Winter is Coming.

Like many bloggers out there, I am doing an entire post dedicated to the encroaching season--as if most of you are too thick to stick your heads outside and say, "Well damn, it's cold out here!"

Yeah. I know you guys know that it's almost snow season. I just thought I would take a little bit of time to talk about why winter is my favorite season of the year, not that sweltering, hoity-toity summer.

First of all, I love snow with a raging passion. There is nothing that induces euphoria in me quite like looking out the window to see the ground covered in white. It makes the nights and the days brighter, in addition to being, you know, freaking beautiful.

I'm a fan of snow, in case you haven't figured it out already.

Of course, there's the Holidays. Santa Claus, presents, candelabras, trees, and all of that good stuff. The last three months of the year are chocked full of holidays and celebration.

As I typed this it started to snow.

....*ahem*....

HELL YES.

The Inexplicable Evolution of a Character

Image by jlseagull via FlickrPeople change. So do characters. I've never been the type of writer to viciously hold onto a character design to the point that I virtually halt the story development for fear that the character will change. A lot of times that can happen without you even knowing you're doing it. In fact, if you've been struggling with writer's block for quite some time now, I'd recommend you ask yourself if  you've noticed your character trying to do things that you'd describe as particularly out of character.

Me, I just write and see what happens. It wasn't that way when I typed up my stories, but once I started handwriting them I noticed that I was a lot less willing to go back and second guess my decisions. I spent roughly four weeks getting all the imagination related crap squared away, and by the end of the first month I had developed a main character that was nothing short of your typical shy and sweet bookworm.

Yeah, I know. Not the most relatable of protagonists. I think that's probably why Muriel changed so much once I actually put her into action. What I see now as I move my pen across the page (and scowl at my consistently poor word choice as usual) is a loud, naive, and not-so-bright girl who probably never acquired the patience to sit down and read a book that didn't have pictures. She may not be as smart and, dare I say it, "perfect" as she was before, but I'll bet she's twice as fun to read about.

And write about. I'd much rather chronicle the adventures of a fun loving simpleton who asked a plant-based character if she eats sunlight than a pompous one who throws out a scientific explanation for everything that happens.

That and I'm barely making a B in Biology 101. Ladies and gentlemen, you will not find me operating on you anytime soon.

I guess the long and short of this blog post (because God help me if I actually make a clear point ever at all) is that you can't really think of your characters as people you can control. Think of them more as people who have a story to tell you so that you can write it down on paper. Or type it up on Word. Whatever floats your boat.

Never Should Have Watched That Episode of South Park

Lately I've been knee deep in trying to churn out a novel in a few months while simultaneously thinking about school and not really caring whether or not I go (or at least remain) crazy. Those right there are the obvious obstacles...school, earning a living, friends, family, that pesky little thing called life...that you hear of most often. What everyone seems to ignore when talking about problems with writing a book is the possibility that you just might get distracted. For some reason everyone likes to pretend that it doesn't happen to them.

I have a bunch of ideas for stories. They're all written down somewhere in a bunch of little notebooks, and I'm always thinking about at least one of them. The problem is that I can't get my Sci-Fi novel--the one that I put off until I'm finished with the one I'm working on right now--out of my head. I sit down with my pen to write about castles and dragons, but all I can think about is aliens. It's maddening.

The strange new alien obsession may or may not be due to my current paper than I'm having to write on Scientology. I can't tell you how many people gave me strange looks when I walked out of my school's library with a copy of Dianetics.  I wanted to shout, "Hey, you've got me all wrong! I'm not a Scientologist; I'm just as whacked out on prescription drugs as you are!"

And once again we come full circle to the Zoloft. And the coffee. And the energy drinks. And the perverted jokes. And the half-assed research attempts that prove my glibness.

Good Lord, I'm a Scientologist's worst nightmare. But then again, I'm a lot of people's worst nightmare.

I took about half of the notes that I need to write the paper last night from Dianetics and a few newspaper and magazine articles. Let me just say that I'm happy that the Church of Scientology probably isn't the least bit interested in me or the $0.32 I have to my name.

Yes. That is what is in my bank account. The words "college student" and "writer" do not mix well at all.

I'm going to call the paper, "The World Only Xenu Knows" and hope to God that someone out there gets the joke.

