Thoughts

I just had a slight freak-out moment. I was sitting on campus, revising some short stories for my creative writing class, when I remembered the slew of campus-related short story contests with deadlines in February. This caused the following train of thought:

Speaking of February, Amazon's annual Breakout Novel Award contest is in February.

Holy shit! February! That's two months!!

I wanted to have IE ready for it in February 2009 but I wasn't ready in time. I swore to myself I'd be ready in 2010.

Holy shit, I won't be ready in 2010! This time last year I was at the same point in my first draft as I am right now in my 2nd draft. I thought I could do it, but I couldn't. There's no way I can polish it by February.

Another year. ANOTHER. YEAR. that I haven't met any of my writing goals. Another year that I have sworn to myself I'd meet a deadline and I haven't.

Another year IE isn't done, when the 1st draft was 75% done in 3 months. The other 25% and 50% of the 2nd draft I have done now have taken about 16 months to finish. And I still have the rest of d2 and at least another draft.

Why can't I meet my goals? Will IE ever get finished?

I love IE. I want to finish it!!

Arrrgggghhhhh!!!!!!!

.... and those were my thoughts. It's finals time, can you tell?

Finals and Writing

I'm making a small amount of headway toward finishing Providence. But to be honest, getting sick the first week of December and having finals the second and third weeks makes finishing a new novel tough. But I'm trying to work on it a little at a time so I don't lose momentum. Hopefully after my last final (A&P at 6pm on the 16th) I will get to finish it by the 31st!!

Finals... ugg. Any college student out there knows I don't even need to say anymore. But I will. Finals are actually going quite well. I have a portfolio for creative writing, a presentation and paper for linguistics, a non-cumulative test for A&P, and a website for web-writing. The website is due tomorrow so after I turn it in I can concentrate on Monday's presentation for linguistics then Wednesday's papers and exam. I'm loving web design, though I wish I had more graphics to work with from the company.

I'm also trying to finish my application to the University of Floriday graduate program and compile some pieces to send to IUPUI's literary magazine, Genesis. I'm working on a poem I'm calling Sophia's Song, which fans of IE will appreciate, and revising a short story I wrote two years ago that has been rejected by numerous magazines.

I'm getting caught up on bills since Mike made a fat paycheck on the 11th, but it'll still take us a bit to dig all the way out of the trenches of debt. It's hard keeping my head up, but I'm managing.

So that's the third week of December, 2009 in a nutshell. Wow, the year's gone by fast!!!

November

November 2009 FLEW by! I completed NaNo, reaching 50K words on the 28th, and am slowly working my way toward the end of my new novel, Providence. Finals are around the corner and I'm hunkering down to finish a web site for Insanity Pro Wrestling, a creative writing portfolio, a paper and presentation on the history of the English language, and get a smashing grade on my A&P final since I bombed the last test and watched my chances of getting an A go down the drain :( But hey, I wrote 3/4 of a novel, right?

Other things on my mind, in random order:

I ♥ Buffy.

I absolutely despise the little dog that lives in the house next door. I live on a corner so my backyard meets with three others, and all three houses have little dogs. They all meet at the corner (my dog included, when he feels like playing outside) and bark at each other. But, my dog isn't in the mix usually. And even when the other dogs aren't out, the one right beside my house is outside All. Damn. Day. And barks. ALL. DAMN. DAY.

I am getting over being sick. Monday was awful, and I thought for sure I had a severe flu. But by Tuesday it was just a nasty head/chest cold. Today, Friday, I feel much better, with just some sinusy stuff still going on.

Of course, I have to go pick up Austin from school in a couple hours, and I just found out that he has bronchitis and a sinus infection. ... Here's to being sick again next week!

Christmas is on the way but once again, we won't have the money to really do much.

Mike got a job!! Of course, we're still late on rent. But the landlord's pretty cool and says it's no big deal. And we won't be able to use any of his first paycheck for Christmas. It's just a bit too little, too late for that.

I ♥ Providence. ☺

5 months and 5 days til graduation!

I hate snow. I loathe it. It should be illegal. It hasn't snowed here yet, but it's going too.

Why Indiana?!?!

And I'm off to do some homework.