I'm just over a week out from my graduation, and I only have four days of school left, consisting mostly of final exams. So, naturally, my English 12 teacher decided to give us one more assignment before our exam instead of actually talking about what will be on our exam.
I would usually be pretty mad about this, but given the assignment, I think I'll manage just fine. Our teacher recently visited London with a class of hers, and one thing that really struck her was the idea of leaving something behind after we've left. So she decided to give us this assignment: write a short story/poem/essay that will somehow incorporate your views of the world.
Most kids were groaning, because of course to most people that's a dry and terrible assignment to get. But ever since first period this morning, I've been mulling over ideas to start in on tomorrow. I like being able to show off stuff that I'm proud of. In music, performing is one of my favorite things to do, and similarly, I like having people read what I write (given that I'm not present and they're not reading it aloud).
Anyways, it's just something that I hope will be able to help me get started on writing again, especially now that my time is freeing up. Already, I have more short story ideas than I need, so I'll have something to work on over the summer.
Maybe I'll post the piece I've written when it's finished. Maybe not. It depends on how it all turns out. But I should probably work on it sooner than later, because I have a busy weekend.
Until next time.
-Teri
Thursday, June 2, 2016
Sunday, May 22, 2016
Going Through Old Files
Oh boy, so have I had an interesting weekend.
My parents decided a little while back that they wanted to get a new computer. See, the way it's set up in my house, we have a 'computer room'. It has two desktops (one for 'the kids' and one for my parents), and usually it also holds my dad's laptop. We've owned these desktops for a while, and due to getting viruses from games my brothers downloaded to not having a strong system, the 'kids' computer is slow and old and a pain to use. So my parents decided that they wanted to buy a new computer, and they can give the one they've been using to us (I say 'us', but I'll be leaving the house in less than a month, so it doesn't really matter all that much to me).
Anyways, over the past week, my dad has been asking me to go through the desktop and pull together any files or pictures or whatnot that I want to save, and set this aside in this folder he has called 'Stuff to Keep'.
Now, I have a laptop and an iPod, and I haven't used this desktop in at least a year, not using it regularly for probably two. It has basically everything that I've typed up (stories/assignments/etc.) between 2009 and 2014. So, being me, I decided that I was going to have a little fun when deciding which files to keep and go back through my old stories from elementary and middle school and just take a look at what I was writing back then.
Here are just a few things that I gathered from looking through them:
- I didn't use Microsoft Word exclusively to write my stories in elementary school. No, I also enjoyed using Powerpoints by typing up the story in one column and adding clipart in the other that seemed to go along.
- I have always had this horrible tendency to giving up on something mid-sentence. It's so annoying, it's like when
- No novel is safe from being given up on. I had books that were 30,000+ words that I just gave up on and stopped writing. There was a story that I dedicated myself to through most of middle school. I spent over two years writing over 60,000 words on the first novel in a trilogy that I had planned. Everything was planned to a T, I had rewritten a few scenes that I thought needed readjustment. This novel was my life. And then, upon being introduced to NaNoWriMo, I tossed it aside like an old shoe.
- I have written more than I thought. There was a rewrite of an old novel that was longer than the original novel, and I still have no recollection of ever getting this far. I remember beginning it, but that's the most I can recall.
- I really cop out with novel titles. I've been using the default '[Main Character] and the [Big Event that Occurs in the Novel]' basically forever, or the '[Single Word that Somehow Defines the General, Overarching Conflict of the Main Character]' (actual examples include 'Penny Mulligan and the Journey to the Shadowlands' and 'Trapped').
- I have not always had a passion for names. There are more Dylans and Hannahs and Sarahs in these stories than I can count. It's like a had a list of ten different names and just chose one at random for each character in the story. And don't even get me started on last names. They ranged from complete gibberish that I made up to 'Johnson' or 'Smith'.
- I have come a long way in how I write. Sometimes, I still have to stare at a sentence for ten minutes to figure out how to fix the awkward way it's been written, but at least I can actually fix it now.
