crash and burn

so i've made it into the winners circle for nnwm '12, and i'm kinda stuck in a ditch. i think i've got a few more chapters to go before i wrap this up, but i'm stuck at a crossroad now. i had nice plans outlined for my characters, and i think i kind of know how i want to end it, if i choose to go down that path.

But,

i heard this song (crash and burn by lifehouse) and it so totally suits my characters, and i really wanna try out a song fic, but that would throw my plots in a huge loop and stretch things out like another five chapters at least. and i have no idea how to lead into it, or how to resolve it. 

but it's just so them! 

decisions decisions.... 

so i'm kinda finishing up this last scene, and i hit the crossroads... ergo the low word count for the day. i guess i'll sleep on it and decide tomorrow....

on a side note, a friend of mine found a new way to "de-stress", but i think mine is better. take a picture instead and share it with your friends, have a good laugh over it. it's better than laughing on your own... ;p

NaNo November

gosh, what a month it's been. 

i started out my nano piece late this year, with no intentions of reaching the target, actually. it was honestly just an itch that wouldnt leave me alone, so almost a week into november, i finally sat down and typed it all out. 

it started out pretty wobbly, and i'd only write every other day. when i surpassed the daily target, i was ecstatic. 

things took a turn for the worse and i barely wrote after that haha... 

but yesterday and today were awesome. i think i spewed out about 6000 odd words yesterday and another 4000 plus today... 

i'm not proud to admit that i may have let my school work slide a little these past few days... what can i say? one thing led to another.... anyway. i'm pretty proud that i had started from a draft that i didnt even have any intentions of pursuing properly in the first place and now i've gotten to the 43k mark :) and i've got a whole week to spew out my remaining 6500 words. easy peasy, right? touch wood just in case.

nonetheless, i think i can venture to say that i'm pretty confident about reaching the 50k mark soon.

day 22

i'm actually afraid of finishing this novel because that means i have to face reality again. december is going to be hardcore study month for me D:

it's my second time doing nano, and i can honestly say that this time round it was harder for me to balance things. 

My mom wasnt around to make sure i had to go to bed at a decent time. i could be writing all the way up to 3am and i'd have to make the choice. Should i plough on, on one hand letting my inner writer feel extremely satisfied but at the cost of messing up my already-temperamental sleep cycle; or should i force myself to save my work and stop there for the day.  but most of the time when it's already so late at night/early in the morning(depending on how you'd wanna look at it), it's hard to give up and go to bed. But most of the time my battery is almost flat anyway so i didnt really have a choice but to tuck in my laptop at the foot of my bed and continue the next day.

i managed to get through two days of eating only dinner by keeping myself busy with uni or writing in the day... most of the time, i'd only take a break because my laptop is running low on battery and i have to stop and charge it.

so yeah. this time round i didnt really pace myself, instead i kinda just dived head-first, and it works great for my writing, but i guess i'll have to be more disciplined next year if i dont want to let my other priorities slip so much.

on a side note, i fell in love all over again with my character today when she got all jealous over something stupid.  ;)

the end is near! cheers

Deepavali

SO.
the malaysians in my university had a deepavali celebration today...

my day started off atrociously. like seriously.
i woke at six because of a nightmare that is still creeping me out now. an hour later "someone" decided to pay me a visit almost two whole weeks early. then when my friend came over to borrow my tube top, i couldnt find it at all even though i ransacked my place.

make up was giving me such a bad time this morning... after multiple tries of attaching my falsies, i had to remove all my make up on one side and start all over. i was running sooooo late.

then i went on and did my hair (which even after a ton of hairspray were straight as sticks by the end of the day)... my friend and i were thiiiiiiiiis close to just staying in, but we decided to just buck up, and finish preparing since we went and bought sarees just for deepavali. Anyway, after doing hair and make up, i grabbed my clothes to meet my indian friend who was to help me with my saree.

anyway, i put on my saree.

and everything was so worth it.

all the bumps on the road and the hiccups in the morning were forgotten as my friend draped the saree and pinned it into place.

we got over there, and most of the event was unremarkable...
But, toward the end, the MC announced that we would have to watch just one last video, and then the dance floor would open.

we were really excited because after most events we'd be rushed out of the hall so they could clean up and return it etc...

