One Score, One Finish Line, One Novel

I am a writer.  I don't claim to be the next Jane Austen, or anything, though.  I write mostly for myself, because it's something that makes me happy, but it also hinders me from letting other people see my work.  I'm so critical of myself that I feel like other people will be too, especially because I know I don't write nearly as well as some people I know.

For me, writing came from reading; I can see now that it was inevitable.  I don't remember not being able to read.  My mom used to take me to the public library all the time for those events they had for little kids.  I'm so grateful she did.  From then on, I read anything fiction I could get my hands on.  By the time I entered middle school I was practically reading on a high school level.  I was set in my ways, though, and some books I just refused to read.  I loved the genres I loved, and I wouldn't read outside of them, mostly because the few times I had, I was bored to death.  So, die-hards, look away...I've never read Harry Potter!  But that's okay, you'll get over it sooner or later.

In elementary school I read through nearly all of the Nancy Drew books, and by middle school I was mainly into the adventure and fantasy genres.  I was all for anything relating to pirates, knights, and other worlds.  Sword fighting and bows and arrows were usually a must.  A little romance thrown in wasn't too bad, but it was just as good without it.  But by the time middle school was beginning to come to a close, I was having trouble finding books that I liked.  I perused the library for as long as I was allowed, reading countless book covers and many times leaving empty handed, or with a book I never ended up reading more than a few pages of.  Thus, the birth of my writing.

Truly, I had been writing since elementary school, because when you read like I did, there's no way you can't have a bursting imagination.  But later, when I couldn't read, I wrote.  I still have a mound of my crazy unfinished stories, written on various brands of notebook paper, in handwriting so horrible, I myself can barely make it out.  There are pictures too, but we'll talk about that another time.  It got to the point where I told stories to myself in my head as I fell asleep at night.

My senior year in high school I took creative writing.  The class was made up of a ragtag group of various ages.  I think there were about three of us who had voluntarily signed up for the class.  I really got to explore there, and write like a crazy person, so I was sad that it was only a semester class.  It was in that class that I wrote the very first draft of my first complete story.

I had had a scene in my mind for several months before we had to write.  Sometimes I even think it was induced by God.  I can't even explain how you can look at the sky when a random song comes on the radio, and a scene unfolds in your mind that you can't file away.  I didn't even have a story at the time that the scene would fit into.  So when it came time for our fantasy short story assignment, I just created a story for the scene.  It was short and very rough, but it was a start.

In college, about a year after high school graduation, Caroline told me about National Novel Writing Month.  Basically, you write a novel in a month.  Some crazy writing fiend must have come up with it.  Who else would?  I signed up on the website immediately and then settled in on figuring out what to write.  It dawned on me that I had never really hashed out the full idea for my short story back in high school, so I went with that.  I wrote furiously that November, and thankfully my classes weren't too hard.  By the time December 1st rolled around, I hadn't finished, or gotten anywhere near the 50,000 word mark that signals victory.  I set it aside.  Then, literally the day that classes ended that semester, I jumped on that thing.  I was so close.  I don't remember the exact date, but sometime before Christmas, I typed the last word.  It was only a rough draft, mind you, but it was one of the most significant points in my life.

I mentioned earlier that I had a stack of unfinished stories.  On my computer, I have at least thirty unfinished plots awaiting completion.  I even had to limit myself to stop coming up with plots, and put a majority of the ones I already had in a file appropriately named, "You're not allowed to work on these yet!".  Up to that December in 2010 I had never been able to finish a story.  That day, I didn't cruise into the winner's circle, I didn't get prizes galore, I didn't make it to 50,000.  But I still won.  I won because I finished.

(The original name and cover I made.  Who knows what the title will end up being...)

If All My Dresses Were Made of Lace, I'd Be a Happy Girl

When you move from a small town to a place like Tallahassee you get exposed to new things, some strange and some fun.  One of the strangest things about living in a college town is the fashion.  In general, things people wear around here are just a little bit strange to me.  Take, for instance, the current obsession with tights.  Don't get me wrong, I love tights.  They're really comfortable and great for layering, but the crazy girls around here just take it to a whole new level.  Apparently to them, layering is "so last year."  Instead, they like to wear their tights as a substitute for pants.  This drives me absolutely insane!  The most popular look is tights with a hoodie and tall boots, like these for instance:

Sometimes I'm compelled to ask them why they feel the need to show every contour of their booty to the whole world.

