I Should be Writing...

Well, I warned you.


This post, churned from procrastination, is going to mainly consist of frustration and self-deprecatory statements. Well, those self-deprecatory statements will probably be erased (with a sharp jabbing to the backspace key, of course), but just know they that existed. Oh yes. They existed.


NaNoWriMo. Oh, NaNoWriMo... I thought you were going to be an easy, fun, nice little writing exercise for me. I thought it would be easy to crank out 1667 words a day. I thought that by the end of the month my story would be publication-ready. I thought, on December first, that I would be running around in the Texan winter air (that should be cold but probably won't be) and do a celebratory fist pump.


Man, was I naive. 


It's November eighth. According to my handy-dandy calculator, I should've crunched out 13,336 words by now, well over the 10% line.


As of now, though, my total word count is a petty 5,833.


And so here I sit, typing this message with time that I really shouldn't be wasting, listening to Disney songs in an effort that they'll motivate me (Mulan's I'll Make a Man out of You is high on my list of motivational songs, right up there with the Rocky training song and Eye of the Tiger, which is why I have it on loop) and trying to keep my hand from twitching toward my Halloween candy. 


Why, you ask?


 Because I've found that writing isn't easy. But at least I'm not the only one who thinks so.


On the NaNoWriMo website, authors post pep talks for people like me who are stuck in a rut. One of these pep talks, written by Maureen Johnson, compares the act of writing to Australia. Australia is a country with most of its civilized ports and major cities resting on the coast line, ringing around the continent. So the coastline is beautiful, filled with tourists and five star hotels and quaint towns and pretty surf shops and whatnot. But when you move in the opposite direction of the alluring sea and accented-people, you begin to brave the unknown jungle. It's uncivilized, lonely, filled with bite-happy reptiles, and, in old days when it wasn't colonized, European prisoners were sent here, so you might run into a vengeful ghost or two. That, those thousands of miles of land, is the biggest and most dangerous part of Australia. But when you do get out of it, there's another beach waiting for you at the other side.


And that's what writing is like, she says. The first couple of days are beautiful, wonderful, easy, [insert good adjective here]. It's only when you delve deeper, when you begin solidify your plots and characters, when you grip the handle of your machete and become paranoid that a two-faced vampire kangaroo is going to jump at you, is when things start to get difficult. But when you make it through, you're rewarded with something great (A freaking book), and I guess that's what makes it worthwhile.


So I guess it's time for me fasten on my helmet and arm myself with a Harry Potter book (great for knocking out two-headed vampire kangaroos) and open up that Word document. 


Because, dang it, I am going to finish this novel!

Halloween

So, today is October 31st. Also known as Halloween, Monday, the anniversary of James and Lily Potter's deaths, and the day when your doorbell gets killed by kids with candy fetishes.


Sure, these descriptions are all relevant to me. But the biggest title I'm giving today?


The day before NaNoWriMo.


As some (or possibly a scant few) of you know, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, and I'm am taking on the completely insane (but really, was I that sane to begin with?) task of writing a 50k novel in a mere 30 days. Half of me (the half that is slightly insane) is excited for this challenge, ready to jump on the test with a fierceness and ferocity that would make a professional power-writer throw away his computer in a flight of jealous rage.


And then there's the half of me that's seriously considering hiding in a closet all month.


I have a general idea of what I'm writing about, sure. But when it comes down to everything, I'm a little freaked out. I spent all day today with a notebook and pencil at my side, jotting down my random bursts of inspiration, from a glinting crown in a dark tunnel to a ball room where my protagonist (a curious, fierce girl named Lana) just happens to kiss her enemy.


Ah, well.


My cousin (you can find her here with an equally freaked-out blog post) and I made wages, so that I if I fall short in my power-writing, 50k-word goal, I have to do something of her choosing. Knowing her, it'll probably be something like making me eat a plate-full of onions, and that's one way to get my inspired.


Well, I have to go put on gobs of eye makeup to make me look like a scary demon so I can scare kids tonight.


