Fill In Some Blanks

Posted on April 25, 2010 by Asheyna

So I read this over on the adorable Marissa’s blog that she apparently got from the lovely Annie Cristina’s blog. Seems like the perfect thing to do while I sip on some amazing caramel vanilla coffee. Mmmmmmm coffee… anyways, here are my answers.

If I was a month, I would be September, when everything starts to get colder and crisper.

If I was a day of the week, I’d be Friday… get lots done all morning then enjoy a well deserved break in the evening!

If I was a time of day, Apparently these days I’m 6AM, up early and get going before the world wakes up.

If I was a planet, I’d be the moon, because I’m contrary like that ;)

If I was a sea animal, Definitely be a dolphin, SO much fun!

If I was a direction, Northwest, all the relaxed-ness of the West with the sharp bite of the North

If I was a piece of furniture, I’d be the desk, great place to put anything and gets lots done.

If I was a liquid, Think I’d be Vodka… mmmm goes with almost anything.

If I was a gemstone, I’d be emerald.

If I was a tree, Weeping willow would be me

If I was a flower, I’d be a sunflower <3

If I was a kind of weather, I would be the pouring rain… all gray and wet and cold.

If I was a musical instrument, I’d be a piano.

If I was a color, I would be dark green.

If I was an emotion, I’d be passion — for the people I love, the words that I write, and the life that I live. (Stealing Marissa’s answer for that one, it’s perfect!)

If I was a fruit, I’d be a dragonfruit!

If I was a sound, I would be the sound of waves on a beach.

If I was an element, I’d be water. (Same here!)

If I was a car, I think I’d be an old school Monte Carlo… looks gorgeous but is indestructible :D

If I was a food, I’d be coffee (yes… it’s a FOOD)

If I was a place, I’d like to be the beach.

If I was a material, I would be Egyptian cotton

If I was a taste, I’d taste like coffee!

If I was a scent, I would be vanilla.


Posted in Personal | 6 Comments

The Second Edit… Actually Reading It…

Posted on April 21, 2010 by Asheyna

So as per my promise I was going to spend one hour at least between both novels or everyone was to completely ignore me tomorrow. I figured I was safe with that, if I ran out of steam editing the one, I could always go and write part of the other. Well it worked! I won’t be a social pariah tomorrow… I spent 1 hour and 10 minutes editing my NaNoWriMo novel!

My task tonight was fairly simple. Go through the bits that I had sorted into semi-related piles and put the entire novel in the right order. That meant actually reading the majority of the novel (granted I did skim parts but still…) And, it’s done! The whole thing is in the right order and ready to be properly retyped for a good edit!

I’ve definitely got a love-hate relationship with this project right now. Parts of it I love, and the general concept is in my mind really neat. But, there is of course a but… writing such a complicated a twisted story for NaNoWriMo where you basically just write until your fingers bleed, may not have been my best idea ever. There are a lot of continuity issues where I am going somewhere, and I mostly know where that is, but it never develops properly.

Had a brain storm in the car the other day driving home from teaching and I figured out how to resolve it into the ending that I think is brilliant. Now it will be a matter of re-writing. As you can see, there are a lot of post-its sticking out marking spots that need re-working or things that I need to remember.

I have one little orphaned section that contains information necessary for the story but I can’t figure out where exactly to work it in. We will have to see how that comes together.

Now for some well earned Oblivion time…

Posted in General | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

I Fail… Already…

Posted on April 20, 2010 by Asheyna

Don’t hurt me, I failed, I know and I’m sorry! Please… don’t hurt me. I’m so ashamed :(

I began this with, as always, the best of intentions. Then I got eaten by the distraction monster.

I don’t even know where the last 12 days went, they certainly didn’t go into my novel lol. Some of them went into starting a new blog featuring two of my favorite things: Crafts ‘n’ Coffee. Just what I need eh? Another project?! Trust me, I’m rolling my eyes at myself too. You know how it is? Once you determine to do something you immediately switch into a mode where you will think of anything and everything to get in the way of accomplishing said task?

Personally I call it writing-via-procrastination. I justify it by saying that I let the story float around in my head, creating itself, until it finally has to come out and out pours a brilliant piece of writing.

Isn’t that the best load of garbage ever? It totally lets me shift from sounding undisciplined about my craft, to being this edgy creative-type. But it’s sooooo convenient. In my defense, and of writers and artists everywhere who use this excuse (I know you are out there), there is some merit to this claim. Stories that I let sit in my head for a little while generally turn out better than ones that get written before they are ready.

