The Big Day (Writing and the Show)
Today has been a big day. Actually, the whole weekend has been a big, well, weekend. Shall we run through the list of things that have happened? I think so :P. Note: The current schedule I am holding for blogging right now (every day but Wed.) is not going to be my standard schedule. Likely I will do three blogs a week and every third week a new chapter (or every month entirely depending on what I can manage). So just take note of that to check back every other day in the future. 1. I finished Chapter One! It’s not going to be up, as I said yesterday, but I finished writing it. Next weekend I will edit the little thing and get it at least presentable to the world. Then I’ll post it that weekend. I was surprised that I finished it when I did. Sometimes I say “oh I will finish this at such and such time” and then I end up writing about it for a long long long time. I’ve actually hit a deadline. This is good news because I have proven to myself that I can actually succeed at hitting a deadline that I made for myself. Good news good news. So that will go up next weekend. 2. Got in a lovely argument with a friend. Well, it was more like a serious discussion than an argument, but it involved our friendship and the issues we’ve been having with it. Needless to say it was not ‘fun’, at least not in the same sense as going to an amusement park, but at least the issues have sort of been resolved. 3. I just realized how much homework and reading and note taking I still have to do for the weekend and it will all have to be done after my thing today (a.k.a. Saturday). I am taking the following classes this semester:a) Traditional Native American Artb) Concert Bandc) Spanish (the first class for it anyway)Note: This is actually a light load for me and there’s good reason. Everyone has a subject they aren’t very good at. Well, languages aren’t my forte, especially when they are ones I am not interested in. Nobody teaches Latin or Japanese anymore around here and it’s terrible.So I have about 45 pages left to read for TNAA, which involves highlighting and eventually writing down notes and printing them since this teacher allows us to use our notes for the tests. Then I have to prepare for a presentation for Spanish and the first exam on Thursday. In all honesty I think I will ace the first exam, but only because it’s really simple stuff and requires mostly some memorization. We don’t have to write paragraphs yet, because that crap is hard. I shoud know because I took Spanish once in High School and didn’t get a passing grade and I also took one college semester way back when that I had to drop out of because of medical reasons (a.k.a. Cancer and being stuck in a hospital for two weeks). The reading is probably going to kill me the most. The problem with Art History classes is that the reading tends to be rather dry. I took an Asian Art class from the same teacher a while back and the book was one of the most dry and boring things I’ve ever read. However, when we started getting into the stuff about Samurai and how they designed their swords, the number of stages and hammering it took to get them in the perfect shape, etc. It was all fascinating and amazing. Zen Buddhism was also fascinating, which by the way is not just meditating. There is a whole lot more to it. Anyway, so the reading will be dry basically. 4. The Sacramento Reptile Show & Sale: Well I got back today (well this post will be shown to be the day after so just assume this was ‘yesterday’) from the 9th Annual Upscale Reptiles Show and Sale in Sacramento. It was awesome! I got to hold a corn snake, a snake called a Cribo (which was HUGE), and a baby Reticulated Python (who was so docile and amazingly neat I couldn’t believe it). I had a Leopard Gecko on hold from Marcia at Golden Gate Geckos and ended up getting a second from her, both females. The one on hold was an adult Chocolate Tremper Albino Jungle, and the other that I picked out was a gorgeous Bold Stripe Jungle.And to top things off, I took the plunge I had been expecting to come for some time. I bought a Crested Gecko! His name is Tim. He’s so adhorable. He’s sort of this wood brown/orange color and it’s so hard to describe without pictures. Hopefully I’ll have some soon to show everyone. He was absolutely gorgeous and I couldn’t resist when I saw him. His little darling face and everything! Oh man he was cuuute.My Leo’s are cute too, it’s just this is a new type of gecko for me and I’ve grown a fascination with them over the last few months.So needless to say things went very well. I spent all the money that I had brought with me, which was expected I suppose. I also found an insect that I will actually want to keep cause it looks so cool. It’s called a Whiptail Scorpion. No, it isn’t a scorpion in the traditional sense, nor a spider. They are actually completely and utterly harmless: no stinger, venom, or anything of that nature. They just look evil and I think they are fascinating little creatures. There’s also a little insect that looks like a scrunched up scorpion but instead of a tail with a stinger they have this long stringer tail and apparently when they are threatened they secrete what is basically like vinegar. It’s very acidic but doesn’t hurt you or anything, in fact you could lick it and apparently it would taste similar
