Summer Update: School, Dance, and Books

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It's been a long time since I posted here, and lots has been happening. I've been working hard to try to finish up Algebra II and Medieval History. I've been doing art classes once a week (pictures to come eventually), Irish dance (soft shoe and hard shoe) once a week, and, starting this week, ballet two to three times a week! There have also been lots of parties and spontaneous get togethers in the nice weather, plus many birthdays to celebrate.

Sunset over Bellingham Bay, on a spontaneous evening excursion to the park with some friends.

I am currently reading The Prince for History, and just finished Are You My Mother? and Maggot Moon, both of which I have written reviews for which will come out soon. If I have time, I'll try to review Fun Homeas well, since it kind of comes before Are You My Mother?

It's been hot around here, in the high 70's to mid 80's all this week. It's supposed to get close to 90 soon, which is quite hot for NW Washington!

As usual, I'm staying busy this week with dance (I have 1.5 hrs of ballet and 2 hrs of Irish on Monday, plus ballet on Friday, and maybe on Thursday), volunteering at the library, a family soccer picnic tonight, a World Cup party tomorrow, and art class, golf, and probably other things I forgot. I'll be reading, doing school, and editing as well.

I'll try to get back to blogging more again soon, but probably not until August, when things really calm down a bit for us. We are camping in Bend, OR for a week in about 10 days, so I won't be blogging then either.

I'll get a few book reviews up this week, but other then that, I probably won't be on here until the beginning of August.

Three for Three!

Yes! I did it! I won NaNoWriMo for the third year in a row.

In 2011, I wrote "Nothing Good Ever Lasts," and finished on Nov. 30 with 50,002 words.

In 2012, I wrote "To Be A Slave," and finished on Nov. 29 with 50,069 words.

In 2013, I wrote "At the Edge of the Ocean," and finished on Nov. 29 with 50,0067 words.

This year and last year are looking quite similar! I'm really sorry I have not posted any thing in so long. I have had a lot going on, and I will try to get caught up very soon. Now that I am no longer writing my novel (so exciting), I have more time, and so I will try to get a few posts written soon. Either later today or tomorrow (probably tomorrow), I will post a life update about why I have written so little on here lately. I will also be doing a sponsored book review that is going up tonight or tomorrow morning.

NaNoWriMo Update: Two-Thirds Done! + Mini Life Update

Let's try to pretend I'm not almost a whole week late on this one... I'm just going to combine Homeschool Friday posts again, since I did not get the one for last week done.

According to the calender, November is 2/3 of the way over, though my word count does not reflect that at the moment. You can always see my current word count in the side bar, and right now that is 26,332 words. This is a lot less than I would like, but I'm not yet TOO worried about it. In 2011, I had 26,928 words on the 20th, and in 2012 I had 31,479. The 2011 numbers are very close, and I still managed to come back and win that year.

This NaNoWriMo has been the hardest one yet. My story is coming together, sort of, but my other life keeps getting in the way. School has been demanding a lot of time and attention, and it remains my first priority most of the time. I have also been sick nearly the entire month, which has resulted in having several days with no writing.

I had a cold in late October which never quite went away (there was a nasty lingering cough), and last week it seemed to come back in full force again. I don't know if this is something totally different, or if I have relapsed, but I have been feeling pretty terrible for the last week or so, which has negatively effected my writing.

I have also had a lot of other stuff going on that I have been doing. I agreed to go to three Scottish Country Dancing classes so that I could perform with them in three weeks at the port festival (I have never done any Scottish before in my life, though it is similar to Irish, which I have been doing for over a year now). I also have several choir performances coming up. I know I have some local readers, so as the time gets closer, I'll post some dates and places that you can come see me sing or dance if you so desire.

NaNo itself has been going okay. My novel is still very strange, and I sometimes hate it, but I am feeling a little bit better about it. Last Thursday, I went to a Write In at a local coffee shop (my first in three years of NaNo), which was fun. I was nervous because I knew I would be the youngest person there (I was, the rest of the people were college students), but it was still fun. One of the people asked where I went to college when I first got there, which boosted my confidence level a bit.

