Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Why I Write

In order for this to really work, it will require a lot of participation and a lot of linking. Of course, I think it would be really, really cool to see it happen.

The idea is a question: Why do you write?

I bet if everyone talked about why they're a writer, why they write, what drives them, etc etc, then the answers would be as varied as if you asked, "What is your favorite thing in the world?" No two people could possibly answer the same, but I think that we would be able to see common threads that we relate to and it would help bring authors together in a new way.

I had the idea for this "meme", project, whatever you want to call it last night when I was in a depressives stupor. My usual escapist mediums such as gaming and TV were not helping, and the only thing that took my mind off my issues was working on my draft for a few minutes. It made me rethink the reasons why I write.

So, I'm asking you, my readers and my blogging friends, to participate with me in an introspective celebration on what it is that makes us all write. It can be any reason, and no reason would be "stupid" or "frivolous". Who knows, maybe your reason will help somebody.

To participate:

Step 1: Write a blog post with the topic "Why I write". The goal is to search inside yourself for the core reasons as to why you open your notebook/Word Processor/napkin every day and put words down.

Step 2: Link back to this post somewhere in your post. It can be in the opening, the ending, in an image, whatever. The point is to direct people here so they can read everyone else's reasons.

Step 3: Link to your post in the comments below. (Note: give a bit of a teaser, such as key words, the opening sentence, etc.)

Step 4: Read the reasons from others and gain a better understanding and fellowship about what it means to be a writer/author.

Step 5: (pretty optional) Use one of the graphics below - or make your own - to link in your sidebar to the reason why you write so all your future visitors can see it too and learn more about you.

It's pretty simple. And, in the process, it's a free link for you. :) We may even be able to make new friends through our reasons.

My reasons:

 In truth, the drive behind my writing has changed so much over the years. It started when  Iwas a small child because I always had a story to tell. I also learned how to read and write very early so it came naturally to me to well, starting writing. Growing up I was very into arts of all kinds, but quickly discovered that...I was incapable of doing much with my hands. In short, I had shitty dexterity. I still do. I used to do bead work until I no longer could because it was too frustrating to always fail and take so long to do it. I used to draw, but then that talent went away as well. I used to be a skilled guitar player until my hands were just too small to do it anymore. Soon all I had left that I was artistically good at was writing. I can type at about 120-30 wpm, which is about as fast as I can think of sentences.  Match made in heaven.

I honed my writing skill through my teenage and college years. My dream became making a life out of writing, whatever that meant. Writing was purely about enjoyment.

Somewhere during college...my life took a very dark turn. Without going into harsh details, I developed the deep depression that I still struggle with today and every day. I became involved with people who were poison to my well-being. The economy went bust and the pressure and stress was so high that there were days I just could not get out of bed with all of these things compounded together. I struggled to find a reason to live.

By that time most of my first drafts were done, so I went to work on them so I would have something constructive to do while taking my mind off how miserable I felt. I stayed focus on my writing and slowly, day-by-day, not only did I have something to show for myself but I also developed pride in myself for doing as well as I did even with all the other bullshit going on. Writing has never "saved my life", but it has certainly made it more bearable while I am here.

Writing is my ultimate form of escapism. In the worlds of my stories I am God, and I control every little thing that happens to the characters, to the plot, to the scenery...it is a power and control I need in my life. With my own life often at the whims of others, and not even my own happiness a certainty no matter how hard I try...I  can control these other (fictional) people. I can determine who gets a happy ending and who will struggle their whole life for even a good day. In my writing the whole world, the whole universe is at stake, and at the center of it all is always a few people who have to bear the entire weight of everyone else's fear. And when they are happy or in love, even for just a couple of chapters, I can live vicariously through them.

Writing is the imaginary friend that you use to spell out your own problems and then constructively take out your anger and frustration on. And, when you really just want to pretend there's a world where people can be happy just by the simplest things, you can go to your writing world and make it happen.

I do not live for writing. I live because I am alive - it's always been that simple. But while I'm alive I need a way to deal with the dark clouds that hang over me, and writing has always been the answer. In the process I get to tell my stories and other people get to enjoy them. And, it's productive. But in the end I'm the one who benefits the most.

I write because it helps me, and there isn't much else in the world that does.

Back to you!