Names and Things
So it comes to it that I am forced to actually write now :). This is good because I have every desire to write something fascinating and altogether appealing to audiences out there. So intermingled between posts–probably once a month–will be chapters for this new story I have cooking.I think some might be turned off by the fact that this is a YA novel, novella, or whatever it actually turns out to be. Perhaps I am just speaking from what I think others might think, which as a sentence in and of itself is confusing in its own right, but I think there should be a big distinction made here. YA doesn’t mean it is going to be dull and uninteresting to more adult audiences. Look at the fame of Harry Potter, the Phillip Pullman’s series, or heck even Christopher Paolini’s Inheritence trilogy (well or saga…not sure if he’ll stop at three books). All of these books are geared towards that YA audience, and even younger, yet adults read them like mad.I’m 22 and I love the Harry Potter books. Granted Rowling didn’t choose the most original ideas, but did she have to? I think just writing style and the characters alone hold the novel above all its cliches. So, a YA novel doesn’t mean it won’t be of interest to adults, not at all. In fact I hope to write something that fits into that inbetween space between “just for kids” and “just for adults” so that what I write is something both kids, parents, adults, older kids, etc. can enjoy. That’s the whole point of wanting to write a YA fantasy. I think writing for a younger audience while making it accessible to adults is a great thing. Look at what the HP books have done to reading. Sure, most kids don’t read, but can you imagine how many more kids wouldn’t be reading if HP hadn’t come around and forced the market to explode? I even have to laugh at those extremist Christian groups that condemned the book because of its imagery of magic and the like. How can anything that causes kids to read be evil? Not to mention, book burnings really don’t do anything to stop the book from being made. You have to pay for those books you burn, so in reality the publisher and the writer are getting money for your silly little demonstration which will only renew peoples’ interest in the book.So while I write this I had all this running in my head. I’m not sure exactly why it popped in there.To add I’ve found that coming up with names for places, people, and things is altogether quite a difficult thing to achieve. Why are names so hard? You’d think that with it being so easy to create things in a mind that is already half-delusional that it would be just as easy to come up with something that would fit into that delusional world. So, I wonder if anyone that pops by has any ideas on how they come up with names. It doesn’t have to be fantasy names. It could be SF or straight Fiction. What’s in a name that makes you select it when you design a character? Is there something striking about that characters personality that makes you pick that name? Now in other news are my fun little plans coming up. I’m a big herp hobbiest. Herp is basically a term used to say “reptile” (and if I’m not mistaken it applies to amphibians too). I don’t have any snakes, not yet anyway, but I do have six leopard geckos, a bearded dragon, and three baby common musk turtles. This thursday I have two more beautiful leopard geckos coming and I just can’t wait to see them :). I found them online through a lovely breeder at ID Gecko. Following that will be the Sacramento Reptile Show and Sale where I’m picking up another beautiful Leopard Gecko from Marcia at Golden Gate Geckos. Who knows what else I will find there. Anywho, so I’m planning to breed them next year :). It should be super exciting to be involved in the process of raising little leopard geckos from the egg on up to the point where I will find them new homes. I love it :). As such I end my four day weekend on a high note. I’ve started this blog. I’ve declared my little mission of writing a fantasy novel, which I have really wanted to do in the YA area for so long, and I am merely days away from the most fascinating weekend since FanimeCon 2006. Things are going to be good from here on out I hope. 🙂