General Updatery

You may have noticed, or not since I have no idea if others are reading this, but I haven't exactly been posting much in the last two months. Or at all, really. So this post is just a general update on where I am at this time and what I've been working on.

Wheel of Time Challenge and Commentary

First of all, I am still doing the Wheel of Time Challenge over at Book Love Affair. The reading of a Wheel of Time book each month hasn't been too hard. The Commentary on the other hand takes forever. I learned that with the New Spring Commentary. I rushed through that and didn't really cover things as I would like. New Spring is tiny compared to the main novels. Plus all that time I was spending took time away from my reading, and more importantly my writing projects. Not to mention class work. I have to say that I have a major appreciation of the work Leigh Butler puts into her Re-reads over at Tor.com. There is no way I could do the Wheel of Time books justice by doing commentary on a book a month, certainly not while taking classes and all the other stuff I do. So for now the Commentary is on hold, possibly for a long while.

That said, I am rather enjoying the Challenge discussions over at Book Love Affair. It is nice to see the series through both long-time fans and newcomers alike. I think the criticism of the books is actually rather healthy and helpful for me since I got into them a long time ago and tend to only get exposed to the rabid fan opinions of the books. Fresh perspective and discussion helps me think critically about a series that I love and have loved for many years. It will be interesting to finally read the ending, even if Robert Jordan wasn't able to pen it all himself. (Also just remembering that I have a poem I wrote about Jordan back in middle school, when I first discovered the books. Should be on a bookshelf at home. Must remember to look for it one of these days.)

Spring "Break"

So last week was my Spring Break. Unfortunately it wasn't much of a break in many senses. It was a break from school, but on the other hand, many of the things I wanted to get done, did not get done. I barely had time to read anything. My computer did not get the help it deserved (more on that in a bit.) I didn't get much writing done, although I did get some interesting ideas (more on that later.) So what did I do? I went to the doctor and thankfully it turned out not to be anything major. I went to the dentist for teeth cleaning. I also did a ton of yardwork.

I'm not terribly thrilled with yardwork, especially this variety. I would rather have spent the week writing, reading and babying my computer. Instead I did tons of work and was generally too physically exhausted by the end of the day to do much. It was also fairly dangerous work, as far as these things go. Beyond the usual snake issues (which I don't worry about too much since just walking outside could lead to an encounter... plus it was relatively cool most of the time, and they tend to stay underground during cooler weather) there was the dangerous combination of ladders and chainsaws.

It is an electric chainsaw, which is safer and lighter than the gas powered one we have somewhere. Still, you add the fun of electricity to the mix. Cutting things from the ground is not bad, although I'm still rather respectful of the danger. When you add a ladder into the mix, I really do not like it at all. (And if you read the instructions, they say not to do that. My mom knows this, yet she still wanted me to do it. Admittedly she did want me supervised when I did these most dangerous cuts.) I'm not terribly muscular, so the week or so I was home was a good workout, and exhausting. We have a stand of Eucalyptus trees somewhat near the house, which were presumably planted by the previous property owners, because they were there when my parents purchased the land and built the house. They were getting a bit overgrown and some were closer to the house than my mom liked. It was maybe 10 years since they were last trimmed (figure made up, but it was a long while ago.) I ended up cutting up several rather large branches and even taking out a handful of trees, mostly smaller saplings. Lots of radical cuts and generally clearing up dead branches which had broken off over the years.

Turns out that gravity makes taking off the limbs somewhat easy, in most cases. The hard part is doing so without getting hurt. Also cutting up the 20 or 30 feet or more of wood takes a while. The real pain in the butt is moving said now cut up wood to our wood pile. Which is really just a pile of pine next to our driveway from last summer's work. The pile is now easily several times larger from a week or so of effort, working for good chunk of the day. I used a wheelbarrow for moving the wood, which was nice, except for the part where the wheelbarrow was rather rusted and beat up. Still, other than the barrow part of the device eventually falling off of the chassis, it worked more or less as intended.

Most days I was rather tired from all of that work and having the idiot box handy didn't help during the evenings. Watched lots of NCAA basketball since my parents are MSU alums. I had forgotten how easy it was to just sit in front of the television for hours, even watching stuff I didn't really want to, just because it was there and I didn't have to put effort into anything. I also tended to go to sleep much earlier than "normal" which for me tends to be around midnight. Whatever. I did some much needed yard maintenance to help my parents out. They don't really seem to be capable of maintaining the yard all that well on their own, for reasons I won't go into now, but on the other hand, it is several acres.

My Computer

So my poor laptop is around 4.5 years old now and has some issues. They are mostly software problems, as far as I know. My installation of Microsoft Office seems to have some issues, possibly due to some corrupt files. There are some startup issues that make for some long delays. There are also some file issues with the Windows OS itself, which make defragmenting impossible, for example. Finally I just noticed at the end of last year that the case has a small crack in it, which doesn't seem to impact performance yet, but worries me a little. Oh, also the graphics card is not very good and the computer can overheat. Those last two are issues I have more or less dealt with by staying away from graphics intensive games (which either don't render properly or cause the computer to overheat... or both!) and using a somewhat noisy cooling fan. I also don't use a mouse, since the laptop likes to eat them within a few months of use.

Fine, there are a lot of issues when I think about it. Most of them I have adapted to and generally work around. Last quarter, some more issues cropped up, such as the startup issues, which caused some difficulties with my schoolwork. Plus one of the partitions is getting full. My plan was to back up everything and reformat the computer. My break wasn't much of one, so this hasn't happened yet. By the end of the week, I will hopefully be done backing everything up. I don't know that I will have time to reformat and reinstall everything during the quarter, so I'm hoping the poor computer will last until summer, at least. I'll be graduating then and likely get a new laptop (or desktop... need to decide) before the end of 2010. Until then, I will pray this thing lasts.

