Re: The Celebration Thread :D

[Guest]

Silvone, what's NaNoWriMo?

National Novel Writing Month. There is a thread in the writing forums about it, if you want to take a look. I might not be doing it after all, as Ryona really wants to do it and I already have a ton of other writing projects to work on.

[Kathryn Lacey]

Ooh. Yeah. I think I'll pass. I'm working on a submission for FoG's writing contest. A short story is within my reach, but a full novel is beyond me. =3

[Guest]

It is less of a novel and more of just a string of 50,000 words. It doesn't even necessarily have to be coherent. The whole point of the contest is for people to force themselves to sit down and write, without getting stuck in the traps of editing and re-editing and blasting past those pesky writing block barriers. But I can understand your hesitation. I've tried twice, and didn't even hit 20,000 words either time.

[Kathryn Lacey]

Yeah. I want to reach 5,000 words for the writing contest, and I'm only at a little over 2,396 words, and I'm a little over halfway done. I just have to type up a battle, the after-effects, and the end. Then again... by the end, I'm probably going to be a little over 5,000 words, but still. I don't anticipate being able to ever keep my head set on one activity long enough to ever write something that's 50,000 words long. ^;_;^

[Fate Flyer]

*is excited* I can't wait to read what you guys come up with! ^_^

I was more than halfway done with my little Halloween story for the fun of it over the weekend, and I managed to get 2 more paragraphs done this morning before class, but I'm really nervous I'm going to go over 5,000 words. D: I guess it doesn't matter for me though! I was just hoping I could live up to my own rules lol. I'm at 4,897 right now!

[Guest]

I haven't even started writing mine yet Maybe I should do that now, while my son is asleep... I got the basic ideas for the story hammered out, but I just need to write it.

[Kathryn Lacey]

Yeah. When I started writing mine, I only had a tiny, three paragraph bio from the main character's sheet with which to work, so I had a beginning, a rough idea of an event, and the end. I'm hoping that I won't have to cut anything from my story to make it fit the required 5,000 words, but I fear I may have to do that. It won't be easy, but I know I'll be really proud of myself by the time I finish even if I don't win. ^^_^^

[Reffy]

Been a long time since I visited the Celebration Thread, so there goes:

- Celebrating awesome feed-back on a crappy story that was just written and not edited. Straight from the heart. Exhilarating. I suggest every body does this.
- Celebrating entering NaNoWriMo with a few others from here, ZOMG, real life and AWR.
- Celebrating finally coming up with a really good plot for my Novel (NaNoWriMo)
- Celebrating having an actual challenge.
- Celebrating my Halloween Competition entry, which I really enjoyed writing (it has a few mistakes but I'm over it since I cannot edit it)
- Celebrating hubby taking on healthier life-style.
- Celebrating hubby almost graduating college (turns out he has another month to do for the student financial aid, in which time he'll do another course that will look awesome on his resume)

Think that's it for now

[Guest]

What job is it?

I'll be working at a deli at the local grocery store. It sounds kinda lame, but it'll be fun.

[Kathryn Lacey]

Ugh... I would hate to do that, but I hate meat. Being a cashier is just find and dandy, though.

[Kalon Ordona II]

I've worked in a deli before. It was fun! ^^ ish.

[The Melancholy Spirit]

Seems every forum I go to people talk about NaNoWriMo… personally I’ve never taken part in it and don’t plan to ever do so… I’ve a strong bias against the entire concept.

Deli worker… cashier… both jobs I wouldn’t really want. Cashier would be the ‘too many people’ issue for me though. Only place I could do that would be a small business or a music store. :p

And how the hell do you people actually fit a story in under 5,000 words!? Seriously… I’m baffled. :/

Celebrating that the concert is this Friday… leaving around 10:30ish (at night) Thursday. Which… anyone reading this who is involved in Eternal Camaraderie… I won’t have access to any computer until I get back sometime Saturday.

[Inerio]

I celebrate my friend Mike finally getting a boyfriend. The damn guy has whored around enough and is finally settling down. I'm so proud.

[Kalon Ordona II]

Oops! I didn't celebrate something that time! Guess I better celebrate TWO things now. xD

I CELEBRATE... ...INERIO'S RETURN!

aaaaaaand.... lesseehere...

I CELEBRATE... thinkthink, think, thinkthinkthink... CANDY!-- MANGA!-- DISCWORLD!

[Inerio]

If I had a beer I'd drink to that.(I have to get booze off my mind. Underage drinking is wrong.)

I have a soda though, so I lift my blue can to you! I also add an emote to my counter.

[Fate Flyer]

*also celebrates Inerio's return* ^_^


I'm kind of relieved right now, since my teacher that I have this quarter for 2 of my 4 classes is actually a pretty nice man. I thought he was intimidating at first and a little serious/stern, but that seems to just be his nature to talk that way, since he appears to have a good sense of humor and is friendly. He also allowed our class to able to come in a max of 15 minutes late for our 8 AM class, which he didn't have to do. So, I thought that was nice too.

