Camp Session 1 is Over!

Yesterday, at some time in the afternoon, I validated my Camp NaNoWriMo novel, Preternatural Inheritance. (Subtitled Two Fancy Words That Don't Really Mean Anything. Given the protagonist's sense of humor, that's actually pretty reasonable. ) It is a 54,754 word epic about…superheroes. Among other things. It's one of the worst things I've written, although I'm going to fix that when I revise it.

Right now, however, I'm going to take a step back from Winston and his pals and instead focus on my other novel, which I'm going to finish for the August session. It's, like, Alice in Wonderland, but…thing. Gee, I can't wait to write the blurb for the back of the book if this ever gets published. (Does the author even write the back-of-the-book blurb? I should probably know this…)

In conclusion, it is so cool to be a part of the first back-to-back sessions of any OLL event. Yowza. We're making history here, people!

Just a short post today. I'm swinging back and forth between obsessively watching the clock and debating over who to request for my cabin. So many choices! So much pressure! Aaaahhh…

How 4-H Annoyed Me By Criticizing My Writing

*pokes blog* 

Well, I haven't really updated in a while. I must rectify this by telling you a fabulous (and pretty long) tale of adventure, writing, heartbreak, and revenge. The title of the story is How 4-H Annoyed Me By Criticizing My Writing, which also happens to be the title of the post. Fancy that. 

Still have no idea what those numbers mean. I got the picture off Wikipedia.

Yes, a few years ago I was in 4-H. It might just be me, but it wasn't quite as exciting as TV would have you believe. But then I found out that there was a category for the fair for creative writing, and everything was happiness and rainbows and smiling clouds.

And then I found out that for a first year in said category, the word limit was 400 words.

400 words. 

I couldn't write squat in 400 words. Well, it was a long time ago and my writing skills weren't that developed yet. I could write pretty long stuff, but short stories were kind of beyond me. What a foolish, naive child I was.

But I tried. In the end, I had to count some of the words as images and leave a few things out of my word counting in order to stay within limits. I think I had maybe 399 words after that. There's no rule against cheating a tiny bit, is there?

"Actually, there is. That's why it's called cheating."

I slid past the judges at the township fair, which qualified me to go to the county fair. My general outlook on the situation was "W00T! I'm the best!"

After judging was over at the county fair, I skipped into the fine arts building to receive my enormous trophy and check for $1 bazillion dollars. Imagine my surprise to find that my story—the one I had worked so freaking hard to make the most brilliant 400 word story at the whole fair—had gotten a red ribbon.

"Lacks character development," they said.

"Lacks brain cells," I said.

To be fair, it was pretty crappy. Probably the stupidest thing I've written since the Little Kitten books. *shudder* I just couldn't see it through my rose-tinted pride-glasses and childish hubris.

The next year, I was determined to win. I had been left a bitter husk by the critiquing of my little Cinderella story. Contributing to the bitter-husk-factor was the fact that the drawing that I had worked on for hour had gotten a freaking white ribbon. Because the stones were uneven. That's how they are in medieval castles. Geez… Looking back on it, I probably could have done the stones a little better. I think my nostalgia goggles are falling apart.

This year, I could write 500 words. Apparently, a hundred little words can make a huge difference. Or maybe I was just better at writing a year later.

I spent hours—or maybe it was only about twenty minutes, as I was quite an impatient child—writing up detailed character bios for characters I ended up cutting. For those of you keeping track at home, this makes the most character info I have ever written before actually writing the story. In the end, I didn't actually use most of the information I invented. I cut swathes of details, leaving me with three major characters and two minor, which is two more characters than I had the year before.

It paid off. I would have gone to the State Fair, that unattainable epitome of 4-H prowess, 'cept creative writing doesn't have a State Fair category.

Oh well. I got a purple honor ribbon in photography, at least.

We here at Newfallen Mystery Enterprises hope you have enjoyed this random and fairly self-centered excursion into Miss Clepe's backstory while she procrastinates on writing. Cheers!

The Writings of Me

I am back from Chicago!

Unfortunately, the deep dark abyss of my room has not yet yielded my notebook. (By which I mean I haven't actually started looking for it yet. It'll turn up on it's own, I know it!) Until that time, I'm going to post bits and pieces of my Camp NaNoWriMo novel in all of its crappy, unedited glory, complete with sarcastic author's notes in [brackets].

There's this bit, for example:

What was…

What was that…

What was that noise?

What was that noise?

