Do you feel discouraged, like there's a lack of updates here?

Sorry, readers. I know it's been a whole 21 days since I last updated.
So what have I been up to?
Well, I'm back at my parent's house for winter break, which means that I have the Internet Of Legendary Slowness, so I haven't been internetting a whole lot. Instead, I've been doing a lot of other things.

I entered a costume at the SacCon costume contest, and won judge's choice, which was exciting.

Also, my computer is still running Linux, so I'm still at a bit of a loss, but I'm learning how to do important things like install things.

I don't know what I'm saying anymore.

Some things that I do

It's 12:17, I'm half-asleep, and I really need to go to bed, but one does not simply LEAVE the INTERNET.

And I've been thinking about things.

First of all, I've been thinking about how great it is to have a group of friends who think that everything that you do is cool, and who get legitly excited for you when you do things.
And that got me thinking about shared culture.
Like how I've slowly been trying to watch Supernatural, despite the lack of female characters, because there are memes that my friends have that I don't understand, but once I watch this I WILL understand.

Or how I started reading Secret Fandom* because Monica was reading it, and now we've got inside jokes that don't make sense.

And that got me to thinking about acceptance, and where people will be accepted.

And this got me thinking about finals week and all of the fucks that I don't really give, and how stressful it is to be a theatre major here.

Seriously. At my school, you need a higher GPA to be a theatre major than a premed major.

Think about that for a while.

And to add to this lovely angstfest, my ankle's still mad at me for walking into a tree a few weeks ago, and I really need sleep.
I'm torn between really wanting to go home, sleep in my giant full-size bed with my dog and my cats and go to bed at a reasonable hour and see my friends and eat bagels, and wanting to stay here and wanting to stay here with my friends and my floormates and my professors and my comic book store** and eat cupcakes and buy clothes from CD or not CD and walk everywhere instead of driving my giant truck and be where I won't have to sit in the DMV for hours to get a new liscense because some frellnik stole my old one, and where I won't need to drive to Starbucks to get internet that works.

I'm already torn somewhere between regret and wishes.

Anyway, I'm too tired to be coherent, so I'm just going to go to bed now.
_____
*I call it Secret Fandom here because I don't want the people on this floor to take it and start reading it and trying to talk to me about it. I like having exclusivity on things sometimes. Also, I'm one of those fans that I'm pretty sure everyone in the fandom hates, so I don't like people in the fandom knowing that that is what I'm a fan of. Also, because it's a fandom that those outside of the fandom who have heard of it will probably judge me for. If you really want to know, check out the recent blog posts from whitefluffyhat. She's in my blogroll.

**Ashland has possibly the best comic book store ever, when it gets the new issues in when it's supposed to.

NaNoWriMo tips, day 9

Permission to suck.

Hello, WriMos! I’m writing this for you, but if you’re not a WriMo, you might enjoy this anyway, so feel free to read on because it’s going to be here and you’re probably putting off something that you don’t really want to do anyway.

It’s week 2. I know it, you know it, and it’s difficult. Week 2 is the hardest week of NaNoWriMo. You’re getting into the plot, you know the characters, you’re stressed out, and that pile of dirty clothes on the floor is probably approaching apocalyptic size. If you’re me, you’ve also reached the point where you’re writing on a borrowed computer because yours is broken, and trying to not worry about your wallet, which got stolen.

So trust me on this, however bad you think it’s getting this week, it could get worse.

Do you guys know anything about cartomancy? It’s like tarot, but with normal playing cards. I had to study it for NaNo ’09, in which it was also a method of time travel, but that’s a whole other story. Anyway, in Cartomancy, the ten of spades is the worst card in the deck. You’ve hit rock bottom. Everything that could go wrong does. On the other hand, it’s a comfort. When you’ve hit the bottom, you have to go up. Things can’t get worse.

That’s this week. This week is the ten of spades. You’ve got this nice world, and you know the characters, and then you have to stab them with pitchforks and they have to loose their spleens and you have to mess up their lives. This is difficult. This is the part where you’re feeling connected to the characters, and you want to give them a good story, and you realize that the story you’re writing isn’t good enough for your characters.

And now you want to start over. There was that scene back there that you weren’t very happy with, and that scene that directly contradicts what you want to do now, and you don’t really like your main character but hot damn, your villain is awesome and you really want your antihero to be the star of the story. This is the part where things start to get tricky.

So what do you do when your writing feels terrible and you just want to kill all of your characters?

Well, there are a couple of things you can do. Number 1) you can kill all of your characters.

