Writer's Updates

Some News

2010-03-05T21:17:00.002-05:00

I haven't posted in the longest time.... I have lots to tell you!
last weekend was the state debate tournament, and me and my partner placed 12th in the state as a pair! PLUS, our team was named "team of the year" - in other words: STATE CHAMPIONS! all this is down to our wonderful coach, who is the nicest, sweetest person on earth, and the best coach in the league and possibly the whole wide world. :) so peace and love to the whole debate team, i loved working with you all!!!!
Also, I had an FBLA (future business leaders of america) competition today, and i competed in public speaking. though i don't know my rankings yet, i find out on tuesday and i will be sure to let you know. i think i did well. :)
anyway i have to go at the moment, but more later <3

Editing

2010-02-06T20:40:00.002-05:00

I have been sadly unable to write anything as of late. I beg forgiveness for this lapse in literary brilliance. ;)
Rather than frustrate myself by trying to write new chapters that won't come, I decided to start editing. While the first couple of chapters of Life As I Know It are still to raw for me to even touch right now, I have begun going through and editing some of the later ones.... It was a good idea, because I've spotted quite a few mistakes and awkward phrasings..... Other than that, nothing to report.
cyaz :)

Oops....

2010-02-05T19:38:00.003-05:00

Yah...... I've been meaning to write..... i swear..... but i've been busy.... and away.... yah. oops. :)
So anyways, i'm sad to say that i have written absolutely NOTHING xept for school work and a lobbying speech. Now, perhaps you are wondering why I wrote a lobbying speech. Well. Allow me to explain.
This past weekend, I went to something called the L'Taken Seminar, which is a 4 day seminar in Washington DC run by the Religious Action Center (the legal/lobbying division of the Reform Jewish Movement) for Reform Jewish teens from all over the US. Throughout the weekend, we attended classes on issues of social justice, saw presentations made by people who were homeless and a woman who was disabled, did a lobbying simulation, did a simulation of the Knesset (the Israeli governing body), went to the Holocaust museum, went to the Mall (I went to Air & Space and the National Gallery), walked around Georgetown, ate dinner and shopped at Pentegon Row, and, most importantly, wrote a speech and presented it (along with the 8 others of my delgation) to the senators and the congressman of my state. The entire experience was amazing, and a ton of fun. I enjoyed every it of it - except maybe the dramatic fire (dalse alarm - it was only a burst steam pipe) that lead to the evacuation of the entire hotel and lasted from 10:30pm to about 12:45am. Even that was fun, though: try about 200 (the other 100 were asleep) teens singing Buttercup at midnight. It's an experience lol.
That's all for now.... cyaz.

New York and Life As I Know It

2010-01-24T18:55:00.010-05:00

Woot woot new york was so awesome. we had a ton of funfunfunfunfunfunfun. we saw West Side Story which was good (thought maybe not quite what i expected from broadway... idk, a little disappointing), we went to a rlly cool restaurant with excellent singing waiters, and they let us walk around time square for half an hour which was awesome. so yah. anyway.

i decided to have a little fun, so i have some pictures of characters from Life As I Know It:
Smokey
Adele

and Adele again

Cassandra

Gishlah

Fate

that covers some of the characters.... i'll get you more another time :)

New York

2010-01-22T20:06:00.003-05:00

Guess what? I'm going to New York tomorrow! haha yes!! The music department at our school is taking the students that take preforming courses (concert band, chorus, choral ensemble, jazz band) to see a Broadway show :D We are leaving in the morning, then when we get to new york we are going to have lunch, then we get a little bit of free time, then the entire troupe is going to walk to broadway and see West Side Story! It's going to be amazing!!!!
If you're lucky, I may even pick up some inspiration to write. ;) at the very least, I'll have something to post about next time. :D

Exams

2010-01-20T15:28:00.002-05:00

ahhhhhh. ok. so you know that feeling, where your eyes are popping out of your head, your brain is melting out your ears, you nose is running like a hose pipe, your temples are pounding, your throat feels like there are knives being dragged up and down it, your joints feel like they belong to the tin man (before he was oiled) and your nauseous? That was the spectacular physical form in which I took two exams, geometry (honors) and physics. I can say that I passed those exams with about as much truthfulness as I can say that I am currently fit as a fiddle. woohoo.
being sick, i have written nothing, done nothing, tried to do nothing. i'm going to go continue to do nothing. ttfn.