So now that I've spilled my soul out to all of you, I expect you to do the same ;) Let me know if you do this and be sure to come back and comment with a link so I and others can read it!

I've made some quick, simple graphics for you to use on your blog. Please save to your own server, etc. Feel free to make your own! I am not a graphic whiz, haha. But they get the job done.







Monday, September 26, 2011

Picture This: Or, how not to take an author's photo.

I would read a book with this photo tbh.
While recently drawing up my "to do" list of things whilst self-publishing, (you know, things like "Find an editor~") something that made it's way towards the bottom was "Get professional photos taken". Because, well, girl's gotta promote herself, and the Facebook pics of me holding a camera away from my body ain't gonna cut it - and well, hello, my family sucks at taking decent pictures of me. It's a curse I've learned to live with at birthday and Christmas times. If I'm going to be putting my face out there I'd much rather have a photo done by somebody who actually knows what they're doing and has a camera that my face won't break.

Plus I'm just so damn awesome I deserve a model shoot anyway.

A website I was on yesterday linked to Flavorwire's article called Against Promotional Author Photographs and amusingly lists the top five most recurrent themes in author photographs - the chin on hand, the leaning up against a couch arm rest, in the workspace, etc etc and basically snarks them to death. I'm especially a fan of Ayn Rand's photo because LOLOLOLOL look at it. I can't decide which part of it I find most hilarious: the deer-in-headlights eyes, the ridiculous hair, the pretentious outfit, or the fact that it's Ayn Rand. One pose you will never see me in, however, is the cigarette one. More than likely you'll see me bounding about with cats draped on my shoulders omg that would be so badass.

So of course I was prompted to go to google and look up "bad author photos", and it seems that lots of people have crap to say about the whole subject. I mean, why not. We're human, we take any instance to bash the way another human looks or visually comes across. Of course, a lot of criticism of author photos are not unwarranted - like the ones posted at Flavorwire above, a lot of cliche poses just make us laugh now at their ridiculousness. What was unique and mysterious during the Victorian era and up through the Cold War last century is just try-hard now. The only one that maaaaaybe would get a pass without me rolling my eyes or giggling from the list above is the leaning in a couch one because that's how I sit half the damn day anyway.

And then there are the blog lists that make sure everyone knows exactly what kind of pictures they hate...and then go  on to list every pose possible, with every prop possible, and basically all the want is a mugshot/passport photo in the back of their books and on the author's website. Uh, no thanks. I do like me some variety. And as somebody who looks like utter baby-face hell in photos from the front, I can definitely say "DNW" to that idea.

Of course I've got quite a bit of time left before I embark on that part of the journey. Until then, I get to think about which cliche pose I want to use (can my cats be involved? please?) or how I'm gonna try to be so omg unique and blow y'all away with my uniqueness.

So how about you, readers? Got any "professional" marketing photos yet and can I see them? If not, do you know what kind you would want? Is there any photo cliche that just makes you cringe? Do you even care, man?

Because photograph is srs bsnss.

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Weekly Writing Check-In: Dissected and Disolved

Dead @ "militarily"
Quiet week from me, thanks to yet another six-day day-job work week aaaaand lots and lots of gaming! Teehee~. Oh well, girl's gotta do what she's gotta do to stay out of a nervous breakdown, right?

Of course, there was editing. A lot of editing. Every night editing! But nothing exciting, just the usual editing monotony madness that comes with buckling down and getting stuff done. That said, here are this week's progress reports!

CROSS//Revenge

So I had a real "OH NO I DIDN'T~" moment this week when I was looking over my notes for this first draft on Thursday. There's a really, really important plot/character development point that needs to happen in this novel, and I TOTALLY forgot the set-up in the draft that I have so far and I'm kicking myself over it. See, there's no place to go back and put it without forcing it in/changing everything. I was not happy. Well, I managed to fix it. The original scene was going to take place in Japan (where my characters are en route now) but I figure it could just as easily take place State-side. The scene takes place in a psychiatric hospital, and part of the original drama was going to be in language issues (the character involved doesn't speak Japanese very well) buuuuuut I'm pretty sure America's ~amazing health care system~ can bring just as much drama. Especially back in 2007 in which the story takes place. Of course this means I have to do all new research now. I know a lot of about hospitals in Japan but now it's time to depress myself with stories about American hospitals. Yay! (Either way, I'm problem solving! Go me!)

