Monday, April 27, 2009

Time for another writing survey!

What’s the last thing you wrote? Hmm a blog for this blog. :P Before that, a blog for my OTHER blog.
Was it any good? Kinda a spazzy account of my weekend, but sure.
What’s the first thing you ever wrote that you still have? Hm, I believe it’s “The Adventures of Coconut” and “Coconut goes to Paris”, about a dog. Yeah.
Write poetry? I have written poetry, but I try to avoid it, in protection of the world.
Do you type or write by hand? Both. I type when I want to get a lot of rough done, but write if I’m experiencing writer’s block or have more time at my disposal.
Do you save everything you write? Basically, yeah. When I type a first draft, I keep the original, but then once I start editing I don't save all the different versions. Hand-written stuff is usually in notebooks so that's saved, too.
Does music help you write? Only non-vocal music. Otherwise it’s reallyyyyy distracting, OR affects my writing in really strange ways. Enough said, I think. O.o
Do you even show people your work? Yes, and usually regret it.
Do you want to write for a living? YES?
Have you ever written something for a magazine or newspaper? For my highschool newspaper. :P And I’ve submitted some stuff to my college literary magazine.
The last thing you’ve had published for pay? Nothing.
Fiction Writers…
Where do you get ideas for your characters? That’s a good question. Sometimes characters from other things give me an idea, like, “What if there was a character like THAT only they [difference].”
Are you a Pantser or a Plotter? (what’s a pantser? O.o) I guess a plotter. I usually work off of an outline. But I dunno, sometimes I don’t. So whatever. Do what feels right to me.
Have you ever written sci-fi, fantasy, or horror? Yes. :P That’s mostly what I write. Well, horror not so much, but “Absence” had some freakish elements.
Ever written romance or teen angsty drama? No. Although I'm sure elements of both are in my stuff without asking permission.
Genre of choice? Er fantasy I guess.
Do you favor happy endings, sad endings, or cliff-hangers? I guess I prefer happy endings, but really anything with closure, unless it’s in the middle of a series.
Quote something you’ve written. The first thing to pop into your mind.
Something from The Missing Door, an unfinished rough draft from last year:
“Watch out for any yellow-spotted lizards,” Ramy said, giving her one of his fake smiles. Ramy had, Tara had noticed, a large range of expressions, most of them fake. “They’re poisonous. Lethally so.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Tara said drily, not sure if she believed him.

Workshop report

Sooooo last weekend, or more specifically Friday night and Saturday, I was at Bob Welch's Beachside Writing Workshop! Yay! Throws confetti! Dances? I dunno.

