Another Book Finished!

I finished Delirium which was such a good book.  It took me a little while longer because some of the parts were really slow but once you got to the last twenty percent, oh my god, I was hooked.  There was just so much in that last bit that fulfilled me in so many ways.  I really loved it because it was just, it was different.  It was different than a lot of the things I've read in the dystopian setting.  The people weren't aware of how bad it was.

Honestly, it actually reminds me of what I liked so much about Brave New World  even though everyone around me hated it.  I liked it because I knew things were bad and I was getting this glimpse into life that they didn't see.  This is what could have been.  People are complacent with the way things are and that is a terrifying future.   It just holds so much illusion that this world is prettier than it is for people.

So on that note, I'm really glad I get to put it in the read book list.  I think now, I'm going to read pride and prejudice, along with probably the Hunger Games again.  I really want to reread that book because this was just moving and I know that the two books couldn't be farther apart but I'm so into the dystopia right now, it's a little bit crazy.  Only two books away from completing another resolution of mine.   This is insane.  I've never finished one resolution, let alone two.  This is a happy and spirited time for me and I hope that all of you are having just as good of a time as I am.  

Novel Excerpt: Novel As of Yet Untitled

Okay, so let me tell you a little bit about this, it's an excerpt of my novel as the title suggests and the basic rundown is that it is about a woman caught in the middle of three love stories that kind of collide into each other.  This is one of the really sad moments.

I was determined to make that day more productive with everyone. I wanted everyone to be a little bit happier and I tried to do that. No one really noticed. Jon was distracted by his damn phone all day and it was driving me crazy. I didn't say anything. I didn't want to set things off again. God, it was really hard though.

When I came home and saw Don though, he didn't really want to do anything either. He was either busy researching or doing some work. I wasn't even sure where they had gone, but they certainly left me behind.

I let it go on for a few days like that, until I was just done with it. I was done with them both. I was done with the way they were treating me and how this was coming out. I was not someone they could idly toss away like a gum wrapper. I knew that I would have to do something drastic with each of them. Jon was fairly easy. I would just not go to work. Don was a little harder to plan for because I had never really wanted to get his attention this badly. I didn't know what worked on him. I would have to find it.

So on Friday, I didn't go into work. Donovan looked a little confused when he left for work. He didn't ask but he knew something was up.

My normal time for being at Jon's came and went. He called and I didn't answer. This was the way things had to be, I told myself. You have to keep up this or he won't get it. He facebooked and I deleted the messages. He DMed on twitter and I didn't bother. I had to cut him off from everything. Eventually he would come around. He stopped everything for awhile. I could tell he was trying to work without me. It lasted than it normally did, but that wasn't really surprising to me. He had built up some tolerance for being on his own but he would come around.

I did other things while he tried to work. I watched television. I cooked lunch for myself. I put my hair up. I looked up actors. Anything to not give into the urge to go to him. It was always like this. It was a battle but I would do it. I would do it.

At about Four in the Afternoon, my doorbell rang. I fluffed up the pillows and arranged them perfectly and let it wait for a minute.

The ringing became more incessant and I smiled. I went over and opened the door and he just walked on in. I had won. I had won. He was over here. He couldn't stand it. “What the hell is wrong?” He asked, a little angry but I tried not to let it hurt. I knew it was for the best. I knew that this was what he needed. He only yelled and he was only angry because he cared about me.

“What's wrong? You mean beside you and Don completely acting like I'm not even here? Besides that there's nothing wrong.” I told him.

He looked hurt. “I don't do that.” He admonished.

“Yes, you do, Jon. You were so distracted with your phone yesterday that you didn't even care what I had to say. I know because during that time you promised to take me and Don to the eiffel tower.” I told him.

“What?” He asked.

I shook my head, “That's exactly my point. You didn't even care. I need to be able to give myself over to you and if you're not going to listen to me, I'm not going to come to work. You knew that this was coming.” I told him.

“What happened with you and Don?” He asked.

I didn't want to talk about that with him, not right now, “Babe, I love you, I want you to know that, but Don and I right now is something completely different than me and you. And right now, I'm dealing with you, so we're not talking about it.”

“Look, I'm sorry for the phone thing, I'll try to stop.” He said.

That made me angry. He wasn't even going to give me a straight answer. “Look, this isn't about trying this, is about actually stopping. Who were you texting or whatever anyway?” I asked.

He looked like he might lie to me for a minute. I didn't even want to hear that kind of thing, “Look, Jill, it's not that simple.”