That’s not the case with this novel though. This novel is written, I just need to get ON WITH IT ALREADY! lol.

A big thank you to the people that have contacted me and nagged me RE: updating this blog. I need to update, even when I get nothing done. Just so I can say “yes, I did nothing… let the mocking commence.”

So, without further ado, shame me into getting work done!

Posted in General | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Editing Stage One – The Sort

Posted on April 8, 2010 by Asheyna

So dear internet universe, I have been procrasinating a little… I’ve had lots of time the last few days but other things always seem to come up. Like… laundry, decluttering the dressing table, re-arranging and sorting the Video folder on my computer, staring aimlessly at the ceiling. Yes yes, these are all very important things!

Any thought of beginning the editing process of the novel was met immediately with No, not yet, we aren’t ready. Then this morning I woke up early and had a lot of energy… it just felt, right.

See I wrote the novel for NaNoWriMo and I wrote it as a series of little snippets and scenes. The entire novel is in no particular order and sadly needing of much addition in the way of general flow. The first step of the editing process is a physical one for me involving scissors and a stapler! I took the entire novel, skim read the pages and stapled together complete scenes. Some pages required being cut up and then stacked in different orders hehe. Then I attempted to bring some sort of organization into the order of these snippets…

Very Organized - n'est pas?

Yes… I am clearly an organizational wizard! The best part? It’s going to stay there in the middle of my floor until I force myself to work on it again hehehe. Because I’m awesome like that. Actually it’s because at least as far as upstairs goes I live on my own with minime and she is very adaptable to her mommy’s crazy writer habits.

Rereading it I am aware some parts need a MAJOR overhaul. You’ll help me with that right my dear ‘net friends? Stick with me when I want to throw the whole thing out… I read a few bits today that made me seriously consider a complete re-write. Then I came upon the funeral scene *goes and gets some tissues*

So there it is, a bit of me is scattered in semi-logical (if you’re on drugs) way all over my floor. I shall stick with it until it obtains some semblance of flow or until it is so completely shattered that I lose the will to live write. Are we ready?

He wasn’t sure what to make of the guy who would only refer to himself as J, a pathetic Men in Black reference no doubt.

Posted in General | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

apt-get install “Hello World!”

Posted on April 5, 2010 by Asheyna

Its been a while! Did you miss me? Not really sure where the last few months went, it was like January, everything moving along well and then WOAH it’s April!

So what have I been up to the last few months? The coolest thing has to be having @darkliquid and @DruidX visit me all the way from England! Check out the pics. Did some touristy stuff like visit Granville Street and Gastown. They were only here for a week but it was just perfect. I think my favorite memory of the whole trip is just getting up and sitting around drinking coffee/tea while we all worked on our stories and various writing projects. Being able to debate ideas and get feedback and stuff, I want that all the time. While they were here we had a Protagonize Pub Night where we finally got to meet @NickB and @Eloosive. That was… awesome doesn’t even come close. The whole visit really inspired me to write more.

As a result I was eager to get back into work on my novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo… remember that? Well I got the rough draft printed out so that I could begin work on it. Because I wrote the novel in bits and pieces and didn’t follow the story start to finish the first order of business is getting that taken care of. From there it will be checking for story-line conflicts, subplot consistency and overall flow of the writing. But I have a confession to make.

Are you ready?

Can you keep my secret?

Ok here it is…

I’m scared of my novel!

The Novel in it's UBER Rough Form

True story… I am seriously intimidated by it. It just looks so… proper! Like a real manuscript. And that’s scary! So what makes things less scary? Sharing them with friends!! So you, dear internet universe, are going to help me through this. What is your reward you ask? Well… for starters not many people get to see inside a crazy person’s brain. Secondly, with each post I shall include a random small snippet from the book!

This really should be a daily thing, but I’m going to be honest… that’s not happening lol. I’m being a bad writer and working on WAY too many projects. For one I will be working on dark’s evil idea Ten and I have started a collab with my friend Kris from EVE. Aside from those I have a few writing projects I’m splitting my time between as the mood hits me.

So this shall be weekly, any time in the calendar week I am going to update this blog with how the editing and writing processes are going. Instead of sitting here complaining to myself at 3AM when I’m just Q#%&#%^&@#%$^@*$&WQ@$ I shall be posting it! Fun eh? Lol.

Thanks for listening <3

“There is no bell curve. This is not a socialist class, those who excel deserve to do so free from the restriction that is the dead weight of the rest of their fellow students.”

