Pages

Saturday, March 23, 2013

Priorities.

Priorities. They're important. I have them, and I know what they are. Some people might disagree with me, but in my personal opinion, I have them straight. (Then again, most people do, in their personal opinions. But that's not what this is about.)

I'm going to quote Dan Wells here. This quote comes, not from any of his books, but from an episode of Writing Excuses. I can't remember which one. During the episode, the podcasters were talking about motivation, and finding time for writing. Dan said, "When you do not have time for something, that is not an issue of scheduling, it is an issue of values."

Now, this seems a simple and obvious statement at first glance. And it is. But sometimes, seeing things so simply and clearly stated is what we need.

When you don't have time to write, it's because you don't value it, don't prioritize, it enough.

When you don't have time to do your schoolwork, it's because you don't prioritize it.

It's not because you have issues with scheduling your time efficiently. It's about what you prioritize.

Once I came to that realization, I accepted that there are just going to be some things that I'm not going to be able to do. Other things, I'll be able to do when I have the time for them. And some things, I'll prioritize, and make time for. I value these things more highly than anything else. Let me give you a list of what's at the top of my priorities, how I decide what absolutely must be done, and what can slide.

1. School.

2. Necessary Body stuff. (eating, etc.)

3. Writing.

4. Sleeping.

5. Everything else, in various orders.

Note that I list school first. That's because it is. If it means that I have to miss a meal to be in class on time, or finish a test, I'll do it. If it means not sleeping one night to finish homework, I'll do it. School, and doing well, is that important to me. I've done all of the above several times.

Writing in this context means creative writing, not this blog. That's why the blog sometimes slips, even though I'm still writing everyday. I'm sorry for that, but I'm not going to bump it up on the priority list.

Now, I won't miss a meal to write. But I will stay up late, even if it means I only get 4 hours of sleep instead of 5. I've decided that writing is more important to me, and suddenly, I've been able to write every day. It's amazing what setting your priorities - your values - can really do for you.

Take a minute to ask yourself: What are your values?

Then, stop and ask: Am I telling myself the truth?

If you are, you will truly prioritize those things at the top over others, even to the detriment of others. But if that's just what you say your values are, then that won't be reflected in what you actually do with your time. It's worth thinking about and examining. I created my list, and wrote it down, and I constantly remind myself of what my priorities are. I still have to remind myself of what my priorities are, and I do so all the time. But because I do so, I stick to them. I suggest that if you're having trouble finding the time to do something that you say is a high priority for you, you do the same. It's what worked for me, and it might just work for you.

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Beautiful Torture

This post doesn't have a lot of words, because a picture is worth a thousand words. Note that I'll still talk a bit because, well, that's how I roll. I'm super busy with school, I don't get to read a lot lately. Here's a picture of the books I have sitting, waiting for me to read, that I'm not letting myself touch until I have time to read one cover to cover. Because that's also how I roll.


There's two more that aren't pictured here, little known things by the names of Ender's Game and A Game of Thrones. They're both on a bookshelf somewhere, but they will get read.

I also have a copy of Unfettered on order. Please also note that there are two sequels to The Warded Man, with two more books planned. Redshirts is a standalone. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is the first in a trilogy. Gardens of the Moon is the first in a 10 book series, totaling over 10k pages, and 3.3 million words. The sequel to The Lies of Locke Lamora is out, and there are what appear to be 5 more books coming. The next book is a writing book. The Shasht war and Doom's Break are the second and third books in a trilogy. The two Alcatraz books are the first two of four, with a fifth planned, and The Name of the Wind is the first in a trilogy, of which two are currently out.

So yeah, if I like the books that are there, I have plenty to read for a long time. Not to mention the Game of Thrones or Ender's Game books. Not to mention that Brandon Sanderson has three MORE books scheduled to come out this year. (Yeah, and A Memory of Light already came out. How's that for lots of writing?) Not to mention that I also have a few more books that I want to order. I want to try out Brent Weeks, for example, and will be ordering his entire Night Angel Trilogy (cheaper than buying the individual books) soon.