[Guest]

Seems every forum I go to people talk about NaNoWriMo… personally I’ve never taken part in it and don’t plan to ever do so… I’ve a strong bias against the entire concept.

You have a bias against a concept that inspires people to write? May I ask why? I mean, the whole point of it is to motivate people to break past writing blocks and just write. What is there to have against that?

[Kathryn Lacey]

Well, I don't exactly enjoy my job, Melancholy. It's just a job, and I honestly think being a cashier is better than being behind a meat counter.

It was really difficult to fit my story under 5,000 words. I exercised extreme caution throughout its making, and I still ended up over the limit. I had to cut some interesting things in order to have it fit. ._.

Hah! Fate, I knew your professor would turn out to be awesome! I even told you that you would end up liking him! ^^_^^

I celebrate being right.

[The Melancholy Spirit]

My bias is against the ideal of quantity over quality. I don’t claim to be right in the matter, nor will I deny that it, in some ways, could make me into the dreaded ‘elitist’ category of people. To be honest and frank, the concept sickens me more than anything. It makes me think of the modern ideals of efficiency over quality, just get do what works to get things finished no matter how cheap they are in the end. To be, it just builds an attitude of ‘it doesn’t matter how terrible it is, as long as it is done’. For me, and many people I’ve discussed writing with, inspiration to write comes from something altogether different and they care, very much so, about how it holds up to what they wanted it to be. Also, I write for myself and no one else… which I admit is selfish. There are far better ways to be motivated to break past writing blocks, and they teach us to build a hell of a lot more character. It might sound strange, but I’m rather a fan of a quote from a musician (I forget which…) who said ’Why should I do something the easy way when I can do something the hard way. In the end it is just my opinion and I’ve nothing against people who partake in it, as that is there choice… I’m just the kind of person who speaks their mind about things even if it makes me appear the lesser. ~shrugs~

Kathryn, I couldn’t really say which is better since I’ve never done either. I would imagine I’d prefer being a cashier though, but only (as previously stated) in a smaller business. I prefer small businesses anyway… rather sick of these corporations taking over everything and destroying the economy/job situation… especially Wal-Mart. At least a third of the buildings that once housed business are now closed in my town anymore. :/

I’d probably have to cut out about… oh at least eighty percent of a story to get it under 5,000 words myself… haha.

[Kalon Ordona II]

Have you yet had the pleasure of reading some of the entries for our last writing contest, Melancholy? They're all less than five thousand words. (pleeease read mine; I'd love to know what you think of it! It's the first 2 posts there on page 2 xD)

Normally I don't think I could have forced myself to stick to a mere 5,000 words either. What I did was treat it as if it were the prologue to a story instead of a complete story in itself, and then end it with finality. 'Twas an interesting exercise. Breaking it up into bits helped, as well. ^^ Sort of like making a short role-play with yourself. Or a backstory for a character.

As for NaNoWriMo, I think their idea is just got Get People To Write That Elusive First Draft. Once you have the first draft, you can then begin revising, but you have to get the first draft first, and that's always a really hard step.

I celebrate the number 8? Why? Because I can...---
I celebrate learning more about photomanipulation today! Fun with photo-enhancing programs! xD

[Guest]

For one thing, NaNoWriMo is not easy. Once it does become easy, then it is time to move on. Its not about finishing anything either. You don't have to send in a readable story of any sort. They don't read it, you merely submit it for a word count. Its about starting it, and reaching a point far beyond what most beginning writers would ever reach. I, for one, have not reached 50,000 words in any story I've ever written. If I can successfully do it in NaNoWriMo, it will be a huge stepping stone for me. It will also, hopefully, help establish a habit of writing more often and more words per sitting. I tend to edit and re-edit and then give up entirely.

So, in my opinion, it is less about hammering out a story in a month, forgetting about the quality, and more about establishing a habit for beginning writers who spend too much time editing than just moving forward so that the editing can be done later. And as Kalon mentioned, NaNoWriMo stories are not a finished product, but merely a first draft than can then be edited at the writers leisure.

[Kathryn Lacey]

Melancholy, I think you would like Fairfield, Iowa. We have a lot of small businesses ((and a huge variety of cultures)) here because the Maharishi schools- namely MUM and MSAE- bring a lot of people from all over the world to our streets. Fairfield would have failed if not for them, but yeah. This seems to be one of the places in which people start a lot of small businesses... and restaurants. Fairfield has more restaurants per ca pita than anywhere else in the world. XD

It's tiny, though... That's the drawback.

Anyway, yeah. It's pretty sweet. We do have a Wal-Mart and all of our nasty fast food franchises, but you can't find a place that doesn't. I shop at Wal-Mart for jeans and such, but yeah. Wal-Mart is lame... ._.

