Yes, I know that many fantasy authors try to write epics, but that can’t be the case with everyone, just with the majority of the authors I’ve run into.

In Withdrawal Slip, I’ve got about 10,000 words to go before I reach my goal of 40,000, and I’m starting to think that it may not happen.  I mean, only so many things can happen when you’re taken hostage in a bank heist before you start thinking “oh look, another hostage was executed.”  I also had the antagonists take the last two hostages (the characters I like) and drive away with them remaining as bargaining chips.  I have no idea how they get away, and I wrote it that way, because the narrating character was unconscious during the final steps of the escape.

I’ve also been thinking that I did want this to serve as an introduction to a bigger story that I was really excited about a few weeks ago, and I still think is a good idea.  However, I’m thinking that instead of this being its own novel, all the important parts could be summarized at the beginning of what I originally envisioned as “Book Two” of the series.  But, I’m also not sure.

What I’m thinking for now is that I’ll focus on Karzon for a few more days to recharge from Withdrawal Slip.  Then I’ll force myself to get to an ending in Withdrawal Slip, even if it’s short of the 40,000 word goal.  From there I can revise the story and see if it’s worth saving as a novel, or if the story would be better served chopped up and inserted in another novel as flashbacks or information given during conversations.  Has anyone ever done that before?  Did it work out well?

Good God, did I really just say “creative juices?”  Doesn’t that just conjure the most disgusting image ever?  Well, a little background on Karzon.  It’s about a guy named Karzon (pronounced carz on) whose dad is the president of a mining company.  His dad thinks he’s getting to be too spoiled, so sends him to their outpost on the moon to work off a debt that he has incurred the company.  Yep, that’s right, it’s a sci fi piece.  I’ve loved sci fi ever since I watched Star Wars in like second grade.  I’d never actually even considered working on a science fiction story before, I’d have to say, about three this morning.  I had this very odd dream about being in a mining supply store, and I’m pretty sure that I knew the whole back story in my dream.  When I woke up from it, I wrote a note down, then went back to sleep.

When I woke up, I saw “Karzon” written in a text message draft on my phone, but I had no idea what it meant.  Until I took a shower.  For some reason, I think the best when I’m in the shower, and it all came right back to me.  When I got out of the shower, I wrote down some more specific notes and went to get my car’s oil changed.  I’ve been busy until about twenty minutes ago when I actually started writing.  I sat down and wrote the first 1100 words straight threw.  At this point, I’ve got pretty much the whole back story laid out, and it’s definitely opening up more ideas about Withdrawal Slip.

So, here’s my question: does anyone out there work on two things at once, or do you focus entirely on one project at a time?

Oh, and instead of trying to get my 2000 words a day in Withdrawal Slip, I think I’m going to try to get at least 1000 words a day in each story.  That way I don’t get too burned out on either story.  Let’s see how it works.

Is it really all it seems, this world of shadows, fears, and dreams?  And when the fallen cannot rise, do they forever close their eyes?

and…

Some of the most beautiful things in life are left unseen.  That is why we close our eyes when we cry, sleep, and dream.

OK, so I know my students aren’t the original authors of these two lines, but I love them.  Actually, I have no idea who originally wrote these, and I would be highly surprised if they did.

Oh, and one more thing.  I added a progress bar for my novel on the right side bar.  Not sure how often I’ll update it.  Probably every few days, but I like having it there.

Words are like eggs and should be handled with care.  For eggs once broken and words once spoken are difficult to repair.

I also have another quote written on my board because we just finished studying Greek mythology.  Specifically the Trojan War and The Odyssey.

I am your enemy tonight, but even enemies can show respect.

If you haven’t seen the move Troy, King Priam says this to Achilles when he goes and begs Achilles to give him Hector, his son’s, body back after mutilating it.

