The point is to keep going...

Since recovering from my illness, I've had some time to think over about my writing. Starting today, I'm going to work on another novel project. There is a twist to this one, though. I'm planning on using Scrivener software! Since I won a coupon for it last year, I've been meaning to use the software for something.You shall know this one as City.

I will also participate in this year's Camp NaNoWriMo (in June)! Since I'm going to reapply for graduate school (prepare for it, Michener Center! I will get into your program!), I want November to be freed up. That is, if I don't find a good short story to send to them by that point. The story is mainly the reason I didn't get in last year, or so I think. But if I do find a story to submit by then, I may do NaNoWriMo again in November. What I might do is find someone I know and recruit them to be my reader (or bulls*** detector).

So there you go, peeps. What are your long-term plans? Short-term? Let me know in the comments!

Sidelined by illness (again!)

Over two weeks ago, my sister was nursing a nasty cold (it sidelined her enough for her to miss a few days of school) and I was taking care of her, along with driving my mom to the courthouse for jury duty. Then around the 3rd of this month, I started to feel a little off. I canceled my blood donation appointment and was struck with a cold. By the next day, it spread to my chest and gave me a nasty, deep cough along with a roller-coaster fever. When I woke up today, I had enough. Nothing I was taking was working at all and I wasn't getting any better. I went to the health clinic and found out that I have mild bronchitis. Thanks to this discovery, I'm now on medicine that is actually doing something. I'm not coughing as hard anymore, thank God. Today is the best I've felt in a week.

Everyone at work was pretty worried about me. I had to call in sick twice, and when I did show up for the two other shifts, I was allowed to go home early. And here I am, trying to earn money for some big events! This wasn't helping! Plus, I hate calling in sick. It's like "well, I'm standing, I should be okay". But the fever worried me, plus I don't want to spread this to my co-workers. Geez Louise, I'm not a jackass!

Either way, to those who were wondering where the hell I've been... here's your answer.

Good Lord, Quotation Marks Won't Kill You (Or Why I Didn't Enjoy No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy)

I am currently trying to read Aimee Bender's The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (is it bad that I want every character to get punched in the face?*) and all I can think is

I'm so sick of writers's excuses for not using them: "It makes people pay attention to the dialogue more", "It's outside the norm", "I don't want to do what everyone does", "It's too traditional". NO. You're just showing off. Don't care. No exception. The end. And guess what? Most of the time, your writing isn't that f***ing special to begin with. Try actually writing something good without an overuse of flowery prose before you begin to break some rules. Sound good?


Lionel Shriver wrote an article about her feelings about this trend. Oh thank God. I was getting scared that there weren't any writers that thought this quotation mark-less trend was total nonsense. She argues that the very excuses her fellow writers use don't really amount up to anything. She even cites an example from No Country for Old Men, where she placed quotations in a passage that previously had none. How odd! None of the mood changed. It wasn't any less streamlined or "punchy", as I read one person describe dialogue without quotation marks. God, I hate it when people want to be arty for the sake of it.

If you don't want to use quotation marks, fine. No really. It's your choice. But don't expect me to understand nor care. Because yeah, I don't understand nor care.

*I have a rule that if I'm reading a book and I hate the characters, I ask myself "If everyone died suddenly in a nuclear explosion, would I care?" If the answer is a gritty, in-your-face "no", I stop reading. That doesn't mean I don't like nasty, "terrible people" characters per se, it's if they are caricatures more than actual people, nuclear annihilation seems like a better option.

130,487 words

130487 / 120000 words. 109% done!


As of today, at 12:17 PM local time, I have finished the first draft of Invisible. Laboring over it since June 1st, 2010, it has taken me 704 days (or 1 year, 11 months, and 5 days) to finish it. My God, I did it. My first full-length novel is completed.

I have no idea what to do now.

...

Play me off, Maurice White and friends!