Thursday, October 29, 2009

I'm taking the plunge.

No, I'm not getting married. (Not that I really thought anyone would actually think that but...)

No, I've decided to do NaNoWriMo, a.k.a. National Novel Writing Month, which takes place over the course of the month of November. The goal is to write a 50,000-word novel (although I'm doing short stories), not worrying about the quality, just forcing yourself to get it all down and not second-guessing yourself. Since I'm such a goddamn overthinking perfectionist that my creativity has been severely stunted for a couple of years now, this seemed like an ideal opportunity to try to counteract all that and just force myself to get it all out...not to mention that I've had this short-story collection idea in my head for years now. It's my baby, and I've hesitated to get much work done on it because I didn't want to fuck it up.

Well, fuck that. I can revise later.

I doubt I'll make it to 50,000 words, but I'm going to do my best. I signed up on the official site on everything. Now let's just hope I don't get felled by some wasting disease in the middle of it. (And even if I do, I'll try to push through it anyway.)

I'm excited, y'all. Wish me luck.

Thursday, October 22, 2009

So, it's been like a million years since I wrote in this, right? (Or six weeks or so, but hey, close enough...)

I'm well into my semester now and overall it's going pretty well. Classes are pretty great for the most part, and my health is...well, it's been worse. There's definitely been some sick badness (nausea, stomach pains, headaches, body aches, chest pain, heart palpitations, a seizure the other day, and even some weird new shit), but hey, at least I haven't gotten the swine flu, right?

I have been really homesick this semester though, worse than it's been in awhile. I always missed my mom really badly, but never "home" so much, and it sounds silly, but honestly I think a lot of it has to do with my missing my cats. Seriously. I am having serious cat withdrawal and it's a problem.

Also, a piece of awesome awesomeness that I forgot to put into my last entry and clearly have not put in since, as I have not updated and all and blah blah blah: The day before moving all my stuff in, when my mom and my brother and I were hanging out on campus, we went for a long walk on the Smith trails. A little dog ran up to us, and as I was, you know, talking nonsense to the dogs and so forth, the dog's owner came over - who happened to be Thurston Moore, of Sonic Youth fame. I looked up (way, way, way up because the dude is TALL), and there he was. With his dogs. I mean, I knew he lived in the area, but seriously, that was about the last place I would expect to run into him. Go figure. I basically squealed my face off.

But enough of this. My mom sent me some pictures of the cats and I'm gonna post them now.

Mabel in the cabinets:


Cuddling cats:




More to come, as always.