- I still have a long way to go in writing, as well. My description is pretty much nonexistent.
There are dozens of story ideas that I've gone through, most unfinished but some completed. I mean, if I were to spend the rest of my life trying to go through and write first drafts for every story idea and series I have in that folder, I still probably wouldn't finish.
Anyways, so that's how I've spent the free time of my weekend. There were things that I went through other than writing - I'm not even going to begin talking about the Paint drawings I found - but writing made up most of what I did on that desktop, aside from surfing the Internet.
I feel kind of bad now for working on starting a new project, since I obviously have so many that I've set aside (I have probably a good ten since 8th grade), but that isn't going to stop me from writing it.
Until next time!
-Teri
My parents decided a little while back that they wanted to get a new computer. See, the way it's set up in my house, we have a 'computer room'. It has two desktops (one for 'the kids' and one for my parents), and usually it also holds my dad's laptop. We've owned these desktops for a while, and due to getting viruses from games my brothers downloaded to not having a strong system, the 'kids' computer is slow and old and a pain to use. So my parents decided that they wanted to buy a new computer, and they can give the one they've been using to us (I say 'us', but I'll be leaving the house in less than a month, so it doesn't really matter all that much to me).
Anyways, over the past week, my dad has been asking me to go through the desktop and pull together any files or pictures or whatnot that I want to save, and set this aside in this folder he has called 'Stuff to Keep'.
Now, I have a laptop and an iPod, and I haven't used this desktop in at least a year, not using it regularly for probably two. It has basically everything that I've typed up (stories/assignments/etc.) between 2009 and 2014. So, being me, I decided that I was going to have a little fun when deciding which files to keep and go back through my old stories from elementary and middle school and just take a look at what I was writing back then.
Here are just a few things that I gathered from looking through them:
- I didn't use Microsoft Word exclusively to write my stories in elementary school. No, I also enjoyed using Powerpoints by typing up the story in one column and adding clipart in the other that seemed to go along.
- I have always had this horrible tendency to giving up on something mid-sentence. It's so annoying, it's like when
- No novel is safe from being given up on. I had books that were 30,000+ words that I just gave up on and stopped writing. There was a story that I dedicated myself to through most of middle school. I spent over two years writing over 60,000 words on the first novel in a trilogy that I had planned. Everything was planned to a T, I had rewritten a few scenes that I thought needed readjustment. This novel was my life. And then, upon being introduced to NaNoWriMo, I tossed it aside like an old shoe.
- I have written more than I thought. There was a rewrite of an old novel that was longer than the original novel, and I still have no recollection of ever getting this far. I remember beginning it, but that's the most I can recall.
- I really cop out with novel titles. I've been using the default '[Main Character] and the [Big Event that Occurs in the Novel]' basically forever, or the '[Single Word that Somehow Defines the General, Overarching Conflict of the Main Character]' (actual examples include 'Penny Mulligan and the Journey to the Shadowlands' and 'Trapped').
- I have not always had a passion for names. There are more Dylans and Hannahs and Sarahs in these stories than I can count. It's like a had a list of ten different names and just chose one at random for each character in the story. And don't even get me started on last names. They ranged from complete gibberish that I made up to 'Johnson' or 'Smith'.
- I have come a long way in how I write. Sometimes, I still have to stare at a sentence for ten minutes to figure out how to fix the awkward way it's been written, but at least I can actually fix it now.
- I still have a long way to go in writing, as well. My description is pretty much nonexistent.
There are dozens of story ideas that I've gone through, most unfinished but some completed. I mean, if I were to spend the rest of my life trying to go through and write first drafts for every story idea and series I have in that folder, I still probably wouldn't finish.
Anyways, so that's how I've spent the free time of my weekend. There were things that I went through other than writing - I'm not even going to begin talking about the Paint drawings I found - but writing made up most of what I did on that desktop, aside from surfing the Internet.