so after the clip ended, i sort of exclaimed "Dance floor!"  and i didnt realize that it was so quiet in the hall, or that so many people would hear me. So many heads turned to us and my friend and i both tried to duck and hide our faces. here's the funny thing. even though i was the one who yelled, people turned and looked at my friend because she's an indian and naturally it's in the indian blood to want to dance or something. hahahahha.

dancing in a saree is no joke. i salute the girls who do it. even though my friends helped me tuck the ends in, they'd keep falling out as we danced. in the end i just ignored the saree and danced. and man its HOT dancing in a saree.

after that we were lazy to change back to our boots so we braved the weather in our strappy heels and sarees. my friends were pretty alright since they were wearing leggings or long johns underneath. i was wearing spanky pants under my saree so my legs were freezing by the time we got back to the hostel....


oh and one more thing that made my day! i found out that i was one of the five nominees for best dressed :D wheeeeee.
many people were upset with the winner of best dressed female and honestly speaking, her saree isnt that special or pretty.... but this year they didnt announce all the nominees since the event was running late, so they just called out the winner... i'd bet if they did call out all the nominees, and the audience could see and compare the sarees, there would have been an uproar at the results... haha.

But i was nominated! :) and there's a hugeeee smile plastered on my face now.

Adrenaline.

Done with my NaNoWriMo for today. and i completely broke my record! more than 7 thousand words in a day!!! :D

finally catching up!

i've even surpassed the target for tomorrow, which is 25 000 words. Halfway through!!! :D

the few chapters that i typed out today were so intense. My characters had their emotions flying all over the place. i was on an adrenaline rush and MY own emotions were sky rocket-ting all over as well... everything was just so intense.

i took breaks in between and spoke about other things with my friends but all it took was for me to read a few sentences and i'm back in the intense zone.    O.o

a few funny things happened along the way...
i remember at one point i was thinking daughter and pale, and my thoughts were going a million miles a minute, but my fingers couldnt type fast enough, so i somehow ended up with the word dale on the screen.

and for some reason, my friend and i couldnt find the term "collateral damage". i was describing it to her, and she knew what i meant, but for some reason the term just kept evading us. we came up with casualties, but i knew there was another term more fitting. In the end, i put a bookmark and continued on with the story as she tried to google it. when she told me "collateral damage", i did a backflip. in my head. i cant do a backflip in real life...  but yeah.... thanks zi :)

gonna take a break from writing... need to sort out what's going to happen next. i've typed out what i had planned and more than that... thankfully i kinda know where it should head, so hopefully the ideas will continue flowing. like today :)

and i need to get up early in the morning to prepare for a performance anyway... some international student day thingy thingy.

time to wind down, and get ready for bed :)


today was awesome.

karma

i am still reeling in shock.

my friends and i were in the metro, on our way home and we were just chatting as malaysians always do. during a lull in the conversation, a nice looking aunty came over, smiling, and tapped my friend, sherylee.

i nudged her to get her attention, and this blond haired russian aunty pressed something firmly into sherylee's hand. she smiled, and walked away.

we both thought she just passed on some random piece of paper, or gave sherylee drugs or candy or something. when she opened her hand, we were shocked to see a 500ruble note. that's like equivalent to rm50.

we were so shocked, and when we tried looking around for the lady to question or thank her, she had disappeared amongst the crowd in our wagon. and then she must have slipped out with the rest of the crowd when we pulled up to the next station.

Sherylee and i were in such a shock, and theorizing as to reasoning behind the nice lady's actions.

we told elise, another of my friend who was catching some shut eye next to me. she immediately thanked sherylee in advance for belanja-ing us lunch haha...

but we decided to give the money off to someone else who were more needy. it would've just been wrong to keep that money!

when we got off at our station, another russian aunty who had been in front of us the whole time asked if the nice lady said anything to us etc. then she told us the lady must've heard our conversation about our winter trip and the payments we had to make or something.


on our walk back to the hostel, the four of us including zi were still reeling in shock.


it'll be awesome when we pass on that money to a needy looking babushka or something, passing on the good deed in a chain :)


god bless the nice lady. karma comes back around and i'm sure something good is bound to go back to her.


ps. i'm still kinda on a high, reeling from the shock. faith in humanity restored! haha..