November is going to be a particularly hard month for me. I'll try to explain why as succinctly as I can. NaNoWriMo. Catching Fire. Words of Radiance.

And with that, I've tortured myself enough for the day. I'm going to go do some schoolwork, so that hopefully, I'll have time over the winter break to at least start on some of these books. :(

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Romeo and Juliet

That title really is just there to grab attention, but I think that it's also fitting for the post - I didn't just choose it randomly.

Warning: Spoilers for Romeo and Juliet. If that's even possible.

Here's a question for you: would Romeo and Juliet either have died if they had had phones and could text or email each other? Wouldn't Romeo have known that she wasn't really dead?

Also, I have major issues with letting myself go on tangents. I just spent 30 minutes reading up history, reviews, etc. of Romeo and Juliet. Wow...

Think on that for a moment. While that delves into the effects of technology on storylines, stories today about miscommunication that are utterly stupid (Seriously. We have phones. Use them, or your characters are stupid. And this is also why we see "Jamming" devices so often.), and some other really interesting storytelling aspects, I don't want to go into that right now.

I want to talk about a real-life situation. My school. It prides itself on communication; they collect phone numbers, send out test emergency system messages, have a FB page, everything. But there's one key area where the fall down.

Cancelled classes.

This semester alone, my physics class has been cancelled twice. (Please note that I'm not blaming my teacher for any of this. He's been sick on and off, and definitely deserves the days off to get better.) It's not the first time this has happened, either. It was cancelled twice last semester, as was my history class.

ACC does not send out any kind of email reminder when class is cancelled. They have everyone's email. They have it in their system that the class is cancelled. All of the information that they need is right there. They put up printed, official notices on the classroom door. They just don't send out emails.

My history teacher sent them out himself last semester when he was unable to come to class. I was able to go home early both days, saving myself a lot of time.

For physics, last semester, I came up to school early (physics at 9, next class at 2:30), and then found out that physics class was cancelled. It was quite a surprise, and I would much rather have gone home and slept in those days. This semester, the first time, I didn't find out that class was cancelled until class time (1:30). I was on campus for my optional government SI session, but that ended at 10:30, and I had been in the library studying since that time. I could easily have been home before lunch. Or, had I known earlier, not even gone up to campus at all.

The second time, a classmate apparently spotted the notice on the door around 10:00, and emailed the entire class (Yes, it's so easy that any of the students can do it - from their phone), and I was able to go home directly after the SI session. I still wouldn't have gone up to campus if I had known earlier, but at least I had the rest of the day that time.

In conclusion (aka, I'll stop rambling here.), it's ridiculously easy to email all of the students in a class when it's cancelled. Heck, ACC, you should have it as part of your automatic system, the same one that prints out a notice and tells someone to go tape it to the classroom door. It saves people a lot of time and stress. And it's just polite. Please?

State of Me, Sunday, 10 March, 2013

It's Spring Break time.

I'd like to take a brief moment here to rant at the government for stealing an hour of out my spring break. Yes, today is the beginning of DST. I've got a post about that here.

Okay, rant over. What's been happening? I've been busy. I know, that's nothing new. I said I would try to get out another post last week, and I failed, so you will be getting an extra one this week, I promise. It is, after all, spring break. Ha.

So, I took a government test on Tuesday morning, and I feel really good about it. I also took a Calculus IV test yesterday, and Differential Equations today. Both of them took me just under three hours each, so I'm mentally exhausted. Because finishing the work/studying for the tests before spring break really wasn't enough, I'm going to work some more Calculus HW tonight. (He assigned homework on Wednesday on material that wasn't on the test, I don't do that kind of homework until after the test is done.) I felt good about both of those tests, too.

Coming up, it's time for me to take a break - not. The real reason that I'm diving straight into more work tonight is so that I can actually get stuff done. I have a large to-do list over the break, not in the least including a few computer labs for math classes, reading 3 history books and writing an essay, reading a 4th history book and writing a book report, reading the last 4 chapters in the history textbook and studying for taking the 4th history exam the day that classes start again, doing a physics homework, preparing for a physics test the week classes start back, and practicing my guitar every day.

