I bask in the glow of my winnerly winnerness.

And then I have to go get dinner and take out the trash and stuff.

And then I have to go work on my novel term paper.

"And so I name you the winner. Or more appropriately...loser!"

Five points if you can name where the quote is from.

These points are entirely meaningless, but may make you feel special. And isn't that all that matters? :)

I am nearly done. Just 2,000 words to try to make a largely incoherent story look like it had some sort of overarching purpose. I think I will treat myself to takeout tonight...maybe one of those places where Rebecca has been getting all these delicious-looking noodles lately.

I want to finish. But I also don't want to finish, because then I have nothing else to work on besides my term papers. Woe! Not that I don't love my term papers, in my own way, but they're term papers, you know? SERIOUS BUSINESS.

Actually, which sounds more impressive: "I'm working on my term paper" or "I'm working on my novel"? Kind of a hard call, actually. I think "I'm working on my term paper" sounds more impressive than "I'm working on my novel," just because people take academia more seriously than the creative arts--so someone working on a term paper is less interruptable than someone working on a novel, maybe. But on the other hand, "I finished my novel" sounds more impressive than "I finished my term paper," partly because it's longer, and partly because no one made you do it.

Gah, back to the grind, I guess.

Yesssss! At last!

Seriously, this has been the most difficult NaNo EVER. I have been behind practically the entire time. (I'm still behind.) Of course, I have never been in graduate school at the same time before either. This is also the first time I have worked with an idea that I just came up with and have no idea where it will go or how it will end. Plus it's all monologue. What a dumb idea that was. Seriously. Never have just one character talking the whole time. It gets old really fast. I don't know. Maybe it will wind up being interesting, or at least an interesting experiment.

If I can do this, term papers should be no problem, right? RIGHT?

Yeah, we'll see about that.

Okay, so I'm a day behind, but it's better than being like a gazillion days behind. I just cranked out 5,000 words by turning off the monitor and not caring. Go me! Tomorrow I have to put together a project I should actually care about, but I don't. This will be followed by term papers I should care about, and actually do care somewhat about and can finally focus on, now that the project I don't care about will be out of the way.

I will get no sleep tomorrow, WOOO!

By which I mean "ahead of my other writing buddies, who are also behind, and this will only last for probably five seconds until Emily updates again." Whatever. It's a small victory, and I will take it.

Everyone lately* has been confessing to me how they are cheating on their novel for NaNo. It occurred to me that there should be some sort of confessional, structured penance, and absolution. With that in mind, I generated a couple of prayers. You can go to your local priest of belles lettres for confession and be assigned 5 Our Novels and a Hail Chris Baty (for example), or you can go the DIY penance route, whichever you prefer.**

OUR NOVEL

Our novel, which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy pages.
Thy themes shall come, thy will be done
On our monitors as in our minds.
Give us this day our daily word count,
And forgive us our plot holes and the flatness of our characters.
And lead us not into long tangents,
But deliver us from rambles.
For thine is our allegiance,
and our sleep schedule,
and our sanity,
from now until November 30
Amen.

HAIL CHRIS BATY

Hail Chris Baty, full of win.
The Muse is with thee.
Blessed art thou among writers and blessed is the fruit of thy labors, NaNo.
Crazy Chis, father of insanity, pray for us writers now and at the hour of our novel's completion.
Amen.


*By which I mean like two people
**Not to be taken too seriously.

Why did I think this would be a good idea? All my thoughts and ideas are terrible. Plus I had a bunch of other stuff to do and write today, so I think I will have to go to bed and just be behind for a day. And of course, of COURSE suddenly I have possible tutoring students pouring out my ears and one of my old employers might need me also, and I could really use the money, and the term papers...they're coming for me. Drums...drums in the deep.

There are fouler things than writer's block in the deep places of the world.

So I was looking on the National Novel Writing Month website, and I checked the list of writers giving pep talks. There are some great ones this year, including Gail Carson Levine, Tamora Pierce, and Robin McKinley. And then the one that nearly threw me into hyperventilation.

Jasper Fforde.

Jasper. Fforde.

JASPER FFORDE.

If I do NaNo this year, I get a pep talk from Jasper Fforde. Jasper Fforde wants me to succeed. (In an "I'm part of a mass e-mail campaign" sort of way, but still.)

Any feelings of hesitation I had about doing NaNo this year...gone.

Who else is on board?

The title don't lie. I might well be missing something, but I think I've got it all.

( Books )

Well, I've finished all the assignments for my orientation class--at least, the ones I can do right now. Ten assignments, eight finished. Of the remaining two, one is an assignment where you have to track two things over the course of a week, and the other requires an appointment for a specific day. So other than those two things, I'm completely done. Now what?

I guess I could work on compiling research for the term papers I know I'll have coming up at the end of the semester. I could work on "Who Shot JKR?" I could start breaking down the work I'll need to do on revising the screenplay. I could update my book list. That would be a good idea, probably. All of these would be good ideas.

It's EVERYWHERE!