No one ever gets my jokes, you see.

Hey, if you think that's cheesy, I also thought about calling it "Children of a Lesser Xenu." Bet you're distraught that you almost got away without knowing that one.

Homework Only Exists in an Alternate Reality

I have a 250 page notebook that I'm using to write my novel and right now I'm just about to the dead center. That's like, what, around 125 pages?

Meh. Not too shabby for about a month's work. Once again I find myself struggling with finding the time to write, as well as the fact that, well, I should be using every shred of free and quiet time for schoolwork.

Yeah, it probably didn't take you too long to figure out that I'm not doing that. I just scratched out an outline to e-mail to my teacher (late) in about ten minutes, and now I'm trying to convince myself that I don't have an abstract due in History when I know I probably do.

As long as I keep saying it in my head it's bound to come true, right?

Meh. Maybe I'd better check, even though I know that checking will reveal that I do indeed have homework that I won't have ready to submit by midnight. 

I was diagnosed with OCD a little while back, and today I started taking Zoloft because apparently it will reduce the amount of troubling thoughts and repetitive tasks that I have on a daily basis. I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't worried that it will affect my writing. What if all I suddenly want to do is write romance novels about glittering boys and rainbows set in a world where nothing ever goes wrong?

God knows we've got too many of those writers out there who don't want a single bad thing to happen to their characters. I swear, the moment I notice myself taking three pages to describe the dress a female protagonist is wearing and how she has her hair done I'm going to watch every horror film I've ever heard of and wage serious war on my serotonin pump. The last time I described clothes in my writing I said nothing more than, "it was white." I'd like to keep it that way.

It's amazingly hard to write when your slightly defective brain only has a specific set of conditions under which it doesn't go bonkers. Or, you know, when you have to wash your hands every time you rub your nose or close all the windows and doors and cover your vents. 

My Death

Image by doug88888 via Flickr
I was thinking about it yesterday and scribbled out a poem. I typed it right into the blog post and didn't really think about editing, so I can at least promise you that it's probably monstrous. Also, I'm terrible at poetry. Gotta keep that in mind, too.

I am happy,
I am free,
I am in the grip of eternity.
Whether I feel flames, hear harps,
Or see miles and miles of endless dark,
Be comforted. I am glad I have left.

The sun will rise tomorrow,
even if I do not spin with the Earth.
Its rays will warm this valley,
even if I lie far beneath its dirt.
Your heart will beat, though mine has ceased.
Dream of me often. Keep me alive.

Problem Fixed? God, I Hope So

For the entire month of October, I had been using nothing but a nice little background image from The Cutest Blog on the Block, a website that I sometimes feel I love beyond reason. I noticed that I started having problems with my longer posts running behind the comment box the moment I changed back to the standard Picture Window that works best with backgrounds. It was then that I suspected that the problem that caused this to happen was more related to the HTML of the blog's template and such, because I had the problem before I started using an XML template, too.

Actually, my boyfriend was the one who figured that out. But, you know, I was the one who agreed. Yeah.

I think the problem might come from applying the background by sticking it in an "Add HTML" widget if you're getting it from a website like The Cutest Blog on the Block or Pyzam. It might work better if you copy and paste the code they give you into the dialog box on the Edit HTML page under the Design Tab, making sure to erase everything that's in there before you stick the background code in. It's worth a shot, anyway, so I'll probably try it later.

The reason I think that the problem is with the HTML code is that it didn't exist when I was using a pre-made template that I uploaded. I only had trouble with the post running off the page when I pasted some kind of background code into a widget. If you're really struggling with your post length running off the page and behind the comment box, putting an XML template on your Blogger blog just might fix it right up. Not to mention, of course, that browsing templates is incredibly fun. I for one wish that I could change mine every week. That would quickly become annoying. I must refrain.

This website has a bunch of good ones. So does Btemplates, Ray Templates, and Blogger Styles. Just download the XML file, save it in a place you know you won't lose it (because I do that SO DAMN OFTEN), and upload it on the Edit HTML tab. You can arrange your widgets however you please.

I hope my fellow blogging/computer impaired writers can learn from my mistakes. I certainly wish someone else would have made them before me and written a few paragraphs about them ._.