NaNoWriMo Novel #1

I don't think I ever named this project in a satisfactory manner. I can't even think of the code name I gave it back when I wrote it in 2008. As a first attempt, it needs... help. I talk a bit about it here. Basically I went through my zero draft some weeks ago and tried to decide what to do with the thing. I really tried to do too much, probably. Some parts are really bad, while others have promise. Really there is probably enough material for the seeds of several novels and enough ideas for dozens of stories or proto-novel seeds. I've been playing with an ambitious rewrite, but will probably not attempt it until I feel better about my writing craft. Anything I do with it will require tons of work, and there are other things I want to explore first. So for now I may tinker with it from time to time, but it will mostly just sit.

Soulfire Project (NaNo Novel #2)

In some ways I am a bit hesitant to talk too much about this project, which has series potential, but right now my focus is on this first book. Actually I would probably only do at most two more books in the series. Talk of a series is very premature. I have a zero draft almost done to my liking, but even that has some issues. For one thing, I decided to experiment with flashback chapters interwoven with the actual linear story. Actually I did it in such a way that there are really two stories which come close to converging by the end. The retrospective chapters come close to the beginning of the novel by the end of their arc. This allowed me to introduce some fundamentals of the magic system (Soulfire, natch) by showing a younger version of the protagonist. Lazy story telling? It has advantages and disadvantages. I'll have to decide soon whether I want to separate the two stories. The flashback chapters cover a large swath of time, while the main storyline covers a relatively short time period (a week or so at most, I believe.)

The flashback narrative would likely not stand so well on its own. I estimate that the main storyline would be something short of a novel, but I would have to add a whole lot more characterization of the protagonist, hints about her past, explanations of the magic system, etc. The main storyline would be maybe 60k words if I cut it out as is. The flashback chapters are less material. Lots of editing to do even if I decide to leave the two together.

More recently, I have been thinking about the protagonist, Olivia, and her motivations. I had some ideas about the incident which changes her from the person she is near the end of the flashback narrative and the person we see at the beginning of the main story. I never wrote the scene, but it is integral to her character for the main arc of the story. I came up with a new idea for this pivotal moment, which is rather satisfying on a personal level. Basically it is a response to recent events, and if I ever write it and make it public, it would probably be pretty obvious as to what I am talking about. So rather satisfying on that level, but the implications for Olivia require some thought. The scene I'm thinking of would radically shift Olivia in some ways. I'm not sure which will end up working out for the story. Lots more thinking on this issue and the issue of the novel as a whole for me in the next month or two.

Other Writing Projects

I have some short stories, some of which might work as longer works, floating around in one state or another. Often they probably won't, but I like exploring an idea in a few thousand words. I'm finding them both interesting and challenging in various ways. I also have a Zombie book idea with some flesh on it (couldn't resist, sorry.) Still in the thinking stage on that, but I even figured out a way to work a Unicorn into it. More of a shout out to the Zombie v. Unicorn YA anthology coming out soon. Not a literal Unicorn. Still, I rather like the idea, but the story and supporting ideas are still rather fluid.

On the subject of ideas... well, they are a dime a dozen. The ideas really have no value until you make something of them. For example, I was a little bummed when I first heard the premise for Blake Carlton's SPELLWRIGHT: in a nut shell, words as magic. (Way over simplifying things, and I still need to get a copy of the book so I can finish it.) I had an idea for a magic system based on words. But when I read more about it and actually read some of the book on his website, I realized that he took a basic premise and went in a totally different direction from the one I have been thinking about. And I really do want to finish reading his book. Ideas are the easy part. The hard part, the value-added part, is turning ideas into a story - to build something out of it. Hopefully I can build more of my ideas into stories as I work on my writing, because I have tons and tons of them and would love to be able to share them with others once they become tangible objects.

Relay For Life

Relay For Life at UCLA starts in 16 days now. April 17-18. 24 hours of partying with a purpose. 24 hours of celebrating and remembering survivors and fighting for a cure. As a member of the Sponsorship Committee for the UCLA Colleges Against Cancer club which works with the American Cancer Society to put on the Relay event, I'm pretty busy. I am also basically the Captain for the National Society of Collegiate Scholars team at UCLA. In addition, I am trying to fundraise personally for the event. My personal goal is $100, which is what I did last year, but really I want to raise as much as I can. I've been working on a "Why I Relay" post for quite a while. I've written and rewritten it so many times. I want to have it up in the next day or so, since Relay is approaching fast. The short answer to why I Relay is this: I Relay for my family and friends who have had or will face cancer during their lifetimes (1 in 2 men, 1 in 3 women.) They are all survivors. We need to find a cure.

This Space

The blog needs help. I'm not terribly good at color schemes or template designs because I haven't really bothered with that sort of thing in years. I rather tend to procrastinate on such things by writing or doing homework. (Although in high school, the opposite was often the case.) So other than actually writing stuff here on a regular basis, the blog needs some work with layout and general appearance. I will try to look up some guides to such things, but April is not the best month for this sort of work since two of my weekends will be extra busy and there are so many other things that must get done as well. Isn't there always.

April Fools

Yeah, just my luck that I finish this around April 1st. I assure you, none of this is a joke.


I guess that covers more or less what I wanted to do an Update on, besides of course the inevitable things I have forgotten. Like book reviews... which I guess will have to be a whole different post. As is customary:

Stay Awesome