~Jonathan Fry

Posted in Personal | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

So Far…

Posted on January 12, 2010 by Asheyna

So, we’re almost half way into the first month of the year. This is going to be a fun year for dates. The last two dates were: 011010 and 011110 respectively. I find that humorous, maybe it’s just me.

Anyways… how’s everyone doing? 2010 being nice to you? Sounds like it’s being evil to my Brits! Somehow I’ve wound up with a bunch of Twitter followers from the UK… not complaining, I love it! They’re getting all the snow, we’re getting all the rain. Ahh well.

As for the resolutions. Well… I have to start with the webcomic. I Just Work Here is doing really well! Thanks to Google Analytics I can track all kinds of useful stuff. Where people are coming from, how long they stay, etc. Doesn’t give specifics, just traffic summaries.

Some of the highlights:

  • 129 unique visitors!
  • 223 page views
  • over a one minute average looking at the site

And some interesting location facts:

  • top 3 countries are Canada, US and UK (in that order… 21 UK visitors… this makes me so happy)
  • I have visitors from Slovenia (4), Finland, and Norway

So that all makes me pretty thrilled. What am I looking for next? I’d love to see a search engine send even a single visitor.

I’ve posted a Squib at Hogwarts Chapter, stuck on my diet (7 lbs and not cheated once!)

Getting more organized… I did pick up my desk and my chair and sorted things on them. Rather pleased with how it’s broken up the room. Made it a lot more functional.

Can see my pretty pink netbook proudly running Jolicloud (which is now in open beta and I am considered a Founding Member) there on the side. And if you’re wondering, those flowers in the vase are dead… I think they’re pretty and moved them, and another set onto the desk.

Some people think I’m weird… I think they’re right and mostly just tell them thank you for noticing!

Most of the other things on my list are not yet able to be done, IE England trip. But I’m working towards it. Very happy!

One other exciting thing I’m going to be starting this course this month called Vintage Jesus.

Really looking forward to this, have been since I first heard it mentioned at the church.

And that’s my uber picture filled blog post for today! Questions, comments and suggestions always welcome!

Posted in General, Personal | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

And It Begins!

Posted on January 4, 2010 by Asheyna

In keeping with my New Year’s Resolution to be moar RAWR I am going to start a diet tomorrow today. Will be giving the South Beach Diet a try, my parents are actually going to be doing it as well… which would matter more if I was still living with them lol. But the moral support is going to be a huge help.

What exactly am I worried about? No chocolate, let’s face it… I love chocolate, I’m a girl lol. It’s genetic. At least I can still have coffee, that could have been seriously, seriously horrible. *shudders at the thought*

Ok moving on past the nightmare.

Moving past it now.

Wait no, now.

Yeesh that’s a horrible thought.

Alright! Back to the blogging thing that I’m doing now, right. I have a few specific goals and rewards to myself for reaching those goals. This isn’t going to be easy, not much of a bread person, but I love other carbs.

My plan is to use this blog to keep me accountable hehe, and maybe encourage others on their diets as well.

How are the rest of the resolutions doing? Well I’m writing more… enjoying this newest story that I’m working on. Not planning on showing it to anyone at all until when/if it gets published. But it’s fun, I have no idea what’s going to happen, there’s just this concept that is a bit different.

Organizing is going well! Bought a new desk that is set up but doesn’t have everything on it yet. I’m really liking how it breaks up the space in my room and gives me a more defined office area. Hopefully this will enable me to be more productive!

Last but not least, my web comic! Got two strips up, next one is due next Monday.

Posted in Personal | Leave a comment

2010 – The Way I See It

Posted on January 1, 2010 by Asheyna

So I know New Year’s Resolutions are cliche and whatnot… but you know what? I like them. I make them every year. Some years I keep them, some years I don’t… but the idea is still there. New beginnings and all that. Anyone who’s known me for a while knows that I’ve started over several times… I don’t regret any of them, they made me who I am. It’s scary, but it’s amazingly freeing as well. This year I’m not starting over, but I would love to add a few habits, personality traits, etc to my life.

My resolutions? Well… here are the specific ones:

1) Write more, and for me.

Protag has been an awesome learning, networking and challenging tool for my writing, and I definitely plan on posting there more frequently this upcoming year. But one thing that happened when I got involved in the site was I stopped writing for me. I was writing for an audience instantly, every post was available to the public and if I was having an off day, well, it showed. This year I resolve to actually write a story that only I, and perhaps a few select people (ie my sis) can read. The story will have no other purpose than to amuse me, I miss this.