Friday night we ARRIVED (actually a whole five minutes early, SHOCKING!). They were set up in a school gym but actually it was pretty neat.....Bob's wife did the decorating and she's kinda hardcore. There was a section for eating (meals were provided, yay!) and a section for the workshop. On the dining tables were large, old books with their innards sliced out and replaced with dirt and grass. Haha I alternated the entire time between horror, fascination, and admiration. Lolz. They were cool though.
We also got plenty of snacks provided for us! The whole food thing was pretty pro. For Saturday breakfast we got this insane French Toast insanity with cream cheese and stuff. It was like....all meshed together. Yeahhhh....and fruit salad and epicness. For Sat. lunch we got CRAB LASAGNA and other stuff. Crab lasagna! Whose idea was that, anyway? It was REALLY fantastic except they used quite a bit of lemon.....lemon in food is probably my least favorite idea, lol. I remember a lemon soup I had at Augustine that I downed through sheer hunger and willpower alone. :D
So Friday night we did sort of the introductory sort of sessions, stuff about inspiration and imagination and Bob's life, etc. lol. He has a plethora of interesting stories about himself, his writing, and how he found the stuff to write about. I decided, even more after talking to him, I would HATE to be a columnist. Like....that's just a LOT of columns. He said he's in the 2000s. Three columns a week, year after year? No thank you. But it was fun hearing the stories. He told us a lot of what went into his American Nightingale book, which is about an American nurse, Frances Slanger. He spent like $67,000 going around Europe researching the darn thing. Crazy. But I need to read that, as well as A Pebble in the Water and the book about the Easy Company guy (Easy Company is the company in Band of Brothers, which is a book I've read and also a mini-series I have not seen).
We also got free stuff! YAY! A t-shirt that says, "Metaphors be with you" (lolz) and a notebook-binder with lots of stuff in it. Wheeee! Also a paint chip. *nods*
Saturday we went through his ten tips for writing, which was kinda hardcore, and then did the whole lunch thing. Besides worksheet-ish stuff in the notebook, we wrote two short pieces during the weekend for various purposes, but kinda overall before and after things. My first one had to be based on a fortune-cookie fortune, which was "You will soon find your treasure." My brain was SO dead that night so somehow I wrote about a girl who was on an angsty road trip by herself and the car broke down. Yeahhhh.....that's what I said too. My second one was about Oregon vs. Ottawa weather. :P
Yeah so more of Saturday was writing and critiquing each other's writing. What I think is interesting is that the main comments I got was that I was very descriptive and I did a good job of wrapping stuff together into one thing. I think I was so nervous about my atrocious descriptive skills that I overcompensated? Ah well.
The people at the workshop were a variety of nice, odd, and strange. lolz. Everyone was prettty old (like 30 and above) except for me and this one guy who I didn't speak to. But Beverly, Mary, and Jan were my friends. <3 But in general it was just REALLY AWESOME to get together with people like me who don't write for a living (yet) but really want to get better at it, and most of them loved writing as much as I do. I'm hoping to get into some regular correspondence with some of them, and I'm more inspired than ever to get involved with a writing group in my area.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

White picket fences are bloody dangerous.

Hai guyz. My life is a hopeless whirlwind of time-sucking demons right now, so I'm lowering my goal to 50 pages. I'll do another 50 next month. :(

On a happier note (maybe?) I'm going to a writing workshop this weekend, held by a local writer who pwns faces. I've never gone to one before and I think it'll be an interesting experience, if not anything else. I'll write up a full report when I return. ;)

May your pens spew ink! Or somesuch poetic line.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Screnzy Update 2.0

Page count: 30
Page count I SHOULD be at: 63
Chocolate consumed: many, many eggs
Time wasted on Youtube: *hides*

I don't know why I'm having such problems! I'm honestly enjoying my script. It's a lot more fun than a LOT of my other projects. I do have time constraints, but obviously that's not the whole problem. *points at Youtube*
My goal for tonight is 10 pages. I have some fun things planned: character cameo from another story, we find out more about the villain, and a previously-named character death. If I get 10 done, and do about 5 a day from here on, I should be okay. :P Let's go!

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Lightbulb moments

"I love those moments. I like to wave at them as I pass by."

I finally had my first, honest-to-goodness ScriptFrenzy lightbulb moment! It made me laugh a lot too. I was pondering a logistical problem I was having with Bahnree (a character) and also pondering a "What should I do with him?" problem I was having with Rogue. Then Rogue just sat beside me on my bed (this is not meant as an innuendo, I was sitting on my bed at the time, okay????) and told me what he was up to. I rofled. I don't know if I'm cute when I rofl, but I did. :P I didn't realize Rogue could make me laugh that much. I didn't know he could be so helpful, either: he took care of both my problems!

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

TO: YOU FROM: BAHNREE

STILL AT TWENTY TWO PAGES STOP STILL NOT GIVING UP STOP PRAYERS ARE APPRECIATED STOP

Thursday, April 09, 2009

Screnzy Update

School is eating my life again. The sillies.

I have 22 pages of Screnzy, and I believe I should be at 29.7 today? Or somesuch. I haven't given up yet, of course, I'll just have to do some massive catch-up. I might try and pump out some tonight, after I finish reading this godforsaken book for school.

Out peace.

Sunday, April 05, 2009

"And then they laugh at him, and beat him."

