This title was already here before I decided on it
13 Sep 2010 Leave a Comment
in Creative writing, Personal Tags: 35 days, Following the Gay Umbrella, revelations, stories, writing
Er, hi. I’m sure you know me, I’m the girl who runs this joint. … Yeah, no, I haven’t been around for a bit, but I can explain that one — you see, there were things that came up and … Ok, look, it doesn’t really even matter; I have toe-socks, and hence any argument you can present on the subject of me having to have posted in this blog instead of doing whatever it is that I have done last week (mostly very unexciting stuff anyway, like trying to not die and having vigorous moodswings) is invalid.
See? Totally compels anything you can propel at me. … Yeah, I’ve even descended to the realms of cheap humour.
Who am I kidding? I was in those realms to begin with, ha! So, hi. I’m back now. And I’m going to pretend that last week didn’t happen, blog-wise, incidentally — because I find that when I’m feeling somewhat calm (if tired; but that might be because I didn’t sleep overly much on the weekend and DID sleep well last night, ironically and incredibly annoyingly enough, since I had to get up this morning and it was ANNOYING; maybe I could try to trick some sleep into me by telling my body that I have to get up at seven on a morning when I can sleep in after all, huh) and un-stressed, I don’t exactly want to begin doing something that might bring that back upon me. I’m going to do the daily challenges probably on a day-to-day basis from here on, again, but I won’t account for any lost days. Sorry! And welcome back, by the way.
Last week was both eventful and uneventful. There were many SACs and a practice exam from English — the latter of which was actually a pleasant surprise for me. I’ve never before been able to plan and write three full essays in three hours (and I even had half an hour to spare!), and I was kind of worried about that, to be honest. I suppose that you really don’t know what you can do before you try… It’s weird how, even when you haven’t done it before, somehow your mind (or at least mine does) accommodates to the present circumstances and copes with them, if only you have enough skill to pull it off. So weeeird. I don’t know if this is common for a human being, but I’ve rather recently (meaning in the past few years or so) become increasingly aware of how many things I actually do subconsciously. My discoveries almost frighten me, because it seems as if consciously, there is precious little I can do — whereas my subconscious is probably the most brilliant thing that exists on this planet.
So this is totally an exaggeration, but so what? I like my subconscious (ha, I just totally wrote “subsconscious” — I suppose that that scone I ate today totally left an impression on my brain as it did in my stomach [and my tastebuds, my dear GOD], too), and I also like finding out things that my subconscious had already figured out far later. Does anyone else do that — like, totally have this massively awesome solution to a problem, go back to whatever it is that they were having problems with and realise that, without actually noticing it, they had already begun applying the solution to the problem? I do this in writing SO MUCH that I don’t really even pay attention to it anymore.
Who am I kidding, it’s so fucking freaky that of course I pay attention to it all the time, probably fail and rant at my amused significant other for a while, after which he pats me on the shoulder and tells me that he knew it was going to happen all along. Seriously, this happened with one of my characters, in my novel (which I haven’t been writing for aaaages, but then again, I haven’t been doing much fun stuff for ages, either). Somewhere around chapter 20-ish, I had the abrupt realisation that he was gay (just a bit of background information: this wouldn’t be necessarily a surprising thing, considering that this is me, and I’ve been a major fan of slash [google it, I dare you], though it’s kind of dying now; however, I wasn’t necessarily PLANNING on making the guy gay, since I already have Dee, who is as omnisexual as can be). This was before my significant other had stopped reading the new chapters of my novel, and he just smiled at me and said “oh, I saw that one coming.” And it’s not a one-off thing, either: I look at some of the other things that I’ve decided to implement only later in the novel, then go back to some of the earlier chapters and realise that I was dropping hints about it along the way.
It is MASSIVELY freaky, and simultaneously incredibly awesome. That thing they say about stories writing themselves? SO TRUE.
Speaking of which, I’ve left myself a note in my phone asking for me to write a blog-post about language and sentence-structure. Since I’m feeling kind of happy and light-hearted today, I don’t think I’ll launch into a full discussion about what language means to me and how much I love it, but I might mention how much it annoys me every time my English teachers ask me to write shorter sentences. In fact, the whole premise of the English exam annoys me for the same reason. The best example to explain this is probably to use the context task (remember that essay I posted? That same task). The task is to write a piece reflecting on your ideas and viewpoints on the prompt by using “big ideas” from one of the texts we’ve studied specifically for this task in English. However, that’s not really the gist of the task — the gist of the task is to make it incredibly clear that you are a good writer and you have clear, understandable ideas; and, of course, to make it relatively easy to follow your logic. This infuriates me, because sometimes I feel like I somehow have to dumb down my ideas — or make them “more complex” deliberately, because saying stuff like “everything is real” is too simple for this task, as is grouping every nuance of a reality under one simple banner (which is something I am wont to do). Anyway, this means that I’m not allowed to express myself as I would LIKE to express myself, or to the extent that I’m able to express myself.
Along the same lines, my writing style uses a lot of long sentences and brackets (as I’m sure you’ve noticed), because that’s how I think — I think in looong thoughts, beginning at one point and then following through, sometimes making notes on the way, to the logical end of that sentence. Sometimes I let the sentence run long only because it would sound … the opposite of fluent (what the hell is that, anyway?) if I just cut it off there. I’ve always been taught that long, complex sentences are a sign of a good writer — though I do agree that if all sentences are long, the whole thing might be rather difficult to follow, and that less experienced writers (hell, I do it sometimes, too; and I’m not really _THAT_ experienced — I’m just saying as a general rule, not compared to myself) can’t always pull it off coherently.
Eh, well. What can you do?
Ok, I noticed that I’ve answered Day 21′s prompt and added that to the beginning of the previous post just to notify of the filling of that. I also decided I’m skipping Day 22, because I’ve got no very old picture of me on this computer, and I REALLY cannot be bothered booting my pc up for the sake of one blogpost (and I still want to go play Kingdom Hearts: BBS for at least an hour before I go to bed and pass out).
Day 23: Three things you want to do before you die
I suppose that this is another one of those prompts that ask you to be all epic and reveal all the grand masterplans you have for life — but like you saw in the whole prompt that I described the apartment I want to live in (day 10, I think — I’m not sure), I don’t exactly have any really cool plans for my life. And that’s really the way I like it — I don’t want to visualise this epic life for me, who really doesn’t want it. I’ve never wanted to be an astronaut, though I’ve loved looking up at the stars and studying the constellations. Well, that’s not entirely true, when you talk about it as a metaphor: I do have a lot of ambition, but I think that most of that ambition actually stems from my understanding of my own skill; I believe that there is much that I can do, and since I have the ability, I also have the partial responsibility to do as well as I can. Also, there is a certain satisfaction you get from succeeding…
But that wasn’t the prompt at all. Three things I would like to do before I die… I want to go back to our summer cottage in Finland, because that’s one place that I miss, back at the freezing country with its even colder people. Sometimes you need to surround yourself with nature, and I find the Finnish forests and lakes beautiful and well-suited for that task. Plus, I associate that place with warm summer rain, summer vacation, saunas, peace, midnight sun (oh GOD I miss that — it seems like the summers here aren’t just quite light enough)… pokémon, oddly enough. It’s just somewhere that I like and want to be.
A second thing I’d like to do before I die.. I suppose that I’d really like to publish a book. I just love it when people read what I write and tell me what they think about what I write, even if they don’t necessarily think too highly of it. I love to share what I’ve made, just so that I can see people reflect it, and… Hell, I just really like it when they come to me and tell that they’ve read what I’ve wrote. I’m not exactly certain what it is about that that I really like, but meh.
Oh, the third thing is probably far simplest — I want to own a cat. In the coming years, this space might become occupied by “I want a child”, but as of yet, I’m not quite ready to think that sorts of thoughts. I’d be fine with a kitty-cat. Do want. Stupid allergic sister & mother.
(I’m skipping 24, because it’s another photo-prompt, and I already know I’d just make up some excuse not to do it)
Day 25: Your favourite part of yourselfDay 26: A picture/description of one of your scarsHoly mother of pineapple but that became a lengthy post. I’m sorry. I suppose I had a lot more stuff to say than I thought, when I finally got the ball rolling.
I’m sure you all missed me terribly, and won’t mind, hee.
Love and orange-flavoured lollipops to everyone~
The one with metal fans, balloons and umbrellas
12 Aug 2010 Leave a Comment
in Personal Tags: 35 days, Following the Gay Umbrella, ideas, music, shiny, writing
So, my mood has steadily declined from the deliriously bubbly earlier today, mainly because of the fact that I’ve been doing chemistry for the entire afternoon & evening, and my wrist hurts like a bitch right now. It couldn’t even be some cool theory stuff, no, but all this explanation about different types of energy, that I’ve been doing since, uh, ninth grade, I think. It was interesting and everything, but there was too much of it, and too much writing.