You've got mail!

or at least, i've got nano mail... and the timing couldnt be better.. :) 

i'm feeling rather exhausted after typing out almost four thousand words today... my contact lenses should have been taken out hours ago, i still need to take a shower, update my microbiology sketchbook, and prepare for two different classes that start way too early tomorrow morning. And my characters are still calling to me. 

anyway, the mail i got was like a little pick-me-up. i liked it so much that i'm gonna post it here. 

Subject: A Pep Talk from Chris Baty

You're watching a movie. And halfway through it, the hero crumbles.

He or she is lost. Surrounded by zombies or forsaken by love or separated from their favorite wookiee. They stare forlornly at the mess their life has become, hope fading that things will ever be put right again.

Screenwriters call this moment "the long, dark night of the soul." Every Hollywood movie has one because we love seeing our protagonists pummeled for a while before they pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and head out to kick some ass.

NaNoWriMo participants go through their own long, dark nights of the soul halfway through November. If you haven't experienced one already, you will very soon.

I say this with certainty because we've spent a lot of time and money making the middle stretch of this year's adventure especially difficult.

We don't have the costumes or the makeup budget to send a convincing-looking group of zombies to your door. Instead, we've relied on smaller, cheaper things to demoralize you mid-month. We've convinced your bosses and teachers to heap projects on you at the last minute. We've gotten your family to pitch fits when you need to get caught up on your word count. Most insidiously, we've paid your novel's cast to stumble through their scenes with all the eloquence and charm of a baked potato.

Why? Because we have to do something to make your novel-in-a-month endeavor a fair fight. Which it isn't. Look at you! You're a fantastically gifted individual, with fierce courage and an imagination powerful enough to knock out a dozen books in November.

If you don't believe me, just scroll back through all you've written so far. That's more than most people achieve in a year, and you did it in two weeks. It may be less than you'd hoped, and the quality may be crappier than you'd envisioned. But first drafts are supposed to be rough, and I guarantee you're too deep in the process right to recognize all the great stuff you've put on those pages. Despite our meddling, you've achieved a truck-load of literary goodness. And it's just a taste of what's ahead.

Because the second half of this noveling marathon is when things really begin to move. For starters, the NaNoWriMo-funded interference will end. This is partly because we've realized the whole "fair fight" thing was a dumb idea, and partly because we blew all of our harassment budget on yesterday's spectacularly unsuccessful attempt to crash every word processor in Manitoba.

Shenanigans aside, the back half of NaNoWriMo has always been a place where writers get their second winds. As long as you keep working, your potatoes will turn back into charismatic protagonists, and your imagination will build a path right out of these mid-month doldrums.

You can help build that path faster by hitting your writing goals for the next three days. This may sound like a small thing, but little, consistent writing achievements open the door to huge writing breakthroughs.

If you've fallen behind on your word count or lost the thread of your story, you may think no breakthrough will be big enough to save your book. Take heart: There are 300,000 of us out there right now living that exact same movie. We're all struggling to balance our books with the crazy stuff life has chucked at us these past two weeks. We're all wondering if we have what it takes to see this thing through. And we're all about to stand up, dust ourselves off, and go kick some major ass.

The long, dark night is ending, my friend. The homestretch lies ahead.

I'll see you at the finish line.

Chris

random much?

wrote more than 3000 words today for nanowrimo :) and i'm still not done for the day. the juices are flowing, baby!

anyway, i was taking a break from writing, and something funny happened.

naturally i texted one of my besties (shoutout to jialickme) and we had a very brief but fun texting session. they were also a few of the hardest text messages i had to compose. i had to squeeze my brain so hard trying to type out those few messages. took the both of us freaking long to send texts to each other.... constructing the erm, sentences, proved to be a harder challenge than expected. ;p

and she saw one of the new acronyms i made up as a typo -.- dummy. i just hadnt gotten to explaining the acronym!

anyway, i'm back to writing :) oh how i wish i could skip class tomorrow just so i could type through the night and continue typing all day.... but i wont. cos i cant. :(

anabasis.

as kids you have play dates. (or at least, the americans in my storybooks are all about arranging play dates for children)

when you hit ten, its all about hanging out with your friends.

at fifteen you can go out at night and it morphs into lepak.

reaching twenty you begin to chill.


but what comes after that? getting drinks after work?

and what about people in their mid-thirties or early forties? have a get-together?

after that you're in the tai-tai meeting up for brunch phase.

then what? visiting your friends at their homes because you all go to the same morning exercise thing in your neighborhood?
slowly each person shows up with a maid that your daughter in law stuck onto you?


i dont wanna get old.

