"I Want" Wednesday; Write Every Day Challenge, Day #28

Okay, this is getting ridiculous.  I am horribly failing at this personal challenge to write every day.  I think I'll stick with it, though, because with NaNoWriMo quickly approaching, I will be writing A LOT.


And that's what I wanted to talk about today:  NaNoWriMo.  For the past couple of days I have been plotting my story.  I am now currently on idea #3, and I am super, super excited about this one!  Unfortunately, I have to throw out my previous characters - or adapt them into these new characters, and I have to get to worldbuilding!  My new story is Science Fiction, and I'm still not sure if I'm going to set it in a future America, or build my own land.  No space travel, so I don't have to worry about creating planets, galaxies, universes!  Or do I?  Who knows which direction my novel will take me next month!  But even if I set my story simply in America in the year 2060 (for example), I need to figure out what the world is like then - the government, the environment, society, jobs, technology, transportation, hobbies, schools, etc.  I have a lot of work to do!  I've decided that my plotting exploits count towards my Write Every Day Challenge, so Monday was Day #26 and Tuesday was Day #27.  Maybe I'll actually write every day this week!  (I'm keeping my fingers crossed, but not daring to hold my breath!)


I realized that my story is like The Hunger Games meets Harry Potter.  Which is SO me!  I think that I'm so excited about it because it's the type of story that I love to read, and so it should be a lot of fun to write!  I think I've finally found my niche, and I have no idea why it was so hard to find!  I think the adage should be not "Write what you know," but "Write what you like!"  


Oh, and it's "I Want" Wednesday again.  This time, I want something immaterial.  I simply want to continue to be this excited about my novel throughout the month of November.  Sure, there will be ups and downs, but I haven't been this excited about writing in a long time, and it's wonderful!


Back to plotting!

"I Want" Wednesday; Write Every Day Challenge, Day #25

I mentioned before that, since I don't have a major theme for this blog, I was going to try some mini-themes tied to specific days, like "Friday Five."  I still have no idea what these things are called.  I call them mini-themes, I've seen the word "meme" but that doesn't seem to be correct - I've Googled this countless ways and yet I haven't found the answer.  Anyway, so I'm starting one today that I found on thedailymeme.com:  "I Want" Wednesday.  Apparently you can write about anything you want, whether it be material or abstract.  [Edit:  thedailymeme.com lists "memes" for every day, and links to sites that use these "memes."  The site that they link to for "I Want" Wednesday is this one:  iwantwednesday.blogspot.com.]


Today, I'd like to talk about the new book that just came out yesterday that I really, really, really want.  It's called Harry Potter Film Wizardry.  It's all about the making of the Harry Potter movies, and it looks awesome!  I'm going to post some pictures on here, and hopefully I won't get in trouble for copyright infringement.  I found these photos at www.mugglenet.com, and I believe that they are copyrighted by Harper Collins.

This is the table of contents page.  Just looking at this alone makes me want it!!!

And this, of course, is a spread dedicated to the awesome Weasley family.




There are several more pictures on Mugglenet.


So it's Wednesday, and this is what I want.

Write Every Day Challenge, Day #24

Once again, I have missed some days.  I'm thinking this may have been a quite impossible challenge.  I haven't written in several days, but I have, however, been doing some research for an upcoming blog post.


I am a huge fan of The Hunger Games trilogy, and I see all these people online posting their "ideal" cast for the forthcoming movies.  I don't agree with most of them.  And recently I found Entertainment Weekly's picks.  Once again, I didn't agree with most of them.  So I decided I was going to make my ideal cast, using the characters that Entertainment Weekly used.  But this task is proving to be quite hard.  I'm not anywhere near finished with the list, but hopefully I'll be able to post it soon.


As for today, I have almost nothing to write about.  I simply wanted to share the fact that 9 new tv spots for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 have been released.  I have watched all of them, and they have some really funny and awesome new clips.  Go to Mugglenet to watch them!

Changing for the Better; Write Every Day Challenge, Day #23

Wow.  It's been over a week since I've posted.  I can explain, I promise!  My last blog post (Day #20 of my Write Every Day Challenge) was on October 4th.  I wrote on the side for the next two days (Day #21 and Day #22).  Then I got sick.  So I'm counting that seven days as a sick week.  People get sick weeks, why can't I?  ;)  So today will be Day #23.  I've realized over the week that I just don't have that much to blog about, since I don't have any type of theme except for my (obviously failing) Write Every Day Challenge.  I know that I will be writing (hopefully) almost every day during November for NaNoWriMo, but as far as this blog goes, I don't have much to write about.  So I think I'm going to introduce some types of mini-themes that I've seen other bloggers use, like "Friday Five," etc.  (I just found out the word for this is "meme" - at least, that's the closest thing I'm finding to answer my Google question "What do you call things like Friday Five?")  But I will start that on another day.  

