Wheee!

Today is a good day, and I feel verbose. There's no point in feeling verbose if you can't talk, so here's a random blog post all about how happy I'm feeling.

That and other things, by the way.

I have 624... or whatever... books on my GoodReads to-read list.

This is a really scary number. I've officially passed the "100-books-past-500-books" point. I think once you pass that, there is very little chance you'll get below 500 ever again. Ever. Each book leads to another fifteen books. Each person you know might have loved or hated a certain book... and then you have to read that book yourself, to find out why.

Since I have... 5 books to read and little time in which to accomplish the feat (we leave Sydney, and a great deal of books behind, at 8am on the 16th), I've made a plan.

I'll be reading a few books, prioritizing others, and setting lots of time limits in order to accomplish it. Vitamin-R, a new Mac application my wonderful daddy bought for me, will be helping. A lot.

Reading is going well. It's really strange/comforting to be taking notes while I read. For some reason, I feel a lot better about the fact that I might actually remember what I'm reading. On the other hand, I'm using up my notebook, and I can't carry around a notebook and a book and a pen around all the time.

This will have to be figured out. Even if my handwriting sucks, I tend to prefer handwriting to typing when I'm reading. It's more... simple, especially when I'm reading on a screen. Writing, on the other hand, is much simpler when I'm typing. I'm faster that way.[397 words

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I feel really bouncy for absolutely no reason, and my head hurts a bit from trying to remember all the books I'm going to simply have to read now.

Does anyone else get this? It should be universal, I suffer from it so much. I have allusions to a billion different writers and books running around my head, along with a very, very certain-sure feeling that I simply have to read Ulysses now.

Back to How To Read Literature Like a Professor, Macbeth, and The Witch of Portobello! Wish me luck. Perhaps I might even start one of the last two tonight!

—

But I promised updates:

April 22^nd (for me… for the rest of the world it will be April 21^st at ten AM, to April 22^nd at ten AM), I'll be participating in You'll Love This One!'s group Toppler.

The point of a toppler is to read books that are already on your shelves. To facilitate reading, there are certain awards which you can receive, from the most ridiculous to the most interesting.

For example, in the February Toppler (theme: classics), one award was for reading a book written during or before 1^st century BC. In April (theme: read books you've wanted to for quite some time), one award is for reading a book in a new way. I have a fantastic idea for how I'm going to read The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway. I won't say a word now, though.

The fact that it's on a Sunday, that I told my dad the toppler would be on the 21^st, and the idea that this particular one is of a 24-hour variety (thus necessitating a loong day spent at home) makes my parents wonder, yet again, exactly from whose side of the family I descend. It doesn't bother me. I'm going to enjoy myself with Wuthering Heights, The Sun Also Rises, The Old Man and the Sea, and as much of Ulysses as I can.

The motivation for choosing these particular books is because of the awards. Otherwise, I'd be reading The Absentee, And Then There Were None, etc, which are for another challenge (which finishes June 30^th, and which I've read only 2/13 books for. Lovely, eh?). It's all planned out, particularly how I'll actually (hopefully) sleep in on Saturday.

And I'll be blogging during my break times— about a great deal of things, probably, including how tired I am. It will be very interesting, for posterity, to find out what on earth I was thinking at 17.

Er...

I must be a really bad person because I haven't even attempted to figure out what to post here for the past two months.

I'm not going to attempt to explain why (it's a mix of plain laziness and a lack of will), but I will say that I'm not going to worry about it.

I'm seventeen years old. I've decided I'm not going to bog my life down with things until I absolutely have to. I'm on the road trip of a lifetime and I'm not going to worry about anything except writing my worlds and reading all the books I can before college.

Which brings me to the fact that, even though I've finally almost-kind-of gotten out of the Riddle Rose rut I've been in since early January, and though I haven't read The Absentee, which has been on the to-read list since late January, I'm not going to worry about it.

Instead, I'm going to focus on finishing the books I've picked up in New Zealand backpacking camp book exchanges. These are the greatest inventions known to mankind.

And I'm going to focus on reviewing those books.

And then I'm going to figure out how to make them qualify as proper blog posts.

Or, in another turn of events, I'm going to finish Riddle Rose. And then I'm going to drop it for a while, perhaps pick it back up in a year or two when I feel properly fortified enough with forgetfulness to read it through. When I finish Riddle Rose, possibly by the end of April, I'm going to work on Pirate Prince. And when I finish that, possibly by the end of May, I'm going to get ready to write a proper novelette. I'm going to aim for 60,000 words for Camp NaNoWriMo, I'm going to figure out what works for me best-- I'm not going to plan the ending, I'm not even going to plan out the first chapter-- just a few characters and a basic plot line. Once I write the first chapter, I'll figure out what happens next. I might even blog about the writing of it.