I was going to go to another one last night, but this cough I have has gotten so bad that I didn't think it was a good idea. Even though I didn't feel too bad, I would certainly have disturbed everyone else with my literal non-stop coughing fits. If I feel up for it, I'll go to the Thursday one again this week.

I think I'll go and try to get some school done. I think I am going to block three thirty to five as my dedicated writing time today, so I have until then to do as much school as possible.

How are you all doing on your novels? Are you feeling confidant, or are you getting nervous?

NaNoWriMo - Week 1

Whew, ten days done, and twenty to go. That means that I should be about 1/3 of the way through my novel, which I am not. I am currently about 3k behind, which is not too bad. I've been much farther behind at this point in the month and still won.

My story is going okay, though I've sort of hit a wall. My story so far as been dark realistic fiction, veering sharply into literary fiction. Literary fiction can be great, but it is a PAIN to write. You have to know your characters really well, and sometimes it can just get to be too much work, especially for NaNoWriMo.

I don't know exactly where I am going to go from here, but my main plan is to change things up a bunch. I am considering jumping forward in time (maybe as much as ten or twenty years), and even switching up the genre (heading for more of a fantasy vibe). I would never do this if I expected anyone to read it, but since that is not really why I do NaNo, it should be fine. I'll update you next week on what I actually decided to do.

I would love to go to some Write Ins this year (write ins are usually held at coffee shops or other public places, and are where a bunch of local NaNoers come to hang out and write together), though I don't know whether or not that will work out. I have never gone to any local events in the past two years I have done NaNo, but I would love to meet some of the people I see so much online. I try to keep pretty active on the Bellingham forums on nanowrimo.org, and I do think that the personal connection can be really motivating.

If you are doing NaNoWriMo, and you want to be friends with me on the site, my name is Daisy512. Feel free to nanomail me, or send to a buddy request.

NaNo Update: Four Days In {Plus - Vote for Me!}

Yeah, I know I said I would do this update on Saturday, and I really did mean to, but then I forgot, and yesterday was pretty busy, so I did not get around to it until now. So far, my word count is 6683, which I am quite happy about since I have done no writing so far today, and I know I will have quite a bit of time to write later on.

So far, my story is going well. My plot is developing better then I had hoped, which is exciting. I still do not know where exactly things are going to go, but I have an ending, and some of the steps to get there, which is good!

I do not have a lot to talk about this week, so I think I'll sign off now, and try to get some school done before I write.

Also, I was nominated for the HSBA Post 2013 Homeschool Blog Awards! You can vote for me once a day if you like. The voting is open now, and will stay open until Nov. 18. You can click here to vote for me. If you then go all the way down the page (it's a long one) to the categories, you can vote for me in category number 10, Best Teen Blog.

I won't mention it again, since I don't want to be annoying, but if you like my blog, it would be great if you would come back and vote again each day, or even tell your friends about it.

Sorry for the short post, but expect me back for a scheduled post on Wednesday, and then a school update on Friday!

NaNoWriMo: Week 0 {Everybody Panic!!!}

I had about five posts I've been meaning to write and post this week, but this is the first time I've even opened up Blogger since Sunday. Sorry! Life has been CRAZY, and it's not looking like it's going to slow down any time soon. I only have about ten minutes to write right now before my grandmother comes to take us to lunch for my sister's birthday. As soon as we get back from that, I will have less then an hour to get all costumed up before heading to a local park to do a Lord of the Rings photo shoot, since we might not have a chance to get any good pictures on Thursday.

Some of the other LOTR people will be coming back to our house after that to participate in a discussion of the Joy Luck Club, which I am hosting, and apparently leading as well, though I have not even looked at any discussion questions yet.

That's just this afternoon. Anyway, I doubt you want to hear about how busy my life is, but at least you have some idea of why the blog has been a little quite, and will probably stay that way.

So, this is going to be be NaNoUpdate number 1. Normally, they will go up on Saturdays, but I forgot to write a post last Saturday. I don't have a lot to say this time, other then that I have hit the panic stage. If you have done NaNo multiple times, you might know what I mean.