1. Finished my internship.
2. Graduated college with a Bachelor of Science: English Language Arts Education
3. Don’t forget the ESOL endorsement that came with that
4. ESOL stands for English for Speakers of Other Languages
5. Got a job teaching ESOL English I and II
6. That would be 9th and 10th grade, so not much different from 8th graders.
7. Found out 9th and 10th graders are VERY different from 8th graders.
8. Bought a Kobo ereader when Borders declared partial bankruptcy
9. Just had to look up how to spell “bankruptcy”
10. Started writing a novel
11. Got a letter saying I have a job teaching at the same school next year
12. Applied to rent my first house
13. Had a sandwich and granola bar for lunch today
14. STRESSING LIKE CRAZY BECAUSE I ONLY HAVE THREE MORE INSTRUCTIONAL DAYS BEFORE FINALS!

Yeah, that seems to pretty much sum everything up.  Oh, and did I mention I started writing a novel?  Yeah?  I did?  Well, here it is again, and bold so you can really see it: I STARTED WRITING A NOVEL (forgot to mention the caps lock.  sorry if you feel cheated)

Well, this isn’t the first time I’ve started writing a novel.  Last time I got maybe half way through the first draft and hated where it was going so I stopped.  Also, I got really busy with school.  That didn’t help.  Then my computer crashed and I lost all the work.  Yay!  Wait, I mean booooo!  Right now I’m taking a mental health break for a few minutes because I just wrote a thousand words non stop, and that’s not the way I normally work.  If I have to write something short, I sit down and get the whole damn thing done right away.  If I’m working on a longer project, I like to write little, but write often.  generally a few hundred words here and there until I average about 2000 words a day.  Today I’ve written about half of that so far.  I’m a little behind and probably won’t get as much done today, but I’d rather take my time and make it good.

I’m aiming at having the novel be about 40,000 words, because that seems like the general consensus for a novel.  OK, let me clarify.  I want it to be at least 40,000 words.  It’s not like I’m going to stop right when I hit that mark.  Actually, I just wrote the epilogue for the book as well.  Seriously, like just a few minutes ago.  It’s not long, but I think it’s the perfect bridge between book one and book two.

Oh, I didn’t tell you it’s the first book in a trilogy, did I?  Well, it is.  In fact, the idea for the novel I abandoned I figured is actually the third book in the series, not a stand alone novel.  Sure, it could work as a stand alone novel, but I think it would work much better this way.  All I had to do was change a few small details.  And a majority of the second half of the story.  But, I think it makes for a much stronger ending in an ending I already loved.  By the way, I’m kind of tired of reading books where the protagonist(s) always wins, so they won’t in my novels.  At least not in the first two, still unsure about the last.  I also think I’ll post the first chapter of what I’m working on now.  Yeah, I probably will.  Please, go read it and leave a comment.  Tell me what you think.  But, be warned: I’m not reading any comments about it until I’ve finished my entire first draft.  Preferably, I would wait until I finish my first revision.

So, go read.  The tentative title of the novel is Withdrawal Slip.  Go ahead, guess where it takes place.

Oh, and Word is telling me that I’m at the 19, 666 word mark (ooo, creepy), so about halway to my minimum goal.  Well, go, read, enjoy it or hate it.  I really don’t care.  What’s that, you thought I was writing this for you?  Yeah, well, I wasn’t.

If you haven’t clicked one of the links you’ve already encountered, then stop reading this and click somewhere in it.  This is all one big link to the chapter.  Stop reading and click.  WHY ARE YOU STILL READING?  I’M NOT GOING TO SAY ANYTHING WORTHWHILE IN HERE!  WHY WON’T YOU JUST CLICK IN HERE?  Oh.  You already did.  Well don’t I feel foolish.  Wait a second, that means I’m sitting here talking to myself.  They say that’s the first sign of insanity, don’t you?  Wait another second, who is this “they” I keep hearing about?  Boy, they sure say a lot.  I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts, dee da lee dee.  Standing over there beside the road, bum bum bum.  Big ones, small ones… wait, I thought you’d already left to read the chapter.  You’ve been reading all this?  Damn it.  I knew I should have stopped, but I JUST COULDN’T HELP MYSELF!  It’s just a flesh wound.  But your arm is off!  What is your name?  What is your quest?  What is your favorite color?  OK.  Assuming you answered those three questions correctly and are still around to read this instead of having been magically flung into the crevice under the Bridge of Death, then CLICK THIS EXTREMELY LONG LINK ALREADY!

