Book 2 Progress

Got more written tonight. Didn't intend to, but it actually wrote itself decently well. I guess that's what happens when I get to write dialogue. :)

2789 / 100000 words. 3% done!

Book 2 Progress

Hoping to catalogue the progress of book two on a somewhat regular basis. Here's to hopin.

1654 / 100000 words. 2% done!

Deviantart

Okay, so I just had to post this somewhere because I wanted to share its magnificence with other people. I want surfing deviantart, looking for pics that resemble characters in my book. It's just plain fun. If you write, give it a shot. Mucho fun to be had. Just try to block all the not-relevant stuff from your mind...

Anywho, I stumbled upon this digital drawing and it's absolutely captivating in just about every way possible. What's most striking is her eyes. Terrified, pleading, innocent. I can hardly draw a freaking stick figure so it doesn't take much to one-up me, but MAN! By far the most astounding deviation I've seen on that site. Okay, now that I've drummed up your excitement, tada!

http://yangqi.deviantart.com/art/devil-eye-68570615

Lamenting the Loss of Spelling, Grammar, and Punctuation

This is one thing that has been bugging me a lot lately... spelling/grammar/punctuation and the lack of it in most people my age. I'm such a freak about it that if you ever get a text from me that has "u" or "2", etc and no punctuation, it's because I didn't want to go over 160 characters. Yes. I'm THAT much of a freak about it. So often I see my classmates and even my friends do that. And it makes me sad. :*( I was reading a letter from a classmate this week and I was appalled that the entire message was filled with 'ur', 'prbly', 'hav', 'togethr' and 'Ovr'. SERIOUSLY?! Does it kill you to put a few more freaking vowels in the words?! Granted, if you're a chicken peck typer who takes one second per letter I can see how it would be time saving. But beyond that, what is the excuse?! I'll use abbreviations like 'pics' and 'prolly' when texting or emailing a friend so I realize there are some things I'm at fault with. And goodness knows I use a LOT of abbreviations for study guides for class. I don't think anyone who's not in pharmacy would be able to make sense of half the stuff in my study guides. But hey, I don't like wasting paper. I'm a freak about that too.

But I just mean in general. It kills me when i get texts that are clearly too short to require Ashley's "time to cut down on characters" rule, but are still filled with words that are a few letters short. Can I make sense of them? Yes. But the fact still remains that it bugs the CRAP out of me. Thank you for listening to my soap box...

-Ash

Three Months Later

Wow, so I thought I'd be updating this a lot more than every three months? I think maybe it's because if I start writing I know I'll look at the clock and it'll be thirty or forty minutes later before I've stopped. So this will be short and maybe I can keep with just some smaller posts for a while. I am now a WoW player. I know this has elevated me into all sorts of levels of nerd-dom, but oh well. We all knew it. It's just one more step in solidifying my claim. However, I've been trying to balance that with writing... something more productively nerdy. ;-) Granted, getting your lock from 57-61 in one weekend is pretty darn good... plus some leveling of alts.

So yeah, I feel WoW accomplished... and I even wrote some too. Shame I can't actually get anything written in the main file of book one... That will be what entertains my brain from the time benadryl goes down the hatch to the time I go to bed tonight. And tomorrow morning. I'm telling myself I won't get on wow tomorrow before class at one.

So... not that anyone actually reads this thing, but I'm posing a rhetorical question regardless... why can't I freaking decide where to end book one?! It's 140K already! And a detached file that's nearly 9K! I have been so mad at myself the past MONTH (actually i think it's two by now) for not being able to decide where to end it. It's not that possible endings haven't popped into my mind. They have. But I'm so damn indecisive. But I'm telling myself that's a sign. That the fact that I'm indecisive about it means that the right ending hasn't made itself known yet. But at this point I'm getting to the opinion of "write something because if there's nothing on the page there's nothing to edit to make it better". And if I have to scrap stuff, so what? I've had to scrap a lot of stuff before. Does it suck any less? No. But at least I'll have something, right? *sigh* I think you're catching a hint of my inner turmoil over this... And don't even get me started on the fact that I don't have a title yet... >:-/

-ash

Movies!!

Movies that I want to see coming up!!