Lalala lala

2010-01-16T21:46:00.002-05:00

Not studying is being most productive in the way of my writing. For example... I'm here! lol. I'm mostly working on my new story, but for some reason the juices aren't really flowing today. The wording isn't coming out right. Darn.
Well I'm doing my best, and I guess I'm making some progress. Not enough for my liking, but some is better than none. I've also edited a chapter of Life As I Know It.
Wow. I thought I'd been productive, but looking back I realize that I haven't actually been productive in literary areas at all. but i did...... (drum roll please!)
HAVE MY FIRST DRIVING LESSON!!!!!!!! WOOHOOO!!!!! my dad took me out and let me drive, for the first time today. i'll be starting official drivers' ed in february :) tis my good news lol. gonna go on facebook now, cyaz!

eep. exams.

2010-01-15T21:09:00.002-05:00

Doing my best to keep it going. Or maybe I'm just procrastinating studying for my physics exam, which I desperately need to do, but unfortunately I can't quite bring myself to do it because my brain hurts so much. I'm actually freaking out, because I need an A on this exam, and I don't think I'm going to get one..... so.... yah. bad.
I'm still working on writing my new idea, but it's going well. Soon I will be at a point where I will ask a few friends to read and review it for me. Then it will go on textnovel. :)
I'm gonna go work on it now. and not study...

2010-01-14T19:00:00.002-05:00

It's the fourteenth. Epic fail. I am ashamed of myself. But I had homework, and practice, and exams are next week....and my excuses are lame....I give up.
So anywayz, i started this new story, which i'm pretty excited about. It doesn't have a title or anything, I just wrote a couple of pages. I'm considering entering it in the new textnovel contest, but I want to write a little bit and see where it goes before I actually put it on the site and stuff. But I think it's pretty cool, and it might be interesting, if i write it well, which, of course, i will try to do. I don't know how it's going to go yet though. It' pretty tough.
I haven't updated anything else at all, so nothing to report on that front.
If any of you are at all interested in my personal life (or lack thereof) i'm headed to New York to see West Side Story on broadway on the 23rd and I'm going to D.C. on the 29th, so I'm really looking forward to the end of January. :D
Ooooh and also I though of this thing that I want to try, but first I need a little help. So, I get the dicctionary.com word of the day email, and i was thinking, i should start a story, and i'll post a little every day, and it'll be a plot totally driven by the word of the day; so like, i'd have to use the word in the story that day. but first i need a premise for like, the first chapter. i figure i can go from there, but i need a character to start off with! :)

Working On It

2010-01-03T17:35:00.002-05:00

It's been four days; i know, i know. Sorry. again. I'm trying, really I am. Trying.
Well, tomorrow it's back to school. Lucky me. Unfortunately, this means blogging opportunities are going to be a bit thin on the ground. Plus, I'm not going to be able to do much writing. At all. Of course I will do my best... I can't be disappointing all of you, now can I? No promises though. AP Chemistry is taking up 70% of my time, track is taking up 20%, and school, debate, dance, and robotics are taking up the other 10%. It doesn't leave anything left over for textnovel time. :\
So, I guess I really have nothing to say right now. Maybe I'll go work on some other stuff...

Still Here (sort of)

2009-12-31T15:48:00.002-05:00

Ok, so it's been three days. That doesn't count as breaking my promise yet, does it? I've been busy! Homework, track practice, i went to the mall... okay my excuses are pathetic. I give up and submit my humble apologies.
At the moment, I'm sort of at a loss as to what to do with Matt in Life As I Know It.... cuz all this stuff is happening to the other characters and i haven't written a chapter about him in forever, but i just can't figure out what to do with him! I know what will happen eventually, but i still have no clue how to get there! this is so frustrating. :P
However, at least I did not waste my day in total idleness.... i wrote a new poem for The Calm Ensues about my year, just in time for New Year's Eve. :) I don't feel like it's really an example of my best work, but I hadn't posted anything there in so long, I felt I had to do something. Even if it's not perfect, I felt like maybe it was better than doing nothing at all.
Slices of Pie has also dried up a little, and I'm not sure what to do about that...... I'll have to think. Interview some people. Research song lyrics and quotes. etc.

This is kind of a pathetic blog post. I'm actually really sorry. But hey, happy new year!! May your year be full of happiness, inspiration, and literary success. Cheers! ;)

