RWCC Challenge Day 23: Catching Fire

[Argh--there be spoilers ahead. Readers ye be warned.]

Greetings!

So, I just finished reading Catching Fire. I know, it took me long enough to start reading this series, but I had a little trouble getting started because I lacked something in the characters--emotional investment.

I'm on to Mockingjay now, and although I still feel the strong desire to kick Katniss in the face as I find her annoying, the emotional investment is there.

I can honestly say that I don't really feel a whole lot of love for Katniss. She's as selfish as the day is long and what annoys me even more is that she knows she's selfish because she constantly says things along the lines of "he was concerned about me, but I was only concerned for myself." And she feels bad every time she thinks about it but always fails to deviate from her usual pattern of behavior.

The other thing that bothers me about Katniss is that she doens't know what she wants. When she's with Gale it's all Gale all the time. But when she's with Peeta it's all about Peeta. I think her problem is that she can't seperate her romantic feelings from her "just friends" feelings which is why sometimes she makes out with Peeta on the beach or why sometimes she goes gallivanting off into the forest with Gale, which is pretty much the Katniss equivalent of making out.

Let's not talk about Katniss. Let's talk about why I actually like this book so much.

Despite the fact that pretty much everything Katniss thinks annoys me, I like the way she says it. I also like that she annoys me because it means she's being honest. It annoys me that she doesn't know what she wants but Collins makes a point to show that Katniss probably doesn't know what she wants either.

Also, the change in her personality is different from The Hunger Games to Catching Fire. She was pretty tough in the beginning--a loner, self reliant, content to be left alone. While usually a traumatic event like the Hunger Games would harden someone, I think it actually softened her. She was so suspicious and untrusting in book one, but this time round she expresses that she does trust people and how she doesn't want to kill to stay alive. She went into the games willing to sacrifice herself so Peeta get out. She still has to fight back her selfish tendencies and her suspicious tendencies first, she does eventually come around.

I like Katniss in those moments.

The other things I like about the books: The Hunger Games arena. As soon as I went to bed after reading Catching Fire, I dreamed about the Hunger Games with the ever present "tick-tock" of a clock going in the background the whole time. Not only that, but there are things in those arenas that never fail to make think that Suzanne Collins watched too much Indiana Jones and horror movies as a child. The things you find there are just horrifying.

The first thing that Suzanne Collins ever wrote that gave me nightmares were those wasps that stung that girl to death. Then they got attacked by those mutts. And I thought, no way that can get topped.

Well, color me wrong. Acid fog. Blood rain. Tidal waves. Electrocution. Killer monkeys. Insanity. Pandemonium.

Collins' mind must be a terrifying place to be.

Finally, the actual plot of the story is pretty damn good too. I mean, it's incredibly effed up obviously, still. Everything about it just keeps me thinking. For instance, is every district the size of a city? If so, how small is the population of humans left alive? Those are the two most daunting question I got from it. Trying to figure out why the Capitol is so oppressive and trying to figure out why some of the other districts are so impoverished would be like trying to figure why some countries here are so oppressive and why some countries are so impoverished. And it's THAT realization that made me feel connected with the actual story.

Thinking that things in America could really get so horrible that we could turn into that horrifies me. That's why Utopia/Dystopia stories are my favorite and this series is especially good.

The main character annoys me, yes, but the story and everything that Katniss is fighting for pulls me in. Plus it's exceptionally well written. There aren't any fancy words and it isn't overly detailed. It's simple, but it's got a lot of feeling to it. It's riveting.

I'm well on my way into Mockingjay and I've already face palmed myself and actually found people I dislike more than Katniss, but I won't get into that yet.

Hmm... I'm not sure how to end a review. Maybe a should do a little jig *does a jig*

I promise I'll do better next time. Practice makes perfect!

Fare thee well,
April

RWCC Challenge: Day 16: Road Trip Wednesday

Greetings!

So today's Road Trip Wednesday topic is: Who have you written into a book--be honest.

