just to accommodate classes.)
1) The New Play Project is excellent. On Tuesday and Thursday morning, we focused on ideas and decided on a show, which we've all seemed to nickname Spacecano. It's about a meteor that's also a volcano that is going to crash into earth in six days, and this team of "super sexy scientists" is trying to find a way to stop it. Meanwhile, there's a volcano cult and all this other stuff happening.
Yeah, this show is going to be kind of amazing.
2) It was so hot this week! It got into the 90s or near the 90s on a couple days at least. It was pretty nice. Guess it's supposed to cool down again, though.
3) I heard someone mention that they're turning The Perks of Being a Wallflower into a movie. This is one book I've wanted to read for a while, but everybody seems so divided on it that I'm a little apprehensive. If any of you have read it, what did you think?
Also, I have no idea if the movie thing is actually true. *Googles* Nevermind. It is true and it is supposed to release next year.
4) Is it super obvious that I am burning out from everything in the world? :)
Haha, just kind of disappeared again this week. Sorry about that. I have no real excuse except I was either out doing stuff or reading stuff or writing stuff. So yeah.
1) Here's an awesome thing of the day from Letters of Note about libraries. You can get the full context at their blog, but here are a couple of the letters:
I love that Dr. Seuss' letter is written in crayon. There are also letters from EB White and Hardie Gramatky which are really interesting.
2) So it's Mother's Day on Sunday. Most people get their mothers some kind of plant life... but not for my mother. You see, she kills every plant she touches. I wrote a poem about it last year. She wasn't amused.
3) Wednesday night at youth group, there was a conspiracy to saran-wrap my friend Joe's car. It was amazing.
4) School starts again on Monday. This semester I'm taking:
Communication Inquiry (which I recently learned is basically how to do research)
Piano Class I
New Play Project (which will be super awesome)
Group Problem Solving
None of the classes sound particularly difficult (except maybe piano class...), though NPP will probably present its own challenges. Still, I'm looking forward to it.
Have a good weekend, everybody! And if you're a mom, happy Mother's Day!
...In any given media. Not in any particular order. Why? Because.
Spoilers ahead, of course.
1) (To give a little context- the little boy with the gas mask had died, but he'd been brought back wrong so that the mask was part of his face. Also, this takes place during WWII.)
"Everybody lives, Rose. Just this once, everybody lives!"
2) Married Life - Up
(To be fair, certain moments of nearly every Pixar movie does this, but this is particularly notable because it happened within the first twenty minutes of the movie.)
3) A Series of Unfortunate Events... *sigh* there are just so many, especially in the last few books. The part that really got me was this... (MAJOR spoilers ahead!)
"'The night has a thousand eyes,'" Kit said hoarsely, and lifted her head to face the villain. The Baudelaires could tell by her voice that she was reciting the words of someone else. "'And the day but one; yet the light of the bright world dies with the dying sun. The mind has a thousand eyes, and the heart but one; yet the light of a whole life dies when love is done.'" Count Olaf gave Kit a faint smile. "You're not the only one who can recite the words of our associates," he said, and then gazed out at the sea. The afternoon was nearly over, and soon the island would be covered in darkness. "'Man hands on misery to man,'" the villain said. "'It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can--'" Here he coughed, a ghastly sound, and his hands clutched his chest. "'And don't have any kids yourself,'" he finished, and uttered a short, sharp laugh. Then the villain's story came to an end. Olaf lay back on the sand, far from the treachery of the world, and the children stood on the beach and stared into his face. His eyes shone brightly, and his mouth opened as if he wanted to tell them something, but the Baudelaire orphans never heard Count Olaf say another word.
4) Of Mice and Men - at the very beginning, you have the guys like us speech.
"But not like us. Because-"
"Because I got you an'-"
"An' I got you."
(And, of course, the ending...)
5) Harry Potter, where to start. Let's just say Harry's entire existence until the epilogue and call it a day. Especially when he starts thinking that everybody's abandoned him (that is, at the start of almost every book.)