That’s right. I said that. If you really hate everyone, and you don’t know what to do, and you’ve totally written yourself into a corner, you can have your character’s house’s carbon monoxide detector fail and everyone dies. You can do this. This is a totally acceptable option. Where do you go from there? Well, just keep writing. Something will happen.

Option 2, you can do something else. You can kill your main character and make this story be about your antihero and your villain and how they end up almost destroying the world and then having to work together to save it. This is also a totally acceptable option. You can take what you have, and mix it up a little bit, and suddenly your subplot has become your main plot. This is also okay.

Option 3, you can just keep writing. That’s right. Just stick to your story, set a timer, and pound words out of your keyboard until you realize that you do kind of like your main character. You will, eventually, finish.

You cannot stop writing. That is not an option. What you need to do is to stop worrying about that massive pile of laundry, and stop worrying about doing justice to your characters and your world, and just keep writing. Your brain is a powerful thing. It will put the pieces of the story together, and you will have something awesome. Everything makes sense at the end.

Polly's NaNoWriMo Tips, November 6, 2011

As November approaches its 6th day, I feel like a few of you may be needing a pep talk or something. I know I do, and this is my 4th WriMo. So yeah, maybe I’m giving myself a pep talk. Shut up. I totally can do that. Sometimes you totally need that.

By day 6, you’re probably getting over the “This will be super fun!” stage of NaNo, and you’re getting into Week Two.

Week Two is a scary thing. During Week Two, you take the world that you set up, and you start breaking it. You know who your characters are, and you’re starting to know where your plot is going (or you think you do. You don’t. You never know where your plot is going. Because of that, you cannot loose your plot, it can just take a surprise twist that no one saw coming. And that’s okay).

And because you know what’s going on, you’re going to start having some trouble. I was writing with my MMC for a while (NaNoSpeak Translation: MMC: Main Male Character, though in my case it could also stand for Main Mail Carrier, but I digress) and I realized that he was a total Gary Stu with no character flaws and all in all he was a character that I just wanted to throw off a bus.

So I started giving him some character flaws and after a page I’d taken that too far and he’d crossed the moral event horizon and I felt like there was no saving him. So I mentioned to my friend, who is also a WriMo, and was in the room at the time, that I hated Steve.

And she asked me, why, and I told her.

And she looked at me and said, “Well, he was on drugs. Keep writing.”

That felt pathetic. It felt like a hand-wave of a scene that I really ought to rewrite because it was really bad, but you know what else it was? GLORIOUS. That, my friends, is the Spirit of NaNo right there.

Your plot feels predictable and suddenly you realized that you’re just telling the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves in space? Go for it. Keep writing. You just noticed that you’ve copied every third line from Pirates of the Caribbean and your MFC (NaNoSpeak Tranalation: Main Female Character) is just female Jack Sparrow? Keep writing.

The thing that should really hit home this week is that your writing style may be bad, and your plot may be terrible, and you may hate the entire thing and want to start over or go back and fix a scene or realize that something didn’t work. The thing you are going to realize this week is that you cannot write a good novel in the first go.

And you know what? That’s okay.

This month, you are just going to write. You’re going to write a story that makes no sense in parts, where sometimes you don’t know what you’re doing, where you reread it during December and find yourself making notes like “Ebe needs a personality transfusion STAT!” and all of this is okay.

This is very important to understand. Even if you don’t know where your story is taking you, even if you don’t know who your characters are, even if you just realized that that scene you wrote three pages ago was long and boring and pointless, keep going with it.

Here’s another piece of advice: If you had an idea to change something in the past, write the scene you’re on like you’ve already changed it. If you want, take a little sticky note (or use the notes section in Scrivener. Seriously. Scrivener. Use it) and mark down what change you made on which page and stick it on your Wall of Plot and Notes and What Am I Doing. You don’t really need to, though. It’s easy enough to realize what you’re doing when you edit.

So yeah. Your challenge for the week: Just write. Week 2 is hard. Power through it. Most people give up in week 2, but you’re not going to be one of them. You’re going to realize that this takes a lot more time than you thought it would, you’re going to be stressed about a lot of things and forget to do a lot of things, and that’s going to be fine. Every time you have free time, put your fingers to the keys, put your pen to the paper, and just write. Turn off your brain, stop thinking about it, and let your characters take control of the story.

Because you want to know a secret? When you are done with NaNo, and you take that first draft that you just printed out on your work’s laser printer when no one was looking, and you read it, you will realize that it’s really bad. You will also realize that it’s really, REALLY good in ways that you never thought you could do. And you will like it and be proud. And that feeling is worth so much. Really, nothing short of seeing a plane that you designed flying can match that feeling. It is the feeling of creation. It is the feeling of being a novelist! And you can feel it.

