eighthphase | Entries tagged with nanowrimo

So I got my stuff for English finished. And I made up missing wordcount from yesterday.

That's about it.

I still have to do today's 2k and also that ten-paragraph government midterm paper I've been putting off for weeks that's due tomorrow... and also at least some of the relevant reading, because I do believe I'm expected to quote shit. My wordcount is currently 6277 and I picked which of the two prompts I'm going to write and I have done absolutely nothing else because I'm a fucking loser!

Real college students procrastinate, kids.

I have at least been vaguely social in the form of making posts in the NaNo forums, so I guess there's that. I wouldn't have thought of posting last year at all - hell I wouldn't have thought of posting last month - so at least I've worked up the nerve to shout into the abyss. (Also Amber asked for photos of my Aradia costume and I linked her to the post I made and she reblogged it and said I was really cute! 0//////////0 That kind of made my day a little bit.)

So far, in the last 6k words, I've learned that Jacob eats a metric fuckton (this is probably going to be something mages in general do) and that he's being a little shithead and decided he didn't want to act like John, and furthermore that he didn't want to be the generic male protagonist, either! On the one hand, at least he's more interesting, but on the other hand... dude, you're going off-outline! Stop fucking up my plans!

He hasn't warmed up to Gareth as much as I thought he would. This is probably because he's neither your typical magical girl candidate nor (apparently) your generic male protagonist, and so just because Gareth saved his life doesn't mean he's going to hop to Gareth's quest and start the fucking plot like a good little protagonist. (It's also partly Gareth's fault for doing his best Kyubey impression, because Kyubey is a creepy little fucker. And if Jacob were supposed to be Madoka it might even work, but Gareth is supposed to be Kero in this analogy and that makes Jacob Sakura, which means he's supposed to decide to start collecting the magic plot devices already damn it.)

I've introduced another character, one who we won't be properly meeting until the end of the book, although she will pop in from time to time before then. (Actually I think she has three more appearances until the characters learn who she is.) And then I realised as I started writing the Jacob section after that that, uh, her bit should probably break up Jacob's morning routine and him actually being at school. Which would be fine, because I can just move it later, except... I have to actually get Jacob to school, first. And he's decided he'd rather wake up early and then bum around the kitchen drinking coffee with his dad. Put some fucking clothes on and get an Egg McMuffin or something, asshole! (Or even better, get some Breakfast Jacks. It's not like the Jack-in-the-Box isn't right next to your fucking school. I know it is, because you go to my old school!)

...Actually, he totally should get some Breakfast Jacks and also some bacon cheddar fries, because those things are delicious and he eats a metric fuckton and would therefore appreciate the calories anyway and oh shit I made myself hungry. I guess I'll go heat up some leftovers or something. (And cover them in shredded cheese because some genius bought some and then didn't put it on his shelf, so it's fair game.)

And then I finally hit four thousand words! About fucking time. So I actually secretly got to what's pretty much the end of chapter two, oops. I'd hoped it might shake out a bit longer, but since chapter one is a monster comparatively I guess it evens out.

Writing eighteen-year-old boy is not quite what I'd expected. Mostly my characters just swear more than I usually have characters swear, but I felt Jacob's reactions were a bit off. And then he kind of started snapping and that felt about right, so I guess there's that.

I realised belatedly that there are not nearly the usual amount of awesome ladies in this story so far, or even very many ladies at all. And the ladies that are there aren't exactly... awesome. Leesha's first two lines are about how eating a lot makes you fat (and in her next appearance she points out that there are times you should question free pizza, although she certainly doesn't turn it down). Estrella is okay, although she doesn't have any dialogue and is in fact only discussed. Maddie doesn't even technically show up, she just gets talked about. And then there's the unnamed lady who attacks Jacob and is subdued by Gareth with... surprisingly little effort. I know the whole plot centres around two ladies being awesome (well, three ladies technically, although Amelia is an antagonist) but so far I feel very bad about the lack of non-awesome ladies.

(I actually felt so bad that I went so far as to decide that the unnamed lady knight who attacks Jacob for his source is named Cordelia, the mage who she works for is Emily, and that Emily is a painter and she wants to use the soulcatcher to cure her boyfriend's cancer so that they can get married and be happy together. ...Shit, writing that down makes me feel worse, since it isn't going to happen at all ever. Fuck.)

