Saturday, March 20th, 4:03 AM

I'm shaking, so I must be in shock. It's hard to think properly, hard to get these words down on the computer. I've only been scared worse twice in my life; once when I was eight and had a terrifying nightmare, and again when I was nineteen and almost drowned. The difference this time is that I'm not scared for my own life.

I have two friends, brothers, who I'm pretty close to. We haven't known each other very long, but they are both really great guys and loads of fun to be around. I just found out that they were in a terrible car accident. They were driving with their dad and got t-boned by a runaway semi truck.

I don't know if they're going to make it. I got the call while they were on route to the hospital, and I don't know what condition they are in. I was told that their car is a complete wreck. When I asked if I could meet them at the hospital to see who they were doing, I was told that I couldn't because I'm "not family," even though they don't have any other family. So all I can do is sit at home, worrying and trying to get back to sleep.

Are they going to survive? Will there be any permanent damage? Will life ever return to normal?

Edit: Saturday, March 20th, 5:03 PM

They're going to be okay. I got a call this afternoon from the hospital, and the brothers are going to be okay. The younger one is pretty cut up, but nothing serious, and the older one was unconscious for a few hours with damage to his liver and kidney, as well as a really nasty bump on the head.

The father, unfortunately, didn't make it. They tell me that he was awake and walking around for a little while, but that he collapsed unexpectedly and passed away.

They're still not letting me come see them, because the older brother is still in really critical condition, but as far as I've been told, they're going to be just fine. I've spoken with the younger brother, he called me as soon as he'd found a phone, and he's a real mess. Everything that's happened, from what he's told me, I'm really not surprised that he's emotionally a wreck.

But the boys are going to be okay, which is what is most important.

Protagonize

So, I've been floundering for the last little while when it comes to my writing. I'm not in a writing group any more, so I don't have anyone cheering me on, or even telling me I can do better. I finally decided on Tuesday that I needed something, so I googled 'writing communities'. I checked out a couple that popped up, but nothing looked like it was what I was looking for, until I found the site called Protagonize. It had a cool layout, a great logo, and from what I read about it, it was exactly what I was looking for. A website where writers can get together and either write solo stories or collaborate with the rest of the website.

I signed up and immediately jumped in, posting something I had written that morning and introducing myself on the forum.

Ten minutes later I got a comment on my story. She, the girl who had read it, said that she really liked it and was pleased that I had almost perfect grammar. This made me feel all bubbly inside, and I was so pleased that posting more on the website as been the only thing on my mind since then.

I would definitely recommend this website to all you writers out there. If you already are a member, look me up under DHNoble.

I'm sick of making plans that never pan out.

Let me clue you in on a secret of mine; I'm a big planner. I make plans for everything, from what's going to happen when my family moves to Iowa without me, to what I'm going to do during the day. The only thing is, I never actually follow through with the plans. If I've made a list of things to do during the day, they never get done. If I do research and make plans for my schooling, I change my mind. I've changed my mind half a dozen times about whether or not I was moving with my family to Iowa. (currently it's not, and as far as I know it's not going to change, thank goodness)

This has always been a big problem of mine. I make plans to work on one of my novels and end up getting side tracked by another. I make plans to work on the one that side tracked me, and I get side tracked again. I can never stick to one project longer than a few days, and it's driving me nuts. I'm almost ready to throw the proverbial towel in. Almost, but not quite.

I'm going to make one last-ditched attempt to get my life situated. My dad sent me some job training ideas, and as soon as I can open the file I'm going to start working on acquiring a skill that will earn me more than $150-$200 every two weeks. I'm determined to get out of my night owl, TV, and generally lazy habits, and get into some better habits.

It really hit me in the last week or so that I only have another few months before I'm completely on my own. And the way I'm living my life right now, I won't survive at all. I don't make enough to pay rent and insurance, my job isn't completely steady, and I generally have too much time on my hands.