A heavy thump-thump, thump-thump.

Ah. It was the beating of my heart. Probably a good sign. [Yay, word count-uppiting!]

I shifted my hand slightly, and felt a sharp pain in the side of my hand. [I think Claudia just passed out. She hates it when I do that.] I opened my eyes. It took a minute for the ceiling to swirl into focus. A cherub. There was a cherub painted on the ceiling. And some clouds and strategically placed bits of flowing red fabric. I decided I didn't like it.

I looked down and to the side, to where my hand was slowly oozing blood onto the already wet cream carpet. A shard of glass had cut me. It had once been a champagne glass. So that was why the carpet was wet. 

I wondered if I could sit up. There was a throbbing pain in my right leg as well, I realized. Ouch. Like someone had dropped a ceiling beam on me. Apart from my heavy breathing, there was an eerie silence in the room. [I'm having way too much fun hurting him.]

Yeah…

See Ya

Just a note: I'm going to be in Chicago until Sunday night. I will not be taking my laptop, so there is an almost 0% chance that I'll get another post up until Monday.

Instead, take this picture and remember that Omnia loves you:

SHEEP!

Ireland, pt 5: I Lost My Notebook

Look, I'm just going to stop making excuses for not writing. Camp has been controlling my life. But now I'm back on track, so I'm good. It's cool, it's cool! Right?

What's not good is that I lost my notebook. Hey, I don't claim to be a person who can hold on to something for half an hour without losing it in the deep, dark abyss that is my room. I'll try to write from memory, but, as we all know, my memory is crap.

Okay, let's see… Oh! I remember what I did that day! We went back to the Tall Ships Festival and while we was selling CDs, Dean and I got hassled by a small group of ten-year-old Irish boys. It was hilarious!

…

That's all I remember. What else did I do? Think, think…

I think…I woke up. Yes, I'm fairly sure I did that. I remember having breakfast, but…let's just say I had yogurt. When in doubt, I had yogurt for breakfast. That was my staple food in Ireland.

Yogurt.

Yogurt.

Well, after that…I went and picked strawberries! Let's just say I picked strawberries. And while I was picking those strawberries — which tasted really nasty, because I had just brushed my teeth — in came the peacock, over the garden wall!

This story interesting so far? Good.

While I was shying away from said peacock, him ignored me and walked through a clump of vines on the wall.

"Since when were there vines on the wall?"

Aw, crap. The exorcism didn't hold. Shut up a minute, Claudia.

Curious, I followed him and found myself in a glade of pine trees.

"Here we go again…"

Pine trees, yeah? So I followed the peacock to a river, where there was a dock and a tiny boat. I got in the boat with the peacock, and then he bit the rope keeping us by the dock and we sailed down the river. Well, boated. There wasn't a sail.

Later, we drifted to a stop next to a large, gleaming city populated entirely by tiny owls. Owls, yeah. While the peacock and I were walking around the city, it became apparent that the original human inhabitants had all died and disintegrated for some reason.

"Now you're just quoting the synopsis of your original novel idea, the one you dropped in favor of that superhero story."

The peacock and I entered the royal library, where we found a scroll. This scroll explained what happened to the citizens of Pelycis —

"You're going to have to get going if you want to make it back in time to be hassled by small Irish boys."

Oh no, I forgot!

Um, then the peacock turned on me and chased me into a portal, which brought me out in the living room of my cottage. I got dressed and then we went to the Tall Ships Festival. The end.

[DISCLAIMER: None of the above may be true.]

Ireland, pt 4: Ships Are Tall

I wrote most of that morning, as Camp NaNoWriMo had just started and I was freaking out that I wouldn't be able to finish. Later, we went to the Waterford Tall Ships Festival very very early, because the people we were going with were playing music and stuff.

After walking around for a while and going on a pretty cool ship with an unfortunate name (the Christian Radich/Radish), I complained of hunger. My parents, being the indulging parents that they are, bought me a banana and Nutella crepe. Have I ever mentioned that Nutella may be the best food on the planet?

Oh my gawd. WANT.

By this time, I was starting to feel a leetle bit sick to my stomach. It wasn't the Nutella and banana-y goodness, I promise. As we walked around town I slowly turned into a tiny, flesh-eating ball of rage and stomach pain. Or maybe that's just because we stopped at a library (a really COOL library) and I read the beginning of a zombie novel.