I decided Jacob had an older brother. I had to come up with a name for that older brother and nearly called him Dirk, except that it felt 1) obvious and 2) not very fitting. Then I almost considered renaming Jacob to John and calling his brother Dave, but hell if I was going to do that. His brother's name is David, though.

I also had to come up with a synopsis for the NaNoWriMo site, and it was... not a very good synopsis. Of course, I couldn't exactly write "it's kind of like a magical girl story - the Card Captor Sakura kind of magical girl, not the Sailor Moon kind - except the protagonist is an eighteen-year-old boy" as a synopsis, since that describes the plot a bit but doesn't actually tell you much. (Actually... swap sources for Clow Cards and Eileen for Clow and it actually kind of describes the plot a lot.) I have pretty much settled on the name Soulcatcher for both title and magical device, however. So there's that.

This actually really is a lot like a magical girl story, though. The protagonist finds a thing and doesn't know what it is, then learns it's a magic thing that has a magic guardian and he has to collect more of them to make a magic device work. There's a bad guy who wants to use the magic device for evil purposes and there's a rival who doesn't want the bad guy to use the magic device but doesn't want the protagonist to use it, either, and the protagonist and the rival end up having to work together to defeat the bad guy.

Now did I just describe Card Captor Sakura or Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha? Actually, I think I also just described Dragon Ball Z, too. It's kind of a general description, really. (Yeah okay it's not a perfect fit for any of them but I think I made my point.)

It's late, so I think I'm just going to check on my dragons and then go to sleep. And then despair writing another 2k words tomorrow amongst research on Emily Dickinson and all the reading I have to do for that ten-paragraph essay I have to write for my midterm. (Both of those things are due on Monday and I have not started either of them.)

I ended up with 700 and change yesterday /: Which is okay, because so far today I'm at ~2350. So now I just need to write the other 1700! Or through to the end of chapter two, whichever I feel more like doing (spoilers: probably not the second one, considering I haven't even quite finished chapter one yet).

The only problem is that I forgot that writing about high school is fucking boring. Probably because high school itself - especially when you're a senior - is fucking boring. Jacob is well aware of that! This is probably why he sleeps through his government class. (Relatedly, he has a government class that he hates - like me right now - he's pretty eh about his English class - which I made Kay the teacher of - he doesn't like pre-cal - I hated it - and he's in journalism - which I also was my senior year. I know they say "write what you know"... of course, I'm really fucking lazy right now, so that's probably got more to do with it.)

Jacob wasn't even supposed to be in Journalism, but I needed an excuse for him to be kind of walking around and I realised belatedly that giving him a car, which I did yesterday without even really realising, meant he wouldn't be walking home, which was what he was supposed to be doing. So I thought and I thought, and I stuck him in journalism because I needed an elective, and then I thought "well I guess he can be their photographer, that should give him an excuse". So I've learned that he eats a lot, that he actually does have a few friends, and that he is a photographer. I also learned he's in AP English Lit! (Mostly because I think Kay would absolutely hate teaching regular English classes.)

If you know anything about me and/or my friends and/or the city I live in, it's really easy to see how lazy I've been with worldbuilding. Jacob basically lives in my city, he basically goes to my high school (actually he does go to my high school; it's got a common high school name so I didn't bother changing it), and some of his teachers are named after my friends. (Besides Kay, Jordan is the journalism teacher. I was going to make Marc a maths teacher but realised that Jacob's apathy in pre-cal was better served by an expy of my own pre-cal teacher.)

Also, Jacob very nearly ended up being Jacob Taylor. I was this close to just saying "yeah whatever fuck it" and making him Jacob Taylor. And then I was bored at the bus stop and actually looked up surnames and so now he is Jacob Linwood. I was much lazier with his friends and so besides two friends with normal-ish names (Tony and Leesha) he's got Anders and Desmond. Desmond is called Des all the time so it's not as obvious, but Anders is called Anders all the time, because his real name is Anderson (ooo stealth double reference) and he hates it!

I'm trying like hell to procrastinate because teenagers and high school are boring as shit but the NaNo site is being strangled by heavy traffic so there's not much else I can do.

This time nanowrimo upd8! And also proper capitalisation and punctuation.

So I've been working out more ideas; I've been fleshing out characters a bit and also adding backstory and worldbuilding depth. Probably I will copy out some of these things tomorrow (or at least sort of; my notes look a bit weird, really) but for now I'd like to get them down just as is.

( lalala details details )

Maybe I'll work on this sometime tomorrow, between showering and potentially studying and researching and finishing my ballot. And stuff.

