So...

I am finished all my exams (yay!). I know for sure that I have done well on two (double yay). I know for sure that I did horrible on one (boo). I think I will get a decent mark in fiction writing (but that's not the point). I know that I did horrible in Science Fiction class (mostly my fault). The good news is, all of it should balance out in the end. Bad news is I can't seem to get my GPA up to that 3.0. I am SO close. Another portion of good news is I will only have to take three courses per term to finish my degree (maybe 4 in one term). Bad news is if I want a concentration in creative writing, I need to space it out over two years. Point is though, I am done school, there are three weeks between now and my spring course and I have no job. This means that I am going to be bored out of my mind.

So, I am going to:
a)Work on WMRR like crazy
b)Play a bunch of old video games because I'm too poor to afford more
c)Try and make new videos
d)Clean my "lair" and finally get all my clothes back in my closet
e)Look for a decent job
f)Try to have a social life

I have Assassin's Creed 2 sitting in front of me (with a somewhat hilarious picture of Ezio and this old guy, who has a priceless expression of surprise on his face...I don't blame him though; Ezio is stabbing him in the back). I am waiting for people go to sleep so I can play in peace until I get tired. I worked on WMRR off and on today, but I couldn't get much time to just WORK on it. Interruptions...

Still working on Chapter 6. If all goes well, I will have it done by Friday. I'm trying to decide how to handle a rather epic battle scene involving a large group of guards, a giant minotaur robot and the search for a special coffee machine. I'm loving how random this is sounding. Makes more sense in context. Really!

Now because this seems the opportune place and time to do it, I'm going to type my list of books that I need to read in the near future. Many of these are "suggestions" from Fiction Writing. The "suggestions" are more or less mandatory.

In by bookshelf to be read:
"The Architects are Here" - Michael Winter
"Covenants" - Lorna Freeman (Need to get this back to Kristy...)
"Shadow's Edge" - Brent Weeks
"Beyond the Shadows" - Brent Weeks (have to get these back to Kristy too)
"Clan of the Dung Sniffers" - Lee Danielle Hubbard
"The Hidden Dragon" - Irene Radford
"The Court of the Air" - Stephen Hunt (no matter how hard I try, I can't seem to get through this book. I've tried 3 times and lost interest. I MUST DO IT)
"Jemma 7729" - Phoebe Wray
"Foreigner" - C.J. Cherryh
"The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz" - Mordecai Richler (love this guy's name...mostly because a Fire Emblem character is named Mordecai...)
"Georges" - Alexandre Dumas
"Ivanhoe" - Sir Walter Scott
"The Darkness that Comes Before" - R. Scott Bakker
"The Warrior Prophet" - R. Scott Bakker
"The Thousandfold Thought" - R. Scott Bakker
"The Experiment" - John Darnton
"Phantom in the Night" - Sherrilyn Kennyon
"Dragon Master" - Chris Bunch
"Knighthood of the Dragon" - Chris Bunch
"The Fate of the Fallen" - Ian Irvine
"The Devil's Armour" - John Marco
"The Eyes of God" - John Marco
"The Sword of Angels" - John Marco
"The Larion Senators" - Robert Scott and Jay Gordon (and the rest of the series again because I forget what happens)
"Thomas More's Magician" - Toby Green
Little House on the Prairie series - Laura Ingalls Wilder
"The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society" - Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (need to get this back to my grandma)
"The War of the Worlds" - H.G. Wells
"Flowers for Algernon" - Daniel Keys
"Follow" - A. J. Matthews
"Shogun" - James Clavell (because I never actually read the last 300 pages)


Fiction Writing "Suggestions":
"Generation A" - Douglas Coupland
Anything by Robert Kroetsch
Anything by Joan Didion
"The Architects are Here" - Michael Winter
"In the Skin of a Lion" - Michael Ondaatje
"The Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie
"What the Crow Said" - Robert Kroetsch
Anything by Joyce Carol Oates
"Ulyssis" - James Joyce
"The Tin Drum" - Gunter Grass
"Not Wanted on the Voyage" - Timothy Findley
"Drowning in Darkness" - Peter Oliva
"100 Years of Solitude" - Gabriel García Márquez
"Perfume" - Susskind
"Sophie's Choice" - William Styron
"Coming Through Slaughter" - Michael Ondaatje
"The Murders" - Edgar Allen Poe
"Waiting for the Barbarians" - J.M. Coetzee
"The Historian" - Elizabeth Kostova
"Shadows of the Apt" - Adrian Tchaikovsky
"Collected Works of Billy the Kid" - Michael Ondaatje
Anything by Kafka
"The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz"

Books (and graphic novels) I recommend:
"The Lies of Locke Lamora" - Scott Lynch
"The Stormcaller" - Tom Lloyd
"The Way of the Shadows" - Brent Weeks
"Acheron" - Sherrilyn Kenyon (the second half anyway. If you like Twilight, this is how it SHOULD be done.)
"Neverwhere" - Neil Gaiman
"Sandman" - Neil Gaiman
"Black Cat" - Kentaro Yabuki
"The Hickory Staff" - Robert Scott and Jay Gordon
"The Count of Monte Cristo" - Alexandre Dumas
"Don Quixote" - Miguel de Cervantes

I Need a Victory Fanfare

Or a theme song. I'll take either.

The reading went quite well yesterday. I was pretty nervous, but it's done. All the practicing sort of paid off. I still tripped over my words a bit and read too fast, but no one seemed to notice. That or they were being nice. Halfway through the reading I also got something stuck in my throat, which was quite annoying because I couldn't get enough air in to read. I think in any other circumstance I would have started laughing. Heard some great readers yesterday though. The amount of readers in the higher levels shocked me though. There were so few! At any rate, it was a fairly good time.

The party at the Auburn Saloon after was the best part though (they most certainly weren't expecting about 70 poets and writers last night). I'm going to miss our class. thankfully most of them are planning to sign up for Fiction II next year, so I'll see at least some of them again. Had a good time, talked a lot, drank beer, ate food, signed chapbooks, watched a dude pee on the side of the building right outside our window and ran around in Olympic Plaza for a bit. Good times.

I probably won't be able to write until Monday night, which saddens me some. Going to be studying for the 16th Century Literature exam...which is on Saturday...in the middle of the day. One must ask why. Sunday I'm volunteering at the Calgary Comic expo (come visit me! I'll be at admissions in the morning and on "Floor 4" in the afternoon, even though I don't really know where and what floor 4 is...). Monday I have my History exam and an interview with a prof.

So yeah. Here's a Nostalgia Chick video:



Because I felt like it.

Day Lilies

Are apparently quite edible. I am on to my final short story of the year. I finally decided on what to write about. Now I just need to write it before 2pm tomorrow.

I might want to look into better time management skills.

Our end of the year reading is tomorrow. I should be more terrified. I know I will be when I'm actually THERE, but for now all I can think about is finishing my last short story...and playing Half Life. The urge to play video games always comes at the least opportune time. Kind of like writing my novel, which by the way is well into chapter 6. I am almost finished filling in mission 2. I left it out a LONG time ago in order to write chapter 7 (which was chapter 6 until I decided mission 2 needed two parts).

I love how the story evolves on its own. I start writing with a specific goal or action in mind, and end up throwing in a giant, mechanical minotaur or an accidental journey to a garbage bay. I just make it up as I go, and the story ends up CHANGING. Half the time it screws around with my initial plans and I have to go back and change stuff. This happens with my short stories as well. I am so disorganized it's crazy...but that's half the fun. Even I don't know where a story will end up. I do have plans for the rest of the novel, but I have no idea if those end results are going to be what I predict.

I also found a lot of TYPOS and sentences that don't even make sense. I tried reading a part of chapter one out loud and this is what I came across:

“One hundred to start is enough as is, unless you think we’re going to be running marathons in the future.”
“I’ll ensure that you do unless you stop wasting my time Myra. Three hundred laps.”

WTF WAS I ON? IT MAKES NO SENSE.

I made a few updates to EGAW in the past few days. Friends of mine liked it/said it was a good idea, so I will finish it. See last post for a link, or just follow the one on the right-hand side of the page.

Toodles.

(apparently "toodles" is a shortened version of the French "à tout à l'heure". Who knew?)

I seem to have a lot of time on my hands for someone who has no time on their hands.

(I washed it off this morning.)