Or, perhaps, I'll just stare at my laptop screen and reread the PDFs I have on it. It may not be a particularly productive use of time, but... I'm still seventeen, and I won't have the time to do this when I'm eighteen next time this year.

I'll be in college. I still have no idea what I want to study-- perhaps something with education or development. It seems so much easier now to just head off to college than it was five months ago.

So?

What's the fate of this blog going to be?

- Temporary updates on my reading life, rants on reading life, ideas as to why I want to read so many books, books people should read, books I've read and reviews of them... etc.

- Temporary updates on my writing life, rants on writing life, rants as to why I think I can actually write a story... story ideas, possible other stuff.

- Temporary updates on life in general-- like stuff I'm going to do with it.

Books

Some of the first memories I have of reading are in my parents' bedroom in St. Louis, 'reading' books like Are You My Mother? And Oink! The truth is, I'd memorized them. But I was so proud of myself, knowing how to read at three or four or however old I was.

At eight I was reading all sorts of books from our book cases— we'd started ordering books from Scholastic Inc., for homeschooling, and we got boxes of books before the schoolyear started.

It was… amazing, how many books came. I loved reading. I'd go to the library and read there too.

At ten I started reading animal books. I'm talking 'how to train your dog books,' or 'rabbit care' books. I read about gerbils. I read about budgies, cockatoos, cats, horses… most of the books being from the adult section of the library.

At fourteen though, interest in reading started dimming. I couldn't find books to interest me (looking back on that I wonder how). Though I was still reading, it was nowhere near the book or so a week/month I had been reading before.

I had hit a slump. I didn't notice this slump— I was doing school, having projects (I always had projects, whether it was running an adoptable on PonyIsland.net or creating a breeding system for a creature I'd just designed), watching TV and surfing the internet (PonyIsland.Net was an obsession of a sort, and probably amounted for more than a bit of my non-reading).

At fifteen, I started having 'required reading.' In the first two weeks of school, I read the Iliad and Shogun (James Clavell), and lost interest in reading for quite some time. In fact, I was so burned out from Shogun (it was… okay. And I read it in three days. 1200 pages in three days.)

I think I read about 20 books in 2010— some of them I've reread since then (Sex, Time, and Power I read October 2011).

One of the best books of 2010 was The Importance of Being Earnest. Yes, it's a play. It's bound in hardcopy. It counts as a book.

In December 2010, though, my cousin Ioana re-introduced me to GoodReads. A friend had sent me a link to it years ago, but I couldn't understand the system at the time, and I think it was much uglier than it is now.

And with the 2011 reading challenge came the idea: 

Can I read 100 books in a year?

I decided to.

I started reading Cișmigiu & Co., a Romanian novel about a young man in highschool in the 1940s. It took me a month to finish the two-part book (the volume also contained another novel by Grigore Băjenaru, Bună Dimineața, Baieti!, which is about being a young schoolteacher), but in the end I managed it.

And then I started reading in earnest. 100 books that year meant about two books a week. 

Until May, I was behind schedule. I read three books in January (two of which were more like 100 pages than actual books), one in February, and finished Cismigiu & Co in March. In April I finished Bună Dimineața, Baieti!

And while we were on the road to Boston for the Religious Olympics (which I won, thus saving my parents a lot of money for what was the best summer camp week ever).

I read 9 books in April (including getting conned into reading The Beach by my dad.)

In May I hated Grapes of Wrath and loved East of Eden, devoured Water for Elephants in time to go see the movie (which was lovely). I discovered Russian novels and raced through Crime and Punishment in three days.

I read Graceling, which is a young adult novel about two people who are graced with a certain strength. The protagonist is graced with Killing, and she meets Po, who's graced with Fighting. The concept of rings in this book was what made it memorable.

I read Nicholas Sparks from May until June, read War and Peace from May to June (marking the first "I'm sick of saying I'm still reading this book so I'm going to finish it" read). I loved Anna Karenina, cried over Gone With the Wind (again), and went into July with The Taming of Lord Astor, which had an interesting instance of dresses making men think a certain way.

July also marked reading The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov, both by Dostoevsky. I read The Book Thief, which was… amazing.

Other highlights of the year were reading Ubersleep and Kurt Vonnegut. I read a lot of Lois Lowry in August, gave up on One Day, and adored Juliet and A Comedy of Errors.

I managed to finish Middlemarch, which was another "I'm sick of saying I'm still reading this…" book, and Steve Jobs, which was… interesting.

Some of the best books of this year included The Phantom of the Opera, which made me laugh out loud. Room haunted me.