“How is it not that simple? I asked you a simple question. Who are you texting that's taking time away from our work time? That's a simple question with a simple answer.” Why couldn't he even tell me what I wanted to know. Why couldn't we get to the bottom of this? That's all I wanted. So we could work together in awesome harmony together again.

“I can't tell you. You'll get mad.” He said.

“I'm more mad that you won't tell me than whoever it could possibly be. So why don't you just spit it out?”

“Fine, but don't say I didn't warn you.”

“Fine.”

He looked at me like he still wasn't sure. God, this killed. I wasn't even sure I could handle it, “I've been texting Jayne. She's really nervous and she likes having someone she can talk to. She's just been hard on her luck lately, Jill.”

I just sat there and blinked at him. He wasn't telling me something. And it was killing our relationship. That phone and Jayne and all of it was killing our relationship. “It's not just that she's nervous.” I told him. I didn't even ask.

“No, technically not.”

I was furious and up to my eyeballs in the “technically” crap from everyone. I was done with it.

“Just cut the crap, tell me the truth Jon. You know as well as I do, I'm not dumb and I know something is going with you” I shouted.

“I'm sleeping with her. We're dating.” He said. It was like a slap in the face.

“Get out.”

“What?” he asked. He didn't even know what was happening.

“You heard me. Get. Out.” I didn't even look at him.

“You've got to be kidding me Jill,” He said. I didn't even want him in here. I wanted him gone. I wanted to cry. I wanted him to just understand that this was a lot to go through right now.

“You can't even telling me that you're dating her before you ignore me. Get. Out. Of. My. House.” I said as a lone tear streamed down my face. It couldn't even wait.

“Jill,” He said and he tried to make it up. I couldn't even take it.

“Go. Away.”

I never understood what people meant about being heartbroken until that day. Donovan didn't come home until late and I was wrapped up in our comforter, tear tracks stained on my face, eyes red and puffy, and he didn't say anything.

That was when he started figuring things out. Something was wrong.

I didn't even want to get out of bed the next day. I didn't want to go to work. So I didn't. Donovan brought me coffee. I didn't drink it. I didn't do anything. I just kind of stayed there in my caccoon and cried and ate a little bit.

He didn't call, didn't text, didn't facebook, didn't twitter, didn't email, didn't come over.

Part of me was upset with how pathetic this looked, but I hurt and I couldn't even find the will to get very far. I got my computer and started writing again. I did what I had to do. I kept emails short and impersonal when sending them to Jonathan. He did the same. We were detached from each other. We didn't even look like we cared.

Thoughts on Resolutions

Hi darlings,
 It's me again. I know, I haven't been keeping very good track of what I'm doing and I'm genuinely sorry for that. Now, I will try to update you guys at least once a week with the various comings and goings of my week.

I've realized very recently...like today recently, that I'm very nearly done with my new year's resolutions. I had three very specific ones and they're all very close to me. I wanted to read more, so I set myself the challenge of 15 books for the year. That way I wouldn't be too burdened during the school months and stress myself out more but I was actively seeking books to read and finding myself in a good place. I think I'm about three off that score. I'm about a fourth of the way through another book and have a couple rereads that I want to go through. So all in all, that should be done by the time I go back into school in the fall.

The next goal I set for myself is to write a novel this year. Well, that looks like it is rapidly approaching completion because I've started Camp NaNoWriMo. I'm now about 42K words into the whole thing and about 21K into my actual NaNoWriMo part of that. Which means I'm about half way done with nano part. This makes me super excited because seriously, it took me the first twenty years of my life to write a full length novel and now I've almost written two of them. That's a freaking craziness. By the time I reach twenty one, I could have written almost three novels. That just totally blows my mind away. It makes me so proud.

The other one I haven't really done is getting through all of the vlogbrothers videos and make Nerdfighter Challenge videos on it. Even then, I got through the first year which was probably a very good chunk of them. About 200 or so videos. So I'm pretty happy about all that.

The thing about all of these things is that I would have never gotten them done any other year. I never would have had the willpower. Being in college made me different yes, but more than that, meeting these people, these internet people, who inspire me everyday to do better has helped me so much. It makes me want to be a better person. It makes me want to achieve my dreams. And I'm so proud of that. People give the internet a pretty bad kind of name, but I love it so much. I love the people I get to see everyday because of this great technology.

So since it's June and it's the halfway point in the year, how do you think you are doing on your new year's resolutions? any outstanding progress? if so, what's it attributed to? and if not, why do you think that is? I mean it's a marathon, that's true but sometimes it feels so good just to get that sprint out of the way, that you don't know what it was like just going so slowly. You want to feel that floating sensation everyday.