And then, we went to a chip shop. I did not have chips, as I was in pain. At the beginning of the trip, at least, it seemed like the universe was conspiring against me, and I would never have any chips. EVER. (But then a few days later I had cheese chips on an Irish beach. BOO-YAH!)

Funny how the first picture on Google Images of "chips" is of British chips, and not Pringles or something.

And then we walked back to the place where the people were music-ing and I sat on a brick. And then I got to sit on a chair and then we left.

THINGS SEEN AT WATERFORD:

- Japanese Teletubby balloons
- People dressed as giant blue bird-alien things
- A Guinness picnic in front of the stage
- Creepy stalker bees

And then we played International Rummy until midnight while others were at a pub. I lost.

Deathly Hallows

I saw the last ever Harry Potter movie last night at midnight. If you don't like Harry Potter or are trying to avoid spoilers, you might wanna skip this whole post. Look! I have travel diary above!

Yes, I went in costume and carried a wand. While I was holding down the fort in the theater and my mom was buying me candy, I took a picture for the girls sitting behind me, and one of them asked if she could hold my wand during the picture. ^_^ (That was a very long, confused sentence.) And I got to sit next to Hagrid…who kept checking the time on his iPhone.

(Random sidenote: I also saw a preview for the second RDJ Sherlock Holmes movie. Benedict is my favorite Sherlock ever, but I still want to see it.)

Okay, back on track. I noticed a couple of things in the movie. One, Professor McGonagall enchants the Hogwarts statues to bring them to life. In the first book/movie, she casts a somewhat similar spell on the chess set protecting the Philosopher's Stone. Two, in the Room of Requirement, there are a bunch on Cornish pixies that fly out of a pile of junk. Could they possibly be the same pixies that Lockhart let loose in their second year? There was something else, but now I don't remember what it is.

The entire theater erupted into applause when Molly Weasley shouted at Bellatrix Lestrange. Also at just about everything Neville did. Can you say character development? Wow. (Emily, Claire, stop laughing.)

I swear, if there had been just five more seconds of Snape crying, I would have started bawling my eyes out…more than I already was. But I couldn't help thinking there was something I missed snickering at…it's on the tip of my brain…

Ah, there it is.

Okay, I think I'm done now.

Oh and weren't all the li'l kids adorable? And—

Ireland, pt 3: Butter

(Sorry to leave you hanging like that. It won't happen again, again.)

So, I woke up pretty early the next day. Before anyone else did, I mean. Waaaay before everyone else did. I snuck downstairs like a secret agent, using a trick I learned from Nancy Drew, and spent several long, antagonizing minutes trying to open a granola bar as quietly as possible. After The Parents woke up, I had toast and took a shower before going strawberry picking.

It should be noted that I have absolutely no memory of this. I'm just getting it from my carefully jotted down notes.

That day we took a car ride to Cork, and it apparently took long enough for me to initiate Emergency Boredom Buster Level 5: Hangman on my dad. I do remember that it took us a while to find a parking space for our giant epic van.

Let's just pretend it looked like that, all right?

And so we went to the mall. There was some really cool and very well done graffiti in the ladies' room, and I can assure you that I'm kicking myself for leaving my phone in Indianapolis and therefore not getting a picture. There was also a really cool escalator.

I got a cheese and onion sandwich for lunch—it's better than it sounds…kind of—and then I, my parents, and some other people set off for the butter museum!

Yes, there is really a butter museum in Cork.

Anyhoo, I spent most of my time there sitting in the back stairwell listening to a repeating radio short about butter. I thought it was awesome. That's just the sort of person I am.

After leaving the butter museum, we walked around Cork for an eternity. While we were in a bookstore we saw some guy get arrested in front of the camera store across the street, the same camera store where my mom's camera was getting fixed. …And that's all I remember from Cork. La-di-da!

Well, that and the fact that the parking garage must have been designed by B. S. Johnson. It took us ten or fifteen minutes to maneuver our large van out of that stupid parking space. But we did it! Specifically, Deb, the driver, did it. She must be some sort of goddess.

Okay, so my notes say we went to a museum. What museum? I can't remember what museum we went to! But, apparently, we went back to the cottages afterwards and stopped for a bite to eat on the way. And we stopped at one of those roadside castle once owned by Sir Raleigh. They're everywhere in Ireland. It's like a plague.

Hmm…a plague of castles. I like it.

Got home. Slept. The end.

Camp!

Somebody please put me out of my misery. It's Day 11 of Camp NaNoWriMo, and I have 10,000 words less than I should. Hey, ten thousand isn't that big a number, right?