2) Finish “A Squib At Hogwarts?”

In the vein of the first resolution comes the second, to finish the Harry Potter fanfic that I’m writing. My goal, to this end, is publishing one chapter a week until the story is finished.

3) Go to England!

Yes, my goal for the summer is to spend two weeks with some of the kewlest people I know… Brits! If you’ve been reading this blog at all, ever, you will know I have a group of friends in England. For the middle two weeks of August my plan is to fly out there and meet them! Two of them, dark and dru, are actually coming to visit me first in February, so I’m SUPER stoked!!

4) Be more organized

Alright, so creative, absent-minded artist types are cool. I’d like to think I do it pretty well for the most part. But… my lack of organization is a bit annoying. Time to grow up a little bit, not saying I’m going to throw my odd ways behind me… just, tweak them a little :D

5) Be more RAWR

You read that right. Be more RAWR. What is “rawr” you ask? Well… to me it’s many things. First and foremost, it means being less of me hehe, I’d like to loose weight this year. It also means just being more me, more artsy, creative, embracing all things that encompass the weirdness that is moi. Pretty general resolution eh? You could summarize it by saying that I want to be happier with who I am. Whether that means accepting the things about myself that will not change, or working hard to change the things that I can. Some of these are general concepts, ideas, others (like loosing weight) is pretty specific. As things come up odds are I’ll be blogging about them.

So that’s it! Small list eh? I’m a realist, I could say I’m going to try all these new things, they probably won’t stick. So… these are my 5 resolutions for 2010. Going to finish this off with an awesome video I found about writing… because so much of what I want to tangibly accomplish this year is related to writing.

If you’re an author at all, of any stream, watch this! Even if you’re not… it’s awesome.

Ps. I’m buying a laser printer tomorrow ~.^

Posted in General, Personal | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

My Favorite Things of 2009

Posted on December 17, 2009 by Asheyna

Wow, so 2009 is almost over. I’ve not been nearly as good with this blog as I would have liked… nothing like my friend @Faltarego and his amazing blog. Seriously… check it out. There’s a good chance I’ll be overhauling my blog in the next few weeks and publishing a shiny new blog for 2010. This is what we’ve got for now though, so I’mma work with it :D

This was a pretty awesome year. Personally I felt as though I really settled down into having fun with who I was, embracing the weirder aspects of myself and just generally being comfy with me.

So what were the best parts of this year? It was a full one to be sure! Here we are, in no order other than the random one in which they popped into my head, the things I’ll remember from 2009!

So You Think You Can Dance – Season 4

I don’t even care that this season was from 2008. I didn’t watch it until this year. And it is easily my FAVORITE So You Think You Can Dance season ever.

Twitch and Katie – Mercy

Twitch and Kherington – A New Day Has Come
What you have to understand about this one is choreographed by Jean-Marc Généreux for his daughter who has Rett Syndrome but loves to watch dancers. I cry the entire way through, every time I see it.

EVE-Online

Some seriously awesome memories are related to playing this MMO at the beginning of the year. I found my way into this awesome all-male group of fighter pilots <OTG> who let me fly with them and be their tackler. Some of the guys I fly with I still talk to even now although I no longer play the game.

They were crazy, and I had a blast flying with them. We ninja looted, high sec ganked, explored wormholes. So big shout out to Jat, Frank, Scout and dpidcoe… my boys <3

If you get in a fair fight… You did something wrong.

Google Phone

Yeah that’s right, my google phone makes the list! It even has it’s own blog, sort of.

It was released in Europe earlier under the name G1 and didn’t get released in Canada until early this summer. I’d planned to get one but didn’t rush out right away, trying to be good with my budget and all. Well… my Opa then comes home with the HTC Magic which was also released that day. That settled it, I went straight to the Rogers store and got my phone. Haven’t looked back. I seriously love this phone, it lets me be SO geeky, it’s open source, it does everything I want… gah I luffs it.

My Brits

Yup, I have my own personal Brits. It all started when I signed up for this awesome website called Protagonize and met this crazy dude named @darkliquid and through him I just kept meeting people! More specifically… I started stalking Brits lawl.

Was pretty successful at it too :P

That crazy bunch of Brits is, from left to right: Bytey, Darkliquid, and LostProcess… don’t ask me their real names, I know them, I do… it will just take too long to remember :P

Dark is married to my girl @DruidX who kindly took the pics and uploaded them onto Pixelpipe for me :D I’ve never met any of them irl, but seriously… they’re awesome friends.

