Many things have happened since my last blog entry. I'm going home on Wednesday, starting up some new projects, and deciding on a new college.

So, I have deduced that what I thought was carpal tunnel was actually simply a sprained wrist, and that I overreacted somewhat. Oh well, such is life.

Starting a ton of new projects, to celebrate basically being over with school. Tomorrow are two of my finals, and the day after that are the other two. And then, the next day I fly home. So happy for that. Hawaii is nice and everything, but I do miss my family. And good food. Dining hall here is less than desirable.

As far as projects go, I have A Feast of Specters, the companion piece to An Iron Sea, an untitled sequel to An Iron Sea, finishing up my NaNo in a month or so, and a Halo fanfiction. Yes, I am going to write fanfiction. But, it is Halo, and it is a part of Halo that I would like to explore, a time after the main trilogy of games is over. I'm writing it with someone else, meaning that they get so much creative input that they are essentially a co-author. It'll be fun.

A Short Update

Got the web serial, titled Hooves, started. Also keeping up with Mercy of the Void still. All in all, writing is going well for me.

Got so many projects floating around it's not even funny. I'm holding off on A Feast of Specters for a while. The plot isn't fully formed in my mind like I would want it to be, so I'm going to let it stew for a bit.

Feeling good about Hooves already. There was a side character that someone help me think up yesterday, and today that person came up and asked, "Hey, can I totally write a story about her origin and stuff?" And so I was all, "Sure, why not?" I feel flattered when someone chooses to add to something that I'm creating like that. Provided that what they're adding meshes well, of course. I'm not too much of a stickler about that sort of thing, but I still like for things to be all non-conflicting and stuff.

Anyways, I went ahead and wrote out what will be the second update for Hooves this evening. I'm going to stick to my schedule though and not post it until next week. If I work ahead like this for a day or so, I figure that I'll have something to fall back on if come finals I am really too busy to do anything regarding it. Which could very well happen. I'm not going to make a bet that I'll just cruise through studying, not by a long shot.

So, again, writing is going well.

NaNo Completion, Web Serial, and Feast

Well, I got to 50k yesterday. I feel very accomplished now. Though, of course, the story is very much far from over. I think I'm just over the halfway mark, hopefully. Sometimes the plot feels a bit dynamic still, and I wonder if I will end up adding a few more scenes than I planned. Hopefully everything will stay as it is and it won't get any longer. But, you never know.

Got an urge to do a web serial. For this, I would open up a new blog thing, and I would post a chapter of a story every week. It wouldn't be very long at all, maybe 1k or so. For the average writer with a goal of 1k per day, that's not too bad at all. I have a couple of ideas that I'll be stewing over, and I'll give you guys an update when I decide what the definite one is.

Going to also try to work away at A Feast of Specters, which is the name I have decided upon for the companion story to An Iron Sea. I wish I could work the word "an" in as the title for this one too though. It's an aesthetic choice, really. I like the way "an" sounds at the beginning of a title like that. I may tinker with the title a little to get that desired effect, just so that it will be a bit more like An Iron Sea.

The New An Iron Sea

I'm thinking of 'rewriting' An Iron Sea.

But when I say 'rewriting' it in this context, I do not mean completely scrapping the draft that I have and starting over. That draft still stands and I think of it as almost a separate story now.

What I am considering is writing a similar story of sorts. Whereas the first story called An Iron Sea is about Dr. Linus Claireborne, a doctor at the research station in McMurdo Sound, this next story would about Dr. Linus Claireborne, ship's doctor aboard the whaling ship Dragonfly. It would be a new story, but with similar characters, and the same setting, the bleak desolation of Antarctica. The Dragonfly would have been driven down to Antarctica by an unnatural storm, and all of it's crew would be dead save for Dr. Claireborne and a boy named Jericho that would have been picked up adrift in warmer waters. Dr. Claireborne would be haunted by spirits, some of dead people he knew, some of living people who left him, and others of supernatural forces that are beyond his comprehension.

