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

12 Step Novel Writing Program

Greetings!

I tell people I'm a writer and by writing every day I seem to actually be one. And people are excited about the fact that I am writer. They love that I feel so passionate about writing and tell me that I should things about stuff that I would never even dream of writing. Still, they know I'm a writer.

What happens though, is that I tell people I'm working in a writing project and they get excited. And then it happens that after a month or so they get on my case, like "Where the heck is that book you were supposed to write?"

Now, sometimes, it happens that I end up hating a story while I write and I stop working on it. Sometimes I feel like it's too Twilighty because the plot is covered in sugar and the main character is a Mary Sue who gets whatever they want. Sometimes, I'll hate the plot and there's no saving that. Other times the whole story will drag. Other time it will move way too fast.

The worst is having a good plot and characters I like but doing something to the story that just makes my skin crawl, knowing I can fix it but not knowing how.

The thing that changed it all for me was in 12th grade when I participated in NaNoWriMo for the very first time. This was an eyeopening experience.

I now know that Jo Rowling didn't sit down and write Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in one sitting (though sometimes I like to dream that she did. I've kept her on a pedestal since I was nine). I'm going to guess that her first draft was a lot better than any first draft I've ever written, but I'm only 19 and haven't sucked enough yet (that's what she said).

National Novel Writing Month taught me a lot about myself and since then I have honed not only my writing ability but the things I have to before I actually write anything at all.

Were you one of those kids who went to a school where they made you outline every paper ever before you actually got write the paper and then they made you do a first draft before you turned in a final copy? Well, I did and I loathed it.

But guess what: they also drilled how to cite everything ever in MLA format so now I kickass at writing college paper (or at least citing in them--and I don't mean to brag but my works cited pages always look pretty glorious as well).

The point is, I now know that I cannot write a book or a short story or even a paper for class unless I outline it first.

There is an entire process to how I write things from beginning to end. It's my very own 12 Step Program (your results may vary). Now I'd like to share it with you:

Step One:
Write down a short synopsis of the entire thing.

This is the first thing that I always, always do. Sometimes I skip it and go straight to step two but then I end up staring at a page for an hour trying to figure out how to end it. Essentially, I just have to write down the gist of the entire thing. "MC goes here, does this, meets MC2. So on and so forth." If I like then I move on to. . .

Step Two:
Naming my characters.

"What? This is the second thing you do? Are you on crack?" No, I am not on crack. There is a method to my madness. Have you ever heard someone say "don't name it because you'll get attached to it?" Well, that's what I do. Naming the main characters in the story (usually just the hero/heroine and their merry band of sidekicks) bonds me to them. Not only that, but once a character has a name, then I can work out how they behave as well. I develop their personalities around their name. For instance if I name someone something like "Cloud Storm" (I would never really use that name by the way) I would know that they're probably going to be dark and angry and mean and whatnot. Once I know how my characters SHOULD behave (more on that later) I know what kinds of things they would do or wouldn't do and that helps me down the road when I need to move the story along.

Step Three
"Chapter" summaries.

I use "chapter" loosely because rarely have I ever written down a chapter summary that ended up filling up enough space to be what I consider a chapter. But, it gives me a place to start and lets me get a little more in-depth with the story. This is a life saver because the story is already in my head and I know what's going to happen. The chapter summaries tell me this has to happen before this happens. I make sure to write down that certain relationship need to have advanced to this stage or someone has to be killed before this point and so on. I have to keep in mind, however, that I am a crazy person and I write down lots of things that don't make sense. For instance, in my most recent outline I wrote down that my MCs parents sent her a care package from Russia filled with, and I quote "Russian stuff". I don't know what that means and I doubt that I did when I wrote it down the first time.

Step Four
Begin writing exposition.*

It's taken me a very long time to realize that exposition is the hardest thing in the world for me to read AND write. Sometimes I get so frustrated with exposition that I just quit. I'm not proud of it, but I do. But I'm a little older and little wiser and I know have to push myself through it. I know it's going to suck because it's the first draft and it always sucks but this is the first great hurdle I get to every time and I know that if I can make this jump everything else will (usually) fall into place the way it needs to. Introducing the setting, characters, and the plot is always the toughest. It's like eating a salad as an appetizer while waiting for your fillet mignon to come out of the kitchen. The salad is necessary because it's good for you and prepares your stomach for the heavy meat you're about to eat but you'd much rather just have the juicy piece of steak wrapped in bacon now and forget all about the salad.

Step Five
Dealing with your characters who (apparently) call the shots.

Once I've started writing, the story is pretty much out of my hands. I don't control what my characters say or do or how they act. They are their own persons and they say whatever. This is frustrating because sometimes I feel like "Bob, why are you being so nice to everyone. You were supposed to be my rebel without a cause!" Apparently Bob didn't want to be the rebel--he wanted to be the bad ass with a heart of gold. Now I know what you're thinking, the character developed that way because that's how I wrote it. But if you remember in step two I say that I write how they SHOULD behave. They don't always stay that way. As I write (as everyone writes) things grown and change and become different and that mostly happens with my characters and I change the world around them to fit them so everything I write goes together well. Of course, there are time when my characters behave in a way that I don't particularly approve of and then I have to punish them. This can vary depending on the offense--if someone decides they want to be friends with someone they were never intended to be friends with I might kill them off or maybe if they think their life is all sunshine and rainbows and perfect, I'll put them in a humiliating situation from which they will never recover. My characters do take on a life of their own but I have to make sure they remember I am their god. I created them--I can destroy them.

Step Six
Do not edit.

Yes, this is a step. After I've gotten through the first few chapters I'll always think of things that I should go back and change or that I can add to make it flow better. No. Absolutely not. That's like taking one step forward and two steps back. Editing now is the enemy. I have to tell myself to keep writing. However, there are times when editing is necessary, like when you have a massive plot change, it's pretty important that you try to fix all that stuff. At least, if I don't do it, I forget about it and then look back and confuse myself. But usually, I don't edit until the end. HOWEVER, since every writer ever feels this desire to edit, if I'm having a particularly good day writing: If I write an entire chapter or something else really awesome, I'll allow myself one hour to edit whatever I want. I get my editing fix and I'll have made progress with the actually story. Everyone wins.

Step Seven
Remind myself that I actually enjoy writing.

After I get far enough into, writing does start to feel like a chore and it shouldn't. This fatigue actually means that I'm almost there. I usually feel like this just before I get to the climax of the story. It's like I'm climbing an actual hill of rising action trying to get to the tippy top where the climax is. It's all down hill after climax after all. Still, all of the anticipation and excitement that happens at the climax is so overwhelming that I again feel like I'm eating a salad and want to get to my steak. You think all those guys who climbed Mount Everest didn't feel like quitting, especially when they got near the top--the air is thin, it's really cold. Maybe a few people have gotten really sick, but they were almost there! just a few more feet, just push a little farther and you'll get to the peak. After that, all you have to do is carefully climb down.

Step Eight
The climax!

The best part of the story! Where everything EXPLODES in a fiery blaze of glory! This is where Harry and his gang sneak past Fluffy! This is where Clio and Aidan get attacked by pirates! This is where The Fellowship of the Ring gets attacked by orcs! This is where the magic happen. The trick for me is to be very meticulous otherwise I blow through it so fast that it actually ends up sucking and then it turns into one of those books where people read it and say "I liked it until. . ." (For me, one of these books was Maximum Ride: The Final Warning. "I liked it until they it turned into a book about Global Warming."). My most recent climax involves a fight with a giant chimera and Google. . . Just ponder that one for a minute.

Step Nine
SLOW DOWN. Ties up loose ends.

The end is where I always screw up. Everything is going well and good and then I  realize I'm almost and screw it all up because I didn't take the time to actually tie up everything or I just blazed through it or I just decide to go all M. Night Shamalamadingdong on it and leave myself feeling like I wasted a lot of time and will never get back the precious hours I spent working on it. I have to slow down. I make sure that I resolve everything. I have to make sure that everything is peachy keen and all that good stuff. This is where I just have to relax and let the words flow out like they should. I have a much easier time doing this now that I've learned to outline instead of just planning off the top of my head.

Step Ten
Walk away. Don't look back.

Walk away from it. Don't look at it. Don't think about it. Write some fan fiction. Throw a party. Take a nap. Eat some cupcakes. After a while has passed (some people wait six months. Some people wait a month. Some people think 24 hours away from it is enough) go look at it with a fresh set of eyes. Then brace yourself.

Step Eleven
Have a panic attack

"Did I really write something this horrible? Did I really think that this line was witty? The plot is all over the place? My grammar is horrible! I totally spelled that word wrong!" If you look at your first draft and you don't feel any of these things, get your eyes checked. Pronto. Take a deep breath. All first drafts suck. They are bad. Like I said, Jo didn't write Deathly Hallows in one sitting, no matter how much I want to pretend she did. And even if she did do it in one sitting, I'm not J.K. Rowling and I'm not that awesome.

Step Twelve
Remove shiny red pen and attack the novel.

This is the final step. Break out your red pen or pencil or whatever it is you use to edit and correct everything. Don't stop until that bad boy is covered in ink. Don't stop until you've written "WTF" on every single page. Don't stop until the margins are so cramped with corrections that you can't write anymore.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

I've only ever gotten as far as step eleven because a lot of things I've written, I've looked back at just haven't been worth saving. Like that book I wrote in 10th grade and my first NaNoWriMo novel--all things that I still have that just remind me there's ALWAYS room for improvement and that sometimes it really is okay to just start from scratch.

After you've sucked enough and written until your hand falls off, you'll have written a novel. High five yourself. You're awesome.

There's only one part of writing that I forgot to mention and that is not writing, i.e., procrastination. Sometimes it's much easier to write about HOW I write as opposed to actually writing. Procrastinating usually strikes me during steps four, seven, and nine. Be wary.

Writing isn't easy. It makes you want to *head desk* and *face palm* and throw your laptop across the room. Just because someone is good at writing doesn't mean ideas come to them easily. It doesn't mean we can just sit down and crank out awesomeness. It takes time. It takes a lot patience. Then it takes more patience. Not just from the writer but from the people anticipating the book as well.

Anyway, I might get done faster if I didn't procrastinate this way. . .

Fare thee well,
April <3

*I feel like I should have a step before this that involves me outlining more thoroughly or something, but I have yet to figure out a way to do this without annoying myself with detail.

Sayonara, Bye-Bye

[It takes me a moment to get to the point, but you'll understand once you get there.]

Greetings!

So, it's come to my attention that I'm kind of a freak. I know that the general population, doesn't care about outer space or the progression of the death of the universe. Most of them don't care how many times I've read Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (12 by the way). Most of them don't care or understand Twitter. Most of them look at me, whenever I mention any of those things and think "Wow, what a freak."

And then I look at them and think "I LOVE being a freak."

I love watching Fruits Basket and then having weird dream where everyone is an animal. I love writing Harry Potter fanfiction. I love that my most recent project is to work the Sisyphean into a sentence and then divulge too much information about the word's origin and meaning. I love that I can explain to you, in detail the three ways that the universe might die. I love that I love Young Adult fiction even if it means a lot of people around are going to eventually tell me to grow up and read more adult books, or worse non-fiction (ick!).

But let's face it. I'm not THAT much a freak.

I'll admit, I'm socially awkward. The way I used to function was that I would find a group of people, imitate their speech and their mannerisms and blend in to make myself more socially acceptable. By the time I got into high I had outgrown that. Somehow, I only found it worthwhile to talk to people who were interested in things I was actually interested in. But I never blew off the people who weren't like me.

When I was with people who weren't as nerdy as I was (because as it turns out EVERYONE in my high school was a closet nerd in one way or another) I silently observed them. I don't mean that I went all Animal Planet and detailed out every single thing that they did, but if they were having a conversation, I'd listen (if I was with them--I don't mean eavesdropping. Who do you think I am, Samwise Gamgee?). I'd watch them way I watched in middle school, but instead of imitating, I'd make a mental note of it (you know, because I'm a writer. It's what I do).

I think people are fascinating. SO fascinating. Even the incredibly horrible things they do are fascinating. I'm always curious about the WHY behind the things that people do (Am I going to go to grad school for something psychology related--of course). I want to know why people have to be socially awkward. Why aren't people more accepting of other people? Why do I find interaction with people outside of Twitter so difficult?

But the answer is easy--we're all afraid of rejection or not being accepted by other people.

I can hear the outcries now "I don't care whether or not people like me. People don't have to like me. I don't care what other people think of me."

But you do. Because if no one liked you, you'd be alone and friendless and you'd hate everything.

The thing that I, that MOST people, I think struggle with is the idea that not EVERYONE has to like you. I don't have to make sure that everyone likes me.

I am an odd, but naturally likable person, because I don't make things difficult people. Some people would call this being spineless. That is I'm starting to call it as well. People ask me a lot of questions and for my opinion on a lot of things but I don't usually answer because I don't want to be painted in a negative light, even if my answer would mean standing up for someone else. And for all the good that I want in the world I know, I've always known, that there are two types of evil: Those that do evil and those that see evil being done and do nothing.

I am the second type of evil person. That sucks. Totally sucks.

Occasionally, I can be passive aggressive--You can tell when I'm irritated and being passive aggressive with you because I'll start my sentences with an "actually" or "apparently." For instance, I was in 3rd grade and my teacher said that we stomped up the stairs like a herd of elephants because we were so loud. I replied "Actually, elephants walk on their tiptoes so they don't make a lot of noise when they walk."

I didn't get recess that day, obviously.

Still being cheeky and passive aggressive is about as much as I do these days. Because, like I say, time and time again, I just don't have the energy to let things upset me.

But today, I woke up and got onto Facebook and something inside of my brain snapped. It was a very sudden, sharp snap. For some reason, almost everything and everyone on Facebook and in my real life made me, really, really angry.

I couldn't explain why I was angry or what they'd done at first but then I had two very massive realizations.

The first was that no one cared about me. And I don't mean that in the "my existence is meaningless" kind of way. I meant it in the, if I were to sit in the same room with most of these people even our small talk wouldn't last five minutes. I would ask them how they were doing, how their life is going, what they've been up to lately, if I know them well enough, how that little hobby of theirs is going. And I know, for a FACT that this gesture would not be reciprocated. Most of them would not even ask me what book I've read recently because they do not care. They don't even care enough about me to be polite to me. And time and time again these are the people that I see doing evil (you know, the gossiping, rumor mongering crowd) and I do nothing about.

Why are these poisonous people in my life? What do they do for me?

And that's when a fellow tweep made it all crystal clear for me: I feel an obligation to these people to keep them around. Why? Because I'm too nice. Because I have no spine. I am a jellyfish.

I am weird. But I'm not that weird. I don't do things that gross people out. I don't sit in a basement and play World of Warcraft all day and forget that there's life outside my apartment. I'm just a nerd. A massive nerd who likes to learn things and read books and go to school.

I am not too weird or too much of a freak for people to not want to pay me even the most basic of common courtesies and if people aren't going to be kind to me then I don't have to be kind to them.

Okay, yes I do. I am always going to be polite and kind because it's who I am. But what I don't have to do, is keep you around. There may not be that many people in my life, but there are enough of them around that I can cut most people out of it and keep around the ones that will make an effort to treat me the same way they treat everyone else despite the fact that I am a freak.

Yes, I'm a freak, but this freak has feelings. I know you have feelings. I treat you like you do because it's what we all should be doing. I don't care if you're some weirdo who plays D&D or if you're a pretentious hipster or even just a dumbass who thinks they know everything. You are a human freaking being and you deserve to be treated as such. People should be nice to you. People should treat you like you have feelings that can be hurt and that words, or lack there of, along with sticks and stones can hurt you.

I may be a freak who watches The Universe and reads YA literature and writes fanfiction and lists "smiling" as one of my favorite activities and has a difficult time communicating with people who don't have similar interests, but that doesn't make it okay for you to just decide that your time could be better spent being a butt muncher than being nice to someone who is always nice to you no matter how massively annoying they find you.

So here's the deal: I like to spend my time being happy and nerdy and I've wasted too much of it wondering why people I see all the time don't say more to me than "Hello." So, goodbye all you poisonous energy suckers. It may not make a difference to you whether or not I speak to you ever again but it feels pretty damn good to not have to speak to you ever again.

Find a new nice girl to string along. I'm done with you.

Fare thee well,
April