Keeping Faith

2009-12-28T23:33:00.002-05:00

well, here I am, as promised. Posting updates. Since I have made no literary progress whatsoever, i will simply write about my day. Just for exercise.
So this is how things went: I got up at eight this morning (on vacation. ew. yuck) and went to track practice. at practice we ran ladders (100m, 200m, 300, 300, 200, 100, with 2.5 lap warm up and 2.5 lap cool down. plus 100 crunches and 60 push-ups). it was a generally miserable experience, but i shaved a full second off my 100 time, which is good. i now run a 14s 100m, which is......decent. sort of. lol. i am a failure at running, but track is good for me. similar to blogging.
anyway, when i got home, i ate, i learned a torah portion, i practiced piano, and then sat down to do chemistry hw, feeling very accomplished and motivated, when the phone rang and ruined this lovely situation.
At 3:30, me and my best friend - the source of my distraction - arrived at the mall. My friends, I announce to you: I went to every single store in the mall today, in only just over 5 1/2 hours. That is skill. Skill I tell you. I bought some tshirts, an abercrombie sweater, bath&body works perfume and body wash (OMG THEY WERE HAVING A MASSIVE SALE THERE; EVERYTHING WAS LIKE 75% OFF!!!! lol), 3 giant rings, more tshirts, a birthday present for my friend, some earrings, ice cream, and.... i think that's it. go me. :)
At home, i played some wii, checked my email, etc, and was about to go to bed WHEN:
i realized i hadn't written on my blog. and it would be a poor resolution indeed if i broke it on the first day, so here I am, telling you all about my day. NOW i am going to bed.

PS - i got a letter from my pen pal. i'm oober excited. i <3 getting letters and look forward to answering hers tomorrow. there. now i'm done.

An End To Solutary Neglect

2009-12-27T22:49:00.002-05:00

So clearly I have been neglecting this blog very badly. I feel very guilty about this because while I'm sure no one actually reads this, I consider it very important to right often, on varying topics, in different places. Also, I find that this is a good place to write down ideas and things, and then i can reference back to this, which is nice.
So, right now, there's not a whole lot going on for me on textnovel, but i'm hoping to complete either life as i know it or slices of pie in time for the contest. Probably Life As I know It, because i like that one more, at the moment anyway. I have a plan going for that one, but unfortunately i'm having trouble putting it into actual formulated chapters and words. ahhh. I'm working on it though. Promise. :D
Besides that, there's really nothing going. I'll add poems as I come up with them, but I don't have time to sit down and write legit poetry, unfortunately. sorry about that. well, i's gots to go now. ;) i promise to stop neglecting thsi an start actually doing stuff. :D

school started

2009-08-31T16:02:00.002-04:00

Today was the first day of school - just thought i'd share. ;) Unfortunately, the updates to my stories are going to really start to slow down now, because I have to concentrate on my work. In fact, I already have a mountain of work, and it's only the first day. So so sorry.
I want an opinion - how much more does slices of pie need before i finish it? because i have the ending all planned out and ready, but im not sure when to use it. I can't decide if it's long enough or anything, and I'm not sure i want to end it yet.... so idk. lemme know.
i finally saw my co-author today....... with luck 'all across time' will be under way now. :)
now i have to go work on that mountain of hw i mentioned. bleh. :(

2009-08-24T20:48:00.002-04:00

I am continuing to work on the slices of pie soundtrack, and will hopefully be posting it soon. Hopefully.
I'm also officially back from vacation, so I will be able to work on my stories properly. Like I said before, I am having trouble finding time to work on Life As I Know It, but I promise it will get done eventually. I like these characters too much to let their stories go unfinished like so many of my other ones. I even know where the story's going. I just need to write it. :)
Other than that, I don't have much news. I'm pushing 50 votes for slices of pie, and im gonna have to do something special for that...... hmm. ideas are welcome, cuz idk yet lol.

just some news

2009-08-15T18:46:00.002-04:00

I am considering the playlist for the soundtrack to slices of pie. I have some ideas, but I'm not sure they all fit, and I'm not sure if there are others i should include.... so i welcome all ideas on this subject.
anyway, 'all across time' needs some serious work, but i don't have time, and i also need some time to confer with my co-author. who seems to be unreachable at the moment, lol. but that will work out eventually i'm sure.
life as i know it has taken a bit of a backseat right now, despite the fact that it is my favorite to work on. i promise i will get back to it properly soon.

Did you know......?

2009-08-07T18:49:00.002-04:00

DID YOU KNOW.....

that Akili, in Life As I Know It, is based on and described as my owl ring, bought for $5.80 at Forever 21?

that all the quotes and last words included in Slices of Pie are real?

that All Across Time was an idea born of absolute boredom in 4th period study, and finalized on the way to lunch?

that several of the poems in The Calm Ensues were submitted as my English class project, and I received an A+?

that I spend hours looking at sites of name meanings, trying to find the perfect names for my characters?

that the title 'Slices of Pie' was jokingly suggested to me by a friend?

that I came up with my pen name in honor of my tap teacher, who's name is Krystal?

just some random fun facts. for your entertainment. :D

2009-08-05T22:30:00.002-04:00

What a screwed up time to be writing. broke up with my boyfriend for no freakin reason. no freakin reason. just out of no where. i dont know how im gonna get through this one. it was such an awful mistake, i wish i'd never done it.
my stories are probably going to suffer accordingly. so sorry.