CROSS//Rebirth

 Editing sucks. Actually, no, I take that back.  I like editing. I just don't like it when it laughs in my face.

Since this is no longer MASSIVE READ THROUGH TIMEZ for clarity, flow, and checking for major holes, I have to get into the real nitty gritty of every chapter, and I didn't skimp on the first one. For now it's "finished" (until later of course, because editing is never really finished, sigh) but it gave me a headache. You see, I have a very specific way I do these detailed edits. Here's the breakdown:

Step 1: Do a careful read through of the whole chapter, changing anything I feel like/needs changing along the way. I get rid of lingering adverbs and passive sentences that stick out to me. The real focus of this, however, is analyzing characterization, especially in these first few chapters. I ended up changing one scene entirely because I did not like how FMC2 came across at all.

Step 2: Run a search and destroy of adverbs, aka ADVERB SLAYER mode. This starts with the obvious "ly" search, and then searching for non-ly adverbs that I know I'm notorious for over-using. A lot of adverbs that survived the first main edit were culled this time. My goal is to not have more than 1-2 "ly" adverbs in prose per chapter. (My chapters are usually 15-30 pages in length, single spaced, so I think this is acceptable. Also, this all only refers to non-dialogue adverbs.)

Step 3: Passive sentences, ugh. This is trickier to search for because not every sentence that holds the key words are passive, and damn you "to be". Word threw a fit at a couple passive sentences that I decided to leave in because they're in dialogue, and sorry Word, that's how they talk. Get over it. This is my least favorite step at all because I just hate searching for passive sentences. Anyone know of a good  program that can do it for me? Heh.

Step 4: Said. Now, this isn't necessarily OMG EVIL KILL THEM ALL search and destroy. This is because I tend to use said as a crutch as I write, when words don't need to be there at all! So I search for "said" and see if it's actually functioning or if a tag is totally unnecessary to begin with. It's usually about half and half.

There's other little sub-steps in there, but those are the four main ones. With the goal of doing one chapter a week (remember how I said some chapters are 30 pages long, single spaced? Yup. A week is good stuff for me!) I usually do Step 1 for three days (it's very careful, close reading) and each other step is one day. That gives me about one break a week if  I decide to take it.

Overall, I deleted about 1000 words this week. Not bad!

Sometimes you reach a point in editing where, you know there are still some passive sentences/adverbs left over that don't need to be there, but you just don't care anymore man. You just can be assed to look for them because yuo're sick of it. Suddenly it's the beta readers'/editor's problem. Yeah. That's the spirit!

It's not my problem at all~

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Cats! Forever! And ever!

LOOK AT MY KITTY. LOOK AT HER.
I like cats, so it goes without saying that most of my characters like cats as well. This is one of those instances where I don't feel bad at all for projecting my own likes/dislikes onto my characters - because cats are amazing and if my characters want to remain, you know, my characters, they damn well think so too. (Blackmail works on characters, did you know that?)

That said, while my characters like cats I very rarely...have cats in my novels! I can think of only one instance in which a character actually owns a cat that gets a fair amount of screen time, and she ain't in the series I'm working on at the moment...nor is the cat coming along for a few more books. However, in my notes for both of my series I can see where I had planned for cats to be hanging in the background as stress relievers for my characters, or you know, great comic relief cause catz r funn3h. 

And now I would like to talk about the cat that may never be.

Her name is Sadie. She's a simple black American short-hair with charming green eyes and the proper catitude that says "all this? it's mine. yeah, the TV too. Oh, you're saving the world? Too bad. TV's mine." In my notes Sadie belongs to one of my female characters starting in CROSS//Revenge. These are old notes, however, and Sadie is currently not slated to be in Revenge at all. Or any other book in the series, probably.

I don't know what happened! At first it was that I couldn't justify this character just going out and getting a cat between novels. And then she's not in a spot in her life where taking care of a small creature is very feasible. So Sadie was going to wait until the end of the series when everyone is settled down again and can have a cat. But now I still don't see it. Sadie may never ~come to be~ in this series.