Confessions of a Shopaholic... come on this looks cute. Plus the guy has an english accent
http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809973783/video/10657718/

Since Escape to Witch Mountain (the '95 one) was like my favorite movie ever when I was little...
http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1810007766/video/10713225/

Bedtime Stories - looks like a cute family movie
http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809973784/video/9950276

Seven Pounds - I LOVE WILL SMITH!
http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1810003163/video/10908746/

The Day the Earth Stood Still - come on this looks awesome!
http://video.yahoo.com/watch/3962251/10739614

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - looks intriguing
http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809785152/video/10367223/

The Ugly Truth - Okay this looks great! Plus it has Gerard Butler!
http://pdl.stream.aol.com/aol/us/moviefone/movies/2008/ugyltruththe_033124/uglytruth_trlr_01_480p_dl.mov

He's Just Not That Into You - no interest in reading the book but the movie looks totally awesome
http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809932969/video/10941154/

Duplicity - Gotta love Clive Owen. mmmm'mmmm
http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1810049115/video/10955955/

Star Trek - Duh!! Do you have any idea how freaking awesome this looks?! (plus Simon Pegg plays Scotty! Awesome actor and a Scottish accent!! *squeal*)
http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809752801/video/10733492/

New In Town - how cute is this? Total chick flick but it looks good
http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809981031/video/10846442/

Okay, I watched the preview for Adoration and all I am is confused. A little intrigued but mostly just confused...

Nothing but the Truth - looks interesting but not sold on the content although I love Kate Beckinsale
http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809944318/video/10908808/

Bride Wars - Hilarious :)
http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1810022011/video/10291783/

HP6 - As if it wasn't obvious... wow. :) I'm so excited
http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809791044/video/9048692/

And, of course, Push
http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809922967/video/10307423/

If any of these look good to you we should go whenever they come out! Coolness.

-Ash

I am such a nerd.

What's playing on iTunes right now? It's not because I'm pretending that by not listening to music I'm actually going to start studying again any second now...

Wow, so I just watched the new theatrical trailer for HP6 and wow, it looks so freaking cool! I know that makes me a nerd to the nth degree, but I don't care. I think that, based on the trailer at least, the movies are starting to capture the increasing "darkness" you feel as the series progresses. I think they did a pretty damn good job with Order of the Phoenix and PoA. GoF was horrible. Period. But that's just my opinion. So anyway, it looks really good and I was happy to see good old Draco in the trailer, but that's just me enjoying looking at Tom Felton. :)

I know, I know, put anything to dramatic music and anything can look more intense/good, but I think that they actually did a good job. Were it not for that stupid opening in the summer blockbuster schedule it'd be out by now. Stupid people at WB wanting to make money. ;-) Then again, it did let Twilight come out early. But I wouldn't have wanted it earlier at the cost of HP moving to July. Sheesh.

AND I'm so excited because last night (when I should have been studying more but was totally braindead in that regard) I've started making progress toward getting the final stages of my book done with. I'd had two different scenes that were floating around that have now found a home in the main manuscript. Woot. :) And I've got pretty much the whole thing planned out 'til the end of the book. It just has to finish getting written. Knowing that I have the next thing to write, I just have to do it, will hopefully get me that push to finish it. It's still like at least 20-30K more words I'm guessing, but I look forward to it. I'm actually really excited thinking about it. And then once it's done I actually get to edit it for good and put in all the things that I've been dying to add so that there will be more depth to the story/plot/characters. I know it's stupid to write in such vague terms since no one's actually read what I've got except for my cousin. And she's only read the first... 70K words maybe? It's at about 120K right now. A little under, but there is still another scene of about 6K that hasn't found its place because I haven't written up to it just yet.

Boy, you can tell when I start talking about something that makes me excited, huh? Any and all coherent sentences leave me and then it just turns into rambling. But oh well. The concept of actually finishing a book for once is really exciting for me. The other two that I'd started in the past never reached completion. And this one has mutated so many times I actually find it funny. But I love my characters now. They're like real people to me. Which is odd that no one else even knows there names (dear cousin Ashley excluded). But maybe eventually once the manuscript has been edited and edited it might eventually meet the eyes of other people. That would be cool. :)

Until then, I suppose I should get back to studying probably. Yuck... Especially since I just got myself all happy talking about the book... which is STILL untitled. Been floating around in my head for more than a year and still no title. Grrrr. That frustrates me. And I've got one of those feelings that I'm not even going to be the one to think up the title. Maybe if I ever give it to one of my friends to read over they'll think of something. Oh well, guess I better stop stalling... Later.

-Ash