2009-08-02T22:28:00.002-04:00

Ah I hope you enjoyed the quote chapter, it was very very very fun to write. "now, now, my good man, this is no time for making enemies." ah voltaire was a genius.
well anyway i had this FABULOUS idea for another story, but im not gonna write it (yet) because i don't really hav time for it, and it's a story that might take a bit of research and reading on my part. however, i hav written it down in a safe place, and when the time comes, the true story will become known to the world. :D pretty excited about it, truth be told. it was my little brother that gave me the idea, actually. he messed up the name of the movie he was watching, and i kinda liked it, and it got me thinking, what kind of story could have that title? and it came to me. POOF! it was great. well anyway, g2g. xox

Not Sure

2009-07-27T20:38:00.002-04:00

I'm becoming rather annoyed with this whole editor's choice thing lol. b/c while my story is editor's choice, i feel like i have to work on that one, but it's the other story i rlly enjoy writing so it takes time and effort away from that one, which incidentally was doing quite well too. grrrr lol. but oh well. there will be time enough to finish both i suppose.
anything else you'd like to know? i'm a wee bit lazy today, so i'm not in the mood to write any kind of long post.

2009-07-24T13:23:00.001-04:00

EDITOR'S CHOICE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WOOHOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
for any who have not noticed, my story "slices of pie" is now editor's choice!!! for this reason, i will, for the time being, be focusing on this story, and probably posting less on my other ones. please read, vote, comment and follow my story :)
i don't have much else to add now, but maybe i'll post later.

2009-07-23T13:45:00.003-04:00

Just giving an update as is expected of me :)
anyone notice the owl's name? akili means wisdom, with swahili origins. fun. i had an absolutely brilliant idea for the owl:

*******WARNING: SPOILER AHEAD!!! EXPLAINS A PLANNED ENDING(or a bit of it)OF LIFE AS I KNOW IT*********

So, i decided i really liked the owl, and i liked writing about him. so i was like, "he needs a bigger role than the one i gave him." cuz he wasnt gonna appear after they left cassandra's house. But then his nickname, cassie, gave me an idea. first because a nickname indicates a close relationship. but also, the name means "she who entangles men." so how perfect would it be if Akili were in love with cassandra? and she's in love with him too. they were gonna be married, and someone (an evil sorceress probably, or some such thing) turned akili into an owl to spite cassandra with whom she is enemies. what do you think?

*******SPOILER OVER**********

sorry about that. i couldn't resist sharing my brilliant idea :) i do so love talking animals. i hav four in the story, and plans of more to come. am i overdoing it? idk, someone tell me if i am, please.

incidentally i changed the name of the poetry collection, now entitled "the calm ensues" because it is a more creative title and i like it better lol. it is taken from a line from the chapter 3 poem. :)

i need ideas for a cover for Life As I Know It, and for The Calm Ensues. please share any ideas you have for a good title image :)

New Story!

2009-07-20T22:21:00.002-04:00

So, I started a new story, called Slices of Pie. My main character, a depressed girl, is named Adrina, after a long name search. I decided that a name that means happiness is suitable irony for my story.
I don't really have much to say, lol. In case anyone cares, the name Papillion, the name of my main character in Life As I Know It, is a direct translation of butterfly into french. Named for her rather scatterbrained state. Kampé, Papillion's mother, is a variation on a hideous monster of Greek mythology - I didn't especially like her as a person :)Cassandra, the 159 year old seer, is named for Greek mythology too - Cassandra was a famous seer, living in Troy, known to the population as being mad, just like the Cassandra of my story.
A poem I wrote recently, the one that was posted last on textnovel, i thought maybe you'd like to know where that one came from. odd poem isn't it? I was really irritated with this guy, and everything I did that day just reminded me of him and it was so annoying. So i started writing a poem about it, and he really likes tongue twisters, so i wrote so much of it in alliteration. haha, just in case you were wondering, cuz that was a pretty bizarre poem, now that i think on it.
well that's my update for today, just sharing some random facts of my stories that i thought you could potentially find interesting :)

First update :)

2009-07-18T18:41:00.001-04:00

How exciting! My first post on this blog. :)
this will be a joint blog for all my textnovel stories: "Life As I Know It," "Poetry And, Well... Poetry," and "All Across Time (not yet published, and that title is subject to change lol)"
In this blog, I will be explaining my choices of names and other things, as I am a huge fan of everything symbolic, and many names have a meaning or a specific purpose. I will also explain reasoning behind plot, inspiration behind poetry etc. Among other things, i also intend to notify my readers of any changes in previous chapters (to avoid confusion and so you know to read them lol), poll people for their opinions, and answer any questions that come up.
I love (LOVE) being contacted so email me, comment, comment on textnovel, whatever. i like to know who reads this, so commenting here would be great. i appreciate any and all feedback. :)