In Which a Rambling Apology is Issued*

I'm sorry, blog! I've been neglecting you terribly, haven't I? Things have just been so crazy here... yes, I know that's hardly any excuse. I'm aware that it makes me a terrible person to be neglecting my blog, my readers, and my own writing all at once, there's no need to shout about it. Look, could you see things from my perspective for a second? You know that old joke about college, the one that goes "good grades, sleep, a social life: pick two." Well, for me, it's more like "good grades, sleep, a social life, writing: you still only get to pick two."

Yeah, I know we do movie nights most weekends. It requires a lot more cerebral energy to write something than it does to watch a movie. Especially the ridiculous movies we tend to watch. I mean, the Avalon High adaptation? That requires no thought whatever to watch.** I'm working on it, okay? I'm using my historical fiction final project as an excuse to work on my own writing. It'll turn out all right in the end, you'll see.

... yes, I know I'm not Mrs. Potts. Quiet you.

I'm trying, okay? Hopefully things will be a little bit calmer for a while and I can pay more attention to you. I'm sorry. Blame the homework. Hopefully my lovely readers will have some suggestions for topics they'd like me to talk about and would find helpful***, as my brain is so fried I can't come up with anything beyond ludicrous made-up dialogues between me and my blog.

No, I'm not insulting you. Sorry, blog. I'll be quiet now. And maybe take a nap?




* This blog post brought to you by sleep deprivation and a heavy dose of Bad Blogger's Guilt.
**Other than the thought that goes "this is NOT like the book!!!"
*** I'm serious about this. What things would be helpful to you? I wish to be helpful! Tell me how!

Midterms = Doom

This week and next week are midterms for me, guys. So I might be a bit sporadic about posting things.

So I will leave you with some fun videos. Like this one:



Also, my friends and I went to see the livestream of the 25th Anniversary Phantom of the Opera concert, and it was made of awesome. However, I have only just recently begun to get PotO songs out of my head, and let me tell you, it is incredibly awkward to go about one's daily business when this is the song playing over and over in one's mind:



... yeah.

Also, have I told you guys about getoutoftherecat.tumblr.com? And how it is the best possible way to destress for five minutes? Because there are cats. Yay cats!

And now I have to go practice. *salutes*

*headdesk*

So this week has been a little like this.




Also this.




Thank goodness tomorrow's Friday.

How do you celebrate the end of a long week?

Teaser Tuesday: Keys and Coffee Cups

Oh goodness it's early... student brains don't like waking up at 6:30. Or four hours of sleep. Yeah.

So... today's teaser... for my Fiction class we just read The Things They Carried, and we're doing an exercise based on that for Friday. So, here are some of the things that Rose carries. This bit is from right after her family is arrested, and she returns to their home for a few minutes.

Enjoy!

---------------------------------
*snipped*

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Also: Let the Words Flow picked my query to critique! Woo!

Let's go back to English, shall we?

'Ello, blogosphere! How are you all today? Are there full requests filling your inboxes? I do hope so!

I'm home now (as hinted in my spazzy Italian post) and am trying to kick myself back into writing mode, even though really, all I want to do is sleep. I like sleep. One does not get enough sleep when one is a college student. Sometimes this is for good reasons - for instance, my roommate is made of awesome and we will frequently have epic late night (and by late night I mean three o'clock in the morning) conversations that go from deep and meaningful to ridiculous in the space of one sentence. But mostly this sleeplessness is for not-good reasons, such as staying up till the aforementioned three o'clock hour working on papers and still having to get up at 8 for class the next day.

Still, I am countering that desire to sleep 24/7. For one thing, tomorrow morning (yes! Morning!) I shall be on a bus to NYC to visit my dearest friend ever and to search for sheet music in Lincoln Center!

And for another I am, like I said, trying to get back on track writing-wise. My "write at least 100 words per day" goal was admirable and very, very short lived. Never take on such a goal three weeks before the end of the semester. It simply won't work.

I've gotten so used to churning out things for classes that it's taking me a little while to recuperate. But I'm determined to do two things over break:

1. Write as much of Preposterous Things, my graphic novel project with Ella, as possible.
2. Fix the mess that is my werewolf novel.