I feel kind of bad now for working on starting a new project, since I obviously have so many that I've set aside (I have probably a good ten since 8th grade), but that isn't going to stop me from writing it.
Until next time!
-Teri
Sunday, May 15, 2016
Update
I have to apologize for the obvious gap between posts. Senior year has kept me quite busy, as you can see. What with AP courses, the school musical, softball, and a million other events that I had to help with or participate in, I have had very little time to myself this year.
As I left off in the middle of NaNoWriMo when I last posted, I would just like to go back and mention that I did, in fact, win for the 5th year in a row. This past NaNo was probably one of my most difficult to get through. Boy of My Imagination had a very different feel to most of the stories I write, so I found it challenging to overcome when the going got rough. I managed to push through it, however, and my end word count was 54,321 words, which finished both my novel and my NaNoWriMo. The last fourth of the book or so was actually fun to write, and the ending was a mix of relieving and bittersweet.
Since NaNoWriMo, I have done next to no writing aside from schoolwork. I've played loads of music and read a lot, but it's very difficult to spare time to write in my busy schedule which seems to consist of nothing but schoolwork and extracurriculars. So forgive me for having very little to say.
Recently, I've been attempting to plot out a story, but I've kept getting stuck on pieces of worldbuilding. Needless to say, it's been moving at a snail's pace, but hopefully, now that AP exams are over, it will be able to speed up a bit.
I'll try to keep updating, but I can't promise anything regular with my strange schedule.
-Teri
As I left off in the middle of NaNoWriMo when I last posted, I would just like to go back and mention that I did, in fact, win for the 5th year in a row. This past NaNo was probably one of my most difficult to get through. Boy of My Imagination had a very different feel to most of the stories I write, so I found it challenging to overcome when the going got rough. I managed to push through it, however, and my end word count was 54,321 words, which finished both my novel and my NaNoWriMo. The last fourth of the book or so was actually fun to write, and the ending was a mix of relieving and bittersweet.
Since NaNoWriMo, I have done next to no writing aside from schoolwork. I've played loads of music and read a lot, but it's very difficult to spare time to write in my busy schedule which seems to consist of nothing but schoolwork and extracurriculars. So forgive me for having very little to say.
Recently, I've been attempting to plot out a story, but I've kept getting stuck on pieces of worldbuilding. Needless to say, it's been moving at a snail's pace, but hopefully, now that AP exams are over, it will be able to speed up a bit.
I'll try to keep updating, but I can't promise anything regular with my strange schedule.
-Teri
Saturday, November 14, 2015
NaNoWriMo: Week Two Review!
Hello!
So, the second week of this crazy month is coming to a close. It's felt like an extremely long week that just kept stretching on and on. Last Saturday, I went to the football championships with my school band, Wednesday my parents took my family on a day trip to a nearby city which was pretty cool.
Writing wise, it's been getting better. During the first week of NaNoWriMo, I literally hated every single thing about my story. Writing it was something that I had to force myself to do, and the only reason that I kept going was because this is my fifth year of doing NaNo and I don't want to break my winning streak. This week has definitely improved.
While I'm still struggling to get excited about writing this story, there are definitely scenes that I've written that are pretty fun. My characters are cooperating for the most part, and the slowness of the beginning has faded for the most part. I can totally work with this.
Despite my writing going a lot more smoothly, I'm just barely on track. So I'm going to cut this short and try my best to reach halfway a day early.
Until next time!
~Teri
So, the second week of this crazy month is coming to a close. It's felt like an extremely long week that just kept stretching on and on. Last Saturday, I went to the football championships with my school band, Wednesday my parents took my family on a day trip to a nearby city which was pretty cool.
Writing wise, it's been getting better. During the first week of NaNoWriMo, I literally hated every single thing about my story. Writing it was something that I had to force myself to do, and the only reason that I kept going was because this is my fifth year of doing NaNo and I don't want to break my winning streak. This week has definitely improved.