What? I've never written anyone I know into a book. You're crazy. . .

Of course, I'm lying, but as it happens, I try to avoid doing this at all cost.

The first book I ever wrote, which will never see the light of day ever again (it is safely hidden away in a plastic tub inside of a notebook, affectionately dubbed "The Bloom Book") was written in 10th grade. It was called Livvie's Story. I know, what an awful title, but I was in 10th grade. Who cared?

Anyway, I spent all day and all night working on this book and at first I was in love with it. But then, a friend asked if she could be in the book and I thought to myself, sure why not. So I wrote her into it. However, soon after this others started to ask to be in it as well. And because I was 15 and I loved my friends more dearly than anyone else in the world, I obliged.

Long story short, I finished the book (a feat I have since not been able to replicate) but I hated it. I couldn't even look at it. By adding my friends into it, it had turned into something that I really, really, really hated.

It wasn't because I hated my friends or anything. It was mostly because it just wasn't the story I had envisioned anymore. Since then I have done my best to stray away from adding people I know in real life into my writing. . . However. . .

I may or may not have added a boy I had a HUGE crush on in third grade into something I've written. He used to throw things at me in class and make fun of me, you know, act like boys did when they liked a girl in grade school. I transfered schools in third grade and didn't see him again until I was in 11th grade when I was at the library. He walked up to me and our conversation went something like this:

Him: Hi, April.
Me: Oh, hi. Long time no see.
Him: Yeah. So my mom said the reason I was mean to you when we were in grade school was because I liked you, but I just wanted to let you know that I didn't like you.
Me: Oh. . . Okay. . .
Him: Okay. . . Bye.

I assumed that things like can't possibly happen in real life because who's really worried about who did or didn't like someone in third grade, especially since I never spoke to him ever again since I left the school, but whatever, I decided I had to write it down because people had to also look at that story and say "of course it's in a book because that would never ACTUALLY happen" when I'll know that it did because it happened to me.

There are other people I've written into my work, disguised very carefully as minor characters or characters that are written in for the soul purpose of being fridge stuffing. Basically, if I wrote someone I know in real life into my work it's because they were A) Really interesting or B) Made me want to choke them.

None of those people, nor the boy from 3rd grade, are mentioned by name and I'm willing to bet that if they read my stuff they'd never notice it was them.

Have I ever written myself into a book? No. But, I have taken certain characteristics from personality, inflated them, and then attached them to a character as a way to have a little bit of myself in every book which I think is fair and I think everyone does it subconsciously anyway.

The people in our everyday lives are a part of our experiences right? And, as a writer, we write about our experiences and what not, so, that being the case, people are bound to end up in our books if they were a part of our lives if they have a good (or bad) enough impact on us.

Fare thee well,
April

RWCC Challenge Day 15: Secret TV Watching Habits of Classy April

Greetings!

There's a consensus from pretty much every person I have ever met that I'm a bit odd. I've addressed the aspects of being an uber nerd many times over and how that makes me odd.

But then there are other things about myself, things that I can't quite grasp, that also make me odd. These things, I don't usually talk about because they're typically frowned upon by every person I've ever met. Then I have an epiphany that what I'm doing is actually so odd it creeps me out, but that doesn't stop me from t doing it.

The oddest thing that I can think of that bothers me is how addicted I am to what is probably the worst television show ever created:

The Secret Life of the American Teenager.

Yep. As much as I like to keep is classy and how I'm not usually into television that's too horrible, the excitement I feel when I watch that show baffles even me.

Every time I watch Secret Life I feel the same way I felt after I finished reading Breaking Dawn: "Was this series as terrible as I think it was and if so why am I actively encouraging in it's continuation?"

Thinking back to the first episode I see now how awful it was from the very beginning. It wasn't one of those shows that started out good and then got pretty bad, this show has been bad from episode one.

