Passive Aggressive Interwebs

It’s kind of amazing to me how easy it is to be passive aggressive via the internets. You know what I mean. You’re mad at someone and open up a browser and all of a sudden blogs and Facebook and Twitter and who knows what else are screaming at you to vent your feelings by typing cryptic messages into little white boxes. Facebook is always asking you “what’s on your mind?” Twitter wants to know “what’s happening?” And blogs were CREATED for expressing personal opinions in your own words. It seems to take a larger effort to refrain from typing things out of your system than it would be to just tweet “wtf, people???” or change your facebook status to “___ ___ wishes people were nicer.”

I think we forget that this is the equivalent of standing up in front of dozens, sometimes hundreds, of people (most of the time including the person you’re mad at) and shouting that you’re mad about what someone did to you.

We forget that we’re not just venting feelings, we’re indirectly slandering the person we’re mad at and inviting others to take up our (self-)justified cause against them.

Sometimes we even forget that we’re hurting the other person personally and making the situation worse. Because they know you’re talking about them.

I don’t mean to sound preachy. I’ve been sorely tempted to do the EXACT same thing, and the only thing that stops me sometimes is thinking about how much I hate it when other people use the internet as a ventilation system. It irks me even when it’s not ABOUT me and I have no idea what’s going on.

I also want to be clear that I’m not angry at anyone at the moment, so this isn’t me talking about how I-wish-I-could-berate-people-right-now-but-I-won’t-because-I’m-too-self-righteous.

The only point I’m trying to make is that the internet is a dangerous place to be when you’re annoyed with someone. Once it’s on the web, it’s hard to take back. It’s good for me to remember.

I JUST WON NANOWRIMO!

*Rocky theme song plays*

I reached 50,000 words at 4:30 today. My 50,000th word was “were.” I promptly stopped in the middle of a sentence in order to verify and win and celebrate.

And then I finished the sentence.

I think winners need cookies.

I’m going to go find a cookie.

Ghosts of Versailles + Pearl and the Beard = Happy

It’s 2AM, but I can’t tear myself from the computer because of the combined efforts of John Corigliano’s Ghosts of Versailles and a band my sister discovered (meaning “found out about,” not “is now managing”) the other day called Pearl and the Beard. The reasons:

The Ghosts of Versailles is the best. opera. EVER. In my opinion. It’s amazing. It’s probably the first opera I ever saw (when I was maybe eight) and I loved it from the off. It has BEAUTIFUL music. The melodies are lovely and the dissonances are equally awesome and the combination is ASTOUNDING. I was listening to this album earlier and decided to look up Ghosts of Versailles on YouTube to see if I could find “O God of Love” which is the most beautiful, lovely sextet in the history of ever.

I couldn’t find it.

But I did find “They Wish They Could Kill Me” which is the first song Figaro sings. Which is also fun and catchy and beautiful and made me smile.

I wanted to see if anyone was possibly going to perform the opera again, so I looked it up. And found that the Opera Theatre of St. Louis had done it in July.

Crap. I missed it.

So I looked some more and found out that the Met Opera was going to perform it in their 2010/11 season! (yay!) And then found out shortly thereafter that the performance had been canceled due to the economic downturn. (boo.)

So I looked again and found out that the Vancouver Opera is planning on premiering the Ghosts of Versailles in Canada in their 2011/12 season. And didn’t find any sort of information to the contrary. YAY! So long as they don’t turn into stinky cheese heads, it’s going forward. I want to buy tickets NOW. I don’t care how much they are. I’m going to see this opera before I die.

Second source of happiness: Pearl and the Beard.

Emily showed me this video today. It is, in short, made of awesome. Watch it. And after I had done all the Ghosts of Versailles stuff I started listening to some of their other stuff which is also made up of pieces of awesome.

And that is why I am up so late.

43,022/50,000

Before I actually went to sleep last night I hit 43,000 words. It’s awesome. And I must keep writing because now my unfortunate character is going to tell everyone about that thing that I was worried about fitting into the plot. It’s good to be ahead. XD

I’m ahead!

It feel so great to have your little yellow bar above you little blue quota for the day. I haven’t had that since the 4th of this month. *happy dance*

So…my unfolding plot. I was suddenly informed of some dramatic events that have rattled my character’s world and upped the anti quite a bit. I don’t want to give spoilers. But I will say that because of this new plot, not only does one of my characters have a concussion (which she got before this development), but another character has been beaten up twice, which has succeeded in fracturing two of his ribs and his nose and giving him multiple bruises and a lovely black eye. Clearly, he’s not in very good shape.

I also discovered something about this particularly unfortunate character the other day. He just up and told me something important about his past that is very sad but explains a lot. Now I just have to fit it into the plot somehow.

I’m really excited. I just reached 41,667 words (it’s 1:46 in the morning where I am right now, which means I don’t have to write anything at all when I wake up tomorrow if I don’t want to. Which I do, because this plot is turning out to be awesome) and I don’t want to stop. Which I should. Darn it.