Every December I swear that I will never put myself through the torture of NaNo again. In mid September of the following year, I begin to remember how much fun NaNo was, and start getting excited to do it again. On about Oct. 28 or 29, I suddenly remember just how hard and stressful NaNo can be. At this point, I've already told tons of people I'm doing it, and I often have even done a little planning, so I can't back out.

I just hit that panic stage. I've done very little planning this year, less then ever before. I do have two wins (out of two tries) under my belt, so that helps, but such rational thoughts don't do much good against that late October panic.

I have only TWO days left until NaNoWriMo, and they will be completely filled with an insane ammount of STUFF. In fact, the first time I will realiztically have to sit down and relax will be Friday morning. Friday, November 1st. Maybe I should just give up on the idea of relaxation until December. :)

How is your NaNo planning going? Do you get that late October panic too? Do you feel ready to tackle this novel (what a ridiculous question)? Also, if you are a NaNoer, feel free to add me as a buddy! My username is Daisy512 on the site.

Homeschool Friday: October 21-25, 2013 {Week 8} + Life Update

I'm sorry this post is so late! I'm going to quickly go over school stuff here:

School Stuff
School didn't go super well this week. With being sick and busy, a lot didn't get done. In history, I read 20 pages out of my textbook, did a bunch of mini bios on important people from the reading, did a map, and added some dates to my timeline. That was everything I had wanted to get done for the week. For math, I was supposed to do five lessons, but only did three. Also, in science, I did two of the three I had hoped to do. In Spanish, I got almost all of it done, and in Latin, I only did about half a week's worth.

So, school didn't go too well, but I need to make some allowances. This was certainly the busiest week of the school year so far, and I was feeling pretty crappy for a lot of it. On that note, here is the promised Life Update:

Life Update
On Monday, I felt terrible, and skipped dance, though I did still volunteer at the library (mostly because I was able to choose tasks where I could sit the whole time. In dance, that's not really an option).

Tuesday, we hosted the current events discussion group, where we talked about (and voted on) many of the local ballot issues this election.

Wednesday, I went to park day, and got to see a friend I don't see too much any more, as well as her new puppy.

Thursday, I was feeling somewhat better, and I spent the afternoon at a friend's house, helping them decorate from their annual Halloween party. The family has two boys about the age of my sister and I, and we split into teams, Isabelle with the younger boy, and I was with the older. I may need to go back before the 31st though, since the project we were working on (which is a HUGE project) was not done when I left, and I think they might need help finishing. I'd say what it is, but I know some friends of mine read here, and I don't want to ruin the surprise before the party. :)

Friday, I went with some friends to the Washington State corn maze, which was amazing. It is 12 acres, and in the shape of WA. All the paths through it are major highways. We had maps, and went around looking for landmarks, which all had mini versions in the corn maze. We found the Grand Cooley Dam, the Space Needle, and the Peace Arch. Almost every town had a sign, and we found many, including Bellingham, Ferndale, Blaine, Concrete, Mt. Vernon, and many more on the East Side.

Saturday (yesterday), my Mom and I went to see the Joy Luck Club at a local theater. It was an amazing performance, and very true to the book.

Today is my sister's 12th birthday, and we are rushing around trying to prepare for all the celebrations, and to host choir at our house this afternoon as well!

So, that's why I didn't too much school done. I mostly feel better now, though there is a pesky cough that doesn't want to go away.

Homeschool Fridays: October 14-18, 2013 {Week 7}

It's Friday again, and that means it's time for another school update. I have mixed feeling about how this week went as a whole, but I think it didn't go too badly, school wise. I have been feeling pretty icky for a lot of the week, so that has not helped my productivity in general. I've had a lot of chest congestion for several weeks, and a runny nose for about a week. Over the past few days, my eyes have gotten really sore, and I've developed a headache and a sore throat. I was originally thinking allergies, but maybe it was just a really long start to a cold? Time will tell, I suppose.

Anyway, back to school. Here is the breakdown:

History
I don't feel like I did super well with history this week. I have read a really long section out of my textbook about Byzantium, and I did a bunch of those little mini bio things I've talked about before. I was also supposed to do a map of the Kiev Rus in the early middle ages, but I did not do that. It shouldn't take very long though, so I'm hoping to do that after I finish writing here.