At first you think, oh, it's about a stupid 15-year-old girl who gets pregnant by the school's male slut. Everyone has heard this story. But then it goes on to meeting Ben who wants to lose his virginity and Amy who is so desperate for her baby'd daddy to not be her baby's daddy that she might actually sleep with Ben just to say it's his baby.

I'm beginning to think that I from the beginning found it stupid but watched it too many times and now it's turned my brain to mush and I can't stop.

A lot of people say that Pretty Little Liars is their guilty TV pleasure, but no. Pretty Little Liars is awesome. I have no guilt about that at all. But every time I watch Secret Life I feel dirty. Really, really dirty.

Hopefully it will go off the air soon and I'll have a reason to stop watching it and I'll stop feeling guilty. In the meantime, bring on the guilty (well, starting on the 28th when the new season starts. Shamefully, I am very excited about it).

Fare thee well,
April

RWCC Challenege Day 8 Part 2: Stress and Anger and April

Greetings!

So, recently I've been under a great, enormous deal of stress. In high school, my counselor used to call me a stress monster because I was really good at holding things in and stewing over them, but as far as letting things out and expressing them I was really, really, bad at it.

I've always been aware that I don't have to like everyone (because I certainly don't like everyone I meet) but I did think everyone had to like me--or at least not hate me.

I'm starting to get over that silly idea, because now I know that if I tell people that I don't like something or anything else along those lines it shows that I have a spine and a voice--something people just assume I don't have because I've been a quiet doormat most of my life.

I was watching That '70s Show recently and Kitty said something that just made me go "That is my life". She said "My mother told me that good girls don't cause trouble and now I've grown up to be a doormat."

Exactly. I never cause trouble. I gave people what they wanted. I was very submissive.

But now, something has happened. I feel like my brain is a string on a guitar that's been wound to tightly that people keep plucking that's well on its way to snapping.

I've snapped a few times in my life all during high school--January of Freshman year. January of Sophomore year. March of sophomore year (you couldn't pay me to be 15 again). September of Senior year. All of these instances I ended up crying in my room or in the counselor's office at school because of my inability to properly handle stress.

I am still not good at it but I am getting better. My boyfriend, such a good sport, sits there and listens to me while I spew out everything that stresses me out and tries to make life better for me.

But still, there are just something that talking to your boyfriend an writing in your journal can't fix. When that fails I go and stress out a few of my characters, read/write some fan fiction, watch TV--do my favorite things. But even then sometimes I feel all of this bottled up. . . emotion.

And I just know, I know with all my heart, that I am going snap. My guitar string brain is going to pop and I'm going to lose it.

But I feel different this time. I don't feel sad or under pressure--I feel angry. I feel like someone is going to say something to me and I am going to snap and then scream and yell and tell them how stupendously stupid what they said and I am going to release all of this stress out onto them.

It will be out of character. It will be scary for everyone involved. Hide your kids. Hide your wife.

Holding in too much stress for me is a very bad thing for those around me because it makes me brave. I am a Hufflepuff. I do cowardice very well. But with too much stress and with too many people stepping on me day after day I eventually have enough of it and blow my top and "keep it real". And usually, I can present this very calmly (and with lots of tears) but the stress I feel now is different than the stress I felt before. It's angry stress brought on by the masses of stupid people I have encountered at Target and in my daily life.

Sometimes people just talk and say something so completely stupid that on the inside I scream "ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?!" because what they said was so appallingly stupid or ignorant or just plain ole simple minded that I feel like a ninja should pop out of the shadows and round house kick them in the face Chuck Norris style for saying it. And that's the kind of stuff I've been holding in--the feeling of roundhouse kicking people with my words the way Chuck Norris does with his feet.

Imagine 1000 tiny Chuck Norris' inside of my chest just waiting for someone to say the perfect stupid thing so that they can all jump out and attack them for it.

Do you have an accurate idea of how much anger is inside of me now? Of how much stress has been building up and what will happen if released?