So from now on, I'm a changed woman. I'm no longer the lazy do-nothing that I once was. I'm going to be proactive about my future.

Just as soon as I quit blogging as a way to procrastinate.

Holy Wow, that car is cool

First things first: I have to admit that I finally gave in and started watching the TV show Knight Rider. Not the older version, I would probably gone insane watching that one. No, I started watching the 2008 Knight Rider, and believe me, I was hooked, instantly. The movie, which I own, was okay. A little cheesy, but okay. The TV show, much better. I have always loved movies/shows with racing/really fast cars; Speed Racer, etc. So after I watched about half of the show, I got a really great idea for an urban-ish fantasy series I could write.

It would be about a woman (duh) who is a great mechanic and loves cars. One day she gets struck by lightning and (par What Women Want) she starts to hear cars talking. She then goes on grand adventures with different kinds of cars, rescuing people, stopping bank robbers, etc. I ran the story idea by my mom, and she liked it. (which surprised me)

So of course, for this kind of story I would have to get pretty intimate knowledge about the best cars, car terminology, and how to fix cars. So I hurried like a good little writer over to the local library and found some books that might help. (might, since I didn't find an all encompassing car book detailing how to become an automobile genius) I got a book about Pony cars, a term I hadn't heard of before, muscle cars through the ages, and a ladies guide to taking care of your car.

Being myself, I read through the muscle car book first, drooling over the pictures of the really amazing looking cars like they were male models. I couldn't decide what car I liked the best, so I decided to do a little more research online. This led me to the Dodge Challenger.

I was originally looking at the Ford Shelby Mustant GT500, which is an amazing car, and was looking up pictures when I came across a picture that compared the Shelby to the Dodge Challenger. Next to the Challenger, the Shelby doesn't look nearly as cool. So I began to look up pictures of the Challenger. This led me to finding out what the specifications of the car could be, so I headed over to the Dodge website to build my own from scratch.

This led me to the Challenger SRT8 (Street and Racing Technology, in case you were wondering), which automatically comes with a 6.1 liter V8 SRT HEMI engine. For those of you who haven't been studying cars all day, that means this is a really fast, powerful car. It can pull 325 horsepower, which, while not as amazing as the Dodge Viper (600hp, and $91,000), is really good for a muscle car. As a comparison, average coups and sedans get about 110-150hp. See?

Now, the Charger SRT8 actually has the same engine. The selling point for me was the Challenger can come in purple.

Now you see how very non-girly and girly I can be, at the same time.

Sorry about the ramble... I tend to be long winded.

They have come back to haunt me.

As someone who loves her dreams and hates waking up in the middle of them, I have had some trouble with the last two nights' collection of dreams. Don't get me wrong, I loved them all. It's just, every single one of them reminded me how very alone I am, as well as how scared I am of being in a relationship. My subconscious has it in for me, I swear.

Talking about another plan

My life has taken on some structure; For once I have a concrete schooling goal that is possible to complete, as well as an after the fact goal. Like my novel, mentioned in the post below, it has taken a long time to get to this point.

As someone who is college age and who could be almost done with her third year, I'm not the most dedicated person. I have a problem with procrastination (got it from my dad), and I'm always changing my mind about exactly what I want to be doing. I've planned everything from ASL interpretation to crime scene investigation and police work. But when I actually get to the part where I have to start working on it, then I have either chickened out or decided that I wanted to be doing something different.

This year it's going to be a little different for several reasons. My family is moving to Iowa without me, and I still don't have a way of supporting myself when they're gone, and I'm tired of being stuck in a rut of earning very little money and having no money. So after careful thinking and discussing with my mom, I've decided to take some advice that my dad gave me last year.

This may be completely against my personality, but I'm going to become a Certified Nurses Assistant (hereby called CNA.) It's hard for me to admit that I'm going to become something I'm not entirely one hundred percent enamored with, but it's going to happen. I have started saving for the class, which I will probably take in either April or May depending, and I've already started planning where I might be able to get a job.