I know. I could just shelve her and use her later in some other novel or story. But you know how cats are. They know what they want and there really isn't any arguing with them. Sadie may be fictional, but she's much the same. She wants to belong to this particular character in this particular series, or she's just gonna stay in the Imagination Shelter forever (luckily, it's no kill!) I still don't have plans for the frisky feline yet but the final books are still a few years away from any official planning, so who knows! Maybe Sadie will appear in CROSS//Repent or later. Or maybe she won't.

Maybe she's run away from home and go shack up with someone else...like you?

How about you? Are there any things that you share with your characters, and yet they never show up in your stories? Or are there characters that you SWEAR you're going to use and then never do? Dish.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Weekly Writing Check-In: "Hey, got some hair here. Look familiar?"

This only makes sense to one other person.
Dang, is it already that time of the week again? Actually, last week didn't go by that fast, but somehow I'm still surprised it's Sunday night again.

I actually got some stuff done again this week! On enough projects that it's time to organize them under their own BOLDED headers! Oh my!

CROSS//Rebirth

Went back and FINALLY, finally added the extra information about Miss Shows Up During the Climax. I'll fill out some more details here and there when I do the next thorough edit starting this week, but the pieces have been placed to work on. Yay! This next week I will do a ~butterfly count~ and open up a new Word file to keep track of which chapters still need primary symbolism so I can add them in the next edit. Speaking of which, the next edit starts this week. Now that I''ve done most of the plot doctoring for now I'm going to focus on characterization (some characters act...not quite how I want them to act in the beginning chapters because I ended up changing them later on) and making everything more succinct. I plan on cutting out a lot of words in this edit. Even more parenthetical phrases are gonna get cut and shit that just doesn't need to be there. My goal is to work on at least one scene a day, as opposed to one chapter because I'm going to be analyzing the actual writing like an utter boss.

CROSS//Revenge

 Started outlining the next part of the novel today, putting down exactly what I want to do next (I still don't know how it's going to end, so yeah) and what's going on in each character's timeline. I definitely have enough if not more to get through this year's Nano which is all I care about at the moment. I'm hoping that I'll have some great breakthrough for how I want it to end and lead into the third book, but right now I ain't gonna worry about it, nope nope nope.

So I've got quite the week ahead of me in terms of writing work, but it's "work" I look forward to doing because I actually enjoy the editing process - it feels damn good to cut out stuff that you know doesn't need to be there, or to fix an issue. Actually, what feels awesome is that you were able to find it all on your own without somebody telling you that you suck! Yeah!

Friday, September 16, 2011

Frivolous Friday! - aka "I'll do what I please to your memes!"


So a common meme I see around is "Teaser Tuesday", where you post a sentence or two (without spoilers) from the latest book you're reading. Thought it was interesting until I noticed the "Tuesday" part. WHY YOU GOTTA PIGEONHOLE ME, BROS? I'ma post this meme on whatever day I feel like! :'(

I'm actually not reading anything right now, but I just finished A Feast For Crows by George RR Martin the other day, and since it's literally right next to me at the moment...guess what you get!

"Evenfall found him sitting alone in the common room of White Sword Tower, with a cup of Dornish red and the White Book. He was turning pages with the stump of his sword hand when the Knight of Flowers entered, removed his cloak and swordbelt and hung them on a wall peg next to Jaime's.
"'I saw you in the yard today,' said Jaime. 'You rode well.'"

Admit it, your brain went there. (This passage also demonstrates pretty much everything I don't like about Martin's writing. Blah.)

AND NOW, just because I can, a similar excerpt from the chapter I'm currently tweaking in CROSS//Rebirth - and yes, I really did stop scrolling here, ha.

"She should have seen it coming, but in realityDanielle was too tired when she went to sleep to imagine what would happen inher over-active dream world. All hersexual frustrations came into fruition and Danielle found her projected selfslammed against the floor of the elevator, her body pulsating in sweat and herbreath seeping out of her as a very lecherous captain loomed over her like the'purring darling' she was."
"The fantasy relieved a sliver of tension inDanielle’s body. It was Danielle’s firsttime to blatantly dream about her superior: her soft, olive skin, her rounded thighs, herbordered calves, her modest breasts, her stable shoulders, her tipped chin, herhenna-colored hair…all defining the scene in Danielle’s mind, that switchedbetween that life and some other one in which Danielle felt her body crushedwith desire. Danielle was not ashamed ofthis dream. She allowed the fantasy ofhaving sex with Miranda in the elevator play out, and it did, as obtrusive andinappropriate as the suggestion itself had been at the time, but the sensations worth everything."
Context, how does it work?