So, goodbye, Happy Halloween, and good luck to anyone crazy enough to do NaNoWriMo!


Oh, and just a warning, for the next month, be prepared to be bombarded with frustrated and slightly hysterical posts as I try to not drown in the run-on sentence that I'll attempt to pass off as my novel.

Procrastination

I've realized, through the years, that I don't excel at many things. I mean, sure, I consider myself a nerd because I get straight A's in my advanced classes, and because I took (and did fairly well on) the SATs in seventh grade. And I do like to think of myself as a blooming writer and mediocre artist. 


But the one thing that I absolutely excel at is procrastination. I've been an active procrastinator for years, ever since I was handed responsibility. I know how to procrastinate efficiently and effectively. I even have a 6-step Procrastination Procedure, as I like to call it. And I'd like to share it with you because I believe that procrastination is a vital part of... something.


Step One: Check your email(s). Is your inbox empty (save from the spam-arific insurance discounts and pharmaceutical coupons) because you're a socially inadequate human being? Not to worry! Just browse through those forwards you saved, and you've effectively lost twenty minutes examining your horoscope and flipping through pictures of cute kittens!


Step Two: Go to Facebook. Or Google+. Or Twitter. Or Tumblr. Or, heck, even MySpace if you still use it. (But, for the record, even the creator of MySpace switched over to Facebook.) Scroll through the statuses of the people you friended, even though you regret adding half of the people on your friend list. Spend half an hour looking at the moody, "you-don't understand-me" statuses, mixed in with vague ones like "forever alone:(" and "having fun!!!1!". Cringe at the elementary grammatical mistakes littering your newsfeed, stalk crushes and like pages. Spend the next ten minutes searching for an update that is really meaningful, that makes you think about life, and forces you to wonder about the grandiose magnificence of the universe. But fail at that, and go to Farmville instead.


Step Three: Look at those gossip sites your mom bookmarked, even though you don't care about celebrities. But, even though you show no interest in the petty drama, you'll find yourself hopelessly entangled in rumors of affairs, pictures of TV stars flaunting the latest Rodeo Drive fashions to get coffee, and, yes, even Justin Bieber news. Very shaming, I know, but you won't be able to help it.


Step Four: When you finally draw yourself away from those glittery-background sites, hop over to Youtube. If there are new videos out by your favorite Youtubers, watch those. If not, rewatch old Vlogbrothers videos, or old Charlieissocoollike videos. And look! Another hour or so has passed! By now, you should feel the need to stay on the computer, and never leave, not even to do the thing you're procrastinating.


Step Five: When Youtube has become boring, open up iTunes and browse through the top songs. Listen to the little previews, bob your head along if you like the song, or grimace and press mute if you don't. This should take about ten minutes or so.


Step Six: The final step, and the most addictive. Do not attempt if you can't pull yourself away from hilarious fails, giggle-rific memes, and/or cute kittens stealing cheeseburgers. That's right. The last step is to visit icanhascheezburger.com. Failblog, Failbook, Memebase, Graphjam, etc, are the perfect examples of procrastinating sites. You can roam for hours, letting your eyes devour the hilarity of everything that site offers. 


And, now that you are finished with the Procrastination Procedure, you are officially on your way to becoming, as I like to say, a Masta.


Good luck on your journey to procrastination brilliance.

FRIDAY

Can I get a WHOOP WHOOP?


Why, you ask?


Because it's Friday!


This would be about the time when Rebecca Black would break into chorus, but I won't subject you to that torture.


Instead, let me shower you with ten useless facts, in the format of pictures! I am, after all, the Queen of Useless and Vaguely Interesting Tidbits.

I personally do not know why hippo milk is pink... but I do wonder who the heck tried to milk a hippo.

It weighs approx. 1,300 pounds, and is so big that a human can slip through the arteries. Dang.

Not good news for people who treasure their wooden possessions... 

I know where I'm getting my first job!

More environmentally-friendly than batteries, at least.

