So I said I was going to elaborate, but now, I don't really know what on.
Yeah, I revised stuff, and wrote stuff too. I got to a point where I needed something to happen that I hadn't written yet. That's going to be happening more and more as time goes on. I;m starting to think I won't finish. Either that, or I'm going to put in a lot of time at home. I'm hoping to get enough done over spring break to make my next checkpoint, becasue I'm going to start missing school for track, and as I said, I already feel like I'm not going to finish. Nevermind that I've gotten no workshopping done on anything. Bleh.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Checkpoint
Dear Mr. Wilson,
Contrary to all odds, I had some ideas to amke my story not suck, and am working on implementing them. This doesn't include a full definite storyline, which was part of my checkpoint. However, I did make major changes to the storyline/concept that give me enough of a guideline to finish revising, and I think that's more important. Why come up with a storyline when it is probably the thing most subject to change as I go? If learned one thing from doing NaNo, it's that I cannot know what will happen at a certain point until I get there. Even in revision, I'll be writing soemthing, and think, "Oh yeah, now I can make that happen!" and a lot of things get changed. So.
I revised the very beginning and then went through my color-coded juggernaut and did all the school remembery sections until I had enough pages to meet my checkpoint. Since I'm not a fan of posting 25 pages' worth of text on my blog, I'm going to email that, and my major changes/storyline as an attached word document.
Sincerely,
Samantha Dixon
P.S. Because so many school districts were closed on Wednesday, they had to move one of the regional meets, ergo states, and I am totally clear to join Less Tequilla on stage Tuesday night. Provided that we get around to actually writing poems. Yay!
Contrary to all odds, I had some ideas to amke my story not suck, and am working on implementing them. This doesn't include a full definite storyline, which was part of my checkpoint. However, I did make major changes to the storyline/concept that give me enough of a guideline to finish revising, and I think that's more important. Why come up with a storyline when it is probably the thing most subject to change as I go? If learned one thing from doing NaNo, it's that I cannot know what will happen at a certain point until I get there. Even in revision, I'll be writing soemthing, and think, "Oh yeah, now I can make that happen!" and a lot of things get changed. So.
I revised the very beginning and then went through my color-coded juggernaut and did all the school remembery sections until I had enough pages to meet my checkpoint. Since I'm not a fan of posting 25 pages' worth of text on my blog, I'm going to email that, and my major changes/storyline as an attached word document.
Sincerely,
Samantha Dixon
P.S. Because so many school districts were closed on Wednesday, they had to move one of the regional meets, ergo states, and I am totally clear to join Less Tequilla on stage Tuesday night. Provided that we get around to actually writing poems. Yay!
Mid-third quarter block update
I keep a surrugate blog in a word document, so here it is. It's not fully up to date, but basically, I've just been doing revision scine then. Except, I ain't gonna lie, I watched Doctor Strange Love on Friday. But I wasn't in mental space where I could write anyway; too little sleep of late.
Tuesday, February 6, 2008
I think I know where to take this. I was whining to Anji and Sarah, and as I listened to myself, I decided to go back to my original idea. See, I’m not doing to have a major problem. All my life, all I’ve heard is that there ahs to be a central conflict in a story. Well maybe I do have one. I seem to have written the classic bildungsroman, but that doesn’t mean there has to be some huge, catastrophic event. I’m basically writing about a girl who does what I’ve often thought about doing, someone who has a few less inhibitions than I do, but many similar idea.
So I’m trying to write this girl’s life, basically. I’m trying to give her something of a personality, and say: this is how this person responds to her problems. She runs away and thinks about it, or doesn’t think about it. I don’t know. Just runs away. And it works out, because she decides not to do that anymore. That sounds really, really lame.
Maybe that’s the problem; not that I didn’t come up with a story before I started writing, but that I didn’t come up with a character to be in the story. I just let her form herself around the things that happened, and there was nothing constant in her. So she turned into me, because that was the easy way out.
Or maybe that was my point all along. I’ve tried to take the things I don’t like about myself and put them into this character, because I want people to know that the way I have acted in the past is destructive, and I am trying to change. I’m tying to show people, through this story, what I have learned, in the hopes that they will be able to learn it faster than I did.
I think my biggest problem was that I didn’t know what to do about religion. I think I made the family agnostic. The sort that would go to a Unitarian place if there were one nearby, but there isn’t. Like Allie’s family in that way. I didn’t want to make then go to church every week, because I don’t have that experience. I don’t know how it might have affected interactions between characters.
I’ll probably just write out everything that I’ve figured out, and keeping that in mind, go back and revise the memory sections. Which is what I was originally going to do; now I just feel more prepared to do it, mentally.
Thursday, January 31
Today was kinda sketchy. I’m just not feeling this revision much. Every time I come up with something, it’s not believable enough. I think I’ll end up pulling that “It was all a dream” trick, after all.
