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.]