Just write.

Polly's 21 tips to NaNoWriMo success

I promised I'd do it a couple of days ago, and with 3 days until the event begins, here's my almighty successful advice.

1. Keep writing. If you had an off day, you don't know what you're doing, you hate all of your characters and you want to kill everything, you just don't feel like writing, do not, under any circumstances, stop writing. It will be difficult. You may not know where the story is. Don't stop writing.
   
2. Go with it. If one of your characters keeps telling you repeatedly to burn down the house, but you know that you plot really needs the house, but your character is very insistent that the house needs to be burned down, BURN THE HOUSE DOWN. You have now murdered your entire plot. Go with it.
   
3. Don't get too attached to your plot or your characters. Things will change. If you are too attached, you will get stuck, and not want to write. One of the best scenes from my last year's NaNo novel was a creepy torture scene that I ended up writing because I didn't want to pick up the main plot again.
   
4. Speaking of which, double plots. They may happen. If you don't know what's going on with one character, switch to another character's point of view and tell the same story that just happened. It earns you words, and you can edit it out in December.
   
5. Make a sticky note that says, "I can edit it out in December." Save it. Love it.
   
6. Wrist braces: Get some. If you're typing all day, unless you have magical wrists or the best posture ever, you are probably at risk for Carpal Tunnel or RSI (I've given myself both. Carpal Tunnel is when your pinkies go numb. RSI is where it feels like someone stabbed you every time you try to type). Get some typing braces today. Start typing with them, so that you can get back up to your normal typing speed with them on.
   
7. Do not delete anything. You had a new idea that requires revising a previous part? Go with it. Don't revise your previous part. Just pretend you already did that. You can fix continuity errors later.
   
8. Have some really spectacular success days. Did you write 5000 words in a day? You can!
9. Get ahead while you can. In the beginning, try to write at least 3K every day. Then you're ahead, and you won't die, and may earn some days off.
10. Don't take a day off. If you're about to fall asleep at 2 AM, I don't care. Open up your computer, pull out your notebook, write a sentence, and log it. 0's are bigger motivation killers than 12's. Scientific fact.
11. Don't think it will be easy. You will miss out on things you really wanted to do. You will feel incredibly stressed and hate all of your characters and want to burn down their building. You will probably cry and scream and tear out your hair and that is okay and that means you're doing things right.
    
12. Write in the mornings. Pick a time (Last year, my time was 5:45 AM. This year, it's 8:00 AM), set your alarm for that, and when it goes off, open computer, type. You may not be awake enough to do this well. That is okay. Write words. You can edit it out in December.
    
13. Shower. You stuck on your plot? don't know where this character is taking you? Take a shower. Things appear to magically work themselves out in your mind in the shower (it's something to do with the fact that you can't write them down and distinctly feel like it's not as good when you get it on paper. Don't worry about that. It's fine).
    
14. Tangents. Go on them. Your character is walking through the park, and you realize that the homeless man she always walks past has a really interesting backstory. WRITE THAT. I don't care if it isn't relevant to the plot. DECEMBER IS FOR EDITING.
    
15. Writing sprints. Do them. Go on the Twitter, the forum, Skype, anything, and find someone to word war with. It is helpful.
    
16. Write in coffee shops. Let the people think you're crazy.
    
17. At some point, you will realize that you cannot write a good novel in this amount of time. That is true. The goal is to write a bad novel, then make it good of a period of several months. Fun fact: Without writing a bad novel, you will never write a good novel.
    
18. Challenges. Dares. Adopt-a-lines. Do them.
    
19. Don't panic. If your novel halfway through wants to become a Glee fanfiction or your pilot turned into River from Firefly, go with it. You don't know where it's going to take you, but you'll be going somewhere.
    
20. Write your whole story. If you hit 50K but haven't wrapped up the story, is it still a win?
    
21. Just write. Seriously. Just keep writing.
    

My tea is cold and there's a Beth on my floor

So yesterday, Beth drove down here from Salem to visit me. (I love Beth)
She's currently asleep on my floor, and my tea has gotten cold.


Anyway, let's talk about NaNoWriMo.

For those of you who don't know, NaNoWriMo is the craziest thing ever created that I have personally participated in.
It's a bunch of nerds. On the internet. Writing novels. In a month.
Specifically, the month of November.

Yep.

I've done it three times, won twice (you win by finishing your novel. Everyone who participates can win, but usually the win rate is at around 25%), and learned a lot of things in the process.

So here's POLLY'S GUIDE TO NOT FAIL AT NANOWRIMO. First of all, let's talk about the three methods of NaNoing that I've witnessed.