Today I had planned on writing a whole rant about the MTV show Teen Mom, the spin off of MTV's 16 and Pregnant.  I was initially drawn to 16 and Pregnant because at the time of the initial airing of it's first episode, I was almost 7 months pregnant myself.  I wasn't anywhere close to being a teen, but I thought that it would be interesting to see these girls' stories and how they compared to my own.  Around the same time, the show I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant was showing it's first episodes, and I watched a couple of those, but they ended up kind of freaking me out more than anything.  (As any pregnant woman will tell you, the impending labor and delivery is the most nerve-wracking part of being pregnant - or at least that was my experience.)  So 16 and Pregnant it was.  

I saw so many things in those shows that made me cringe, made me almost cry, made me laugh.  When the spin off, Teen Mom, aired, I was excited to see the continuation of the stories of Maci, Catelynn, Amber, and Farrah, but mostly, I was excited to watch as those adorable children grew!  When the first episode aired, my son was just 3 months old, and the children on the show were several months older, but I was still interested to see their milestones, triumphs, and cute little failures.  I knew that it was the drama surrounding the young moms and dads that drove the show, but I continued to watch.  Then I started getting angry at the people on the show.  I started judging them left and right, finding faults in their parenting styles, and using not-so-nice adjectives to describe them to my husband, who does not watch the show.

With the impending season 2 finale, I found myself thinking, "I finally have an idea for a blog post!  I can voice my opinions of these people!"  I was planning on talking about each mother in turn, and rant about the things that made me crazy about each one.  In all fairness, I was going to commend each of them on certain things as well, but the main gist of my post was going to be pretty negative.  

And then I realized, this is not the point of my blogs.  Many of my previous blog posts have been about love, about equality, and, most importantly to me, about kindness.  These are the things that I believe in more deeply than anything.  And for me to write a blog, pointing out the faults and errors of others, is simply wrong.  It's not this blog, and it's not me.  But I know I'm not perfect.  I've judged a lot of people.  I've said unkind things about a lot of people in the past.  And I also know that, in the future, I'm sure I will say more unkind things.  But I will definitely try not to.  I am constantly trying to better myself - trying to be a better person.  And I will continue to try to be kind to everyone.


It's funny, because I thought about writing the ranting post a couple of days ago, thinking that I would write it after the finale.  Then, before I had even watched the finale I realized my mistake.  Then, today, I was planning on writing this blog post.  This morning I watched yesterday's episode of Ellen.  Perez Hilton had asked to be able to come on her show (she was not a fan of his - she thinks of kindness as one of the highest virtues, too) so that he could let everyone know that he is in the process of changing his blog.  He realized, in the wake of all the teen suicides, that he is a bully, and that his blog was wrong.  He admitted his errors and pledged to change, not only himself, but his blog as well, for the better.  And it made me realize how right I was to not write a blog post full of rude comments and harsh criticisms.  And I wish Perez Hilton and his blog all the luck in the world.  Maybe more people will come to realize how hateful and harmful they are being, and try to change for the better.

Reading Away: Write Every Day Challenge, Day #20

I missed a couple of days of writing (surprise, surprise), but I made up for them yesterday, which therefore became Day #19, and today is Day #20.  I should be on Day #40 by now, if I hadn't miss so many days!


I finally finished Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood.  I don't think I have enough to say about it to write a full-blown review, but I'll mention a few things.  It took me a long time to finish this book.  Of course, I had other things to do:  take care of my son, spend time with my husband, watch all the new fall television shows, write, and read Mark Reads Harry Potter (I'm so addicted to that blog!).  But, I think my slow reading also had to do with the fact that I wasn't quite into this book until I was more than halfway done.  I was interested in it, sure, but it didn't really hook me until then.  I also think it was a bit confusing.  Not only is this set in the future, after an apocalypse, but the main character, Snowman, has flashbacks to his childhood and early adulthood, which is also later than our present-day.  It is kind of interesting though, because I just read Mockingjay, where there was a type of apocalypse years before the storyline, and the present-day in those stories is a dystopia, whereas in Oryx and Crake, Snowman's childhood is a dystopia, and his present-day story is after an apocalypse.  Overall, I enjoyed the book, but I thought the end was a bit blunt.  I wanted a little bit more closure, I guess.  But I definitely enjoyed the way Atwood unraveled the events that led up to the apocalypse.


So now I'm going to start my book club's book for this month:  The Lost Symbol, by Dan Brown.  I liked The Da Vinci Code, and really enjoyed Angels and Demons, so I look forward to seeing what Robert Langdon gets up to this time.