Ok then, enough of that.  The new program I have been using is NewNovelist 2.  Yes, this is a program you need to pay for, but I have a friend who gave it to me.  Also, NewNovelist 3 has come out since I got the second version, but the only thing that looks like it’s changed is the way things look.  Now, on to the good things.  GOOD THINGS HO!

NewNovelist has a new novel wizard that is very cool.  Instead of having to switch between different tabs for things like characters and settings, they just pop up in a pane next to where you’re writing.  Also, you choose what kind of story you want to write, such as an Epic, then what kind of Epic you want.  The thing I really like is that the program breaks all of these down, explaining exactly what they are, as well as giving well known examples.  Then, when you’re actually writing the story, the program breaks the story type down into different parts, giving even more examples of what these parts are from popular stories (Harry Potter, Jayne Eyre, James Bond, etc.)

I’m going to keep this post short since I’m tired and my head feels like it got hit with a semi, then stepped on by an elephant.  If you want the best novel writing program around, and can afford $50, get NewNovelist.

Along with this, the situation with the science teacher across the hall has been fairly interesting.  In the beginning of the year, there was a teacher, who decided to quit after two and a half weeks of school.  Along with his resignation, I have been told was a tirade about various things completely unrelated to teaching.  After that, there was a succession of substitutes who did, effectively, nothing.  Finally, they got a retired teacher to take the position.  This is the teacher who posed an interesting question to me.

We were at lunch, and for some reason, the new science teacher decided to sit at our table during lunch.  She asked me, “why did you cut your hair?”  I, of course, did not give her a real answer.  Instead, I told her that the last time I had gotten my hair cut was in January, and it was just time.  Then, she looked at me and asked, “if you cut your hair, then why don’t you shave?”  I should have probably say that I haven’t shaved since the beginning of November, but my facial hair grows really slow, and isn’t very full yet, so it doesn’t look like all that much.  I sat there for a second, trying to figure out a more polite way of saying “fuck off,” but I couldn’t.  So I answered something along the lines of not even coming close to giving an answer.  And I’m just paraphrasing there.

The reason I am saying all this is because I have a question of my own: why do people feel the need to butt into other people’s business?  Does the length of the various kinds of hair on my head really make that much of a difference in your life?  I just can not fathom why some people have the innate  drive to take their noses and cram them into whatever else is going on with other people.  Especially other people you barely know anything about other than their name.

Does anyone know why people do this?  Is there an actual reason, or are they just jerks?  What does anyone who may be reading this think?

1. I got the journal that my article was published in.
2. Had to get rid of the cat, he was attacking my son for no reason.  I miss Eclipse, but it seems like only I do.
3. Almost done with my internship, so I’m really close to graduating.
4. Took the English 6-12 Subject Area Test for Florida, waiting on the results.
5. Got to use pictures of the Alot in a lesson today (I hope Allie doesn’t mind and send the copyright monster after me).
6. Got my first hair cut since January.
7. and I got married.  YAY!

Before I get on to the rest of what I was going to talk about, the Alot is a mythical creature that Allie Brosh from Hyperbole and a Half made up, that is hilarious.  It’s from a post called The Alot is Better Than You at Everything, and it is possibly one of my favorite blog posts ever.

So, anyway, I was being nostalgic today and thinking back to my freshman year of high school, particularly the second half in 2003.  To put this in perspective, most of the kids I’m teaching right now were 8 at the time.  I’m not sure if I mentioned this before, but I lived in a small town called Krailling in the southern part of Germany for my ninth grade year.  I went to the Munich International School and participated in a local youth group called Young Life.  The basic meetings would consist of my going to the weekly meeting of the school’s Film Club, then meeting up with everyone else to take the subway to the last stop before you hit downtown Munich (where Oktoberfest comes from).  The school was awesome, because we had a fucking CASTLE on campus, and my art class was on the top floor.  But back to the Young Life meetings.  We would get off the subway and take a bus before walking a few minutes to the home of the leader of the youth group.  Every week, she would make us all dinner, we would play games, and have a little bible study.  There were like six people from my school there every week, plus three or four people from other local schools.  This means we had ten or eleven people in this tiny little apartment, crammed in like sardines, for a couple of hours.