And Dark and Dru are coming to visit me! Feb 23, I’m so excited I couldn’t stop dancing around when I found out. Let’s just hope we don’t have An Asheyna Incident!

Protagonize – Top 50

protag

I joined Protag in early April and fell completely in love. It’s an online collaborative writer’s site, basically a guild, of writers from all over the world. You can post joint or solo stories, leave feedback and get ratings, etc. One of my best moments this year was when I made it into the Top 50. A small accomplishment compared to some perhaps, but it meant a lot to me. Especially after @nickb, the site’s creator, removed the self-ratings from that calculation. It meant that every author in the Top 50 had been voted their by our peers.

The following is a list of the stuff I’m currently working on for the site.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

So that’s what I loved about 2009! There’s lots more I’m sure, I may even edit this post before the end of the year, but those are the things that really stand out that were unique to this year. Can’t wait to see what comes in 2010!!

Posted in General, Personal | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Thirty-ish Days and Nights of Literary Abandon

Posted on December 1, 2009 by Asheyna

n1389894426_5642So, a picture says a thousand words right? Well take a look at the one over there >>

If you don’t believe that, then go check out this link.

That’s right, my story is finished! Not only did I meet the word count but the actual story is done too :D

This was my first NaNo, and what an experience it was! Got a late start, and then just never managed to catch up. Couple times I came close, but never made it. For a while I was in a decent groove, fitting in word wars and bits of writing here and there. Did some covert writing at work hehe, so some of my novel is hand-written pages at the moment.

About half way through one of my characters died. I didn’t kill him, honestly. From the start I knew someone had to die, and I’d planned to kill off a different person. Then I’m in the middle of a one hour word war with my friend Vampire_Rogue and all of a sudden my favorite secondary character is being hauled off. I cried for the rest of the word war :( That was hard, no more writing got done that night. The next evening I wrote the funeral scene, and had the character I was planning to kill say a few words over the unmarked grave.

You can laugh all you want. Those people have lived in my head for over a year, they’re like friends. And then one of them died on my pages…

Oiy, yeah oiy. I’m getting teary thinking about it now. That was the hardest part of the month and I lost the will to live write for a few days. So my already behind self was almost hopelessly behind. Wasn’t impossible though, so you know. Me being me, I just had to get crazy with it. I’d suddenly fallen into plans to go away for the last weekend of the month, and I wanted to enjoy myself.

Enter Mad Dash to Finish – A Night of Writing Dangerously

On Wednesday the 25 my word total was: 35, 238. I was leaving on Friday… so let’s just do some quick math ok?

50,000
-35,238
14,762

That’s Wednesday NIGHT mind you. Thursday is also my busiest day of the week. Ballet with minime in the morning and teaching in the afternoon and family dinner that evening.

So at 9PM on Thursday night I got writing… and writing… and writing…

Determined not to go to sleep until I was finished.

At the start of the evening I could word war and get 900+ words in 15 minutes. I had a personal victory when I wrote 1005 words in a 15 min word war. Then the pain started, first it was a finger cramp, then my back started to ache from sitting, then my wrists started going.

Took a break to do some laundry and just chill. Called a friend for encouragement (it helped!)

The hours passed, the word count grew but my word war ability died. The novel was finished at 4:33AM Friday morning, my last 15 min word war yielded 600 words. Not for lack of thought, but pure inability to actually type. But it was done, and I validated it, posted some “woohoo” tweets and Facebook msgs, and crashed.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The novel is done, some parts are crap, seriously unadulterated crap. For example, I clearly remember a character set in the future yelling “What in tarnation?!” Yeah, I know. But it got the point across for the moment.

Others are moving… funeral scene flashback *sniff*.

And the end? Well.. it’s done, and I love and hate it. It was SO not where I saw the novel going, but then it was like the ball started rolling. And I wasn’t creating the story so much as recording what happened to these characters. Events fell into place, and then, it was over and my response was something along the lines of O.o

Awesome right? Yeah I know.

Now I’m leaving the book to gather a bit of cyber dust. Get some distance, work on other things… in a few months I shall pick it up and begin the LOOOOONG process of editing it into something worth reading.

If you’ve never tried NaNoWriMo you should. Start planning now, create characters, worlds, let them just wander around your brain for the next year and then join the insanity that is November in author-land.

Posted in General, NaNoWriMo | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment