The New Year & Being You

It's 11:48 pm, December 31st. Let's talk about 2016.

The Perfect Life & Success

The other day, I took my little brother Jack to the park. Well, it was more like a playground with surrounding patches of grass. Unlike most days, there were a lot of kids there. They were mostly at or a few years around my brother's age. This got me thinking. What exactly is success? It's not an object, that's for sure. It's an idea. It's a goal, or is it? At what point in your life do you say: "I have succeeded." Succeeded at what? Life in general?

Global Compassion | P4A

Good Morning, Good Afternoon, Good Evening, and/or Good Night! We're about 9 hours away from Project For Awesome, and I'm so excited! I just finished uploading my video to YouTube, so if any of you want to watch it...it's below the page break.

Project For Awesome Aproacheth!

It's that time of year again! Time for the nerds to take over YouTube! If you have no idea what I'm talking about, or if you do, please read the following post!

YWP?

This year, I recorded my noveling adventures on both the adult NaNoWriMo site and NaNoWriMo's site for students, Young Writers Program. This was because I decided on doing NaNoWriMo a few months before signing up for YWP. YWP came in when I went to school and discovered that some of my classmates were doing it too, so I thought, 'Why the heck not?"

Over the past month, every lunch time, I take my lunch into the library (per the librarian's approval of course) and write. I did this with a couple of friends, and have found it to be quite delightful. (Ugh. I can't believe I said that.) The point is it was fun. There was a group of people there that could answer my questions if I had them, and they were real world answers. Not google answers.

There is a certain bliss to writing on your own though, and that was part of the appeal of NaNoWriMo to me. In language arts, we always have to write such a short amount of words and then have our peers check over it. NaNoWriMo was kind of the way for me to let loose and just write and not care about editing. Believe me, I didn't care about editing. My draft is horrible. I really need to finish and then revise it.

My message to teachers: YWP is an amazing program that I think every language arts/humanities teacher should do with his or her class. By choosing your own goal, you don't have to commit to the 50k that seems impossible (even though it isn't.). But a word of caution to teachers who do this, don't force your kids to edit and revise. Your students are trying to write a novel, and editing a first draft of a novel is like knitting with cooked spaghetti. A little bit gross and basically futile. (That was not my quote. If I could, I would say who said it, but that information is buried deep in the twitter madness of the NaNoWriMo twitter account.)

Would anybody be interested in an excerpt from my novel? I'm nowhere near finished, but I feel like I need somebody to tell me what they think.

Cheers, DFTBA, and Good Night.
Anna Grace

Holiday Travel Tips (Part 1)

Thanksgiving has passed (for Americans. All Canadian WriMos have it easy.) and that means that many will be pulling out their Christmas trees and decorating their houses with festive lights and tinsel this weekend. For many others, it means travel. For people who live in my community, it usually means long haul overseas travel. To make it easier on us and you, I have compiled a list of things that all travelers should do.

NaNoWriMo: The Thing That Has Ruined My Life But Not Really

I am back my friends, and better than ever! My novel, while 50k words, is not finished however once I edit and revise and all of that good stuff, I do plan on publishing it. Just curious, would any of you be interested in a book I wrote? Please leave your opinions down in the comments! Also, if you would like to be my beta reader or test reader, or just have a hand in the publishing process, please leave it down in the comments!

NaNoWriMo was an amazing experience that I will definitely try again in either July or April as well as next year. I think I have actually made NaNoWriMo seem awesome enough that one of my friends may joining the WriMos in April or July.

Word sprinting or warring is really confusing. Over the past month, I've been sprinting over an IRC with a wonderful group of people. They're awesome. Anyway, the sprinting itself can have two outcomes.

a) You actually get work done
b) You end up procrastinating and deciding that watching all of Panic! at the Disco's music videos is a perfect way to spend your time even though your deadline is 5 days away.

So, as you can see, there are definite pros and cons.

Well, I'm off to edit and finish that mess of a novel that I started.

Cheers, DFTBA, and Good Night.
Anna Grace 

NaNoWriMo Prep Day 4 (More Info, Just in Case)

                                                               50,000 words or bust!

Counting Down The Days (NaNoWriMo Prep Day 3)

   Oh my gosh November can’t come slow enough! (Or is it fast enough? I can never get it right with phrases like that.) I’ve been freaking out trying to get my setting and characters and plot straightened out. Most of my friends and teachers probably think I’m crazy by now, but if you’ve done NaNoWriMo before, you know exactly how I feel. I should be using this time to figure out what Brigid’s apartment looks like, but I decided that I needed a break. So, I’m going to explain what my novel is about. Don’t worry, I’ll try to make it as short as I can.