At some point during July, when I'd caught up to schedule, I decided to read 150 books. And then contemplated 175.

But that didn't happen. So I left the goal off for 2012.

And that promptly fell through the roof. In the first two weeks, I found a storage of Judith McNaught novels— romance (only one of the most captivating genres ever)— and devoured 17 books in 15 days.

Clearly, there was a way to read three hundred books or more on this trip.

And it's been great so far.

I'm at a total of 24 books this year, and it's only Day 29!

Battle of the Brains

I do. I really do. If I see something about a book I want to read it.

But I can't read it. I can't read it because I have to write and if I don't write the entire frame of the world will collapse.

At least, that's what my studious left brain thinks. You know, the brain that says, "Hey! You put it on the to-do list, and now it must be finished!"

My right brain thinks, "EH, we'll get it all done. Don't worry about it! LIVE! ENJOY! READ!"

"No."

"Yes."

"No."

"Yes."

And the right brain usually wins out in the end...

OR... worse... I spend all day surfing the internet because my right brain gives up convincing my left brain to read and just says, "Hey, do whatever."

And my left brain does the same thing.

So I do whatever.

The list of books I want to read grows, meanwhile, and I start thinking,

"But I want to read this too! And that! AND... since I've managed to read 18 books this year, it should be completely and totally possible to keep this insane goal going! Why not read 366 books?"

Then left brain comes in and says, "Listen. You are 20,000 words behind schedule. That means you don't have time, NOT that everything's good and you can keep reading insane amounts of books."

So what does my mind say after this battle of the brains?

You've got time. You can make up all that writing by the end of January... you can read 13 more books... you can get up to speed in Les Trois Mousquetaires... you can do the impossible. But you can't also, so don't get your hopes up.


BUT DON'T WORRY! IT'S IMPOSSIBLE, BUT YOU CAN DO IT!




So. If I actually get to 140,616 words and 31 books by January 31st...

You'll know that I've lost against myself again.

You'll also have irrefutable proof that I'm a machine.

A machiiiine!

Falling Apart

I just lost this entire post.

It is a lovely feeling in a way... a very sad feeling in others. So I'm rewriting it all very quickly with a couple of notes on the side.

Crazy internet. ^_^

The gist of it?

I'm behind in everything except reading. The reason is because I started reading romances.

The catch-up plan is to do it slowly. The logical priorities are Writing, Learning, and Reading. The emotional priorities are Reading, Learning and Writing. The emotional priorities always win out.

I'm 20k behind, a few books ahead (okay, a lot), and behind on learning.

BUT I shall prevail.

Please don't expect any new Riddle Rose chapters-- I'll be editing Chapters 1-8 because I've gotten a few new ideas and I don't want to reveal new chapters without explaining or foreshadowing those ideas. Hopefully within a month I'll have new chapters up again. At least 2 weeks though, because of the editing.

Pirate Prince will probably get a few new chapters within the month. Hopefully.

At the moment I'm focusing on getting a few Paa'nik stories out of my head. (I should change the spelling of that to Paanik, as it's more accurate, but I like the look of Paa'nik more, and I can always change my grammar rules.) So no short stories either. Sorry again... but I have cool things on my mind and those always win out. My self-discipline is not good in creative endeavors.

I had a talk with my mom that setting high goals and not achieving them has a way of undermining your self-consciousness. I don't doubt that, but I'm starting to wonder when that undermining starts. I've been not-accomplishing for years, and either I finish it or decide I don't care about the goal any more. Maybe that's the exception, eh?

ANYWAY... expect real content soon. ^_^

Goodbye, 2011! Hello, 2012!

It's been… a great year. I can't remember anything past… yesterday, but I'm very sure that it was a good year.

Scratch that. I can't even remember yesterday. I remember disjointed occurences, of course, but other than that, I can't think of many things that made this year the best ever. I think when I was one was the best year ever. So many new things!

Some highlights of 2011:

• Taking care of a three-year-old for 3 days.
• Taking the ACT
• Spending a weekend with my best friend, walking in the gorge and studying
• Leaving on the trip (and all that it entailed)
• Reading 150 books

What will be some of the highlights of 2012:

• Writing 1,200,000 words
• Reading 150-175 books
• Finishing Khan Academy material
• Reading Les Trois Mousquetaires and Don Quijote in their original languages
• Visiting China, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, and more
• Being super productive
• Turning 18.

And quite a few others. I've got my plan set out for 2012's writing schedule. I'll be working on two projects at all times— in January this will be Riddle Rose and a rewrite of my NaNo'09, In Which There is Edward (I'll also be working on a NaNo swap every day, but it will not have a posting schedule.). I'll be updating all the blogs once a week (at least), reviewing books, and critiquing pieces from my critique group.