I'm going to blow up the way Red Forman did on Hyde when he got caught with Jackie's pot. I will probably even use the word "dumbass" repeatedly.

I don't WANT to blow up on someone. The only thing I can think to do is gradually release the stress anger by "keeping it real" every once in a while so things don't go wrong. I mean, calling someone a dumbass and stupid can get you hit in the face, and despite how I can word things to make them less brutal when I write, I'm not the most eloquent when I speak. I don't articulate things well on the spot.

That being the case, someone can be stupid to me tomorrow and cause me to blow up that way so what can I do about that? Think about how I'm going to shout at them before I do it. However, I will keep in mind that in the heat of the moment anger can cloud judgment and how that can lead to some pretty intense words and I won't censor myself and then people will be really, really angry.

Now, I'm going to be self-centered here and say that I deserve to get angry and blow up on someone for all the years that I refrained from doing so to spare the feelings of others. I should be allowed one free angry pass for all the years I didn't tell people that their stupidity made me angry. Majority of the people I know are always talking about how they want people to say what they think of them to their face so why get angry if I do just that?

Oh, right, because I'm supposed to be a coward who doesn't stand up to you and doesn't have an angry thought in her pretty little head.

*laughs*

The moral of the story is: I need to learn to handle stress better lest I turn into this evil, angry, mean person who yells. Which is not like me at all.

Song of the day: "Mean" by Taylor Swift

Fare thee well,
April

RWCC Challenge Day 8: Challenge Revisited

Greetings!

This is not an "I Quit" blog. Because I am not a quitter. However, I like many before, have realized that there are certain things that I'm just not capable of doing.

So, this blog is to show that I am revisiting this challenge and setting my goals to a standard that I can actually meet.

Essentially, all of my house hold tasks and health improvement goals will stay the same because laziness and illness are not an option. However. . .

This 12am bedtime is not working.

I'll just lie awake in bed until four being awake, trying to sleep and fail. I do my best writing during this time and if I'm going to be awake then I may as well do what I do best.

The waking up and 8 thing isn't working either however. . .

I'm still going to try, albeit it will be difficult to get up that early if I stay up late but my plan is to eventually wake up one day stay awake until a reasonable hour and then be tired enough to fall asleep, thus putting my sleep schedule back on track (it was ruined by NaNoWriMo).

Now for the reading and writing goals. Essentially I'm doing this:

Still trying to write 2000 words a days but if I don't get it, no sweat. Sometimes the words just aren't there.

One book a week. I did a really good job at this before and I can get back on track so long as I make time for it.

Yesterday I cleaned my apartment (well, not the dishes but it's the BFs turn for that so no worries there) and my bed is totally made up right now so. . . So far so good. Time to get to reading and get to writing.

As for the Harry Potter blog every Saturday, I doubt it'll happen but I will try to update it once a week from now on.

After all, I make the rules and I can change them when I want to. But no quitting. Only quitters quit. On Nov 30th 2010 I'd only written 30k words for NaNoWriMo but was I up until midnight trying to write? Damn right I was.

Fare thee well,
April

RWCC Challenge Day 4: SO CLOSE

Greetings!

Today was slightly more successful than yesterday.

I ALMOST got myself out of my writing red zone from the past two days but I didn't read at all.

This fate could've been avoided if I had remembered to turn my phone off vibrate when I got home from work. Alas I did forgot. . . So. . . That happened.

Also, I probably could've made more progress if I had decided to not turn on That 70's Show when I got up this morning and I didn't really have to go see Take Me Home Tonight either (but it was funny. You should watch it).

So, I just turned my phone on so I will hear my alarm.

I will NOT watch That 70s Show while I write.

I WILL tomorrow. I am determined.

Starting Word Count: 17,212
Ending Word Count: 19,106
Difference: -2,645
Favorite Sentence Written Today: "All the kids there made fun of me, but I'm pretty sure I was way cooler than all of them for not being as successful a clown as they were."


Starting Page: 38
Ending Page: 38
Difference: -60


Fare thee well,
April

RWCC Challenge Day 3: Definitely Need to Get on That Water Thing

Greetings!

So today marks day 2 of my "bad day" and hopefully it will not continue into tomorrow.

Essentially, I woke up feeling better about today than yesterday. I got up early and everything. Just as I went in to make my bed I felt it like a knife--that familiar pain in my side hinting that I'm probably getting another kidney infection.

Ever since I got my first one, I've lived in constant fear of them. I got a second one back in December and I've been trying to drink water to keep myself from getting one.

I slipped a bit in February so I decided to drink more water this month.

Too little to late apparently.

So, after being stricken with pain I laid down in my bed all day trying not to hurt, I started to feel better in the late afternoon and decided that I could go to work and I did and I felt like I was being shanked the entire time, I'd have asked to go home but that would leave one girl to zone the entire softlines part of the store on her own and that would've sucked.

And now I'm home and tired and hurting and drinking water and I have A LOT of catching up to do tomorrow.

But I can do it.

You know, barring a trip to the hospital on account of the possible kidney infection, but let's try to stay optimistic, shall we?

Starting Word Count: 17,212
Ending Word Count: 17,212
Difference: -2,539
Favorite Sentence Written Today: NOTHING!


Starting Page: 38
Ending Page: 38
Difference: -40

Fare thee well,
April

RWCC Challenge Day 2: Is April Gonna Have to Choke A Bitch?

Greetings!

March is not cooperating. Not at all.

The story begins last night around 11:30 when I realized that come midnight, I was not going to be asleep. I have this thing, probably called insomnia, where when I lay down at night to go to sleep, it doesn't work. Unless I go to bed when I'm actually sleepy, it's not going to happen. Otherwise I lie there, wide awake in the dark frustrated about not being able to sleep.

So I decided that since I wasn't going to be sleeping at midnight the very least I could do was turn off the computer, which I did. Long story short, I went to bed at almost two, which considering I usually hit the hay around 4:30 is a step in the right direction.

I was all prepared to wake up and be groggy at 8:30 this morning but, come 6 o'clock I hear something moving in the dark--a familiar sound. Mice. With the knowledge that there were mice in my apartment for the umpteenth time this year, I cannot get to sleep, which is fine. I figured, if I'm up at six, I'll definitely be asleep before midnight.

But no, I feel back asleep at 10, even though I told myself that I was not going to sleep past nine. To make it even worse, I didn't wake up until my boyfriend got home from work at about 12:30.

AKML.

Still, there's plenty of time left in the day. I can totally still read, write and clean up a bit before the day ends.

So I long on to check my e-mail and there's a message to me from my college bearing really, really bad news.

You see, I took all online classes last semester which was a HORRIBLE idea and I will never do it again because I did really bad. I can't learn outside of a classroom, which is something I'm happy I learned early on my college career.

But, like I said I did really, really bad and despite having been on the Dean's List the semester before my GPA dropped down super low. And because my GPA was not satisfactory I "may not receive financial aid for my next semester of enrollment."

So basically today:

1. There are probably mice in my apartment
2. I slept in.
3. Academic probation

Yep. March is just shaping up to be. . . Awesome.

And of course, armed with the information that I can't go back to school until the spring or whenever they decide I can give fin-aid another try I have walk into Target everyday and feel like I am completely and utterly wasting my life away working at a store that I can't even afford to shop at.

My life is so awesome.

And get this: when I'm in a bad mood, like right now, I find it very, very difficult to write and read. It's not usually an issue because I am just so happy-go-lucky all of the time, but it's days like this that make me feel like I'm just not up to it. It's days like this that just make me want to go all Wayne Brady on people.

Still, I need to push through all of the bad stuff and know that there is something good coming out on the other side. So even though today sucks the future holds this:

1. I will live in a place that doesn't have mice really soon.
2. Tomorrow is a new day and I can try not sleeping in then.
3. I can easily pull my grades up.

