Coffee Shope Watching

I love sitting in coffee shops.

My parents have been gone all week, and I've been staying with my calculus teacher for the week. (Seriously, how often must I be reminded of my nerdiness?)

And today we decided to head over to a coffee shop to get some work done without distractions since we both had so much we needed to get done.
(And no... blogging is definitely not a distraction... this is work, somehow...)

Anyway, I wrote an essay pretty quickly and changed the font a bit to make it fit into two pages, and then I wrote a poem before starting on the second essay.

And then I got distracted people watching.

See, there were so many interesting people there, like the American and Asian couple, and the woman with all the tattoos, and the Canadian, and the woman with the Mickey Mouse shirt, and the awesome guy who knew just about every single person who walked into the café. He spoke to each person in whatever language they spoke, English, Spanish, French. I overheard (eavesdropped) him talking about Russia and Guatemala and Paris, and I am so jealous of all his travelling!

See, I am one of those people that loves travelling and has travelled a lot. I admire anyone with a global perspective and enjoy seeing people that know what the world is like and aren't stuck inside a box. I can't imagine living in the same country my whole life.

I mean, I'm planning my trip to England, and hoping for side trips to Germany, Sweden, and Paris.

I've visited Costa Rica, Peru, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda.

I'm going for more.

I love to travel, and I love the mix of languages and cultures that combine in coffee shops.

In fact, the girl behind me is saying that she's from Holland, and the man talking to her has a peculiar accent, so I don't think he's from the USA, and they're talking about Spain.

I just, I love to see the mixture, because I myself am such a mix of cultures. I like to see that the rest of the world is blended together, too. It's no fun staying in one place being the same person and doing the same things. You've got to step out and do your own thing and see the world!

A quote from the beginning of Fahrenheit 451- my current read:

"When they give you ruled paper, write the other way."

Rambling Rages

I haven't posted in a few days, longer than it usually takes me to update this post, and I feel like I have so much to say. Of course, at the same time, I feel like I don't really have anything good to say. My mind is all jumbled and twisted up and doesn't quite make sense.

So bear with me on this post and try to keep up.

I guess I'll start with the most recent accomplishment: cleaning the house.

Picture from here.

My family has never been big on chores, just washing dishes, and my dad usually cleans the house. But my parents left for the week and I spent all of today trying to clean the house for my calculus teacher, who's going to stay with me while they're gone. (Yes, I am so nerdy that I actually asked my teacher to come stay at my house for a week. Yikes.)

So far I got the patio, the yard, the living room, and the room where my teacher will stay. Unfortunately that means I still have the dining room, the kitchen, and my own room. I guess I am exaggerating a little bit. My house is actually pretty small, and it hasn't taken that long.

But I'm still feeling slightly overwhelmed. Again.

Cleaning, homework, college applications, ESL classes, and that banana peanut butter cake I've been trying to bake for a couple of weeks now and haven't had time.

I wish I was outside in pretty red leaves...

Ugh. So much that I should get done, and then those things that I actually need to do and keep trying to put off.

On a different note, one of my friends (the same one who commented on my lack of weapon knowledge) is now reading through the novel.

Boy is it terrifying giving him the book.

I think maybe this is an irrelevant picture, but...

He's barely started and already telling me that I need to decide on a time period and stick to it, because apparently it's not allowed to have trains and swords.

What if I like trains? Huh? Doesn't that count for anything?

Goodness gracious, it's a fantasy novel; I'm supposed to be able to do whatever I want!

But I guess he has a point, and I guess I should listen. I just don't want to. I want to keep my trains, and I don't want to bring in guns. Guns are stupid. Swords are so much cooler.

On the plus side, he compared my book to Reckless by Cornelia Funke (Not exactly in a positive way) but she's like my favorite author and I take his comment as the highest compliment rather than the insult he meant it to be.

I guess that's enough raging for today. I'm out, to finish cleaning the house and maybe get some homework in there someplace.