Well, apparently in Germany, or at least in International Schools, they are very liberal with giving students time off of school.  Not only did we have a winter break, but then a ski week just like a month after getting back.  That’s right, an entire week set aside for people to go skiing.  Then, my spring break was two weeks long.  I spent the first week in Venice and Rome before heading back to Munich so I could hop on a bus for the Czech Republic.  Now, this wasn’t part of some strange vacation, but a mission trip I took with Young Life.  We all got on a charter bus for the million hour bus ride from southern Germany to a little town outside of Prague.  The bus ride was mind numbingly boring for the most part, except for one thing.

After about four hours on the bus, we got to the border of the Czech Republic.  Now this was the first country we hit that was not a part of the European Union, so we actually had to show our passports.  The humor comes in because one of the kids from another chapter of Young Life didn’t know we needed a passport, so he couldn’t enter the country.  This meant that after driving for four hours, he had to wait for four hours while one of his parents came to get him, just so they could drive four hours back home.  That’s right, a nice twelve hour trip for absolutely nothing.  Anyways, while we were in the Czech Republic, we had volunteered to build playgrounds for two of the local elementary schools.  During this time, two things happened.  One, I got my nickname, “Thumper,” and two, I got to see someone chased with a shovel for the first time.  Now, I know I should talk about these two things in the order I mentioned them, but I’m not going to.  Why, you ask?  Well, because that’s not the order they happened; and because it’s my blog, and I don’t want to.

So, for the shovel.  The small, subgroup I was with was tasked with digging the holes so we could put in a swing set.  We had to dig three round holes that were about two feet across and three feet deep.  Along with these, we had to dig two rectangular holes that were for the supports for the swing set.  The rectangular holes weren’t much of a problem, but the circular holes got to be a pain for the last foot and a half or so.  At this point we had to lay on the ground, and hang in the holes from the waist down to fill coffee cans with dirt and haul it out.  Plus, in one of the holes, we found a bunch of buried fiberglass rope that didn’t put hundreds of splinters in our clothes or hands.  After a little while of having people hanging in the holes, we realized that we could grab them by their ankles, hold their legs in the air, and trap the person doing a hand stand in the hole for a few seconds.  So, being 14, we of course did this every chance we could.  However funny this may have been, it get better.  Once.  I grabbed my friend Jeremy by his ankles and held his legs in the air.  While I was doing that, my other friend James ran over, and started giving Jeremy an upside down wedgie.  I put Jeremy’s legs down without James noticing.  As soon as he was free, Jeremy leaped out of the hole, grabbed the nearby shovel, and started chasing James with it around the soon-to-be playground.  Both of them ended up being hosed down to end the chase.  That must have been really fun for them, because the temperature dropped to just ten degrees above freezing at night.

As a side note for the swing set, one person, whose name escapes me now, was so proud of his job sanding one of the beams that he volunteered to rub his naked butt on the wood to test how smooth it was.  Someone got it on tape.

So, on to number one: how I got my nickname, “Thumper.”  Just before we set all the posts in the holes that had been dug, we needed to make sure they were the correct depth in the middle and level.  This meant that another group of us went around to each hole to add or take out the correct amount of dirt to make them all even.  Since I had the biggest feet, I was designated the job of stomping down the dirt so we could measure the holes.  I soon found out that the easiest way to do this was by jumping up and down in the hole.  Everyone else with me also soon found out that when I did this, it made a very distinct thumping sound.  So, from that point on, for the rest of the trip, I was called Thumper by just about everyone.  But it was OK, because one of the guys that was in the group was named Thelmo.  Yes, his name was Thelmo, pronounced “telmo”  (like Elmo from Sesame Street with a “t” in front).

Anyway, I’m not quite sure why I was thinking of this particular trip, but hopefully, if you have made it this far through the post, you have enjoyed the story.  Also, hopefully I will be able to start posting on my original, semi-regular schedule.  Still do not want to set a specific day of every week that I post something, because I still want to keep this fun for me, but I do miss posting things.