Earth Science
I finished the chapter on renewable and nonrenewable energy sources, and started the one of plate tectonics. I only got two sections done, though I was hoping to do three.

English and Rhetoric
In English, I finished the chapter on verbs. In Rhetoric, the chapter wasn't all that long in terms of the number of pages to read, or exercises to do, but the exercises were all quite long and involved a lot of research and writing, which is partly why I only finished about half of it.

Spanish
In Spanish this week, I have had to find more time to work on it with my mom, since it is really focusing on having simple conversations, and learning conversational language.

Math
I'm not thrilled with how I did in math this week. I was supposed to completely finish the chapter on quadratic equations yesterday, and then take the test today, but I only got through three of the lessons for this week.

So there you have it. I ended up with a small amount left over in each subject, but I think I need to realize that some weeks are just going to end up like this. Overall this year, I've done relatively well, especially considering I do have a pretty heavy workload. I should be able to absorb this work back into the schedule, so long as every week isn't like this. :)

A Life Update

I haven't done one of these in a while! I've been pretty busy lately, and I haven't had time to sit down an write up one of these in several months.

School is going pretty well, though you already know that, since school is the one part of life I manage to consistently blog about. :) Here are some other random things I have been doing and thinking about lately.

1. Our little homeschool choir just started up again, and I am really excited. This Sunday, we started working on our first song, The First Nowell, and I thought it went amazingly well. I moved from the Altos to the Tenors this time around, and I am really happy with the switch. While I can sing both parts, singing alto was often a strain for me.

2. Emma Approved just started!!! I loved, loved, loved The Lizzie Bennett Diaries last year, and I'm thrilled that they are keeping going with the idea. Unlike with Pride and Prejudice, I am not familiar with the story of Emma, which is a bit exciting. I actually don't know what is going to happen this time around!

3.  November is coming very quickly, and I am trying to get prepared. Mainly, I am writing 750 words every day (750words.com is what I use. It is no longer free after the first month, though I was grandfathered with a life time free account in since I was using it before it went to pay only)to get myself back into the habit of writing.

4. Halloween is coming just as quickly, and I am trying to get the last of my Sam (LOTR) costume together. I still need pants, a backpack/sack, and to decide what to do about the feet. Since there is a group of us being the Fellowship, us four hobbits kind of need to be in agreement about how to handle the feet. Some people are saying just go barefoot, but since we will probably walking around outside quite a bit, I'm not fond of that idea.

5. I'm about half way through the Joy Luck Club, which is this month's World Lit book. So far, I am really liking it.

That's about it for now. I don't have time to do a longer post today, so this is it. I'll try to come back tomorrow with a sponsored book review!

NaNoWriMo - It's Coming!

For the last two years, I have participated in National Novel Writing Month each November. Basically, the idea is to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. So far, I've successfully done it twice, and I'm excited to go at it again this year.

Last year, I worried a lot about the story, and ended up totally switching gears 20k words in because I didn't really like what I had done. This year, I'm going to try to forget the story, and focus on writing. While the story is obviously important, I'm not going to do any planning AT ALL (pantsers FTW!), and I won't even have any idea what I'm doing until the day before. How am I going to do that? A few years ago, I received the Storymatic as a gift, but have never really used it. It's a box with two types of cards: character cards, and plot cards. Character cards are things like: wrestler, servant, animal psychic, or mascot for a professional sports team. The plot cards are things like: shouldn't have touched it, nobody is watching, flat tire, or fear of getting old. I like them because they give you lots of freedom, but still get your creativity going.

My plan (at least so far, things could still change), is to pull a two or three character cards, and one or two plot cards on Oct. 31. That will give me some time to think about how I'll incorporate them all into my story. Then, whenever I need something new, I'll pull a new card. The story I end up with will be totally ridiculous, and the plot will probably be full of holes, but that's okay. I'm not writing this story because I want to publish it. If I did, things would be different. I'm writing to write. I want practice writing, and practice with being flexible with my story.