Reading Love

I looked at a list of 100 best books. I know there are a ton of those books, and of course they are all opinion and change according to each person. But I would like to think that I've read a lot of these "best books" according to whoever it was that wrote this list.

Unfortunately, I've read about five of these.

Ouch.

This cheerful cat is from here.

Some of them are on my "should read soon" list, but a lot are just ones that don't even look that appealing to me.

But I've given myself November to read as much as I can, and then I'm going to give myself December to write as much as I can while I finish up with Shadow Whispers. Then, January, I will finally let myself begin work on the Shadow Remnants! I can't wait until this, and I'm hoping that I can work on the Whisperers faster and therefore get started on the second book sooner.

Wish me luck.

But now I'm getting ahead of myself again.

This is not December; it's November. National Novel Writing (Or Reading in my case) Month. And I plan on reading as many books off my list as I can.

Yet another top 100 books list.

Number one is I, Robot by Isaac Asimov, and so far I'm loving it.

Make sure to keep checking on my Pages and More Pages blog so you can read my short little reviews as I finish each book.

I really hope I can read a LOT this month!

Picture from here.

More Advice

Remember that post when I went on a rant about how I keep on looking up writer's quotes and advice to writers and yet I never agree with the things they say?

Well, I found a list of advice that I actually like!

So here goes:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them-in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

By the way, I got these from here and they come from Kurt Vonnegut. I don't think I've ever read any of his books, but he looks interesting and someday I plan on reading Slaughterhouse Five. I'll let you know if I ever get around to it.



Picture from this link.

But anyway, I actually liked the advice he gave. I mean, none of the points are really new, nothing I haven't heard or just known, but hearing it like this gives me inspiration.
And I like point seven and eight and five. Those seem like things that it's really tempting to change, and while experimenting and being creative are all good and great, I still think it can be bad to have too much suspense or too much waiting around before the story gets started.
(I think there are some classic authors I've read in English class who could have heard point five...)

My advice? Just write. Forget about all the rules. If you're really meant to write, you won't have time to worry about who to write for and what to write about. You'll just be so caught up in the words that nothing else even matters.

This seems like a super cool blog!

That isn't to say that it's not good to read and research as much as possible when you're in the in-between books stage.

If you haven't figured it out-- I am in the in-between books stage. Or at least, the in-between drafts stage.

Man, sometimes I wish people could read faster!

Senior Pictures

So I spent all morning running around taking pictures.

Because I am going to graduate in a couple of months.

Wow.

I will be done with high school.

Graduated.

Can you believe it?

I can't.

I'm sorry. I'm just having a little bit of a mental breakdown at the moment. It's just so freaky. I can't possibly be old enough to be a senior in high school. An almost done senior in high school for that matter. I'm graduating. Soon.

But anyway, I took a bunch of senior pictures and it was a lot of fun. So, because I am such a wonderfully nice person, I'll put up at least one of the pictures we took today, so you guys can see my lovely face.

Ah. Wow, still can't get over the fact that I already started the last quarter of high school. Ever.

I should probably get my act together with this whole looking for colleges thing.

And I should also register for the SAT so I can score better than I did last time I took it. Hm.

Anyway, I realize this wasn't the most exciting post, but now you get to know a bit about my breakthrough.

And yeah, picture:

I probably won't use this one, but I just look so epic taking my typewriter out of its case to show the world. Like, just looking at this picture makes me want to go write an amazing story or poem or something. Oh, and if you're curious about what the typewriter actually looks like, it's now the background of the blog. So you are probably looking at it right at this moment. Isn't it awesome? I bet you're jealous.

Cloaks and Coffee

Yes, I know, I know, I spelled that wrong! It's NaNoWriMo!

But, you see, I have issues with NaNoWriMo. I tried it once upon a time, or maybe try isn't the correct word. I signed up and made an account and everything, but I don't think I submitted a single word. A novel wasn't even begun in that month all those years ago.