So yeah, a nice little spring break. I hope you enjoy yours, too. (I'm not being sarcastic there. I enjoy being busy. I thrive on having so much stuff done.)

Anywho. Life lately has been about priorities. I've had to decide what's important, and when I can do it. I'll write an entire post on this at some point, but I'll say one thing here. If I don't have something done that's due tomorrow, and I'm staying up late doing it, that's not because I was a procrastinator. I just prioritized other things above it. I was still working, darn it.

Okay, end rant. Time for happy stuff. I finished my writing project. It's at 52,985 words, majorly shorter than I want it to be... (Darn, another topic that I have to write about. I just went and started keeping a list of these, so I'll actually remember.) But it's done, dang it. Except, it's not. Nothing's ever done for me, is it? I've had a few people who offered to read the thing, and give me some feedback on it, and I'm planning, after I've had some time to let it set, get back to working on it, make it better, etc. I don't expect it to ever be publishable-good, but it'll get better. Mostly because I'll learn something in the process. Oh, if you want to read my story, shoot me a message. (I'm being delusional here. Nobody reads this blog right now.)

You'll notice that my wordcount on writing dropped dramatically. That's because I reset it for the next project. That's right, I started on something else new, immediately. I've taken a few story seeds that were floating around (I have an entire file of them, most just a sentence or two. I'm never going to run out of ideas.) and I've mashed them together. I threw together a rough rough rough outline yesterday, and I think I'm going to throw in another idea and work a slightly more complicated outline today. You can expect to see the number of words written go up and down over the next few weeks, as I put them into more and more files, all over the place. I'm planning on fleshing out the outline for another few days, then writing up character sheets for all of my main and semi-major characters (I don't know who all of them will be, yet.), and do some detailed world-building. Heck, I'll even welcome a bit of world-builder's disease at this point, because I feel that the world for the project that I just finished was underdeveloped and rather boring.

So, I've rambled here long enough. I'll write one more post later tonight, and post it, and a second one will be coming sometime in the next few days. Here's the numbers, and I hope all of you have a good spring break (whenever it is for you).

Writing:
Mar 3, 2013
49,271
519
300
49,052
498.1
Yes
53
1,432
Mar 4, 2013
49,812
541
300
49,571
498.9
Yes
54
1,486
Mar 5, 2013
50,409
597
300
50,112
500.6
Yes
55
1,541
Mar 6, 2013
51,109
700
300
50,709
503.9
Yes
56
1,597
Mar 7, 2013
51,916
807
300
51,409
509.0
Yes
57
1,654
Mar 8, 2013
52,985
1,069
300
52,216
518.2
Yes
58
1,712
Mar 9, 2013
647
647
300
53,285
-334.3
Yes
59
1,771
Mar 10, 2013
647
0
300
947
-329.0
No
0
1,771


Rice:
Mar 3, 2013
347,240
1814
151
1,450
2
725.0
1064.7
Yes.
72
4,147
Mar 4, 2013
348,390
1812
150
1,150
2
575.0
1065.1
Yes.
73
4,220
Mar 5, 2013
349,540
1804
150
1,150
8
143.8
1065.5
Yes.
74
4,294
Mar 6, 2013
350,950
1799
149
1,410
5
282.0
1067.2
Yes.
75
4,369
Mar 7, 2013
352,340
1795
149
1,390
4
347.5
1068.7
Yes.
76
4,445
Mar 8, 2013
353,800
1794
149
1,460
1
1460.0
1070.6
Yes.
77
4,522
Mar 9, 2013
355,310
1790
149
1,510
4
377.5
1072.7
Yes.
78
4,600
Mar 10, 2013
357,160
1782
148
1,850
8
231.3
1076.3
Yes.
79
4,679


Monday, March 4, 2013

State of me, Monday, 4 March, 2013

I'm insane.