11k

So. against my better judgement, i for some reason, decided to take on nnwm this year. never mind that i have a lot of things to settle academically or that i've barely had much free time this semester. 

Such a pretty badge this year ;)

i started pretty late but the words came spewing out, and there's no turning back now. i've just passed the 11k mark although my supposed target by this time should be 15k. 

feeling pretty nervous though... my characters have decided to make out and leave me standing at one side, trying to figure out what they'd wanna do next. D: 

they did tell me what they'd be doing in a few days' time, so i'm not so worried if i can get to that point. getting to that point from where i am is what's giving me the headache. 

so i've taken to going through the nnwm website etc, got myself a pretty word counter badge thingy. hopefully that'll motivate me to continue pumping words out. 

and they've got a word count scoreboard by your country... germany's right at the top, followed by london. america's split by states and region though, so kudos to them for snagging so many other top spots... moscow is ranked no. 486 haha... russia is only slightly better, coming in at 466. malaysia's doing pretty darn well at 117 :)

ignorance is bliss.

Ionkina (my physiology teacher) has permanently spoiled chewing gum for me. there was this class where we were learning bout the hunger-satiety mechanism etc and she once said that if you ever see a person, especially a medical student or a doctor, chewing gum, it goes to show that said individual has completely zero knowledge about physiology, and how said person might not have even completed high school. you know, because the chewing action activates your glands and stomach motility etc but there's no real food going down, so it ends up being bad for you etc. 

one of the reason that stuck with me was because of how epic it was when she said that. the way she just looked you in the eye and go "zero knowledge. Zero." is something that kinda sticks. besides, who makes such a big fuss over chewing gum anyway?

so. why the random rambling? 

i was watching an interview, and this actor that i absolutely love happens to be someone who would always chew gum on set and it was brought up during the interview. 

unfortunately, my brain went straight from the actor chewing gum to "zero knowledge" and that sucks because for the rest of the interview (which spanned an hour long) i kept thinking of how this actor i love, has "zero knowledge" and how much i'd like to tell them that chewing gum is really bad for you.

gargh. it was a wonderful interview though.

Nanowrimo

November's here! and that means Nanowrimo '12 is here... 

for those of you who dont know, it stands for national novel writing month. a friend of mine introduced it to me years ago... the objective is to write a novel in a month. 

50 000 words in a month. just type it all out, no editing, no nothing. just squeeze those creative juices and bring your characters to live. there's a word count program thingy on their website, and you can see your bar slowly increasing as you progress throughout the month. 

So once you surpass the 50k word count within november, you're considered a winner :) and you get really cool badges and a cert or something. you can even publish your book. here's one of the badges i got way back in '09.

i think most people who get to the 50k mark would agree with me that getting there isnt the hard part. oh sure, there'd be days when the plot bunnies all hop away, and there's no inspiration, the muse is off playing hookie, and you hit writer's block. but, if you're lucky, things work out in the end and the words just come spewing out. 

the hard part is the editing. here's the thing. you put in so much effort, and you think you've got a solid piece going on. but when you edit, you end up throwing chunks out and wondering if you were sane when you typed those chapters out. and you end up jumping back and forth throughout your story, making sure you get your details to match.

my original piece was about 85k, and after all the editing i think it got cut down to 60-70k words. 

i enjoyed writing. i still do. but i think i'm still recovering from the phobia i got from editing. nowadays when i try to write, i cant help but read when i'm done for the day, as opposed to reading through and editing only when i was done with the whole piece, like i did back in '09. 

and i hate reading back what i've written. i dont like reading what i wrote. and i am absolutely terrified of someone else reading my piece.

i keep running different scenarios in my head, and in the end the story just dies there because i cant bring myself to just leave things be and continue on with the story. i keep thinking how frustrated i'd get when i do my final editing after finishing the story. hence the WIPs (work-in-progress for those  of you who dont know) accumulating on my laptop and phone. then when i stumble upon them on a random day, i'd be so pissed at myself for not continuing because i think those storylines have a pretty good backbone and plot line going on. 

maybe one day i'd be able to finish another piece. type in my last full stop and put the end  and save the doc. feel the elation without the dread that follows in the wake of editing.