During November, I'm going to be pretty busy trying to keep up with school and NaNoWriMo, so I might not have a lot of time to blog. I will try to blog twice a week (on Fridays and Saturdays), once to do my weekly school wrap up, and once to do a NaNo update. I might have time to write some posts ahead of time and publish them through out the month, but if not, I'll be back to regular posting in December.

I know November is still a ways away, and I'll probably post a few more NaNo planning posts before then. In the meantime, I do have some posts planned. I will be reviewing a short story anthology tomorrow, along with my usual school update. Doing those updates has helped me do more, I think, because I don't want to say that I didn't get anything done. I want to tell you about all the amazing work I did. :)

I also have two more posts in the My Favorite Things series coming up in the next few weeks, and another book review coming up sometime next week. I also thought it would be fun to do another homeschooling QA post, so if you have questions about homeschooling (or other things, it doesn't have to be just homeschooling), please let me know so I can get that post started! I'll be asking for questions on Google+ today as well.

Also, this blog now has a twitter account! If you use twitter, follow me @RWGHBlog to be updated when new posts are published, and to hear about books I love, and other fun literary stuff!

Lord of the Rings

This is not going to be a book review, or a movie review. It's just going to be a collection of thoughts I have after watching most of the LOTR movies in about 12 hours. I was at a super fun sleep over with some friends where we planned on watching all of them. I, unfortunately, starting feeling pretty sick during the beginning of Return of the King, and missed a lot of the 1st half because I wasn't able to concentrate, and the noise and lights where making me more nauseous. I ended up going home half way through the movie, as I kept feeling worse. I still feel a little out of it, though I feel a lot better. So, my thoughts aren't really going to include the last movie, since I kind of phased out/missed it entirely.

Anyway, my friend has the extended movie version, which meant that the three movies were a total of 11 hours! Yeah, it's a lot. I did find that watching them continuously like that is a different experience then watching them over the course of a few days or a week (which is what I have done before).

First thing is that I have never seen the extended version before (the one we have at home is the normal version), and I didn't really notice any differences. I think it was really just the same, but more. Longer battle scenes, more scenes panning out over the scenery, ect.

Random thoughts and movie images:

1. I'd forgotten how old Aregorn was! I had thought he was as old as he looked (thirties, forties), not 87!

2. Orlando Bloome is super cute, even with long blond hair and pointy ears:

Though I will say that I think he's cuter like this:

3. Well, that got off topic... Also, I can't seem to fix the formatting so that there isn't so much space there. Annoying.

4. Okay, I think I should just quit with this. This wasn't much of a LOTR themed blog post like I intended, but that's okay. I haven't actually eaten anything since a few bites of cake at about 11:00 pm last night (what with feeling sick and all. When I don't feel well, my appetite goes away completely), but I probably should.

Life Update! {More Blog Stuff, School, Books, and the Future}

Today, I'm just here to post a quick update on what I've been up to. I'm going to divide this post into sections for easier writing, and hopefully, reading.

Bloggy Stuff!

Let's start out with some semi-serious stuff. First of all, I'm realizing that a few things about how I've been blogging just aren't sustainable. First of all, Homeschool Fridays have been kind of a bust. I often don't get around to posting them, and I always feel like they are not as well written out as I would like. As a result of this, the "Graduating Highschool" part of my blog is going to become more literal. While I still intend to post about homeschooling related stuff the way I have in the past, I have a whole new format coming up that I hope will work a little better.

This all new Homeschool Fridays, which will be kicking off tomorrow, will be weekly school updates. I'm going to go through each subject (as it makes sense to do so),  and talk a little about what I did, what I didn't do, and what I hope to do next week. If you're a homeschooling family (particularly with younger kids), maybe you can get some ideas, and you can see how a particular curriculum or method works in a real life situation. My main goal with this, however, are a little more personal. I hope that this will help keep me accountable, and I want it to be a record of my sophomore year of high school.

If you're not sure how this is going to work, come back tomorrow to find out. My current plan is to try this out for a month, and see how it goes. If it's not working out, maybe I need to find a different way of doing homeschool posts.