Just one example of the importance of learning a country's language before you visit it. Think how awkward it would be if you said: "I want to shower you with kisses!" O.o

Good news for egg-lovers (cough me cough)!

I wish I had a whale when birthday parties roll around... that'd save me alot of lightheaded-ness.

Everything I knew was a lie... 

I don't even want to think about the labor pains.

Well, hope you liked that. I got all these super-cool pictures at: http://www.learnsomethingeveryday.co.uk/ It's a really cool website for lazy-day web surfing.

Happy Friday everyone!

Writing, Analyzed

I've been writing for a while.


I know. That was a very blunt and uninteresting way to start this blog. But bluntness is the best kind of truth. Or something like that.


So, like I said, I've been writing a while. I believe I started at age eight or nine, and I was very into celebrity romances. I was a little girl who longed for a romance (or, at least, what I thought was romance at age eight), and since I couldn't get that, I turned to the next best thing: the love lives of celebrities. More specifically, the love lives of one Joe Jonas and Demi Lovato.


Yeah, I also watched Disney Channel alot.


So, for a couple years, I wrote Jemi (as it was known) fanfiction... and I was terrible at it. I have countless stories just taking up space in my hard drive that absolutely suck. I didn't indent, so my stories were basically one big paragraph. I didn't add any kind of descriptions, or sensory details, or personal feelings for the protagonists. My grammar was atrocious, my spelling was laughable, and don't even get me started on the story lines.


And yet I can't get rid of them. They prove to be amazing pick-me-ups when I have the writer's blues. They show me how much progress I made as an author in a couple years.

Soon, I began to grow away from Jemi fanfiction, because I finally came to my senses about how ridiculous it all was. I stopped writing for a while, picked up some tricks and got better at it. When I began to write again in sixth grade, they were all original stories, and they were better than the sappy love stories I had in mind for my celebrity fanfiction. They all ranged from a girl who was kidnapped and fell in love with her captor (totally realistic, right?), to a kid spy who had to save the world from an evil dude who turned out to be her birth father. (Sound familiar? "Luke, I am your father.") It was through these stories that I began to develop a writing style.

I also came to a realization when I was writing these stories. Ever heard of the phrase, write about what you know? It was because of that tiny rule that I wrote such crappy stories back when I was an eight/nine-year-old fanfictioner. (is that a word?) All I knew back then was: school is boring, every highschooler has a car, every highschool has linoleum floors, and everybody likes Converse. As you can tell, most of those facts I got from movies. 

But that wasn't the realization I came to. I realized that authors are the biggest copy-cats in the world.

We copy scenes from our own lives, like that awkward barrier you accidentally put between you and your crush by portraying your feelings by hitting him when your were in fourth grade. Or the time or cried your eyes  out back in fourth (or was it fifth?) grade in front of the only guy who liked you because of a skinned knee and your dad had to carry you back to your house, fireman-style.

We copy alot to properly describe certain feelings, like love or betrayal, depression or excitement, and to do that, we have to feel those firsthand ourselves. But we don't copy from just our own lives. We sometimes copy from things in the news, or from our best friend's crazy stories, because her life is more exciting than yours.

And that's okay. It's all part of the job. I just recently got a great new idea for a story by reading a random blog that I stumbled upon here on blogspot. And I'm not ashamed... very much. 

That's why there aren't many teenage published authors out there, because when you're young, you haven't lived enough to weave a story out of your experiences. 

I've been writing awhile. And I'm going to do it for a long time in the future. And hopefully, some day, I'll do it just enough to cross PUBLISH A BOOK off my bucket list.

Brothers

So recently, my younger brother and my dad went on a three day hunting trip. I was absolutely ecstatic-- my brother is the single most annoying person on this planet. He's like... a mosquito. But instead of latching on to your skin and sucking your blood, he sucks your sanity. And your patience. He sprouts these never-ending sarcastic and smart-butt comments that make me want to pummel his little--GAH. 