I know that it would be fairly easy to change up the names and stuff so that it would be a completely new story. But, this is Dr. Linus Claireborne too. He's not some ancestor of the one from the first An Iron Sea, or that first one thrown back in time or something. He's Dr. Linus Claireborne, only in a different time and situation than the first time we saw him. He's different, yet the same, if that makes any sense. He's still a learned man with only his logic and knowledge to help him in the face of forces that he does not understand. Other characters from the first An Iron Sea are sure to pop up as well. I don't know quite how yet, but I do know that they will be there. It's a different play, but with the same actors playing similar parts to the first one.

I'll probably get to work on this right after my NaNo. It's fresh in my mind, but not so fresh as to be fully formed and demanding to be written, and I think that by the time Mercy of the Void is done I'll be very ready to write it.

Paper, Shark, and NaNo

So, I got that stinking rough draft and works cited paper done. I turn it in tomorrow and then sweat until I get it back. Literally, not figuratively.

Got my wallet and keys stolen last Friday while I was snorkeling with a class. We had to leave our stuff on the beach, and some guy ran off with my backpack. It's all good though. The wallet and keys were the only valuables in there. And, I saw a shark while snorkeling. Yes, you heard that right. There was a shark in the water while I was snorkeling. It was awesome. I can now say that I have swam with a shark.

Now that the paper is done, I may return to my NaNo. I have neglected it these past two days while I slaved over the horrid non-fiction. But, now all that horribleness has gone away, and I may return to the story of Keith Huge. The words are already flowing along like they did before.

Lately I have had lots of ideas for stories. I'm just going to vomit some of them out to you.

-a story with a girl, who is wearing a white dress, and a boy, who is wearing dark shorts, by a stream in some ruins in a jungle
-the literary equivalent of a spaghetti western, except with centaurs
-a one-shot story featuring Keith Huge and some malevolent unicorns
-a one-shot story about Keith Huge going through a cave of spirits and being guided by Sherlock Holmes
-a one-shot story about Keith Huge (yes, he's a favorite of mine) meeting Jesus in the desert before the latter is tempted by the devil
-a story about the death of Cunningham, that one character from a previous blog post

Also, I'm thinking the Varia story may be scrapped until much later. I have other things that I've had kicking around in my head for longer that I need to write first. It'll be a later project.

Trilby

So I passed 30k in my NaNo yesterday. Yay for me! :)

So, anyways, I am going to try to knuckle down on my paper. Note the word try in that last sentence. Basically, at this moment, I don't want to do it at all, because I dislike being made to rethink my paper. But, I suppose I'll get to it at some point.

My trilby, a kind of hat, is sitting uselessly on my desk, along with a ton of other random papers and books. Basically, my half of that desk looks horrid. But I don't care. It's one less thing I have to worry about, and the guy with the other half doesn't care so long as it doesn't cross the half way mark. And it hasn't. So, he doesn't care.

Anyways, the trilby. It really was a dumb investment. For thirty bucks, I could have gotten some books down at the bookstore. What did I end up getting? A hat that I never wear, cause I have nothing that it goes with, really. I'll probably wear it with my nice clothes on the way home, just to get some use out of it. Oh well. Live and learn. Hopefully I'll get ahold of some stuff to wear it with, someday.

The word 'trilby' is kind of cool though, not gonna lie. It's part of the pseudonym that I want to adopt when I start publishing. Harold Saxon Trilby. Rather unique and slightly Anglican sounding. Which is what I'm aiming for.

Also, reading "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" again as I'm writing my NaNo. It's still just as good as always. And, no, I'm not any closer to memorizing it, haha. No time for that at the moment.

Hands are hurting while I type. I worry about this. I've heard about how a couple of people from YWS have carpal tunnel syndrome. Needless to say I don't think I want that. So, I'll be shopping for handwraps tomorrow, to see if I can't wrap up my hands and stop this before it becomes carpal tunnel.

Need to cash my birthday money tomorrow as well. Gonna go over to the bank and check on that. There's a First Hawaiian not too far from campus, only a couple of blocks or so. That'll be where I see how to do this.

