Step One: Start a blog!

September 8, 2011

Hey, look! I’m writing an entry! Or, rambling, more like. The whole “goal” thing is really just a disguise for the ability to ramble until you’re bored stiff or think I’m crazy.

Daily goal: Do not lash out at students, even if they have stupid questions

This one will probably be tricky for me. I’ve been working 8-8 in the BU mailroom since August 29th, and it was fine at first, but now classes have started and many, many more boxes have arrived, and I’ve been basically doing double the work as anyone else (a long story, involving BU not having enough staff/not wanting to pay an extra person for two weeks to help out this teensy tiny supervisor). So I’m on the end of my tether, and last night, even if people were nice, I feared I was giving them death glares and was about ready to snap. Or go postal. Har har har.

Weekly goal: do not spontaneously combust; do laundry, clean/organize room, make real food

This whole 8-8 thing has been rather stressful. I still haven’t been able to fully unpack my room, because I get home around 8:30, do an hour of work, get ready for bed, and crash. Fun stuff. Meaning that this weekend I have a heck of a lot of chores to do. The making of real food will be nice. Having to bring lunch and dinner to work is tricky, since it means I have to only bring things that can be microwaved or easy-to-carry stuff. I’ve had some soup, lots and lots of leftover pizza from move-in night, and cheese and crackers. But I have all the ingredients for chicken fettuccini alfredo with broccoli, so I’m excited for the weekend! (I also have to go grocery shopping, though my roommate Sara always says I have plenty of food already, but everything I had was non-perishable, and I’d like some fresh stuff to supplement my emergency supply of canned food—emergency simply being when I’m too lazy/tired to make food). <---Run-on sentence alert!

Monthly writing goal: 5000 words in a new story; edit the old

I’m setting my writing goal low right now, to get the hang of things. That’s about 10 pages, so maybe it’s not that low: if I wrote ten pages a month, in a year I’d have a novel (I’ve figured that one page in a book is about ½-1/3 Word page, meaning it’s three pages to every page I write. So if I write 100 pages, I have between 250-300 book pages. Not a too shabbily-sized book, I’d say). So, upon second thought, regarding how busy I am, 5000 words is sort of impressive. But, I have to prepare for November, which is National Novel Writing Month, in which I must attempt to write 50,000 words. AND there’s only 30 days in that month!

If you haven’t figured it out yet – I’m a writer. I don’t tell many people this for several reasons: 1. I get one of two responses – “That’s so awesome, what do you write???” or “Really? What’s your other plan in life?”
2. To both responses, I hate answering. The first is kind of awkward. Maybe other writers are different, but for me, what is written is meant to be written, not spoken about. It sounds strange out loud. It’s also a highly personal pastime, even if eventually it will (hopefully) be shared with the world. Writing comes from within, and every word on paper could either be likened to a piece of my soul or a drop of blood, depending on how hard I had to work to get that word there. The second is just completely wrong. What someone who isn’t a writer (and I don’t mean a writer in the sense of someone who writes papers for school, or who occasionally writes down story ideas and says “I’ve always wanted to write/publish a book one day”, I mean someone who IS a writer – who is always dreaming, who comes up with ideas at the randomest times, who gets antsy when he/she hasn’t written in too long) doesn’t understand is that it’s not a “plan in life”. It IS life.

As my parents will tell you, recently I’ve had a frustratingly last-minute life-evaluation, meaning what I’d thought I wanted to do since sophomore year changed, and I no longer want to do it, and now I’m figuring out what I want my “job” to be. I think I’ve figured it out, but the reason it’s so hard, is because the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do, down to my bones, is write. It’s a vocation, if you will, and while I realize it’s not as profitable as other vocations nor will it be as easy to reach, it’s the ONLY thing I can 100% see myself doing. So choosing a “backup” job isn’t very easy.

About as easy as publishing. Sara (the “you have too much food” roommate) told me the way to go is getting an internet fan base. You know, become a vlogger or start an internet zine or something. But to get popular that way, you have to have something snazzy, like some high-concept Adjustment Bureau-type thing, or something trendy like zombies. Not like my current story, which is girl falls down hole into magical world, meets strange white rabbit who’s late—errr…I mean, fiddle-playing boy—who leads her home, mishaps, adventures, and general silliness ensues.

I swear I didn’t actually rip-off Alice in Wonderland. It’s more Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, and other such stories wrapped together. And all started one day when I was just sitting in my room and one line of dialogue came to me. Then, I took a fateful car ride with three of my favorite children in which aforementioned fiddle-playing boy was invented…and then on the ride home, more of their antics had inspired more ideas, thus in the span of a day creating about the first three chapters. Then, I went to Edinburgh, saw a carousel in the park, and another chapter was born…not that that’s how most of my inspiration works, but for this story, it was very much “Oh, look at what happened there, that can go in the story!” A hodge-podge of events. (Hodge-podge is my word of the month. Been using it far too often.)

Well, better actually do some work now…