After I parked today at work, I was walking in to the building, and there was a deer on the hill. Now, there are often deer in this area, but it was on the sidewalk, right by the stairs, looking at me as bold as you please. I expected it to walk off or get skittish once I started walking up the stares, but it kept staring at me as though to say, "Nice hill you've got here. I'm not moving. It's mine. Don't eat my plants." And I waved good morning back to it, and on the other side of the stairs, a young deer tromped down the hill. They were incredibly mellow and unconcerned about me. (Not that they had any reason to be concerned, but I can walk into a room sometimes and scare the bejeesus out of our cats.)

Then on my lunch, I saw a pretty yellow-green bird fly into one of the windows and fall down, flailing on the ground. I wanted to help, but I didn't know what I would be able to do, if anything, and figured I probably shouldn't touch it. (My fear of birds no doubt fed into this. I love birds in the abstract and find them beautiful, but I don't like having them within about a ten-foot radius of my personal space.) So I sent a lot of hope its way and hoped that would be enough. I felt really bad for it. But birds can take care of themselves, right? Right?

Daaaaang, but it's quiet with everyone gone. I hope everyone's having a good time at Comic-Con. I am doing relatively well. Had a great time yesterday with Liz, whose friends are also all at Comic-Con. We swam, cooked dinner (homemade lemonade, lemon honey chicken, rice, and cream of broccoli soup), watched Angel, and played piano/violin duets. I am not half bad for someone who hasn't touched a violin in sixteen years and who is working without the little pieces of tape that tell you where your fingers are supposed to go. Plus I can play chords on the piano! (Kind of.)

Huzzah, I have an interview at Kohl's on Tuesday! Following up really is helpful. And all I even need at this point is *something* somewhere for some amount of time and money. So not picky. Anyway, maybe that will work out, or something else will.

Alas, the hyphen key has detached itself from the keyboard, and I have been trying to reattach it without any success whatsoever. I can see how it is supposed to attach, but I do not have the impossibly small fingers or manual dexterity to make it happen. Maybe if I had a pair of tweezers...which I do not. Stupid little hingey clippy things. Grrr...

I guess I'll just have to go write something. I've kind of left myself without anything else to do. Rather silly of me, wasn't it? But a great boon to productivity. If you get bored enough, you'll do anything, even the things you feel like you should be doing.

Why do brilliantly terrible or terribly brilliant ideas (and I can't decide which one this is yet) always come in the shower? Why is it never the ideas you want to get that you actually get? Whence comes crackfic? Why do some stories fall so effortlessly into place while others have to be wrenched piece by piece out of your brain and painstakingly assembled?

What sort of deranged mind would come up with an Angel/Royal Pains crossover?

Oh.

Why do I have nothing to do for the next six and a half hours but indulge this odd compulsion?

*sigh* Oh well.

I just finished reading another book!

35. The Birth of the Mind: How a Tiny Number of Genes Create the Complexity of Human Thought by Gary Marcus.

It's exactly what it sounds like. It's science! It's genetics and the brain! It's cool, and actually fairly accessible.

Key points:

*The idea that the human genome is a "blueprint" is misleading, because there's not a one-to-one correspondence (e.g., this gene controls this trait). There are perhaps a bit more than 30,000 genes, but billions of cells in the human body. Instead, genes act more like self-regulating recipes for creating different proteins.

*The "nature vs. nurture" debate is silly and falsely dichotomized, because genes are encoded in such a way that allows them to adapt depending on environmental triggers. (And they are really adaptable.)

*The cells and genes that make up our brains are not in any significant way more special than the cells and genes that make up our bodies--or, for that matter, from the brains of chimpanzees. The "specialness" of the human mind has more to do with the way the complex interactions within the brain itself, all set in motion by the genes.

*Some of the complexity from simplicity could be explained if certain genes act as triggers for cascading reactions, so that large changes can actually occur fairly quickly.

*Guys! Language is complicated! Science is complicated! We're getting there, but we still only have a vague idea how it all works.

I'm sure I butchered some of that and I definitely left quite a bit out, but that's the gist. And now I am officially out of stuff to do.

Let's see, what's been going on in my life lately? I've had interviews, but ultimately no job offers. At least I have a lot of hours in August, after which I start school and get loan money. I just have to keep trying, keep going, muster up the stamina to endure just a little bit longer until things get better (and they will get better, one of these days).

I got into the class I wanted! My paper on librarians in pop culture is totally going to kick ass! This is simply a fact of life.

Everyone is at Comic-Con. I would have a wild party, but virtually everyone I would invite to said wild party is, as previously mentioned, at Comic-Con. Would anyone who is not at Comic-Con (or out of state) like to have a wild party? It's wild and party-like! (By which I mean we raid my roommates' DVD collections, cook some food, and maybe go swimming.)

Meanwhile, in my writing life... I started another screenplay. I haven't gotten very far--it's mostly in the character development stage at this point. I'm procrastinating on "Who Shot JKR?" No really good reason for that.