Now excuse me, I have to go look at flight costs home and try not to cry about it because the fees are outrageous.

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Double the fun, double the web space!

First off, I've received the Versatile Blogger award again today! (I'm wondering, does this mean I should post it twice on the blog awards page? lol.) This time it was from AE Martin over at her blog! Thanks so much!

I guess this means I should "pass it forward" now, eh, considering I finally have the time! So, here's the rules for receiving this award:

"1. Thank the person who gave you the award and link back to them in your post.
2. Share 7 things about yourself.
3. Pass this Award along to 15 recently discovered blogs and let them know about it!"

Oh, seven things about myself, huh. Well, okay.

1) I majored in Japanese studies during university even though I hated it by the time I graduated. Just to make the irony even bitterer, the first job I finally got out of college (after a whole year in Japan) was teaching English in rural Japan. I've been here since April with the goal of saving up money to move back to the States and self-publish my debut novel.

2) That said, my favorite thing in the world is Pikachu. You don't wanna know about my Pikachu collection. It will scare you (especially when others enable me with Pikachu gifts, haha). I also love Hello Kitty, Sailor Moon, and all forms of J-pop. Sooooo I do enjoy Japanese media if nothing else.

3) Cats are the most perfect beings in the universe. This is undisputed fact, actually. Didn't you get the memo?

4) I LOVE ORANGE. It's my signature everything in life. All my stuff is orange. Most people don't think of orange until they meet me and are surrounded by it. People have this funny habit of handing me their orange things, haha.

5) I write a lot about death. ie: what happens when we die. I didn't even realize this until a couple of years ago when I was comparing notes from my various stories/series. Apparently I am obsessed with death as an overarching plot element.

6) I also have a huge amount of queer (LGBTetc) characters - a lot of this has to do with the fact that I'm not-straight at all myself and, come ON, there is so little good stuff out there in terms of lesbian fiction, let alone characters! Fun fact: I just developed my first prominent gay male relationship and I have no idea what to do with them because that's just...different territory, ha.

7) I wrote my first novel when I was four. It was about my grandmother and a pegasus, hell yeah.

As for passing this on to 15 people...I don't  think I know that many people! Ha. So I'ma make it three because that's way more manageable for me.

SO *~CONGRATS*~ TO:

1. miho li @ miho li - anyone who posts as many fun snippets as she does obviously deserve this award.
2. Dan @ Dangerous Dan's Blog - because he's been following me for quite a while now and is generally a pretty cool guy.
3. Lorelei @ Lorelei's Muse - I'm not really into vampires most of the time, but reading her blog is starting to make me think otherwise!

That's it for today, folks. If you read my last entry you I have my daily dose of Sailor Moon to attend to. Sarabada~


Wednesday, September 14, 2011

"In the name of copy-editing I will rewrite you!" and other ways Sailor Moon creeps into my author life.

What I see when I edit.
If you follow me on Twitter you've probably noticed that every night (er, my time) I've been re-watching Sailor Moon Super and live-commentating every episode I feel like watching. Well, imagine my ~surprise~ when last night we got an episode where the victim was an author and the monster-of-the-day sent after him was supposed to be...an editor.

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOL.

I am now a huge fan of Uhenshuu (the name of the monster, which essentially means the noun version of "editing"), and she's quite possibly my favorite monster-of-the-day in the history of Sailor Moon. And since there's over 150 of them (gotta catch 'em all amirite) that kinda says something. She's pretty much everything a nightmare editor is supposed to be, all the way down to her attacks. I would explain, but here! Have Youtube clips instead! (No subs so I've translated what she's saying down below.)


@ 0:17 : Are you obeying your deadlines?!


@ 0:00 : My ultimate attack, WHITE MANUSCRIPT HELL!
@ 0:12 : Next is PHOTOCOMPOSITION!
@ 0:19 : Heh, heh. Cut and paste...snip, snip!
@ 0:25 : Hey, wait...wait a minute! What are you planning?!
@ 0:28 : Make sure you get a good clipping of her!
@ 0:30 : Hey now!