I'm hoping to be able to get a job at the children's hospital in the city, because I would rather work with children than with old people. Then, once I have a steady job that pays pretty good, I plan to buy a car. Preferably a Ford Focus because that's my second choice; my first choice is too expensive.

So my financial life has been planned for almost the entire year, which is a first.

If that was all a little bit scattered and random, I'm sorry; I'm tired and have the residue of a headache sitting in my brain.

In other news I love the movie The Lake House; it's now on my top ten list.

Thus I am ready to spearhead the global take-over

It has taken me a long time to get to this point. I've thought I've been here several times before, but each time it wasn't right and stalled out. This time I am positive that I'm going to get it right, and there are several long reasons why. Let me start from the beginning so that this all makes sense:

I have a single novel that I actually reached the words THE END. I wrote it during NaNoWriMo in 2008, and despite how completely boring most of it was because of how much filler I put in it, it was a great story and all of the people who I let read it raved about it. They all said that it had great potential, and one particular friend has been great at helping me get to that potential. After November was over, I started working on the second draft, and decided that somethings needed to change. So it began to evolve from what it was, very slowly morphing to what it is today. However there were quite a lot of large bumps in the road along the way.

Since the first time I wrote it, I haven't been able to bring it back up to 50k. After the initial paring down, the most I got it to was 24k. At first I didn't understand why this was happening, then I realized that it was because I didn't have enough plot to actually fill that much space. So around version three, I started adding new plot stuff; dreams, more bad guys, a longer conflict with Chandra instead of Artemis (they are the same person, just different personalities, in case you were wondering), etc. Nothing worked.

Another thing was the guys in my writing group kept accusing telling me that it was like Twilight, which was NOT my goal in any way. So I finally just set it aside and didn't touch it for a few months.

About a week ago, I decided that I really needed to work on it some, because my best friend has a printing waiting for me to finish it. (her own painted cover included, it was the best birthday present I have ever received) So I pulled it out, thumbed through my notes, read through several of the different drafts, and talked it out with my mom. It's always fun doing that, because while she doesn't like what I write, it's good to bounce ideas off her (and they always come back better than I threw them.)

After a few days I came to a decision: Huntress was taking on a whole new direction. After carefully examining it from every possible direction, I came to the conclusion that it would be better for Chandra, the main character to be older; It would make it easier for me to write it since I hate writing about high school students, and it would solve a lot of time constraint problems. So Chandra had a small encounter in high school, but the big one didn't come until she was halfway through college.

And since she was older, many other things had to be changed as well. Friends had to be cut out or changed, setting had to be rearranged, and finally I had to come up with things for her family.

But I still didn't have an exact plot in mind; I knew the very VERY basic of what I wanted to happen, I knew that it had to last longer than any of my other plots, and I knew that it had to be amazing.

So today, while mom was at work and the boys were at school or asleep, I sat down at mom's computer (mine's in Iowa) and just started typing the plot. I wrote up a little of what I had already written, including a prologue and some of chapter one, then just continued on from there.

The plot was similar to the first drafts, but at the same time very different. There were less important characters to keep track of (though I did completely forget about one while I was plotting...) and there was a lot more action and danger. I finally got around to inserting a new scene that I have wanted to get in there for a while now (it never fit until now), and I got to use two characters as supporting characters instead of background, like they were before.

Somethings still happened, like her mom dying a fiery death, and somethings that happened in the first drafts but not the more recent ones came back, like certain people getting injured, and some completely new things happened, like Artemis not really coming back all the way, just as a voice in Chandra's head.

All in all, when I was finished writing the plot, I felt a sense of elation; I was actually going to be able to get this done.

And so here I go, on my way to a complete global take-over, stealing the world right out from under Twilight's vampire riddled, annoying feet.

Wish me luck.