While I'm still struggling to get excited about writing this story, there are definitely scenes that I've written that are pretty fun. My characters are cooperating for the most part, and the slowness of the beginning has faded for the most part. I can totally work with this.
Despite my writing going a lot more smoothly, I'm just barely on track. So I'm going to cut this short and try my best to reach halfway a day early.
Until next time!
~Teri
Friday, November 6, 2015
NaNoWriMo: Week One Review
Okay, I totally get that it's only been six days and that the first week of November isn't technically over yet. I get it. But I'm going to be out of the house basically all of tomorrow, so I figured that it'd be better to write this today.
So... I suppose that I should start off by introducing the story that I've been writing and hope to finish by the end of the month (my goal is more to finish the story than to reach the goal of 50,000 words).
Boy of My Imagination
When in a nasty car crash, Penny fell into a coma. When she wakes, her life becomes a storm of doctor's appointments, visits from friends, family, and people who claim to be relatives that she's never seen before, and trying to find time to get a job so that she'll be able to afford to return to college the next year.
Boy of My Imagination
When in a nasty car crash, Penny fell into a coma. When she wakes, her life becomes a storm of doctor's appointments, visits from friends, family, and people who claim to be relatives that she's never seen before, and trying to find time to get a job so that she'll be able to afford to return to college the next year.
To add onto things, every time that Penny leaves her house, she seems to run into a boy - someone she's never seen before, yet someone who looks so familiar. But when she points him out to her friend, Penny realizes that she's the only one who can see him. Afraid to be sent to a therapist by her parents for seeing hallucinations, Penny keeps him as her secret, but she's determined to figure out who he is and why nobody else can see him before she returns to college in the fall.
Before November, I had been pretty excited to start. I'd felt so ready to begin writing that I hadn't thought about whether this would actually be a good novel to write during NaNoWriMo. And I'm learning that it probably isn't the best.
See, the novel starts out a bit slow and picks up. Only, trying to dive into the slow parts and get through them has really slowed me down. Yes, I am ahead of schedule, but a lot of that is because I need to write more on the weekends so that I don't fall behind during the week. So I could still easily screw this month up.
So my excitement for the novel is down, and it's been just... not a good week. I just need to get to a better scene and have the novel actually begin to pick up. Hopefully my regret for not choosing a different novel will fade away as I get deeper and deeper into the story.
-Teri
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
NaNoWriMo: Year 5
Hello!
There are going to be two people looking at this blog post (you know, if I ever get people to actually look at my blog posts): those who look at the title and know exactly what I'm talking about, and those who look at the title and wonder whether I slapped my hands on the keyboard or if 'NaNoWriMo' actually means something.
To the latter, NaNoWriMo stands for 'National Novel Writing Month'. It's this crazy, intense event every November where hundreds of thousands of writers all try to accomplish a fantastic and insane task: writing a novel (or 50,000 words of a novel) in 30 days. Sound crazy? It is.
It's also how I've spent the last four Novembers, and how I see myself spending the rest of my Novembers. It's stressful, intense, and a lot of hard work, but it's fun and in the end totally worth all of the blood, sweat, and tears.
For those I haven't scared off, the main website (13+) can be found here, and the website for those 17 and younger, the Young Writer's Program is basically the same thing as NaNo, but you can adjust your word count goal for the month to make it more realistic.
Okay, so... NaNoWriMo starts in a few days and I am currently a mix of excitement and terror. Even though this is my fifth year doing NaNo, there are going to be a lot of little struggles that I'm going to have to overcome this next month. The first of which is that I'm busy. I'm taking multiple AP courses this year, I have a couple band concerts at the start of the month, I'm working towards applying for colleges and making sure that I get all of my stuff in on time, and just a lot of little things that really eat up a lot of time next month.
Also, this month I'm writing a sort of YA/mystery type novel, which is something that I've never attempted before. So even though I'm excited to get started, I'm also terrified because I have no clue how this is going to go down. We'll have to wait until November and see.