(Also, belatedly, I don't have a name for this story, and it kind of needs one. ...knowing me, I'll probably just call it Soulcatcher or whatever other name I end up coming up with for the magic thing.)

So, I'm procrastinating writing a paper. No surprise there, huh? I also didn't get in my word count today, I was too busy doing stats and reading Reasoning with Vampires. But mostly stats.

It kind of sucks, because the topic my paper's on is actually pretty interesting; it's just that, in having to do the work, I suddenly can think of tons of other things to do. I say, "If I had more time, I'd actually do the research" but I had time, and I didn't do the research, and if I had more time, I know I wouldn't.

It's that lack of research that makes me so sorely tempted to quote Trace, but I don't think it counts as a valid source, and even if it does (I mean, it should, even if it is fiction; it's even pretty relevant to my essay) I'm still young enough that I feel immensely awkward using anything containing sex scenes as evidence in an essay. Besides, it's not like I couldn't find tons of stuff in the library databases if I just looked; I mean, that's what they're there for.

Ugh. Procrastinating procrastinating procrastinating. None of this is getting the paper written, of course. I think I might do fake research on this one like I did my Cinderella essay - you know, write the essay first, stick quotes in later. (It can never possibly backfire, so long as you remember to take all your quote placeholders out. Especially if you write quote placeholders like I write quote placeholders. Fortunately, I haven't forgotten them... yet.)

At least this is literally the only pressing thing I have due, and tomorrow I can mostly disengage my brain. There's also no class on Friday, because it is a holiday.

Can it be Friday now? Or even Thursday night. I'm not picky.

Oddly enough, there is no strong, reliable wireless signal in the library. I suppose I should simply be content that there's a working one, and leave it at that.

Today only four people in my speech class who were scheduled to speak today actually showed up, so we got to leave half an hour early. :D As I sat listening to the speeches that were presented, I got another of those magic inspiration strikes and figured out exactly which topic I was going to do my speech on, as my introduction practically wrote itself in my head. (As I write this, the internet keeps glitching out. It is intensely annoying.) I have only two concerns about the topic I'm going with: first, that I can't cover everything I want to cover, or I'll never be within the time limit, and second, that I can't tell any disbelievers to just gtfo, which was part of what wrote itself in my head.

I'm not even kidding. It went, "On July 20, 1969, millions of Americans sat glued to their televisions, entranced, watching as history was made with the words, 'That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.' I'm speaking, of course, of the Apollo 11 mission, the historic event in which mankind first set foot on the moon. Some people believe it was a hoax, a government conspiracy, and if you're one of those people, then you can just get out, right now. Seriously. I'll wait."

Other things in my mental draft that will certainly not make it into the final speech include much of the questionable language that inevitably comes up when I talk on something I'm so passionate about, and the fact that I spent all my time watching NASA documentaries as the human hosepipe (although that second one arguably illustrates quite nicely the fact that I absolutely care a lot about this topic.)

I'm debating on what kind of aids I should use. I know there's a video on Youtube of the television footage, but part of me wants to just... talk, and hope that my evident passion and apparent storytelling ability invoke all the interest I need. I'm sure I can, I just don't know if it's the best idea.

I actually forgot that I had this icon, but I was hoping that it was still here. It's certainly relevant, haha.

I hit 15060 words last night :D So in all I wrote almost 5000 words yesterday. I hope I can keep that pace up today! To that end, I'm bringing my laptop with me, even though I usually don't on Tuesdays. (I'm sure that's not the real reason why; it's just that it's the only thing I can remember to relate to it. The real reason probably has something to do with printing and not having a spare folder, or something like that.)

Informative speeches start today. I'm not going until next week, which is fortunate, since I haven't actually started my speech yet. I mean, I'm still not even sure what I'm doing it on yet. I need to head to the speech lab sometime, partly to get hours and partly to hash out this whole... thing. If that means I spend two hours doing stats and two hours in the lab tomorrow, then that's what it means (and then I'll have eight hours, and only need six more). I'm not doing too good with this whole lab thing, haha!