I might cry. Or laugh. It's in committee.

I've been posting my ScriptFrenzy as I've been writing it over on my friends-only LJ. You know that character, Rogue? All of my readers LOVE him! WHY? WHY, O MUSES, WHY???? To me, he's one of those slimy good-bad types that's over-the-top good-looking and ought to be PUNCHED or beaten with a large, blunt object. There are way too many hunky "gray area" guys in literature, let's face it. And I love Han Solo and Boba Fett as much as anyone.
Breathe, Bahnree, Breathe. Rogue exists for me to make fun of myself, and I'm going to stick to that goal, no matter how many females love him. 

The GOOD news is that I'm up to 18 pages on my script! Yay! I not only caught up completely today (I was aiming for 15 by tonight) but am ahead a bit! :D Wootage. It's all thanks to a super epic scene wherein Alec told people how it was several times, Conrade yelled a lot, and Rogue let people know stuff only because it suited him. Oh, and I created another character on the spot: The Serpent, a professional assassin. I know, how original. I just needed an assassin. I don't even know if it's a chick or a dude!

Oh, and I keep forgetting to post this, my Screnzy profile: http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/eng/user/200913

gotta getcha head in the game

Whew! I'm a bit behind on Screnzy. But I HAVE been getting stuff done. Namely homework, going to a play that a bunch of my friends are in, editing the Stranger, editing the Varesh-as-a-child story, etc. :D I'm at 10 pages now, though, for Screnzy. I'm really curious how the story is going to turn out...I don't have much of a clue or outline at all. Characters keep popping up, like Vana and Rogue. Rogue, particularly, is a funny story. I was thinking tonight about how I often like the scoundrelly, ruffian, rogue types in movies and books. SO I decided to make a character named Rogue who's a scoundrelly type, and then totally tear the poor guy apart. :D Fun times. My sarcasm shall be his death. It'll be interesting. It'll be like a metaphor for me getting over the whole rogue-novelty thing. Or something.

Okay, yeah, it's lame. 

Friday, April 03, 2009

it's the fear-fear of the darkness growing inside of me

I woke up this morning and realized a new episode of The Stranger was due today. Lolz. So I ran through the final edit and it is up HERE. I'm pretty excited about this episode. It's the first one past how the story has gone before, and we meet a lot of people in it, some who will be important later, some not. :P
Of course, now I have to hurry and finish 17 in time for next Friday. The next episode is just a mess, probably because I'm trying too hard. :)

Day Two of Screnzy was rather disappointing. I hate every word that I wrote. I'm regretting the massacre in scene three. Ah well! Keep going, wot?

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

And then the ice weasels come.

I've been finding spectacular ways of procrastinating from writing my first paper for the term, which happens to be due tomorrow. :D

Anyway, it occurred to me that I should write a First-Day-of-Screnzy post. For posterity. And for the furthering of said procrastination. :) Note: Why do I always seem to end sentences with emoticons? That is irritating and I just noticed it. For instance, I wanted to put a :S after "emotions?" and a D: after "noticed it." Sick. I think my sudden new resolution is to temporarily stop using emoticons.

OKAY ANYWAY SCRENZY!

I've written a bit over 3 pages, which is, you know, what I should have for a day but it's good to create a buffer in the first week, right? :S Ah well. I like what I have, although I wrote the scene way too fast and I know I left out a bunch of stuff that I needed to put in...but oh well! I'll add it later. I'm having a lot of fun so far (which isn't saying much as it's only the first day, but hey!), but it's REALLY hard for me to not wax descriptive on every little mood and facet of the characters. I didn't realize how much I liked describing my character's speech and motivations. Weird, huh? Although I'm also noticing I don't miss describing locations AT ALL. Me and locations=fail. For anyone who's read my infamous Olympus scene.....yes. Case in point.
Tomorrow I'm writing a scene wherein my mercenary commander gives his best and brightest a run-down of their new duties, a tour of the palace, and possibly a glimpse of the ferret terrarium thrown in the mix! :D