@ : 0:10 : Even if it's a sudden storm I'm okay!
@ : 0:16 : G pen, round pen, and kabra pen!
@ : 0:25 : MANUSCRIPT HELL!!
@ : 0:37 : Sudden strength before a deadline!
@ : 0:41 : Borderline, safe!

I'm thinking that I could really use somebody like Uhenshuu in my life, man. You know, that editor in glasses and questionable fashion that yells things like "MANUSCRIPT HELL! HOW DOES IT FEEL?!" while throwing giant pens at me and making me cry until I finish my novel. But this could only work if I have Sailor Venus on hand to call her off whenever I want. She's like the IRL version of Write or Die!

Seriously, though, the whole time I was watching this I kept thinking about how "real" it is, when you consider her as a metaphor of writers and editors combined - we pretty much say all those things in our heads as it is. "WHITE MANUSCRIPT HELL!" is so hilarious because we've all been there yo. Staring at that white space going "WHY ISN'T THERE A NOVEL HERE OMG" and, if you have an editor/agent/publisher, hoping that they don't call up and ask you if you're "OBEYING YOUR DEADLINES!"

Then again you might get the "SUDDEN STRENGTH BEFORE A DEADLINE" and be "BORDERLINE, SAFE!"

You can watch the whole episode (with subtitles) here!

I'm done, indeed. Bye!

Disclaimer: Sailor Moon is copyright to Naoko Takeuchi, Kodansha, Toei, and everyone else who well, owns copyright to it. No infringement intended. Take it up with Youtube. Screencaps from soul-hunter.org
 

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Weekly Writing Check-In - Pfffft

LOL LOOK HOW OLD THAT LAPTOP IS THO.
Oh, oh I was supposed to be writing/editing this week?

Oops.

It was a crappy week. A very crappy week, especially at my real life job (and that's all I'll say about that.) Between that and the utter mental exhaustion, I'm lucky that I managed to crank out those character profiles every day - so, this week was not unproductive at all! And I look forward to the editing I will be doing this week as well. I mean, I get to write about  ANGST and that's always FUN.

So I hear there was a campaign challenge this week. Yeah, didn't do it, but I see lots of other people did! I may have done it if I wasn't doing the character profiles, which, quite frankly, were more important! Well, there's also the fact that nothing about the prompt inspired me. I'm not really into flash fiction and using prompts, you see. Nah, it has to be an idea I've been steaming over for about five years and be about 10 books long. Then we're cooking.

This week's goals: edit in information about a background character into CROSS//Rebirth, even if it means inserting a new scene or two. If I complete that, it's butterfly time!

This is, of course, assuming that this next week doesn't suck either. But I don't think it will. Aw, look at me, being ~optimistic~. I'm sure it'll come back to bite me in the ass. :3

TO WORD. *flies away*

Saturday, September 10, 2011

SUPER AWESOME 100TH ENTRY PARTY POST!!!

That's right, this entry marks the 100th post of Musings of a Procrastinating Author, and we're gonna have a monster party full of statistic analysis, goodies for you AND me, waxing and waning about nothing in particular, and a lot of fandom related gifs. SO LET'S PARTY.



First, the statistics. I started this blog on Livejournal to talk about writing and to promote my works/name a couple of years ago but posted very sparingly. Well, that changed about a year ago when I "discovered" Blogger and decided to move shop there. I imported my Livejournal version (although I still mirror most posts there) and the rest was history. There were still moments of not posting much due to, well, a lot of "problems" in 2010/early 2011 and the fact that I moved across the world. But now that I'm settled posting is just another thing, man.

But you don't care about hte history. You just want the cold, hard facts.

Like how I've been holding out that, for only 35 followers at the time of posting this, and having 100 entries, I have 16,873 page views, not including my own.



I didn't think this was much until I saw people with journals with more comments, followers, entries etc celebrating just 1000 views. Oh. WELL. Well, damn. Where are all these views coming from? AND WHY AREN'T PEOPLE FAWNING OVER MY JOURNAL, HUH.


This is why Blogger has that nifty stats page, though. They tell you what posts have the most views and where your traffic is coming from. So...let's see...my two most visited entries can be seen in the lower side bar...the one about irony, and the meme one about making maps.