I have a test tomorrow morning, and then I'll be spending the weekend in the testing center again; I have another round of math tests coming up. I also have a physics report due tomorrow, a physics homework due on Thursday, and a blog post for government due on Friday. Over the weekend, I did 56 pages of math homework.

I'm working something like 16 hours a day on schoolwork, and starting to cut into sleeping time to work on it; that's about the only thing I have left to cut into. I still feel like I'm barely hanging on, and that I could fall behind at any moment, and that if I do, I'll never catch up. I'm doing supremely well in all of my classes, and I feel like I'm always about to fail, that any slip up will lead to utter disaster. I think that's part of why I do so well.

You aren't getting a regular post right now. I have one that I want to write, and we'll see about getting it done tomorrow. If not, I'll put it in extra over spring break.

I got my physics test back finally, 45/47, averages to just over a 95%, so I'm happy with it.

I've gotten even more books for my ever growing stack of things that I desperately want to read when I have the time. It's painful. I got one today that's a little special, I'll give details on that soon.

I'm doing my writing every day; it's very exciting and fun. I've had to consider after midnight as the previous day a few times, but heck, it's before I go to bed for the day, so I'm perfectly fine with counting it.

My story is coming ever closer to the conclusion. I'm going to push to end it this week. I already have a host of ideas for what I can do next. I'll be looking at all of them over the break, probably rough rough outlining each one in a single day, and then selecting one, and doing some serious character and world building before launching in to it. I'm tempted to try one or two shorter pieces, to see how they go, and maybe to have something marketable. Getting a short story published would be a dream.

I wrote 2k words on the last day of February, because it gives me an extra point on the magic spreadsheet, which bumped me up from rank 5 to rank 4 for the month of February. So yes, those words were written quite selfishly.

My story is almost at 50k words, the cutoff for being considered an actual novel. I'll hit that either tonight or tomorrow, and I'm really looking forward to it.

Rice, I'm doing every day. Not much to say here, other than that levels are getting a lot less frequent. It helps, every morning, knowing that even if I don't get anything else done during the day (HA HA HA HA HA. I wish I could do that, for one day), I've done something that causes net good in the world. It's a good feeling.

I'm signing off now. I have to write two essays for my government test tomorrow morning. Even though I need a 20 on this test, if I make 100s on the rest (I made 103 on the first one.), I feel like getting anything under 90 is failing. I don't know why I do this to myself, sometimes.

Writing:


Feb 25, 2013
44,449
680
300
44,069
461.5
Yes
47
1,129
Feb 26, 2013
45,182
733
300
44,749
466.8
Yes
48
1,177
Feb 27, 2013
45,728
546
300
45,482
468.3
Yes
49
1,226
Feb 28, 2013
47,728
2,000
300
46,028
497.2
Yes
50
1,276
Mar 1, 2013
48,230
502
300
48,028
497.3
Yes
51
1,327
Mar 2, 2013
48,752
522
300
48,530
497.7
Yes
52
1,379
Mar 3, 2013
49,271
519
300
49,052
498.1
Yes
53
1,432
Mar 4, 2013
49,271
0
300
49,571
489.4
No
0
1,432


Rice:


Feb 26, 2013
340,660
1829
152
1,200
4
300.0
1058.4
Yes.
67
3,797
Feb 27, 2013
341,990
1823
151
1,330
6
221.7
1059.8
Yes.
68
3,865
Feb 28, 2013
343,250
1819
151
1,260
4
315.0
1060.7
Yes.
69
3,934
Mar 1, 2013
344,430
1819
151
1,180
0
0.0
1061.3
Yes.
70
4,004
Mar 2, 2013
345,790
1816
151
1,360
3
453.3
1062.8
Yes.
71
4,075
Mar 3, 2013
347,240
1814
151
1,450
2
725.0
1064.7
Yes.
72
4,147
Mar 4, 2013
348,390
1812
150
1,150
2
575.0
1065.1
Yes.
73
4,220