Also, this.
"After all this time?"
"Always."
6) A Very Potter Musical: (and don't get me started on the sequel)
Quirrell: "You came back?"
Voldemort: "I came home."
7) The Hunger Games
Fhhhh. This is harder than I thought it would be. Why are top ten lists so difficult. Remind me that I shouldn't do this again. I guess I'll go with the heartwarming one since this list is mostly comprised of depressing ones at the moment.
"You love me. Real or not real?"
8) Lord of the Rings (the book)
"I am glad that you are here with me, Sam. Here, at the end of all things."
...Because I was really busy on Friday and Saturday. Heh, sorry.
1)School-wise... exams went fine. Don't really care how I did, just happy the semester is over. :)
2) This book trailer for Skary Childrin and the Carousel of Sorrow is pretty brilliant. It reminds me a lot of A Series of Unfortunate Events because there is such... joy in its complete and utter misery (just watch the video, it'll make sense). Also, I'm really excited for this book because I've been watching Katy Towell's flash movies for six years. SO YEAH.
(The video won't embed, so you actually have to follow the link. And yeah, you should definitely watch her short films. They're marvelously dark.)
3) You know you might be a little sleep-deprived when...
...you're writing in a notebook, and when you hit a bump in the story, you start hitting the notebook against the table and yell "Move, story, moooove!"...
...you refer to your handwriting as font...
...and you forget that you can kind of draw cows.
It is a little embarrassing that all three of these things happened within an hour.
Tomorrow I have a real exam for COM 2000, then I have to turn in a take-home exam for Environmental Tech Whatever (so that's what I'll be working on today). Thursday I have three exams. Three. In one day. Grand total of five exams. I haven't had to take this many since high school.
So yeah, this is me disappearing until Friday. Sorry!
1) It was the last week of classes this week, which means there are only 67 days until my last day of school. Ever. (Nope, no plans to go to graduate school.) The *grin* emoticon doesn't do this justice, so... ^________^
2) I've been working on this new story called "Evan's Almost Dead Again" (for now). Not completely obsessively because school keeps getting in the way, but it's been fun.
3) Just curious. Anybody here into fandom? Cuz I just discovered this, frankly, really entertaining Livejournal called Fandom Secrets, which is kinda like PostSecret except with... fandom.
4) And because a post just isn't complete without some sort of visual...
5) Happy Easter! Hope you all have an excellent Sunday doing whatever you do. I think my dad's side of the family is getting together Sunday evening for dinner. Plus we have church earlier in the day. We're not very exciting people. :P (Though church activities can be exciting. Like that time with the grill exploding into fire and almost melting my friend's face off. No exaggeration.)
You know those questionnaires about your characters that kinda float around the internet, and they're supposed to be really fun and give you insight about your character?
Yeah. I've always found them kind of irritating. I don't know if any of you feel that way. But I picked up a very similar exercise from Script Frenzy a couple years ago that helps just as much.
1) Take a Facebook survey. Any Facebook survey.
2) Answer the questions as your main characters.
3) Happiness ensues.
For example:
102) Your best friend of the opposite sex likes you, what do you do?
Tal: *Hand shoots up in the air* You JUMP THEM. Until the writer says, "Nooo, Tal, your boy is a WEIRD boy, a very weird boy who would have a heart attack if you did that." So then you just tease and flirt and hope he gets the hint, but then he's too big of a chicken to admit that he loves you-
Sim: Um.
Tal: -so you keep trying and trying, even though you start doubting yourself, and then when he's taken away-
Sim: *Full on frontal attack*
Tal: ...Oh yeah. That's what you do.
Emerald and Pyro: *Exchange look*
Emerald: I thought you used it to make a plan to take over the middle school.
Pyro: Thanks for that... using me for your own selfish gain...
Emerald: It was Hydro!
Hydro: And thank you for your feminine wiles. *Smirk* And you too, Emerald!