I did just barely manage to get my English homework done properly - originally I was just going to do it in the library, but then I decided to check if it needed to be typed and yeah, it did, so I did it an hour ago. I still have to print it, but... eh. Honestly I don't know how good this latest essay is going to turn out to be; I literally decided on a topic, wrote an introduction, and threw together an outline in about twenty minutes. I don't even know what sources I'm going to use yet, which is half the assignment right there (not the one that's due today, but rather the essay itself). Hopefully nobody will notice, or at the very least, nobody will care. And if not, well... that's my own bad luck, then, I suppose. (Due to procrastinating, obviously. All the more reason for me to keep ahead on my word count, clearly; I'll probably spend all of tomorrow and all of Monday doing other things. /: )

I am having a toasted cheese sandwich for breakfast. It is kind of like a grilled cheese sandwich, except that it is made in a toaster oven and is therefore infinitely lazier (and probably healthier, but that buttery taste is so good...!). I wanted bagels, really, but there is no time for bagels, so I had to improvise.

I'm sitting at 11774 words right now, though since I don't plan on actually doing statistics in stats class today if I can help it, I should at least break 12000. I want to aim for 15000 today (which is actually a lot less than I thought I had in CaS; I thought I had 18000 for that but apparently I actually have 23000. Go figure!) but we'll see how that goes; I may or may not actually be that productive once I get home, when I can stream Thor (or Tales of Asgard, which I still want to watch) with relative reliability. (Or not, as my home internet seems to be a bit flaky lately.)

Or I can just slip on my brother's headphones and tune into my inaccurately named techno turian playlist which contains no techno whatsoever, unless you count Bad Apple!! as techno. For some reason this is my main creative playlist, and I don't know why, but hey, if it works.

I guess we'll see what happens.

I just wrote a paper detailing my one-month plans to write a paper, and I honestly don't think I'm going to follow those plans very closely at all. Such is life, I suppose.

Yesterday I spent the morning writing to catch up to the word count I missed the day before, and then writing an additional 2000 words for that day. (I actually wrote almost the exact same amount as on the first day, weirdly.) It seems to be easier for me to write when I'm doing it pen-and-paper style than when I'm writing on the computer, but then so far the only day this month I've done much writing on the computer was the day I was sick, so I could be wrong. Last year wasn't quite like that (although last year I didn't have as much free time as this year) but then I might just be getting better at writing in general.

In 4500 words, my main character gets on a train, receives a text, gets to school, meets her room-mate, goes to the dining hall, goes to bed, wakes up the next morning, takes a shower, receives (but does not actually eat) a muffin, unpacks her stuff, goes to a café, and gets a job application. In another 1100 she runs into an old friend and, later, makes plans to meet up with him at the café that she (by that time) works at. If it sounds like nothing's happened so far... that's because nothing has. I have vague plans for this story, but nothing particularly concrete; I've got a few plot-important bits written out in my notebook and a few more sort of plotted in my head, but once I get past that point (which is maybe halfway in) I don't really know where I'm going with it.

It's kind of exciting, actually.

So I seem to be ill today; a cold or something, I think. This morning I was all sniffly but now (and for the past four or five hours, actually) I'm just uncomfortably warm, have a crazy headache, and can't concentrate very well. (I still got an 89% on my stats test, though. I even did it in about normal time for me, too, even though the test quiz took me twice as long and I didn't score as well. I wonder if the program gives you easier or harder questions on the test depending on how well you did on the quiz? ...nah, I doubt it. That would be questionable.)

I've been trying to work on my story but, I can't think very well right now so I've only gotten in about 400 words. I would be happy with 1300, that would put me about on target, though I'd like to do at least 1500, if not 1700 or more. (Yeah, I highly doubt I'll end up with more.) If we do have cold meds at home (I think we only have nyquil, if anything) then it'll be fun to see how my writing turns out once they've kicked in.

Today a friend asked me, "So, what are you writing, anyway?" and I stared blankly at the screen for about ten seconds before managing to reply, "You know, I really have no idea how to summarise it." It turned out she was only wondering what I was writing it for, which struck me as a bit odd considering that I'd mentioned NaNo at least a couple times in conversation before the question came up. (Then again, I guess I could be doing it for a class... though I'm not.)

My stats teacher asked me, after I finished my test, if I wanted to help him out. At first I just kind of "um"ed at him, because I wasn't sure what he'd want, and then he asked me if I'd grade quizzes, and I realised that I really should have figured it was that. I got away with a "You know, I'm really feeling kind of off today..." and made my escape from the classroom... into the study hall right outside. Well, you can't really see where I'm sitting from his desk when the door is open, so I guess that's good enough. (At least, I can't see him, so I'm assuming he can't see me either. Though that might be cat logic right there.)