With art students, fashion is generally insane.  I've seen anything from cut up t-shirts to shorts that might as well be underwear.  Bras are optional and individuality is so thick you can't breath.  Some things you really just have to see to understand.

I've always had a pretty good sense of style, even though my style changes from day to day, but I've never been able to buy into the general fashion trend of showing as much skin as possible.  My best friend/roommate, Caroline, shares this sentiment.  Caroline is basically my window to the Korean/Japanese world, so I get to hear about all the crazy fashion trends they have over there, like those crazy big eye contacts they love so much.  But last fall I found out about one of their fashion trends that feels like the best thing for you life: Mori Girl.

Mori is the Japanese term for forest, so the whole idea is to look like a girl who lives in/came from the forest.  Lace and natural colors are encouraged, as is layering, and modesty (something foreign here in America) is almost always a must.  To me, lace is one of the best fabrics in the world, and I enjoy coming up with a Mori girl outfit every now and then, even if it's just to rebel from the rebels.  Now I'll leave you with a ridiculous amount of Mori Girl pictures.

The rapture will probably happen before this becomes popular around here.

The English Language is Ridiculously Awesome, Even Though We Stole Most of It

The first month of 2013 is over, which means I've gone through the first month of my new calendar.  I know that sounded really stupid and redundant, but if you knew how nifty (yes, nifty) this calendar was, you would be as excited as I am.  I haven't come across a word that describes just how nifty it is yet, but the year is young and I have roughly 288 more words to go.  So now, for your enjoyment, have a snack of forgotten English.


shame-faced - The quality of being too fearful of losing the esteem of others or doing something that may give them a bad opinion. Shamefaced, easily blushing, easily put out of countenance.

snow-bones - Remnants of snow after a thaw.

court-holy-water - Insincere complimentary language.

lying by the wall - The interval between death and burial is sometimes spoken of in Suffolk as "lying by the wall."  There was a saying, "If one lie by the wall on Sunday, there will be another corpse in the same parish before the week is out."

trollibags - The intestines. Norfolk. [Still known in Northern England.]

bowssening - Casting mad people into the sea, or immersing them in water until they are well-nigh drowned, have been recommended by high medical authorities as a means of cure.

whizz-bang - A mixture of morphine and cocaine injected subcutaneously.

behopes - Hope, expectation. Ireland, Cheshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire.

fauxonry - Fraud, in the legal sense; falsification of deeds or measures, coining false money, etc.  Adaptation of Old French faussoner, to deceive, faus, false.

vomitory - A door of a large building; from Latin vomitorious.


upputting - Lodging, entertainment for man or beast. Scotland, Northhamptonshire.

real cheese - The Anglo-Indian, by his rough-and-ready adaptation of native words and expressions...is responsible for the currency today of many popular sayings.  Amongst others, such a source has been suggested for the common expression the real cheese, meaning the real thing, quite in fashion, or up to date.  There is a Persian and Hindustani word chiz, meaning thing, and a young Anglo-Indian would frequently say, "My new horse is the real chiz," easily corruptible into the English cheese.
                   - Duck's meat; hardened mucous in the corners of the eyes after sleeping.

boanthropy - A form of madness in which a man believes himself to be an ox.

strowlers - Vagabonds, itinerants, men of no settled abode, of a precarious life; wanderers of fortune, such as gypsies, beggars, peddlers, hawkers, mountebanks, fiddlers, country-players, rope-dancers, jugglers, tumblers, showers of tricks, and raree-show-men.

heterarchy - The government of an alien; from Greek heteros, foreign, and arche, rule.

milkscore - Account of milk owed for, scored on a board.

trumpet marine - An instrument with a bellows, resembling a lute, having a long neck with a string, which being struck with a hairbow sounds like a trumpet.

conbobberation - Conbobberation, helliferocious, mollagausauger, to puckerstopple, and peedoddles were actually in use, and seem unbelievably outlandish today only because of their unfamiliarity...The "tall talk" of the backwoods. moving ever westward with the frontier, left unmistakable traces in the writings of Mark Twain, John Hay, and a good many smaller fry.


Don't you want this calendar now? I thought so.