So far, attempts to deal with that mess have looked like this:

1. IDEA!
2. :D
3. *frantically plot idea in a very detailed fashion*
4. *come across fundamental problem with this idea*
5. *come across seven more, similarly fundamental problems*
6. *discard idea*
7. :(
8. IDEA!
9. :D
10 *restart from step three*

So we'll see how that goes.

On the plus side, when I have something to edit, my made-of-awesome roommate gave me a pretty fabulous Christmas present:



Yes, that IS a red-ink quill pen. Yes, you SHOULD be jealous. Yes, I DO make stupid faces when taking pictures of myself.

Right. Well, I should toss myself back into the loop of ideas (right now I'm on step seven) and get cracking.

What are your writing plans for the winter holidays, if you have any?

Hallelujah!!

(Anna mi vorresti farlo.)

Allora, l'esami sono finito, e io sono molto contenta. Sono stanca, sì, ma contenta. La mia compagna di stanza, Anna, dovrà fare due esami anche sarà finito. Potrò ritornare a casa in NJ domani. Vorrei dormire per due mesi.

Tutto è finito, finalmente. Non ho i temi o i presentazioni. Non ho i compiti. Non ho le lezione. Necessito molto questa vacanza. Potrei scrivere molto, e vorrei trovare un lavoro. Mi mancherebbe le mie amiche di Ithaca, ma voglio vedere le mie amiche di Verona. Inoltre, mi mancano la mia famiglia, il cibo buono, e i miei gatti.

Caro abbraccio a tutti.

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... Oh. Wait. Wrong language. Er. Sorry...

(Also: I might be an Italian minor, but that does not guarantee the accuracy of ANY of that. I apologize for any horrific errors...)

Exam Time

When you're sad and it's exam time
Your papers are rough and suck levels are high
Just remember there's one thing that you can do.
And it always works, too.

You gotta put stuff on your head.
Put stuff on your head!
Well it can be blue,
Or it can be red,
The color doesn't matter if it's on your head!

How's this, John?

Teaser Tuesday: Paying Attention

So the whole "write at least 100 words a day" goal? Admirable, but when one begins it two weeks before finals, it is also rather impractical. Extremely impractical, one might say. Also not happening.

Blaaaaaaaaaaaaah so many papers. *drowns*

To tide you over for now, here's something I wrote for class. Enjoy?

----------------------------------

*snipped*

Not Dead Yet

Wow, it's November already? Sheesh, how time flies when you're buried under six mountains of homework and are running straight from one rehearsal to the next.

What has happened during my impromptu blog hiatus?

Broadway Revue goes up tomorrow (!!!) and I'm terribly excited.

My Personal Essay professor said that my writing had a "self-effacing and therefore likable narrator." Apparently I make fun of myself in my essays? Awesome.

I turned twenty. (Wow.)

And November started. Which means National Novel Writing Month started.

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is a worldwide internet phenomenon in which just about everybody tries to churn out a 50,000 word novel in a month. It turns novel-writing into a game - if you make it to 50,000 words, you win.

Apparently this year NaNo has been the topic of some controversy (see what you miss when you're buried in work? Jeepers, Caitlin). People (and by people I mean The Internet) seem to be debating the merit of forcing out 50,000 words in a rather insanely short period of time.

For me, NaNo has always been one of those "maybe I should do this" things. This is another year I'm letting it pass me by, for a couple of reasons. One is the horrifically lame "I don't have time" excuse. I know I shouldn't let the fact that this semester is kicking my sorry rear end get in the way of my writing. But when I'm this sleep deprived I can't think about writing. Which leads to my next problem - I haven't really got anything TO write just at the moment. ABtW is hopelessly stuck (I'd say that it's going nowhere fast, but the truth is that it's going nowhere incredibly slowly) and I've decided to put off solving that book's myriad problems till winter break, when I don't have papers and Italian grammar and dress rehearsals to worry about as well.

So after this week I'm going to have to sort through and come up with some kind of plot for something.

I wonder what that will be?

Are any of you doing NaNo? What are your stories about? If you aren't doing NaNo, why not?