Why?


Blogger says my top key search terms ARE:

irony
625









fantasy maps
430









middle earth map
135









map of middle earth
69









fantasy map
49









middle earth
34









fantasy world maps
20









карта средиземья
20









dramatic irony
19









fantasy world map
13


Troll'd. Especially by the Russians.
So, people aren't visiting my blog because I'm awesome, it's because they think irony and JRR Tolkien are awesome. Oh, well. I will agree with at least one of those things being totally awesome. But on the other hand, I 've been getting a lot of views recently from other sources, such as twitter and facebook where I post links to my entries, so yay! Also, getting views from other blogs linking to me! It's, like, happening you guys! I'm a real blogger now!






Aw, so many warm fuzzies. Of course, none o fthis would be possible unless I had people following, commenting, and making me excited to blog about my biggest passion in life. (I would write stories regardless, but you now, validation for extracurriculars are BOMBIN') So I'd like to thank you, yes YOU reading this right now for being amazing and awesome and giving me the warm fuzzies. Even if you only came here to steal a map of Middle Earth. Because, well, I do what I can to rope you in.

That said, I said I had goodies for me AND you, so let's get to it!

First, for me! Leah over at Leah Writes Pretty Fierce gave me two Blogger awards today (look at her fantastic timing, what a swell chapess~) and they're my first awards! I received The Versatile Blogger award and The Irresistibly Sweet Blog Award, posted below for your viewing pleasure.



I think I'm supposed to do something with them, but let's save that for next week when I have, you know, some more time and this isn't just party post. As much as I love party posts, well, you know...



MOVING ON. Now it's time for my gift to you!

To thank you all for putting up with my SHAMELESS CHARACTER spam, I now present you the original blank file for your own character-profilin' pleasure. This is a sheet I came up with on my own, but no need to credit if you post something somewhere. I like this one myself because it's detailed, but not so exorbitantly so that it takes half a day just to fill it out for one character - if I stay focused it takes me about a half hour to 45 minutes to fill out. Anyway, here you go~


Basics

Name (Identified):
Full/Real Name:
Age:
Birthdate:
Generation:
Birthplace:
Astrological Sign(Western):
Astrological Sign(Eastern):
Ethnicity:
Hair (Color):
Hair (Style):
Eyes (Color):
Eyes (Shape):
Height:
Weight:
Voice:
Physique:
Notes:

Family

Mother:
Father:
Siblings:
Grandparents:
Spouse/Partner:
Children:
Pets:
Notes:

Career/Education

Degree:
School:
Job:
Boss/Supervisor/Commander:
Former Jobs:
Ambitions/Goals:
Notes:

Relationships

Sexuality: BIsexual
Status: In arelationship with Devon Anderson
Turn Ons: Goals,self-worth, androgyny
Turn Offs: Timewasters, no drive, hyper-masculinity
First Lover (Female):Myra Langley (college)
First Lover (Male):
Other Notable Lovers:
Love Interests:
Best Friend:
Other Friends:
How Others See Her:
Sub/Dom:
Notes:

Likes/Dislikes

Favorite Color:
Favorite Food:
Favorite Music:
Favorite Band:
Favorite Song:
Favorite Book:
Favorite Movie:
Favorite Animal:
Favorite AlcoholicDrink:
Clothing Style:
Hobbies:
Guilty Pleasures:
Notes:

Health

Dexterity:
Handicaps:
Diseases (physical):
Diseases (mental):
Notes:

Personality/WorldView

General:
Strengths:
Weaknesses:
Outlook:
Idiosyncrasies:
PoliticalAffiliation:
Religion:
Fears:
Phobias:
Offended By:
Pet Peeves:
Vices:
Wants Children?:
Drunk Type:
Death of Choice:
Notes:

Other

Drives:
Lives:

Relationship toAuthor

Ways she’s like me:
Ways she’s not likeme:
Notes:

Voila! A party post. Just gonna thank everyone reading this one last time before heading out - who knows, next time we have a milestone party, maybe I'll have something to give away! Maybe~ keep the dream aliiiive~

ADDENDUM: Obviously this post needs more gifs. Help a woah-man out and post some in the comments, if you would be so kind~*~

Party over. Back to work.