It's funny; people always talk about how they're totally loopy when they're on cold meds. Me? I'm sleepy on cold meds; I'm only loopy when I'm ill and the meds haven't kicked in yet. (I imagine that I'll probably fall asleep before I get much writing done, if we do have any and I take them. Probably though I'll just take some advil... wait. I have some advil with me. Why didn't I remember that earlier?)

Anyway, that's enough sick ramblings out of me. Meds now, then... cracked.com or something, idk. Something mindless.

Naturally NaNoWriMo started on a day that I don't actually bring my laptop to school with me. Although I did have about three hours with nothing to do (including maths! since I never do stats outside of class on Tuesdays or Thursdays) so I got in about three hours of writing. And the only edits I made typing it up were adding more words :D So right now I'm sitting pretty at 2014. I think I'm off to do some stats stuff (at least finish the homework, so I can launch straight into the quizzes tomorrow) and then see if I can't write some more.

I'm actually pleased with my progress so far. Yeah, I know, it's only the first day and nothing's happened and I'm sure I'll give up later (wait, no, invincible spell, you can do it!) but I didn't spend a lot of time wondering just what the hell I was supposed to write and spent most of my time just writing, which is what I've been telling myself I needed to do anyway. I can edit and make everything pretty later! For now I just need to get all the words down.

I think what I need to do is find a folder to keep all my writing stuff in - and by "all my writing stuff" I mean all the printouts I'm inevitably going to accumulate trying to work on this between school and home. I don't want to just do the flash drive thing like I tried last year, as I don't actually have much access to computers on the days I don't bring my laptop with me, and anyway I've found that Word's word counts are ridiculously different from Open Office's, and that's just weird.

In other news, still dislike my stats class (no particular reason this time, just thought I'd reiterate), English is okay, speech is harrowing, and mass media is cool if occasionally a bit boring. (No points for guessing which class(es) I'll end up writing the most in.)

Anyway, stats stuff awaits. /: And maybe some rice with stuff in later. (Actually probably not, because if I don't eat it tonight then I can eat it tomorrow morning. But whatever.)

Standard Time, how I missed you! No longer will I have to trudge to school in the dark (not that I did anyway), no longer will I be able to tell between 5pm and 6pm! It's good to have you back, Standard Time.

Got all caught up on wordcount, and stuff. Christian's Inferno is... probably going to be much much shorter than Albert's Legacy! But that's fine, because some of the others are going to be ridiculously long anyway. It'll even out in the end! (And anyway, for now I get to actually write crazy!Damien, and then really awkward!Damien and Mao. That conversation is going to be fun, haha. "So, uh. I'm Damien." "Yeah, I know. You tried to kill me." "Yeah, and then you called down lightning on me and nearly killed me." "Right. Um. No hard feelings?" "Sure, okay.")

I've got like a million layers on right now, and I'm still kind of cold. Mostly it's just my fingers, since I'm not wearing gloves - my thumbs are warm, though, since I've got armwarmers on. (And the rest of me, since I've got two shirts, a jacket, leggings, shorts, and sweats on. ) I'm actually kind of glad that the weather report for today is "really cold;" I've kind of missed that, too. There's nothing like bundling up and knowing that you aren't, actually, going to regret putting on all those layers - so far it's been pretty iffy, since we've had temperatures in the seventies and eighties for the past few months, but today's supposed to be barely sixties, so it's time for layers! :D

Anyway, time for some Let's Play Metroid Prime 3. The forums kicked me off because I didn't have an account (or archives, for that matter) but I checked the site the videos were archived on and, lo! MP3 LP. That kind of totally distracted me yesterday, haha.

Current Mood: content

400 words behind on my wordcount, but since I wrote none yesterday and 3000 today, I figure things'll even out by tomorrow.

Reading lots of poetry in English! We just did Keats, and all that Keats made me want to play Folklore, except that I, well, can't. So I went looking for another game, instead - Phantasy Star II. Except that I couldn't find my PSC cartridge. ): I spent two days looking for it - yesterday I was looking for the cart until I realised that it was probably in my DS, at which point I started looking for my DS instead. Naturally I found neither. I spent some time on it today, too - I finally found it jammed between a couple of boxes in the stupidest place it could possibly be. The cart was in there, though. :D Then I loaded it up and realised I was at level 4, and so decided that maybe I didn't want to play it after all, haha.