A few weeks ago at a job fair, I happened to meet a man who used to be the vice president of Final Draft, which, for those who don't know, is the industry standard screenwriting software. (I checked his credentials just to make sure.) We got to talking, and he asked if I wrote screenplays, which I said I did (because I do), and he encouraged me to send him a synopsis. So I finally got around to writing up a synopsis, which apparently had Katie laughing out loud in a hotel lobby when she read it. (Since it's a comedy, among other things, her laughter is a good thing.) Obviously I'm going to run it by my inestimable writing partner before I send it out though.

I have mixed feelings about the synopsis. On one hand, I had a blast writing it and I think it's brilliant. It's loaded with snarky commentary and it captures the light humor of the story and its escalating shenanigans. On the other hand, I don't know if it shouldn't be more brisk and businesslike: "In Act One, event A occurs, leading to event B and conflict C, which character D escalates, culminating in event E and our act break." Maybe it would be more professional. But it would also be more boring. Maybe I could strike a happy medium, but it seems petty to hit people who are happy, and especially unwise if they can see the future. Besides, violence won't solve my problem. I guess I'm just worried about looking amateurish and making an unfavorable impression. On the other hand, Shane Black made about a gazillion dollars by basically having a personality, filling his descriptions with witty asides like: "This is the kind of house I'm going to buy if this movie becomes a big hit." (That was in Lethal Weapon, so Go Go Gadget Foreshadowing!) (Aside: Shane Black is going to be at Screenwriting Expo this year. Awesome!) Probably some people will think I'm silly, while others will be incredibly grateful to see something that doesn't read exactly like everything else. Maybe I should take Jean-Luc Picard's words to heart: "If we're going to be damned, let's be damned for what we really are." Thank you, Picard! You are so wise and solve all my problems!

Yeah, sorry it's been a while since I posted. Not that it much matters, I guess. Books will still be books, and my thoughts on them will still be my thoughts on them, regardless of the time elapsed.

Since I have so many books to cover, I probably won't go into as much depth on each book, but you're welcome to ask for more thoughts on any you wish to have more thoughts on.

( So, books! )

Went up to Sacramento last weekend for my brother's graduation. He graduated from Universal Technical Institute, which is a mechanic's school. It's actually a pretty snazzy-looking school; my family and I took a tour before the graduation started. They label all the hallways with street signs, things like Raceway Lane and Professional Parkway. Plus they have a ton of different labs with all the necessary equipment. In the transmission class, for example, you have to disassemble and reassemble a transmission system and make it run. Anyway, based on the information in the graduation program, it seems like my brother did pretty well overall.

The graduation itself was held in the collision lab. The graduates entered to the sound of revving engines, which was cool. They still did the proper processional, but it was nice to have something different, given the obscene number of graduations I have attended in one capacity or another.

So, anyway, I'm proud of him for reaching this milestone. He's had kind of a rough time of things, but he did accomplish this goal, which is a good thing.

The rest of the weekend was spent amicably bickering with my family, playing board games, having a celebration dinner at BJ's, and taking a tour of the Jelly Belly factory in Fairfield. Apparently Ronald Reagan was obsessed with Jelly Belly jelly beans and brought them to the governor's office and the White House with him, claiming it helped people bond and make better decisions. There were cool murals made with jelly beans all over the walls. I recommend going not on a weekend, as it is probably more interesting to be able to see people actually working. But free samples, so can't complain.

Went over to zzcat13's house last night, and we watched the first five episodes of Angel, which she had never seen any of. Of course, now she's hooked. I love the first season of Angel, myself. "I Fall to Pieces" gets my vote for creepiest anything ever. Can't wait to watch more.

We also made dinner, falafel pita sandwiches. Delicious, but much less complicated than last time. I was quite proud of how the tzatziki turned out. Yogurt, cucumbers, green onions, half a teaspoon of garlic paste, and a sprinkling of dill and lemongrass. The lemongrass was my own addition--not something that normally goes in tzatziki, but it really should, because it tastes fantastic.

Pretty much what it says. Things are starting to move. Everything is going to be all right. I applied a couple of places yesterday and made a few calls today regarding open positions. I finished one short story that I'm not sure how I feel about and am working on another. I'm going over to zzcat13's house tonight to introduce her to Angel. That will be fun.

Right now, I'm bored. More accurately, I'm antsy. I feel like there's so much that needs to be done, and right now I can't really do any of it, though I've done what I can do. On the upside, my loan deferment went through, yay! And soon, I should have a lower car insurance payment. On the downside, NINA (No Income, No Assets). I feel like that should be a sexy evil robot with laser eyes who makes your life miserable. Or something.

Guess I'll go check on my waitlist and financial aid status. *sigh*

When talking about your favorite show, do any of the following phrases come up?

*But it has such potential!
*I know I can fix it.
*It just needs someone to love and nurture it.
*Sometimes it hurts me, but it always apologizes, and I can tell it just feels so bad...
*But sometimes it's so good!
*It's not really that bad.
*You don't understand. No matter what it does to you, you can't just stop loving it.

Yes, Robin Hood (BBC) fans: we are trapped in a classic abusive relationship.

( Cut for spoilers, rambling )