1. When November comes, write. You realize that it's November, and you don't have any idea for a story, and you don't know where things are going, write. If you didn't do any planning, now is not the time. You need to just start writing. Don't worry if it's a good concept or a terrible concept or you don't know your character or what they're going to do...just put your fingers on the keys and write. Eventually, you will find yourself making turns and changes that you had never expected, and the novel will happen.
   
2. Well, it's like this, but also like that... You have a vague idea for a plot. "It's about a guy who sends a journal back in time to stop a plague from killing his sister." You don't think it through much more than that. I have used this method for the past two years (my two winning years) and it's nice and easy. Since November has 4 weeks, here's my basic formula:

   Week 1: Establish this character's life as it normally is. Build the world, their job that they hate, their coworkers that like to steal things from them, the magical talking alpaca that lives in their basement, business as normal.
   
   Week 2: Mess up their life. Their alpaca sends them on a journey for a mystical crystal, their obnoxious coworker sleeps with your character's spouse, and to top it all off, the coffee pot breaks and your character has to go through the whole story WITH NO COFFEE.
   
   Week 3: The character tries to fix things, but just makes it all worse. They go to Starbucks for coffee and find that they interrupted a counseling session with their spouse, and to top it all off, they broke that mystical crystal and now the universe is going to explode. By the middle of week 3, everything that can go wrong, has gone wrong.
   
   Week 3.5/4: Fix it. You have written your character into a giant literary hole. Now make it better.
   

   Most of this you just make up as you go, but you know where the plot is hopefully going to lead you.
3. The intense outline method. I'm attempting this one for the first time this year. Here's how it works: You download Scrivener (SERIOUSLY YOU CAN'T DO IT WITHOUT SCRIVENER, IT'S AMAZING) and you put every scene into a notecard, figure out how many words you need, and then you can write whatever scene strikes your fancy when it comes time to write. Having never done this before, that's all I can say.
   

Okay. This got long, so tomorrow will happen my 21 tips to make NaNoWriMo less miserable.

Some more Theatre-y things.

Disclaimer: There will be much theatre nerding, a little bit of angst, and probably a misuse of Theatre/Theater in this post.

I'm sitting on my bed right now, holding Thumper the Thunder Thumper, and really glad that my Den Mom appears to be psychic. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

So two weeks ago, the Foundations students (that's me and all of the other pre-theatre majors) filled out their theatre practice assignment requests.
And we were told, "Hey, guys, don't panic, but you MAY not get an assignment. We don't have enough space. Sorry, guys." And then we got a little piece of paper and filled out our schedule and went home.
And then a couple days later they posted the assignments, and I checked the call board--
--I'm going to take a moment right there to be like GUYS I CHECKED THE CALL BOARD THAT'S SOMETHING THEATRE PEOPLE DO!!--
--and there was my name! Right there! on the costume crafts crew!
THE COSTUME CRAFTS CREW, GUYS! It's like the best job ever. It ALLITERATES!
So I signed off that I'd seen it and went on my merry way, and when I checked the call board on Friday, I saw when my first work call was.
I HAD A WORK CALL YOU GUYS.
And then I looked at the time, and my heart just kind of plummeted into my liver. "Tuesday-Thursday work call: 1:30-5:20." Which would have been fine, but I have a class Tuesday-Thursday, 1:30-3:30. And I couldn't do Monday, because I'd have class from 3:30-5:20.
So then there was a lot of panicking, and a lot of stress, and a lot of Polly OMG WHAT DO WHAT DO.
So then I sent an email to the lady in charge of scheduling for the costume department, and tried to have a good weekend.

On Monday, still hadn't heard back (but also hadn't yet checked my email. I was terrified of having a YOU FAIL AT THEATRE, PACK YOUR BAGS, YOU DO NOT PASS GO, YOU DO NOT COLLECT $200 kind of email sitting in my inbox). My Den Mom has this little Thumper plushie (from Bambi. You know, Thumper?) that she gives to someone in the den who she thinks will need it, and then they bring him back for the next class. She gave him to me, and I ended up really needing him because the people I live with are hypocritical dicks. And then I checked my email.

And everyone was super nice and helpful! I now have a job working in the stock room or on the Make-it-Better crew (we don't know which one yet, but they're basically one group), which is FANTASTIC. This means next term, when/if I'm working on one of the other crews, I will know where everything is, and where it belongs, and what we have.

Anyway, that's all I've got to talk about at this point.

The thing that I was really upset about yesterday was still really upsetting today, so I ended up skipping one of my classes and walking around town. I discovered that buying bubble tea and a crepe fixes many of the problems with the world, especially when it's enjoyed while watching Project Runway.