My motto is to always look on the bright side of life and, besides, March is my month to spring clean my body and mind so starting over and looking on the bright side totally implied in that, at least it is for me.

The past year has been tough for me with all my friends being so far away at school and I've been here trying to figure out exactly what direction I want my life to go in. I've always known what I want to do at the end of it all, but I don't know exactly what I want to do to get there. I'm at Point A and I want to get to Point B, but do I take a plane, a train, a bus, or a car to get there?

All I want is to keep going to school, keep writing and to not have mice in my apartment and the universe has yet to cooperate long enough for me to do any of those things successfully simultaneously.

*takes a deep breath*

But I'll be okay, I think. . . Yeah. I just need to breathe a little bit. Relax. Look straight ahead to the light at the end of the tunnel.

Tomorrow will be better, even if I have to go to work at a job that makes me want to ram my head through drywall.

Today's Starting Word Count: 16,673
Ending Word Count: 17,212
Difference: -539
Favorite Sentence Written Today: "What do I need a closet for when I have a perfectly good floor?"


Today's Starting Page: 38
Ending Page: 38
Difference: -20


Song of the Day: "Breathe (2 a.m)" by Anna Nalick

April's Read, Write, Clean and Classy Challenge!

Greetings!

So, I got up this morning (11:45 still counts as morning right?), and went to Twitter and then to YouTube and on YouTube I watched a video by this lovely girl I follow on Twitter by the name of Bailey. She and her sister are doing a 30 days of blogging challenge where they will blog every day and be awesome and it got me thinking.

Why don't I challenge myself to do awesome stuff on a whim like that? Why must I always wait until BEDA or NaNoWriMo to start super awesome writing projects? It's March. I'm alive and well today. My fingers work and I'm all hopped on coffee. So I decided that today I am also going to start my super awesome project for the month of March which will be like a spring cleaning for my body and mind.

I present to you: APRIL'S READ, WRITE, CLEAN & CLASSY CHALLENGE!

1. Every day I will write at least 2,000 words of my work-in-progress novel.

2. I will read at least 20 pages of a book every day.

3. If the above two are not met, the remaining word count and pages will roll over to the next day (so if I only write 600 words I'll have to write 3,400 the next day) and as a punishment for failing I'll take away my Twitter privileges for 12 waking hours--during which I'll be crying and torturing my characters because I screwed up.

4. At the end of every day I will give my word count for the day, and the page number of the book I'm reading via, this bloggity blog here along with whatever topic I assign myself for that day (suggestions please?).

5. Every Saturday I have to update the Blogging Harry Potter blog.

But it's not just about reading and writing. There is a lifestyle change involved in this challenge to improve my overall health and well being and to make me less lazy.

1. Get out of bed by nine o'clock. Stop being such a lazy bum.

2. Bed time is Midnight. No exceptions.

3. Do the dishes. Every day. That includes, today, tomorrow and on March 16th when I'll be less motivated to do them.

4. Eat at least twice a day. Food is not an acceptable thing to cut out of my life to make room for books and writing even though I sometimes pretend it is until the hunger pains start.

5. Straighten up the apartment--at least make up the bed every day.

6. Water. Drink it. Every day. One bottle. One glass. Just drink it. No pop at all. Even if it's free soda day at work or something.

7. Stretch. I know it's a weird thing to challenge myself to do but if I stretched and was able to relax and unwind more I wouldn't get so many headaches and muscle aches from being so uptight all of the time.

See, now I'll be improving my brain and my health and the ascetics of my apartment which currently looks like a college dorm room which isn't bad considering I'm actually in college, but I'd like to maintain a classier lifestyle. I do follow the tweets of Maureen Johnson after all--she is all about keeping it classy.

I start today so here are my opening stats:

Word Count: 14,416


Page Number: 20 (Radiant Shadows by Melissa Marr)

So basically: Keep writing, keep reading, keep it clean, keep it classy.

Fare thee well,
April <3