And so...

You will not see me posting until after November 30th. Just a warning. But you will see Artemis, who has so kindly volunteered to post updates on my nano throughout November. Keep a look out for her!

Surfing the web, la la la, SLAP IN THE FACE!

Today I was on the computer listening to Disturbia by Rhianna and some other music, trying to get my 1,700 words in without success. I finally gave up, and turned to watching stuff on YouTube.
My absolute favorite TV show ever is Stargate: Atlantis, which started a new season last July. You remember a while back I posted about the season finale of season 4? Yeah, I finally gave up and watched season 5 episode 1 on youtube. It was very good, finished well, solved the problem beautifully. So watching that, I wanted to know what the next episode was called, so I went to Gateworld, which is THE website to go to for all Stargate questions. And right there on the front page was this headline:
ATLANTIS CANCELLED
Gah! Giant slap in the face!
So I hurried up and read the artical, dreading that they were going to cancel it before the season was over, and found out that they were going to finish season 5, do a movie, then Atlantis will be done.
GAH!

But they are going to be doing a third show, called Stargate: Universe, that might be good. It will never be as good as Atlantis though.
*Tears up*

In other news, I reached 12,000 words yesterday! I am so happy! That is the most I have ever written on one story, EVER.
*Happy dance*
I have no idea where the story is going, but I am writing 1,700 words a day no matter what, and I am going to make it to 50k by Halloween, then I will know for sure that I can do it in November. And I will have finished two novels by December!
Wheeeee!
Then December will be devoted to editing and getting them ready for sending out to publishers.
*Squeal!*
I CAN DO IT!

Also, I got a raise at work yesterday. I am now earning $10/hour! I was so happy that I had a hard time not breaking out into a giddy grin the last 5 minutes of work last night. And I smiled all the way home!

Anyone know CSS?

I have a problem.

I went to try and make my website look better, and ended up with something wrong. Check out the bottom.

I have been over the CSS, but nothing makes sense to me because I only know HTML.

Here is the site it's supposed to look like: Link

And I can't remember where I got it.

If you think you can help, please email me.

Is it stealing if I use D & D as a guide to make my own world?

I have almost sort of decided what I'm going to be doing for NaNoWriMo.

It's going to be a fantasy, it might involve a Druid, it will have a princess that was changed into a fluffy white kitten, and it will have lots of black shadows.

I think.

The story I'm writing right now is set in a fantasy world that is pretty interesting. Since I wasn't really paying attention to what I was writing when I wrote the first 3 pages, I have a new world that warrents some expansion.

Example: The city the main character is living is is called Fifth's Dawn. Why? I don't have the foggiest idea. There are two festivals mentioned, the Festival of Leaves and the Midwinter Festival. It's baking hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter. There are Gray Magicians and Elves. One part of Fifth's Dawn is called the Lower Courts. There is magic, what kind I don't know for sure.

So far there have been no mention of a government, the only other characters other than the 12 year old girl who is the main one is a gray magician who wishes her ill, an elf Prince who wishes her well, a seller of strange artifacts, and her son. Any others are only mentioned in passing.

The question I pose is this. Is it stealing if I take ideas for fleshing out this world from D & D v3.5?

I was looking through it earlier and thought that if I changed a whole lot of things but still followed the same principles and ideas, I might be able to have a world worth writing stories in.

Is that wrong?

Ready, set... Oh... It's next month...

So next month is November, as I'm sure everyone is aware, but it's also NaNoWriMo. National Novel Writing Month.

I did this last year and totally bombed out at 6k words. Never got close to the 50k goal. The biggest reason was because I had been so hyped up on Halloween that I started a novel about a girl who finds out she's a witch from Halloween land and I combined several other story ideas that I had had and wanted to write but could only pick one.

And November isn't really a Halloween month. So I got bored really fast, especially with the plot not moving forward very fast.

This year, things are going to be different, I will tell you that right now. First of all, I don't have classes to go to. True, I do have work, but I spend about 4 hours a day sitting on a bus to actually get to work, so that's 4 hours I can be writing.

And I am getting a new, awesome, powerful laptop. My dad is helping me with this, as he is a computer expert. He's going to be doing the actual shopping for a great computer, I'm just going to pay for it.

Luckily I have an extra paycheck this month that I don't have to pay bills with. Whoot!

The biggest problem now is that I have no clue what I'm going to write this year. Last year I was all planned out before I started, was all set to go, all I had to do was write everything down. Only I got bogged down with the boring details.

This year I'm going to start with nothing. With actually might not work, but what the heck. I don't even know what genre I'm going to do... We'll just have to see after the first, which thankfully is a Saturday. So I'll have all Saturday to write 20k and be ahead of everyone. Then I might actually finish the 50k before the end of the month and try to make it to 75k, which is what some other people are doing.

Actually I think that is insane. But you know, if I do finish the 50k before the month is over and the story is not over, then I'm going to keep writing.

All this planning and I'm not sure I can do it...

DON'T SAY THAT! I'M GOING TO DO IT, I'M GOING TO MAKE IT, I'M GOING TO FINISH!

Okay.

For anyone who wants to try, the website is nanowrimo.org. It would actually be nice to have people I know doing it as well, that way I have buddies, and might be able to plan a write-in on one of the Saturdays.

The only distracting thing I'm going to do during the month is I'm going to go see Twilight in theaters for the midnight showing.

Anyone want to go with me?

8 Years and then, so beautiful, so wonderful... WHAT THE?! What happened?

There is a book called Into the Land of the Unicorns. It's written by Bruce Colville, who's a very good childrens book writer. It came out in the '90s and was a very good book. I really loved it. Then book two came out in 2000, called Song of the Wanderer, and I loved that one just as much, but I could tell that the story wasn't over. So I waited for the next one to come out. And waited... and waited... and waited....

Finally, yesterday I found out it had come out and that there was a copy at one of the local libraries. So I used some of my precious gas to drive over and grab it before anyone else could.

When I left for work around 11 and rode the bus for an hour and a half, I read the book, which is called Dark Whispers. I read it during my 10 minute break at 4:30 and my lunch break at 7. I read it all the way home and finally finished it just before arriving at the train station.

It took all of my strength to keep from screaming on the bus.

Dark Whispers has the worst cliffhanger ending I have ever read!

NOOOO! I don't want to wait another 8 years! WRITE FASTER BRUCE!

The book was so amazing, it switched viewpoints a lot, which he hadn't done in the other two, but even though they weren't the main character, Cara, I was still rooting for them, not caring that I had to wait for Cara to come back onto the page.

And one of my favorite unicorns dies! HOW COULD YOU?!

Thankfully, my ultimate favorite is still alive, seperated from Cara and in the direct path of danger, but still alive!

I just wish I knew what happened... *Whimpers pitiously*

In other news, I have rediscovered my old Eragon website, Alagasia Manin, mostly because for some reason, people keep joining even though IT'S OBVIOUSLY NOT ACTIVE and so I sent all the members an email asking if they wanted to reactivate the site, and, what I was not expecting, three people came back and said they did!

Therefore, I need to find someone who can do a layout for me. The website is hosted on Invision Free and the current layout, which I did myself, is crap.

And anyone else who want's to join is welcome to!

That's all for now...