The only problem now is that there is NO WAY they are going to get everything resolved at 50,000 words. Which puts me in a bit of a dilemma. Do I write until I get to 50k and stop? Do I skip parts so I can just fill them in later? I’m not sure.

oh hai

I have not had to time to blog. I am sorry. I have been trying to write. I am finishing out today with 39,676 words (yay!). I cannot write anymore because it is almost 3AM and I really should go to sleep already. So goodnight to you. More blogging tomorrow, maybe. I have some things I wanted to mention.

Such as my wonderful self-unfolding plot.

And characters suddenly telling me their backgrounds.

Fun stuff.

Good night!

Long day

I can’t seem to be able to concentrate enough to write just now. It’s been a very long day with many difficult things to deal with, and all I can seem to do is watch episodes of Ghost Whisperer and play games on Facebook.

I’m thinking that I will try to write some later, but it’s just not working right now.

Wisdom did not win

Ha, wisdom! Vanqueshed by foolishness once again!

I stayed up until 3:30 in the morning and got to 27,177 words.

Having a fire/explosion/cave in scene will do that for you. *nods*

Goal for today is to catch up! Hopefully I can still write 2,823 words even with all the other stuff I have to do today. But if I set my mind to it (and slack off on the other stuff) I think it can be done!

I had to break the fourth wall once because I realized that I couldn’t loose everything that I had put in harms’ way, and had to remind myself to fix that in editing, but otherwise the flow was great. I don’t think I had broken the fourth wall or two or three thousand words before that point, either, which is cool.

…Okay, clearly the 3:30 thing has made me a little ramble-y, so I’m just going to go ahead and wrap this up now.

Happy NaNo-ing!

Past the halfway mark!

I finally got past 25,000 words today, and have even made it past 26,000 (the Scrivener count is 26,006, the NaNo official count is 26,076. Which is weird)! I’m very excited, because I was having some slow going there for a while, but I finally let myself get to a plot point (I’m secretly — well, not that secretly — afraid of running out of steam before I can get to 50K, so I was putting it off for a while) which upped the word count quite a bit, and made for a very nice chapter ending. Yay!

I’m so into my book right now, that although I just finished watching Star Trek (woot!) and it is now 2:29AM, I still am wanting to write for a while longer before I actually go to sleep. This would not be good for my sleep pattern, but it would make me happy in the short term.

I think I’m going to brush my teeth and junk before I do that though, so we’ll see whether wisdom actually wins out in the end.

Excerpt time!

Yesterday two of my characters had a silly(?) exchange, so I thought I would entertain you with an excerpt. *clears throat importantly*

“Looking for someone?”

The voice behind her made her jump and she spun around.

“Reilly! Don’t do that!”

“What? Did I scare you?”

“No, you just startled me is all. How’d you get there so fast?”

“I’m magical,” Reilly said with a smirk.

“Ha, ha,” Brooklyn said.

“So were you looking for someone?”

“Not really. I just don’t have anyone to walk with just now.”

“What about miss haughty pants?”

Brooklyn raised an eyebrow.

“You’re talking about December?” she asked.

“Aren’t you chummy with Kidwelly?” Reilly inquired.

“I wouldn’t call it that . . .” Brooklyn said.

“What would you call it?”

“Why do you care?”

“I just wondered is all.”

“If you’re just here to pester me —”

“That wasn’t my intention, actually. I only came over because you looked like you were looking for someone.”

“All right, then. Anything else I can do for you?”

“Well since we’re both lacking in someone to walk with, maybe we can help each other out.”

“You want to walk together?”

“If you insist.”

Brooklyn rolled her eyes.

“Okay,” she said. “But you should know that December is going to be furious at me for doing it.”

“Who cares about what the privileged Miss Kidwelly thinks?”

“I do, since she keeps lecturing me about it.”

“Why?”

“She thinks you’re up to no good,” Brooklyn explained.

“Does she?”

“She does.”

“Then why doesn’t she straighten me out?”

“She doesn’t want to straighten you out, she wants me to stay as far away from you as I can possibly manage.”

“She thinks I’m a hopeless case?”

“I got that impression from her,” Brooklyn said. “Try not to let it worry you too much,” she added in mock concern.

“I’ll do my best,” Reilly returned in solemn tones. “I am sorry she gets on your case about it, though,” he added genuinely.

“Don’t worry about it,” Brooklyn said, brushing it off. “Worst she’ll do is stop talking to me.”

“What a tragedy!” said Reilly sarcastically.

“Hey now,” Brooklyn reproached him with half a smile, “she means well.”

“She means you well. She hates me. Probably would be happy if I died via tunnel monster.”

“Death by tunnel monster,” Brooklyn said. “Sounds like fun.”

“Very. Not my favorite way to go, but it’s better than death by toaster.”

“Or death by sleeve.”

“Or death by curtains.”

“Or death by spoon.”

“How can a spoon kill you?”

“You could choke on it. Or a really slow murderer could use it to kill you.”

“Ouch. Yeah, I’d definitely rather go by tunnel monster than by spoon.”

“I agree.”

“Death by curtains actually sounded like fun too, though.”

“This is ridiculous,” Brooklyn snorted.

“Then we might as well walk together,” Reilly sighed.

“Excellent use of logic,” Brooklyn said sarcastically.

“Does that mean you’ll walk with me?”

“If you insist.”

“I do.”

“Okay, then.”

So yes. Hope you enjoyed that. <3