Anyway, what I did today was try to salvage what I have so far. I came up with some ideas I think are workable. At least for a few weeks. And I color-coded Juggernaut so I know where to go, looking for specific parts. I’m surprised I didn’t think of it before.
Problem with decathiclam: it’s the same day as states, and girls jump last. There’s no way I can do both. Regionals got moved though; maybe states will get moved too.
Tuesday, January 29
I spent some time looking at my draft, but it’s all so frustrating, I just can’t stand it. I made notifications for people who got into Misentity, and then we had a team meeting for the decathaslam, fleshing out stuff for the team piece
Friday, January 25th
So…Today I was going to try and get back into my project, and I looked at it and went,” wow, this is really, really bad,” and tried to fix it. Nope.
So then I went to the library, and intended to read some random stuff to try and get some ideas/ make myself feel better about myself. I wound up having a conversation with Anji and Sarah that gave us an idea for our team poem, so hopefully we’ll be getting some stuff done on that.
Tuesday, February 6, 2008
I think I know where to take this. I was whining to Anji and Sarah, and as I listened to myself, I decided to go back to my original idea. See, I’m not doing to have a major problem. All my life, all I’ve heard is that there ahs to be a central conflict in a story. Well maybe I do have one. I seem to have written the classic bildungsroman, but that doesn’t mean there has to be some huge, catastrophic event. I’m basically writing about a girl who does what I’ve often thought about doing, someone who has a few less inhibitions than I do, but many similar idea.
So I’m trying to write this girl’s life, basically. I’m trying to give her something of a personality, and say: this is how this person responds to her problems. She runs away and thinks about it, or doesn’t think about it. I don’t know. Just runs away. And it works out, because she decides not to do that anymore. That sounds really, really lame.
Maybe that’s the problem; not that I didn’t come up with a story before I started writing, but that I didn’t come up with a character to be in the story. I just let her form herself around the things that happened, and there was nothing constant in her. So she turned into me, because that was the easy way out.
Or maybe that was my point all along. I’ve tried to take the things I don’t like about myself and put them into this character, because I want people to know that the way I have acted in the past is destructive, and I am trying to change. I’m tying to show people, through this story, what I have learned, in the hopes that they will be able to learn it faster than I did.
I think my biggest problem was that I didn’t know what to do about religion. I think I made the family agnostic. The sort that would go to a Unitarian place if there were one nearby, but there isn’t. Like Allie’s family in that way. I didn’t want to make then go to church every week, because I don’t have that experience. I don’t know how it might have affected interactions between characters.
I’ll probably just write out everything that I’ve figured out, and keeping that in mind, go back and revise the memory sections. Which is what I was originally going to do; now I just feel more prepared to do it, mentally.
Thursday, January 31
Today was kinda sketchy. I’m just not feeling this revision much. Every time I come up with something, it’s not believable enough. I think I’ll end up pulling that “It was all a dream” trick, after all.
Anyway, what I did today was try to salvage what I have so far. I came up with some ideas I think are workable. At least for a few weeks. And I color-coded Juggernaut so I know where to go, looking for specific parts. I’m surprised I didn’t think of it before.
Problem with decathiclam: it’s the same day as states, and girls jump last. There’s no way I can do both. Regionals got moved though; maybe states will get moved too.
Tuesday, January 29
I spent some time looking at my draft, but it’s all so frustrating, I just can’t stand it. I made notifications for people who got into Misentity, and then we had a team meeting for the decathaslam, fleshing out stuff for the team piece
Friday, January 25th
So…Today I was going to try and get back into my project, and I looked at it and went,” wow, this is really, really bad,” and tried to fix it. Nope.
So then I went to the library, and intended to read some random stuff to try and get some ideas/ make myself feel better about myself. I wound up having a conversation with Anji and Sarah that gave us an idea for our team poem, so hopefully we’ll be getting some stuff done on that.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
So here's whatall I've been doing since break...
I don't think I can do a day-by day...well maybe.
Last Wednesday- checked submissions for formatting and (I thought) correct entry
Last Friday- learned how to use edline Misentity group, and put up all the submissions for voting and stuff.
This Tuesday-
Today- (Thursday, January 10, 2008)
Last Wednesday- checked submissions for formatting and (I thought) correct entry
Last Friday- learned how to use edline Misentity group, and put up all the submissions for voting and stuff.
This Tuesday-
Today- (Thursday, January 10, 2008)
- First-Misentity meeting- broght CWII into the loop
- Discussed progress/changes we should make for spring Misentity production with Jeff
- Started some new docs on the Misentity group, about Miss Entity contest and Decatha-slam
- Committed to a Decatha-slam team
- Discussed my plot with Anji and came up with a conflict! That actually uses a lot of the manuscript that I already have!
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