The posting schedule is:

Sunday: Post a blog post.

Tuesday: Post a chapter from Project #1 and #2. Post one critique.

Wednesday: Post another critique.

Friday: Post a chapter from Project #2. Post short story.

Saturday: Post a chapter from Project #1. Post a third critique. Post book review.

I'm not exactly sure how I've got Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday with two or three submissions and Monday and Tuesday with none, but I'm writing about three thousand words a day (what with 750 words of 'morning pages,' 500 words of Write Your World, planning for the chapters…), which means that I should be able to stay on top of things word-count-wise.

Time-wise, I'm not too sure if it's possible. It should be— I can write 3000 words in forty five minutes to two hours to a whole day, and I can read a book in two hours to twenty four hours to forty five days.

I'll be posting updates on my Day Zero Project's goals on there, but I'll also be updating here. At some point before January 31^st, I'll have posts with goals separated by year an category (growth, reading, writing, official learning, unofficial learning, random, and travel). Those should be posted by Saturday, acutally.

Otherwise, I'm not sure what else to mention, besides a happy new year! Let's hope that those of us attempting crazy schedules and goals in 2012 will not burn out before January, Feburary, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, or December are through!

Turning 17

Turning 17 is an interesting phenomenon. While 16 is widely celebrated in America, and 18 is celebrated in Romania (as well as 14, but that's another story), I like 17. For one thing, it's a prime number. For another thing, the numeral 7 is probably one of the most elegant. And I like it. For another thing, 'seventeen' has more syllables than any other year from one to sixteen, and from eighteen to twenty. And many other things I could mention but don't want to clog up the post with.

I'll be posting all the details of what we saw on Noi6, because it's a bit more public and that one needs views too, and focus on more writerly/readerly things here, because no one goes on an Around the World blog to read about my word count and book total.

The Liebster Blog Award

Lemme start off by saying I have no idea what the Liebster blog award is.

But it was a wonderful birthday present, from Coffee of The Land of Man-Eating Fairies. THANK YOU!

Receiving the award meant finding out what it is.

The Liebster Blog Award is awarded by bloggers to other bloggers whose blogs have 200 followers or less. (I think I have... 0. 0 is also a beautiful and elegant number.)

The rules ARE:


1. Thank your Liebster Blog Award presenter on your blog.

2. Link back to the blogger who presented the award to you.

3. Copy and paste the blog award on your blog.

4. Present the Liebster Blog Award to 3-5 blogs of 200 followers or less who you feel deserve to be noticed.

5. Let them know they have been chosen, by leaving a comment at their blog.


Now, let me also start off by saying I don't exactly follow blogs. In fact, I never read them.
THAT IS NOT TO SAY that I do not have friends who blog. I do. Here they are. They're all writing related. You may hate me or love me because of it. XD

Kaedekit's Thoughts of a Paper Dragon hasn't got too many posts yet, but she's doing MilWordy. Instant win and instant follow. There are not enough people doing MilWordy in this world.

Katie G's MilWordy & Beyond is also about MilWordy. It hasn't started yet, though, so there's only an introductory post. BUT THAT'S OKAY! I only had one post once... and it was a terrible one. Katie's is a good one. It explains things. Mine didn't.

Bouchra Rebiai's Pink, Purple, and Fuchsia is awesome. For one thing, Bouchra (Boosh-rah) sets insane goals... just like me! For another thing, her blog is bright pink. Now, I like pink. And, she's been doing the Day Zero Project for about... 14 months. So... instant triple win. She's not doing MilWordy. She's studying her ... ICGSE's or some other strange acronym.

The Thoughts


Seventeen doesn't feel much different from sixteen, with the exception of the fact that instead of being in a plane this year, I was on my feet. I'll have the details of the things we did on Noi6, but suffice it to say that it was an AMAZING birthday.

But I've also got a couple of thoughts on what I want to do with the next year... more personal wise than writing goals:

1. Stop drinking carbonated drinks. In the two months since we left home, we have drunk more soda than we have in the past year. It needs to stop.
2. Start working out. I haven't done anything since we left, and I'm starting to wonder if my muscles remember what a split is or not any more. They definitely don't remember push ups.
3. Count to ten before yelling at any one. Unless there's a rhinoceros charging them and they won't move... this means that before calling peoples' attention to things... I count to ten. This will hopefully stop me from being such a terrorist to people I know well.

And that's it! Three, simple, easy things that I'll be able to remember.

Also:

1. Don't have more than 7 things on the to-do list for one day. This, of course, doesn't include things I haven't finished from days before. ^_-