For those trying to scramble and get everything together before the 1st, good luck! And to those of us who have prepared as much as we can, let's try not to lose it.
Oh, and for those who think we're crazy for trying... uh... have a nice Halloween?
I'll see you soon!
-Teri
There are going to be two people looking at this blog post (you know, if I ever get people to actually look at my blog posts): those who look at the title and know exactly what I'm talking about, and those who look at the title and wonder whether I slapped my hands on the keyboard or if 'NaNoWriMo' actually means something.
To the latter, NaNoWriMo stands for 'National Novel Writing Month'. It's this crazy, intense event every November where hundreds of thousands of writers all try to accomplish a fantastic and insane task: writing a novel (or 50,000 words of a novel) in 30 days. Sound crazy? It is.
It's also how I've spent the last four Novembers, and how I see myself spending the rest of my Novembers. It's stressful, intense, and a lot of hard work, but it's fun and in the end totally worth all of the blood, sweat, and tears.
For those I haven't scared off, the main website (13+) can be found here, and the website for those 17 and younger, the Young Writer's Program is basically the same thing as NaNo, but you can adjust your word count goal for the month to make it more realistic.
Okay, so... NaNoWriMo starts in a few days and I am currently a mix of excitement and terror. Even though this is my fifth year doing NaNo, there are going to be a lot of little struggles that I'm going to have to overcome this next month. The first of which is that I'm busy. I'm taking multiple AP courses this year, I have a couple band concerts at the start of the month, I'm working towards applying for colleges and making sure that I get all of my stuff in on time, and just a lot of little things that really eat up a lot of time next month.
Also, this month I'm writing a sort of YA/mystery type novel, which is something that I've never attempted before. So even though I'm excited to get started, I'm also terrified because I have no clue how this is going to go down. We'll have to wait until November and see.
For those trying to scramble and get everything together before the 1st, good luck! And to those of us who have prepared as much as we can, let's try not to lose it.
Oh, and for those who think we're crazy for trying... uh... have a nice Halloween?
I'll see you soon!
-Teri
Introduction!
Wow, it's weird to be starting over. Blank slate.
See, I used to run a different writing blog, but something somewhere messed up and long story short, I no longer have access to that account. The thought that my horrible, cringey writing quality from middle school and early high school being permanently stuck on the internet where I can't take it down is less than comforting, but I'm just going to do my best to move on and pretend it never existed.
Anyways, I'm Teri! I'm a senior in high school who doesn't know what exactly she's going to be doing with her life at this point. It'll probably have something to do with writing.
Writing is basically the reason I created this blog. The blog that follows more of my regular life will be here. This is dedicated to just talking about what projects I'm working on, any advice that I can offer, and just... writing stuff. Lots of writing stuff.
Now, I used to blog so I know from experience that I kind of suck at remaining consistent with uploading stuff. I'm hoping that I may be able to change, as enough time's passed and I'm a bit more responsible than I used to be, but I can't promise that this blog will be updated regularly.
We'll see how it goes.
I'll see you soon!
-Teri
See, I used to run a different writing blog, but something somewhere messed up and long story short, I no longer have access to that account. The thought that my horrible, cringey writing quality from middle school and early high school being permanently stuck on the internet where I can't take it down is less than comforting, but I'm just going to do my best to move on and pretend it never existed.
Anyways, I'm Teri! I'm a senior in high school who doesn't know what exactly she's going to be doing with her life at this point. It'll probably have something to do with writing.
Writing is basically the reason I created this blog. The blog that follows more of my regular life will be here. This is dedicated to just talking about what projects I'm working on, any advice that I can offer, and just... writing stuff. Lots of writing stuff.
Now, I used to blog so I know from experience that I kind of suck at remaining consistent with uploading stuff. I'm hoping that I may be able to change, as enough time's passed and I'm a bit more responsible than I used to be, but I can't promise that this blog will be updated regularly.
We'll see how it goes.
I'll see you soon!
-Teri
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