Back to writing - Benjamin couldn't just decide that maybe Catherine was right for once, and so had to be a stubborn asshole and extend Albert's Legacy more. T:< Two days ago I thought I'd finish it in 6000 words but now I think it'll be more like 8000. (Bringing my total wordcount up to 10000, of course.) Earlier I was worrying about if I'd manage to finish the whole thing in 50000 words but now I think I'm not going to have any problem with that at all, especially if I'm still doing interludes.

Bought and finished Lord Sunday! I was totally wrong about Saturday being pride and Sunday being envy; it was the other way around. Also I would have liked a more detailed epilogue, but then Nix's endings always leave me wanting, somewhat, so I should have expected it.

Also did car stuff today. My dad bought a new grille for it, since the old one was kind of ugly and also didn't have foglights, but we hadn't started it up with the new grille installed until today, which we only did so we could put antifreeze in it. Naturally, the car starts emitting smoke. It was because of the new grille, of course, so we had to take it off and put the old one back on. (I don't know why I'm saying "we," since I wasn't there for most of it. Basically just the 'putting in antifreeze' part and the 'smoke is bad' part - the rest of the time I was writing.) At least they got the ugly Great Britain badge off the old grille before putting it back on.

Tomorrow I get to write more and read lots of poetry and then write about how it makes me feel. Maybe I'll get to play some PSII as well; I don't know yet. It depends on how things end up happening.

fake!edit: Also LJ has been stripping my icons of their keywords lately and it's very annoying, because I don't remember what all of them are and so it's a little difficult to put them back in. Cut it out, LJ.

So then I broke another pair of earbuds. This makes two pairs in four months, and I'm not very happy about that. I just seem to have bad luck with the black ones, I guess. I'm stuck with my Apple ones until I can get out to buy a pair of new ones, this weekend or next weekend, probably.

Am currently boiling potatoes! We're making a potato and sausage frittata for dinner later, but since potatoes take like an hour to boil I'm doing those ahead of time. In the meantime I can't decide if I want to make a sandwich or not. I probably should, since I didn't eat lunch, but I'm feeling a little weird and anyway I'm not sure if the roast beef is still good.

To-do list for today: 1) write paragraph about "Ode on a Grecian Urn"; 2) write up to ~7000 words; 3) don't massacre potatoes; 4) probably listen to more podcasts; 5) take shower. (I really do need to include the last one, because I'll probably forget if I don't make a note of it. This might sound surprising, but then I also often forget to eat unless someone reminds me, so forgetting to shower does not surprise me at all.)

To-do list for tomorrow: 1) hit word count, preferably in the morning since we're doing a lab in physics and that requires actually paying attention; 2) do TA duties, possibly involving editing journalism club articles; 3) go out and buy da's birthday gift and also Lord Sunday and potentially also new earbuds; 4) write up things about Romantic poets; 5) catch up on Supernatural; 6) actually stay up long enough to watch new Supernatural and Sanctuary.

...actually, I should probably do item five right now, since I'm two weeks behind and mum will kill me if I don't watch the episode from two weeks ago. (Just because they take like a million potshots at Twilight doesn't mean it's funny, mum. I bet the Twilight reference from Sanctuary last week was funnier.)

2560/50000, yeah! A strong start - good job, self. Keep up the good work and we'll have this challenge finished in no time! I think if I have time later I might write a bit more, get that wordcount up to around 3400. Yeah, that's two days worth of work, but if I have that then it means I can write less one day and still not be behind. (Could I do that during AVID? I shouldn't, because I've got so much Hamlet to do omg, but I probably could, I bet... two journal entries each, Five Conversations Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Didn't Have (And One They Did), and How Rosencrantz Met Guildenstern; find literary devices for those last few quotes; type up all the words - death predictions, analysis chart, soliloquy translations, performance analysis; revise the essay that's very important. That's all, I think.)

Still, even if I do have loads and loads of work (oh yeah, got to finish the outline for that novella I'm writing this month, that might be important, huh?), I'm not letting it get in the way. I will complete this challenge! I will not let anything get in my way! And I will remember, one week from now, that I told the entirety of AVID 12, half my physics class, all my friends, and my very favourite English teacher that I was going to do this challenge, so I can't quit or else I'll look like a total loser. AVID 12 already thinks, "omg Aloxa, you're so amazing," and I want it to stay like that, damn it, it's good for my self-esteem. (Not much else is, really.)

I should just drag my laptop to school with me, jfc. Too bad it's an ancient thing and I don't have a carrying case for it and it won't really fit in my bag. ...though at least the new power cord for it should come today! Keep thinking positively, Azu, things'll turn out the way they're supposed to :D