Sorry. That was my frustration leaking out onto my keyboard. Back to their absence. So, they left three days ago to go shoot deer and catch fish and do whatever to quench their desire to hunt, I guess. And so that just left my mom and me, but mostly me, as my mom still had to work. The first night they were gone, we went to Taco Cabana and pigged out on quesadillas and chips and queso, et cetera... and I didn't have to listen to my brother complain about how he doesn't like cheese and ramble about guns and WWII while I tried to enjoy my yummy, Mexican fast-food. It was quite nice.


The second night they were gone, and I turned on Teen Mom and blasted it. Normally, my dad can't stand the sound of the TV because our house is anything but soundproof and his office is rather close to the living room, and my brother hates Teen Mom. But they weren't there to protest. I gloated in their memory. HA.


The third (and, regrettably, last) night they were gone, my mom and I went to this Italian place. I laughed, because I ate spaghetti and that's my brother's favorite food. And no, I did not save him any. Bahaha. And he says I could never be evil. 


But then they came home and my brother once again become his annoying/mosquito-esque self. And my dad... well, he tries. He got me a present. It turned out to be a mini, travel-size can of shaving cream. The complimentary kind you might steal--er, take-- from hotels. I don't know if he's trying to be thoughtful, or if he's trying to tell me something. 


Well, at least it smells good.

Introduction?

This blog is basically the lovechild of boredom and a stifling summer. How much more do I need to say?

Well, let's get the basic introductions out of the way. My name is Lindsay, and I live in the magical, drought-prone land called Texas. And now, let me answer the question that is surely bubbling inside your little head: 

Do you ride horses to school? ... Heck yes.

I am undoubtedly, unquestionably, and without-a-doubt a nerd. I have a precarious-looking pile of books dominating both my bedside tables, and I've read them all. Twice. And those medals glinting on my wall? The result of academic nerdiness. For fun, I practice math. In the summer. And I speak the few words of Spanish I remembered from 7th grade interchangeably in my normally one-sided conversations with my family. (I find I ramble on too much when given too much freedom to talk, so they usually tune out.) And my area of expertise is undeniably Greek mythology. 

I guess I should put it out there that I'm also a writer. I write fanfiction as well as orignial stories, though right now it's mostly fanfiction. I find it easier to right fanfiction, because there's usually already a ground set in place that you  follow. I love exploring deeper in characters' personalities and elaborating on stories that need elaborating.

Oh, and I'm extremely well-skilled in the fine art of pretzel-eating.

My weaknesses include: Harry Potter, musicals, pretzels, ice cream, curly hair, cute romantic stories (nothing like the Notebook; that book bored me to tears), daydreaming, Country songs, and puppies. The best way to earn my friendship? Show me a cutely romantic Harry Potter musical involving curly-haired puppies daydreaming about Country music while eating pretzels dipped in ice cream. We'd be instant best friends! Strangely enough, though, no one has used that tactic to become my friend...

I have two dogs--Shelties, to be exact--that could not be more different. I think the only thing they have in common are their ability to thoroughly annoy me/make me smile and their love for human food. Sofi is dark, small (I'd wager about only a foot high) and... well, chubby. But she is the nicest dog you'll ever meet, and she'd lick anyone, anywhere. Her barks are annoyingly shrill, though, but you get over it because she's like a pillow on legs. And then there's Beau... he's lighter in color, bigger and more slender, and he isn't as nice to strangers. Sure, behind closed walls when he's surrounded by my family, he's gentle and sweet and just downright melts your heart. But introduce him to a stranger, and he immediately goes biserk. It's gotten to a point where he's known by name in my neighborhood.

I've also been mastering my British accent. I'm happy to say that it's moved away from dreadfully Cockney, and has steered into semi-European. I'm quite proud of it, actually. Though I do have a question--what the heck are crumpets? Anyone know? Me neither.

Well, that pretty much says it all. I'll be updating this blog every now and then, telling you interesting bits and pieces of my life, or maybe just to record my frequent and very random thoughts. Until then-- ciao!