[The Melancholy Spirit]

I’ve yet had the pleasure to read any entry for the last contest Kalon, much to my dismay. It has been troublesome to do so, what with the site taking so long to load anything for me. I was quite hoping that it would have started working normally again by now, yet alas it has not. Maybe when I get back from the trip it will be back to normal… all I can do is hope, eh?

Understandable, sounds like a good way to go about restricting your word limit to me. I’ll admit that my problem is in my perfectionist approach at things, for in treating it as a prologue and then adding finality to it I’d end up finding countless errors in doing so and see the story as nothing more than an intro and an ending with a vast, gaping void. Sure, perfect can’t be obtained but by chasing it I just might obtain excellence… it hinders my work a lot, in terms of finishing things, but I do believe it progresses my level of writing much faster with better results. Of course, ‘tis just my way of doing things and not the best… nor would I suggest it to anyone else because it can be incredibly tedious and some might even say trivial.

Also, I get the point of NaNoWriMo, as you two are describing… but that doesn’t mean I agree with it. I edit as I go myself, but that is never what keeps me from finishing something. What keeps me from doing so is that I always find inconstancies with the plot, errors with timelines or logistics and so forth of the world (I rarely write anything that isn’t in my own world, even when dealing in ‘modern’ eras).

For me, it comes down to self discipline and I think for a person to discipline themselves outside of something such as the NaNoWriMo builds a lot more strength of character, and in the long run is better for true potential writers and not simply these people who do it for leisure or, dare I say, hacks. Again, I realize this probably makes me sound arrogant and an elitist, but it is the way I feel about the entire thing.

--------

Fairfield, eh? I believe that is where my mother’s friend is going to be graduating from in a couple years. My mother is going to be going with her… I’ve debated trying to go myself if I’m still around and can manage to do so… less for the graduation bit and more as just an excuse to see some place new… which I love doing. Traveling is great, truly. I generally like smaller places though, not a fan of big cities myself.

I get my jeans at… Macy’s I think. ‘Tis the only place in town I can get low boot cut jeans that actually fit comfortably. Sears only has boot cut, not the low rise ones that I wear. And yes, they are male jeans even though they are low rise. ~chuckles~ I don’t even like shopping at those places though… but we’ve no good places to get decent clothing around here else wise… and hot topic is just… well, I’ve never been a fan of that place. Only thing I’ve gotten there has been a few band shirts, but these days I have to order all those anyway.

[Kathryn Lacey]

Aww. That's pretty neat that we have a shaky link to one another via the webbing theory or whatever... You --> Your Mom --> Mom's friend lives in Fairfield --> I work in Fairfield...

But yeah! Maybe you should visit your mom's friend! Then I could officially meet one person from FoG in the flesh! XD

[The Melancholy Spirit]

Well, she is going to school here currently. Working on getting her teachers credentials, I believe. They have both worked as teachers aides in the special ed. branch of school for several years now, ‘tis how they met. I don’t know much of the situation, just that she is going to be graduating up in Iowa in a couple years… and I’m quite sure I recall hearing the name Fairfield when the trip was being discussed.

Haha, I could always just hop on one of the trains passing through town and take it as far as I could… avoiding detections as I hop onto more until I get there.

[Reffy]

I CELEBRATE... thinkthink, think, thinkthinkthink... CANDY!-- MANGA!-- DISCWORLD!

CELEBRATING DISCWORLD WITH YOU! WOOHOO!
Cramming as much Terry Pratchett and Terry Brooks as possible in to my brainz before November. I am, after all, writing a Fantasy World Finished "Witches Abroad" yesterday, and just started "The Color of Magic". Hoping to squeeze in one more Pratchett, possibly "Hogfather", and "Landover: For Sale, Sold!" Terry Brooks.

[Guest]

Well, turns out I won't be getting the deli job.
[chody died a little when he found out XD]

I'll just be working everywhere around the store wherever they need me.
Hopefully I'll get to work in the bakery! : D

Also, I celebrate making these awesome homemade donut holes that Chody and CJ absoultely loved...Even though I can't eat them. D:
I'm tryin to lose some weight.

[Inerio]

I celebrate my little brother's seventh birthday!!!

God, I'm so much older than him it's almost sad.

I also celebrate that he's getting a wii for his birthday which means the rest of the house gets a wii. Which means I can get the Ju-On, Silent Hill, and other horror genre games for the wii now!

[Weiss]

This morning, I'd like to celebrate the ability to cook. It's a simple thing, perhaps not truly worth celebrating, but there are few things that can beat a bacon, fried egg and cheese Everything Bagel sandwich in the morning.

So, here's to being able to cook!

[Guest]

I'm celebrating my wife's birthday today! Happy Birthday! She's now 22!

[Sponsored content]