Minotaurs and Cake

I had a fairly productive day doing pretty much nothing. I would like to report that chapter 5 is FINALLY done. I said I would finish it on Monday, but I didn't write the last few paragraphs until a few minutes ago. Honestly, the stupid chapter wouldn't end. I'm convinced it's a boring POS, but my second read later on will reveal if it truly is or not. I need better language that's for sure. I have these amazing environments, but I don't use them to their full potential.

Other than the completion of the chapter, I finished Portal for the second time today, started my writing tips page on my website, failed my Fire Emblem level AGAIN and watched my brother play Call of Duty for about four hours. So yeah, totally productive. I should probably start studying soon for my test on Tuesday.


Current rough draft completion: 32.5%
Overall completion: 24%
Word Count: 28,426

(MAN it's been a long time since I posted one of those)

The following is a link to the "EGAW Tips" or the "Ever-Growing Amateur Writing Tips" that I started today. I just wrote it, I am not finished and there are probably a ton of typos. I will work on it more when I have the time. In the meantime, check it out and let me know if it's useful (please please I need feedback!)

http://drschwa.webs.com/theegawtips.htm

P R I N T I N G

Chapbook is successfully printed and sitting at Staples for me to pick it up. I REALLY hope it turned out. All I have to do now is worry about how I'm going to cut the pages properly. This is a big deal because no matter how careful I cut them at home, the pages were uneven, though I made what I thought were the proper measurements. Go figure.

Tonight we dine on hellebore! Oh those crazy medicinal rhizomes...

So I plan on finally finishing chapter 5 tonight. This should be interesting seeing how I'm not exactly sure how it'll play out. All I know is there will be steamy rooms, a ton of EMP devices and an encounter with a giant sadistic robot. Hilarity will ensue. Once I am finished this I should be a little over 1/3 complete the novel. I may be a little over my estimate goal, but it should be fine considering I plan to cut 10% of the overall content by the final edit (I can't remember where I read that number, but apparently that's how much you cut from a rough copy). I will probably include stats like that in a writing section I hope to make for my website.

I am planning on taking all the random facts and information from this year's fiction writing and writing them down for other people. I was going to do that on the blog, but the posts would be annoying to browse through.

In other news...POKEMON! (This guy is awesome by the way...I think one of his videos is in my last post).

Aquatic Easter Egg

I've had way too much caffeine tonight...AND THE NIGHT'S NOT OVER YET. I have way too much energy than a normal person should be allowed and yet I'm ready to just fall over at any given moment. The chapbook is nearing completion and out of all possible items to be waiting for, IT'S MY PROF'S PORTION THAT IS LATE. I find that a little bit ironic considering the semi-strictness of due dates, although my critiques and one of my short stories have been late because of an overload of stuff to do and a lack of motivation to do it. This is the last time I take five courses in one term. THE VERY LAST TIME.

SO, to keep the blog on topic, I wrote most of chapter 5 this past week when I should have been writing the history paper that I should be writing now, but can't because I'm excessively hyper and need an outlet so I chose a blog no one looks at! Well not many people at any rate. I think it might just be me passing through the profile to get from one blog to the other that's contributing to the count...

CHAPTER 5. I decided to split chapter 5 into two parts, because otherwise it would have been too long and involved a perspective change and although it wouldn't have been overly confusing I'm doing it anyways because I willed it muaha. So now there is a chapter 6 before Dedrad's prologue and Chapter 6 is now chapter 7 which still needs the introduction fixed.

It's as square as a bee.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2L253VLwH3w&playnext_from=TL&videos=4I5mwn8wsZg

I should really find out wth is in this loose green tea from China.

The Ugliest Muse

...must be with me tonight. I pick strange times to be motivated. I have everything under the sun due in the next two weeks, not to mention exams, and I decide now is the right time to write chapter five. I don't know what it is tonight, but I feel inspired. I hope to at least get half of it done tonight. I am also going to finish editing TOA by the end of tomorrow night, which will hopefully make a friend of mine quite happy. He's waited about 2 months for it. Yeah I feel pretty bad about that...

I also have a strong desire to make Fire Emblem comics. Once summer rolls around, I'm going to work on not sucking so much at drawing. Either that, or find someone willing to draw Fire Emblem characters for me. I have a lot of jokes, which is kind of pathetic. Also, Hector's story from Fire Emblem is so much more fun. Not that Eliwood's wasn't, I just like Hector as a character so much more.

TO DA WRITIN' MOBILE!