And then I banged my elbow twice to something, because my upper body was jealous of the damage that I did to my toes this morning.
BUT then I thought that I might cheer myself up by keeping my promise and picking up my camera; it produced a photo like SO:
Hee, yes, this is the beloved b’loon that my mother brought home with her, to my delight. Oh, and also the weirdly clinically-looking hallway-thingy of my house. … I really don’t know what else to say about it, except that it’s a b’loon and hence it must be awesome. Speaking of which, mother came in just a few moments ago, looking for the other bag of balloons that she was supposed to fill with helium later. I suppose I’m not the only one who loses things easily…
BUT what I thought that was far more important than this picture of the balloon, delightful as it is, was the picture of my gay umbrella. This is him (on the pile of stuff that is the bed I sleep on):
There’s somewhat of a story behind the acquisition and hence the name of the umbrella. I think I found him at Dangerfield, some time last winter, when we were shopping at Westfield with this Swedish girl who has hence moved back into Sweden. Of course, I’m a sucker for any sorts of colours and I was actually looking for an umbrella, since I didn’t have one and it was, at the time, raining quite heavily outside — and then I spotted this one, a rainbow of an umbrella, and of course I had to have him (I hope that my referring to inanimate objects like people isn’t freaking you out). And, of course, due to its colouring and the positive feelings both I and said Swedish girl have for homosexuals, he had to be gay.
And there’s more to it than just that — I really early became fond of pointing the umbrella at directions before walking there, because it’s just that sort of an umbrella. At one point, when aforementioned Swede was with me, I pointed it at a direction, grinned and said “let’s follow the gay umbrella, eh?” to which she remarked that it sounded curiously like some title for a novel. Being the writer I am, this struck me, and I had the idea for the novel that is still, after more than 200,000 words and slightly more than 30 chapters “under construction,” under the title of “Following the Gay Umbrella.” It’s weird where the smallest seeds of ideas get us, isn’t it?
The gay umbrella, too, has become an increasingly important part to the plot of my dearest novel-child, to the extent where if I told you, I would have to kill you — I mean, if I told you, that would be totally spoiling the story, and though I’ve spoiled it from at least two people who might want to read it at some point, I wouldn’t want to do that, would I now? Anyway, only thinking about him makes me incredibly excited, so mind the post for a while while I go bounce around my balloon in a weird sort of ritualistic dance.
Now that I’m done with that, let’s go back to the whole 35 days thing.
Day 03: Three concerts you would have wanted to/want to attend.
Three concerts? At the moment, since I’ve been following Nightwish’s camp diary thing with insanity in my eyes, all three slots are taken by some sort of fictional Nightwish concerts that will only begin taking place after their new album will have come out — which will be, I think, around the Australian spring of 2011, if even later than that. No-one knows, yet! Or, well, I suppose that the band itself will know, but that’s not really relevant to my point. I’ve seen Nightwish live once, and that was 1.1.2008, and that was pretty insanely rad. After that, I wondered why I had never really been to any concerts/gigs/things before D;
Which kind of sucked, since then we moved to Australia and the concerts from that particular genre of music I listen to seem pretty few and far between around here. Sonata Arctica, I think, came down at some point, but it was a small, 18+ gig at a time when I wasn’t just yet 18. That would’ve been pretty cool to have attended, I’m sure. Then there’s bands like Disturbed, After Forever and Epica that would be, uh, pretty epic to see live — and bands like Poets of the Fall that just kind of make me cry like a waterfall without really trying, and even though I’m not sure how much I’d like them live (they’re the sorts of things you just listen at home to yourself; and I’ve seen some recordings of their concerts, they seem kind of awkward and too poppy on stage — probably because they ARE technically pop), I’d have to go just to show my appreciation.
My final answer, though? Nightwish, Nightwish, and Nightwish.
Can you tell?
Day 04: Four moments that changed your life
Day 05: Something that makes you smile
Want to be huge metal fans (or anything else — I’m so much more than just a huge metal fan [now to make an incredibly terrible "I can be anything you want me to be" joke]) with me? This is how you do it:
- READ POST
- LEAVE COMMENT
- ????????????????
- PROFIT
Whirled peas. n_n
