I’m doing NaNoWriMo!

I have official permission from my parents. Yipppee!!!! I’ll post about my novel when I have it more concretized.

daybook

Date… Tuesday, October 5th, 2010

Starting time… 4:34 PM

Mood… bored

Outside my window… grass and a street.

I’m thinking… that I need to get off soon…

I’m reading… eh, nothing really. This week’s Great Books reading is from Caesar but the class was only today, so I haven’t started.

I’m listening to… A Man’s a Man for A’ That – Old Blind Dogs

I’m wearing… Blue flowered buttoned blouse and a full, black denim skirt.

Yesterday, I… had piano lessons, had my braces tightened, and went to the library.

I’m excited for… English country dance on Friday.

I’m sad because… I have chemistry homework :X

I’m hungry for… a caramel milkshake.

The song stuck inside my head is… ditto for what I’m listening to.

I want… to plot out my NaNoWriMo story.

I love… bagpipes! Uillean (sp?) pipes from Ireland and Scottish ones too. .

I loathe… allergies. And braces. And acne. And hot weather.

This week, my goal is… To finish all my school work.

Did I meet last week’s goal?… I don’t think so.

NaNoWriMo!

I’m so excited about November. Why? National Novel Writing Month!
What? you may ask. Well, NaNoWriMo is a challenge to write a 50,000 word novel (roughly 175 pages) in ONE MONTH.
Scary, huh? That evens out to roughly 1,667 words a day. There isn’t any death sentence if you don’t finish and no $1000 prize if you do. The idea is to force yourself to actually get that book DOWN on paper whatever it is you write with.
There’s also another option if you’re younger than 18: NaNoWriMo’s young writer’s program. You can sign up for regular NaNoWriMo if you’re 13 or older, but with the YWP you can set your own word count. I haven’t decided quite which to do. I’m actually not certain of participating at all, since my mom wants me to prove that I can juggle my schoolwork with the writing. But if I can, I think I’ll do the regular NaNo.

Here are the links:
NaNoWriMo
Young Writer’s Program

Poetry!

I thought I’d hunt up a few of my favorite poems in the public domain and post them for you to read. Fortunately, most good poetry is oldish.
I personally don’t like free verse. I once heard someone say that it lead to sloppy thinking. That can be true, but I think it’s more common these days as a sign of sloppy thinking. Most free verse (which contains nearly all poetry written nowadays) is equivalent to incoherent prose minced into irregular lines. Not that all free verse is quite that bad, but that seems to be the main idea. Real poetry, with meter, takes some effort to write. As for rhyme, I prefer it but it’s not necessary. I used to think that blank verse and free verse were the same. Silly me. Anyways, a great deal of the greatest poetry (Just to reel off a few; The Odyssey, The Iliad, the Aeneid, Beowulf) was written in meters that don’t use rhyme.


Apart from all that… you must, must, MUST read this poem. It’s called “All That’s Past”, by Walter de la Mare, and I read it for school recently. It’s one of my favorites. Read it aloud, and reread it often. Poetry should be read aloud as much as possible, actually. It’s possible to get music out of it by mouthing it, but new things seem to appear if you read it aloud.
I can’t leave without mentioning the author. Walter de la Mare compiled a perfectly lovely anthology of poems called “Come Hither”. Don’t be put off by its being a children’s anthology. I have the impression that he had similar ideas as Tolkien on the subject of so-called “children’s literature” (see Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy-Stories”, which I highly recommend). It’s superb.


All That’s Past


Very old are the woods;
And the buds that break
Out of the brier’s boughs,
When March winds wake,
So old with their beauty are—
Oh, no man knows
Through what wild centuries
Roves back the rose.
Very old are the brooks;
And the rills that rise
Where snow sleeps cold beneath
The azure skies
Sing such a history
Of come and gone,
Their every drop is as wise
As Solomon.


Very old are we men;
Our dreams are tales
Told in dim Eden
By Eve’s nightingales;
We wake and whisper awhile,
But, the day gone by,
Silence and sleep like fields
Of amaranth lie.

October

The general trend recently seems to be writing about October. So I will do so.

October is probably my favourite month. Sure, June is my birthday, and December is Christmas, and Easter is… wait, a movable feast. Drat. But anyways, for a number of reasons, October is my favorite.

1. The month is enchanted with red and gold and fading green. Well, in most places. Where I live, the show doesn’t really get going until November, if I remember aright.
Now that I think about it, I should probably delete that first sentence. Too poetical.
2. Where I live, it’s hot from April until, usually, sometime in late September or October. I mean hot as in 90+ degrees Fahrenheit. This summer hit 107, I think. We get all excited when it drops below 85. Plus, I love cold weather.
3. It’s the month of the Rosary. I love the Rosary. It’s easily my favorite prayer.
4. My nameday falls in this month. That would be reason enough, actually… Plus I LOVE St. Teresa of Avila, and her feast day is the day before my name day. (Try and guess who my saint is now.)
5. The dreariness of autumn appeals to me, in most moods, more than the flowers of spring. Why, yes, I do see green polka-dots dancing in front of my eyes, and I do talk in a Gollum voice to my pet rock. (Just kidding. In the second sentence, that. is.)