DFTBA darlings,
Nina x

It's Been Awhile

It's been more than a week and I'm sorry for that.  I will try to keep a bit better tabs on this thing.  But let's talk about this week and why I've been a bit too busy to entertain you.  The main reason is that I contracted the tiny chickens disease.

For those of you who are not nerdfighters, that means I came down with a cold.  What happened was kind of like this.  Day one: Bad Headaches.  Day Two: Bad headaches and appetite kind of out of wonk. Day Three: Snot and Crap. Day Four: Oh my god, please let me die, because this is just horrible.  So yeah, I have been sick now for about a week and things are finally starting to turn up.  There's no headaches.  Finally, there's starting to be less snot and stuff, but the chickens seem to be evacuating my nasal cavity so that is all good.

The other things are that I like to be extremely loud when I type so on Sunday on the worst of me being sick, we (meaning me, my three younger siblings, and our five dogs) were relegated to the upstairs and had to be super effing quiet because my mother was filming in our downstairs which was more or less a nightmare for me.  So typing was basically, in my room, trying to be as quiet as I possibly could while being sick and kind of just hating life in general.

On monday, I went to go babysit some kids and just didn't think to blog.  Probably wouldn't have been that interesting anyway.

But I have also finished another book to add to the Books I've read collection page, so I'm glad to have done that.  I read Maureen Johnson's "13 Little Blue Envelopes" and it was FANTASTIC.  It was an easy read.  I started it on Monday and finished it today but I really only read in chunks of like one or two hours.   So that was nice.  It was really super quick and something I would recommend to a few people.   Because it was like being on an adventure without having to pay for it.

Oh, I've also written words.  I don't know if I told you last time how many words I was at, but currently I'm at 18K, almost 19K and so it's going along smoothly.  Once I finish it, I will tell you what it's about but the crazy thing about my brain is that I don't like to tell anyone.  I keep the goal inside or else I'll never do it.   And so I thank you guys for your patience, but it's gonna be here I promise.

Video blogging is a thing I should get back to.  I haven't done it in awhile and that's something I want to do again.  I wasn't going to do it while I was sick and there was a couple of other things that were just affecting a lot of stuff.  But I'm back on being on the road to completing things.   Hopefully, you'll see me soon.

DFTBA Darlings,
Nina x

Finished the Book!

For the first time ever, I have FINISHED the book "Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West" and I have to say that I liked it.  This would have been a book that had someone told me kind offhandedly about one thing that happens at the very end of the book to a relatively uneventful character that you don't meet until the last fourth of the book, I wouldn't have read it.  Why you ask?  Because that character is a dog and it dies.  Having five dogs of my very own and already having lost one, I'm very big on my pups, but it isn't even because of that.  It's because I have this thing where I can't handle an innocent dying.  Like I just can't handle it.

And I mean this could be construed as I'm a pro-life stance in politics, but no.  Sorry to those you who think I think that. I'm pro-choice.  I would rather you get rid of your child before it experiences any pain or suffering if you are not ready in any way.  But no, the killing of an innocent upsets because they don't know what they did or why they are dying.   They don't know how to come to that conclusion and it's really just something that's emotionally stressful.  Like if [enter serial crime drama here], the killer kills the dog or cat before taking out the human or I see that.  I cannot watch that episode.  Like the worst thing a killer could do to me is hurt my pets and hurt my animals because they are innocent. 

And I mean like I can get behind some pretty gruesome murders when it comes to adults because I can sort of kind of justify that they did something or knew something that changed their life forever and they got to experience most of what life had to offer.  They also knew what the world was like.  They knew the world was a bitch and cold an indifferent.  You could murder a whole bus full of adults and it still wouldn't have the same emotional impact on me than killing one dog or cat or one child.  It just wouldn't.

But yes, other than that small detail which turned into a very long talk, I think it was a good book.  I liked it a lot.  I enjoyed reading.  It was broken up into chunks big enough to be interesting and short enough to be manageable from day to day things.  I mean the pacing could have picked up.  I think that was one of the issues of why I had picked up this book so many times and failed to finish all the way through until today.  The characters also could have had a little more interaction or made me care about them a little more.  I just for most of the character I didn't care if they lived or died which presented kind of a moral dilemna with some characters because you're supposed to care and you're supposed to have these big moments about their death when you don't care enough about it.