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And sure, that was probably three years ago, I should try again.

But I don't think a novel written in a month is really a novel. It's just a bunch of words, and unless I really go through the work of really making it into a book and not just a collection of letters, then it's worthless. Okay, not worthless. I know it would still be really helpful and good practice and all that.

I just don't think 50,000 words scrawled down in one month is quite the same as the novel I've been working on for over a year. And I don't mean to just brag or sound like I'm above those NaNoWriMos or anything, because I definitely am not.

It's still stinkin' impressive, writing that much in so little time.

And I'll admit that a big part of my NaNoWriMo dislike is just the plain and simple fact that November is one of the busiest months, and an overall bad month for writing for me.

So anyway, I decided to make this November into NaNoReMo-- National Novel Reading Month-- because I need to read more. I made that list in that post with those books (PS: All those links go to the same place.) and now I want to actually go about reading some of them.

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So this November I am going to read as much as I possibly can.

And actually it works out fantastically, because at this point the Shadow Whispers is being read by different people, and until I get certain people to read it, I can't do any more as far as writing. So while everyone reads my novel, I will read as many novels from my list as I can.

I know that there's no way I'll get to all fifteen, but I hope to get as many as I can. And a certain friend keeps giving me more books to read that aren't on my list, so not all books will be from my list.

So yeah, it was on purpose. I meant ReMo, not WriMo.

Wish me luck!

Cloaks and Coffee

When was the last time you had a sleepover? Like one of those great sleepovers with one friend where you watch chick flicks and eat popcorn and complain about life and talk about friends and then wake up and spend all of the next day together?

I did that this weekend, and it was fantastic.

I got to watch my friend practice gymnastics and meet all her gym friends. She's really good, by the way, by far the best in her gym. I still think she could make it to the Olympics, but I guess that's not her top goal. She wants to be a doctor. (Doesn't make any sense to me. I want to have nothing to do with the human body- or at least not the inside of it.)

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After that we watched the Proposal with her mom and sister, and it is a hilarious movie. I die laughing every time. "Take the dog! No, no, take the dog instead!"

Link

We then watched Pitch Perfect in an empty apartment her family owns, and then stayed up talking until 2:00.

We woke up at 8:00, and 8:30, and 9:30, and finally got out of bed at 10:00. We took her mom downtown to the doctor's office, and my friend got super excited about watching the ultrasound and hearing the doctor's analysis. I don't see the appeal.

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Then we headed over to the cloth store to choose out cloth to make cloaks for Fun Fall Festival-- the oh so excited festival at the end of Spirit Week every year. This year's theme is Fantasy, and we are dressing up as Whisperers. (Yes, I am totally dressing up as a character from the book I wrote, and no that is not lame or narcissistic or anything. It's just advertisement, duh!)

And then we looked in stores, and bought ice cream, and bought chai smoothies and sat at Black Coffee for a long time talking, and then went through the puestos in the zocalo and bought friendship bracelets.

Zocalo

We took a bus back to her house and brainstormed how to go about making a cloak. And then we hand sowed everything and made awesome cloaks. And then we focused on finding the rest of our outfit and deciding what else to wear besides a cloak.

And then she rolled up in a blanket on the couch, and so obviously I jumped on her, and we laughed, and she laughed about how she could feel me laughing, and then her sister jumped on top of me, and we all laughed, and played the "ha-ha" game until we cried and she farted.

(I wish I had a picture of this...)

And then we rolled of the couch and buried ourselves in blankets, and played hide and go seek with blankets on the living room floor. And we wrestled and tickled each other, and laughed until our abs hurt.

I don't even like cats. But this...

I haven't had that kind of fun in a really long time, and I'd forgotten how great it really is.

Basically, I had an awesome weekend, and I'm trying to make you jealous. Go grab a friend and have a sleepover. You won't regret it.