Books

I love writing book reviews, and in fact, it's my favorite part of this blog. This fall, I hope to review every book I read. That might not mean a lot of book reviews, however, since I just started A Game of Thrones on Monday. I'm loving it so far, but it's not a short book. And, when I finish it, there are four more that all seem to be that size, or maybe larger. I don't know how long it'll take me to get through them, but be warned, there might not be a lot of review coming up.

To help compensate, I'm going to try to post reviews (or at least thoughts) on books I'm reading for school.

The Future

Maybe this should have come under the Blog Stuff heading, but I think it makes more sense here. I have a few long term plans and thoughts about this blog at the moment. The first of those is that I have a few sponsored book reviews coming up in the next few weeks, which is a lot of fun. I like doing those, because we (the company and I) both win. While I don't get paid, I get a new book or other cool product free to review, and they get some publicity.

I also have some exciting plans for the blog in 2014 that I might be talking more about soon.

Also, here are some posts to look out for soon:

Two sponsored book reviews.
A writing post (it's been WAY too long since I did one of those).
A HF post tomorrow.
A post about blogs I read.
A review of the tv series Angel.
Some NaNo prep posts (I can't believe it's already time to do those!).

What is Perfection?

I have so many posts that I have promised to write on all sorts of subject, particularly book reviews. I am getting super behind on posting this summer. Unfortunately, I'm not going to get started on that list today, but instead I have some more ramblings. Bear with me, and things will go back to normal after school starts (on September 2nd).

I have a problem. I worry too much. I plan too much. I think too much. Sometimes those are good things, but more often then not, they hold me back. For example, my mom goes back to work in a week, effectively meaning that summer is about over for me. My first reaction is to freak out. I naturally would spend that whole week worrying about how boring and sad things are going to be when she goes back to work, and I have to get up early and spend the days with my dad.

I need to stop doing that. My goal this week is to not worry about that. I want to enjoy every day of summer, and spend time with my mom while she is home all day. When the day comes, and she has to go to work, it will be sad, and it will be hard in lots of ways, but there is no reason to worry about it now.

Another way these tendencies of mine hurt me is my perfectionism. There are many things I am terrified to do because I am afraid I won't be perfect. When I started dancing last September, I was so nervous because I was sure that other students would be better then me, or would learn faster then me. Over the last year of dancing, I have found that I really love it. It's true that I am not the fastest learner in the class. I don't have the best rhythm. But my teacher has told me that my form is great, and that my best quality is my persistence. 

It is still hard sometimes, because I know that most of the other girls remember the choreography better then I do. I know that they will probably perfect the new steps faster then I will. But I also know that once I learn a step or a dance, I will never forget it. If I put in the time, I will learn it, and I will learn it well.

I need to stop worrying about being perfect. Dancing has helped, but I have a long ways to go. The stress I feel when things don't go according to plan is not right. I know that I don't need to have perfect grades, or the best posture, or the best hair, and in a way, I don't even care. But something in me cares so deeply.

I'm working on it. It may take a lifetime, but I've already made the first steps. What is perfection, anyway, and why should I need to attain it?

I hope that was not too boring. :) A little window into my brain!

More Posts Will Come Soon! Plus, Music I'm Listening To...

Lately, it feels like the majority of my posts on here are about how busy I am, and not about books and writing. Here is another update on my very busy summer! :)

I haven't been posting a lot lately, but I have lots of half written blog posts waiting to be finished. I have numerous book reviews coming with in the next month or two, so look for that. I have a partially written post about the teen writing conference I attended last month, and another about the John Mayer concert I attended last week.

I have some other posts coming too. I have a few more to write about the books and authors that made me a reader, and a more serious one prompted by the death of the actor Cory Montieth. I also have one planned about some of the blogs I've been reading, and websites I've been frequenting.

Also, I'm going to restart Homeschool Friday Posts on August 2nd with a 2012-2013 school year review. I'm not sure if I'm going to post weekly or biweekly yet, but we'll find out soon. :)

And, just for fun, here are some of the songs I've thumbed up on Pandora today:


1. Collide by Howie Day

2. How to Save a Life by The Fray

3. Wonderwall by Oasis

4. If You Could Only See by Tonic

5. All For You by Sister Hazel

6. Roll to Me by Del Amitri