But yeah, overall a good book.  I think that I would recommend it to a few people, but definitely not most people.  Just because it takes a while to get into it and for most people that just won't work.

Beda: Day 22: Video Editing.

Well today was interesting.   I filmed a video at two thirtyish and didn't really want to edit.    And for me that's kind of an alarming sign.   Because I like editing videos.  I'm not very good at it.  I'm quite frankly, probably terrible at editing, but I do like do it.  I like having that time with a video to make it good.   And Not wanting to make it good and not even caring to edit, means I'm not that interested in the raw materials which is worrisome. 

Honestly, I didn't want to edit that video because I didn't like it.  I had no passion for it.  It didn't have my voice.   There was nothing really said in it.   That's a problem.   I did however, watch some YouTube videos by people I really like and one of my friends posted how she didn't feel like her video self the past couple of days.   And that inspired my video.   My video was taking my two lives and kind of conceding that I had them.   It's not that I never talked about my personal life on a video, it's just that there was the weird in between space that I was slipping into.

And out of that, even though I had to distort the color and find ways to make it look better, where you could see my whole face, I really enjoyed the video.   Maybe it wasn't the best sound or video editing, but I did like the video and that's really important to me.   I want to put out products that I like and I want to keep watching again and again.   And in those moments in that video I was very real.  I was the person that I wanted to be.

So the video was a success.   In other news, I haven't done any editing of the novel today.  I should probably edit chapter 3 before bed.    I'm going to do that.   Editing the book is a treat even if it is abnormally long to do so.   I just think there's so much potential for this book to go places.   I don't know if there is another book on the market like it, but I love it.   I love it.  I love that I spent so much time writing it.   And even then, to most people thirty days is nothing.  To me that's a commitment that I don't take lightly in the slightest.   And I like month long challenges.  It makes it easier to manage.   I can tick off days.

I mean look at what we've done here.   Blogs this month make up over half of this blog and I'm proud of that.  I don't know if I'll keep up daily blogging, but I'm certainly going to try.  This is freeing and this is also part of who I am.   I'm a writer through and through and if I didn't write how my day went everyday, where would I be? I don't know, but I certainly love doing it.

And with that, I think I'm going to go.  I still have another page of a paper I have to write as well as getting some sources down.   Don't worry though, I'll be back tomorrow and you'll have a grand ol' time.   Go put on some music and dance.

Beda: Day 21: My Editing Process.

I never knew how exactly hard yet easy it was going to be to edit a novel.  I mean I've written things before and reworked them and gone back and cringed at old work I had sitting on the internet, but revising this is an entirely new ballgame. 

First of all, it's not something I can just do on my computer.  I actually had to print it out so it was easier to read and see what changes I wanted to make.   Mostly because if I don't agree with these changes later, I don't have to make them and I can throw the draft out.   And by throw out, I do mean recycle because that would a lot of paper to just waste on putting in the wrong bin.   Seriously this manuscript is over 60 pages.

It's easy in the fact that this doesn't really feel like my work.  I can critique at a distance and put the much needed edits into it.   Which is something I never thought I would be able to do.   I'm typically more assured in my work than that and it's often not till several years later when I'm bored and decided to have a read at some of my old work that I realize how much I could have used an edit button.   I truly mean that.   But no, that part is actually going remarkably great.   I'm also not at that point where everything is total crap, like writers often go through.  I just I have the distance and that's what I needed.

It's hard in the fact that it is very technically time consuming.  I often have to read paragraphs or sentences over again because I'm not sure how they feel.   I have to mull them around.   And that's a little bit frustrating.   As someone who virtually has a judgment on something the second she is presented with it, this mulling process is fairly long and laborious.   And that maddens me a little bit.   For the past two days I've been editing on and off and I've only gotten through 8 pages.   Not even 8.   Like 7 and 3/4.   And that was only the first two chapters.   There are at least like 20 Chapters in the whole thing.   I don't exactly remember. 

This manuscript has all the words I wrote and I'll always be incredibly proud of that, but I'm really glad I'm taking this time to make it better.   To see what else to do with it.  And I think this is making me a better writer.   I can see what works for me and what doesn't.   And no, I'ven't finshed the novel for this year.   It's still on my list of things to do, but I work best under pressure and I wrote this novel in November, maybe I'll write all my novels via NaNoWriMo.

Maybe in November when NaNoWriMo comes around I'll have to blog about how well things are going without giving any details away because then I'm never motivated to finish.   And I'm determined to write a novel this year.   Again.   Because I like writing.   And While I love doing blogposts, my heart is with the fiction.