Apparently it is, seeing as it's more than my whole word count so far.

I am going to fail so epically. Stupid characters not giving me any new inspiration. Stupid Felix being stupid.

But even if I do an epic fail, this comforts me. Even if I am going to fail, I can still inspire future writers. I—!

…I can go write productively now…

You'll have more tales from my trip to Ireland as soon as I get my word count up a bit. Now where did that random plot twist generator go…

Ireland, pt 2: Sleep Much Want

Sorry to leave you hanging like that, but I was really tired and stressed after being awake for 20 hours straight. Now I'm not as tired and stressing over only having about five thousand words done for Camp NaNoWriMo. Eep.

What's more fun than going through airport security? What's fun to pretend to crush while looking out an airplane window? What would I rather do than have jet lag?

The answer to all three is "anything and everything." It also pretty much sums up that whole thing that was happening that very annoying and stressful Tuesday.

Well, I left the plane minus one cell phone carrying pictures of the Epic Emily. (Which, I have recently found out, never actually made it on the plane. It's still in the States somewhere, and Friends are looking for it, after finding and losing it again. I love them.)

I waited and waited and waited at three different airports, a car rental place, and at the cottages for some reason I can't remember I was sleep deprived stop looking at me like that!

Anyway, cottages. Five of 'em. With a sheep/goat/cow pen adjacent. I just can't enjoy farm animals anymore, after having cleaned up after them for… Wait, was that only two years? Wow. Seemed like longer.

Not very much like that at all.

But that's a story for another day.

There's also the peacock, which makes this ungodly noise like my cat crying to be let into my room while I'm trying to write because I'm so behind on my word count *sob*, and a lot of other birds.

Pretty bird.

After pretty much passing out in my bed, I was dragged, feebly kicking and screaming, for a hike. Well, hike doesn't really do it justice. It was more wandering around with my parents and the lone other under-18-year-old of our giant group, trying to find a ruined castle.

Guess what. There wasn't a castle.

(Actually, my dad and I found the castle later, but that's another day. And it wasn't a castle, it was a church.)

So we walked back to the cottages and had soup and cheese and bread with the rest of our group. Then I kind of passed out in my bed again. The End.

Next time on Newfallen Mystery, Omnia climbs out the living room window and runs around the farm barefoot. 

No, Really, I'm Not Dead (Or: My Trip To Ireland: My Own Backyard)

So sorry for not updating you about my absolutely fantastic voyage across the sea. Okay, some parts were a bit less fantastic than others, like when I got lost at the park or being very very very bored at the Guinness Brewery, but some parts really were fantastic, like The Long Room at Trinity College and fresh cheese chips.

Which are French fries in the States, by the way. In case you didn't know. But now you do.

Be warned: This might be a very long post, especially if I decide to try to be funny.

Part one of my journey to the Emerald Isle actually took place in my own proverbial backyard.

Er, my old own proverbial backyard.

Unfortunately, there are no surviving pictures of this stage, so I'm just going to search up pictures on Google Images to illustrate the happenings.

After a four-hour drive and one strawnilla milkshake, I arrived on the doorstep of my awesome friend Emily, who I haven't seen in a while.

Actually, that looks a little bit like us. Just a little bit. Not at all, really.

We played Parcheesi with her brothers, made mini-pizzas, and hung out with our other friend Claire when she arrived. After Other Friend left, Emmers and I fell asleep on the sectional after watching Night at the Museum.

Lessee, what happened the day after that…

Oh, right. Wait, I forget. I remember we went shopping, but everything apart from that and the stuff between the pillow factory and the pirana breeding tank is kind of a blur. But I do remember that the next morning I had toast while watching TV, and then trundled off to the airport, where I spent a lot of time being bored out of my skull.

It wasn't quite that shiny.

We then flew to Newark with the rest of our group, and then spent several more hours sitting around. I ate a pretzel. Almost immediately after getting on the plane, I started messing with the screen and watched some movies. Dinner was better than roast beast compared to usual airplane food (that was a weird analogy…) and there were a lot of good movies. I watched Mythbusters, This Is Spinal Tap, and part of Cars before getting bored.

Before you ask, no, I did not get any sleep. I did listen to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, though.

That doll thing is staring at me…

Next time on Newfallen Mystery, Omnia monologs about sleep deprivation and explains what happened to her phone in the middle of laughing at peacocks. Claudia might put in an appearance.