Kind of looking forward to going home and relaxing a bit. And, yes, I will consider having a job for all of three or four weeks to be relaxing. I have one waiting for me, hopefully, if the manager that was there when I left still is there. Which reminds me, I need to get a postcard and send it to them. I already sent one, but I figure sending another one won't hurt one bit.

Trying not to think too much about what lies ahead for me. If I do that, I start to worry and not function properly. Living in the moment is really the best thing you can do for your personal well-being, I'm finding out. Because if you worry about something that's far off, it'll bite you. I'm seeing it happen in a few people I know. I'm not advocating being lazy, oh no. But what I am doing is not worrying about the paper being due in two weeks, and instead just seeing what I can get done on it today. If I think about the time constraint too much, I'll freeze up.

NaNo is progressing well. I had to step up when certain events happen, like make the "huge destroying army" that wasn't supposed to show up for a day after Keith arrives in Sea Heaven in the story's narrative show up a few hours after the MC arrives. How convenient. And he remarks on it! For a simple Oklahoma boy, he's a rather perceptive person in that regard. But yeah, I think I'll be able to bounce forward now. Though, in the final draft, I will add a day there. Because, it seems stupid for the world destroying army to conveniently arrive then. I need to set it back by at least a day.

Guh, need sleep, rest, whatever. Tomorrow ought to be fairly easy, minus getting the money. But even that will be pretty painless. It will be somewhat time consuming, but relatively painless.

Things Abounding in Abundance

So, my birthday is in a couple of days. Yay!

Trying to take a small break from my NaNo today, since I hit the halfway mark yesterday. It's kind of at a slow point anyway, so I'm alternating between picking at it, picking at an outline for Varia, obsessing over maybe wanting to write Creep again, and trying to pick at my writing homework.

I am really starting to get irked by this stuff. I do not understand the purpose of going to all this trouble beforehand, lining out your warrants and stuff. I do that as I go, making sure all that stuff sounds right to me and making sure I have good sources. And this isn't even for a factual paper. This is to alert people to a specific cause. Do they even write papers for that anymore? They write short articles in newspapers, or pass out pamphlets. I have never heard of them writing ten page papers to try to convince people of a particular note-worthy cause.

And the way my teacher just goes on about it. She's so dead set in this. Not that I mind that. It's just she's so incredibly hostile to any perceived threat to it. The other day, during my conference with her, I made a comment about me having a hard time with this initial stuff. She took it as me insulting her teaching style. I was saying that I had a failing there that I needed to correct and she instantly took it as me saying her teaching doesn't work.

Whatever. I only need to do the old stuff if I want a better grade. My plan is to make sure that I do the stuff I got the worst grades on first. That way I can bring up those weak points and whatnot. Hopefully that will work.

I also need to do math. Guh. That one is more my failing. I will probably read up on how to do it this afternoon, then do it tonight for a bit, then read again on tomorrow afternoon, do some more, then finish up whatever's left on Monday. I just have to stick to that schedule. It shouldn't be too hard, and I am confident that it will get me where I need to be. So, yay on that account.

Trying to hammer out some stuff for Varia, the gender bender story. It's kind of difficult, seeing as how I want to deviate from a perverted way of looking at a story like this. I want the protagonist to be in a girl's body fully, with a guy's mind, but with that mind rapidly becoming a girl's mind. The protagonist would be too freaked out to do anything with a girl's body that a guy would want to do, and by the time there has been adjustment the girl mindset is already taking over. So, yeah. Not many girls are willing to give me a lot of tips on this. But, I shall persevere.

NaNo is going well, quite well. Halfway towards winning, and not really halfway through the story's plot. This is very good for me. Very good indeed.

Got $45 dollars from both sets of grandparents for my birthday. There is a used bookstore just off of campus. I think you know what I am going to be doing with that money. I hope they have a better selection of science fiction and fantasy by the time I get there on Monday. But, if they don't, oh well.

That's all for me for now. Good luck.