February Doings: Surprisingly Not-Blah!

So remember how I said last month that February is the most boring month of the year? Well, that may still be true . . . but this last month has actually been pretty interesting, at least for me! It's also been an odd mix of busy and really chill, so that helps. Anyway, let's get on with what made it so interesting.

Writing!

• So whatever made February interesting, it definitely wasn't writing, because I only wrote 554 words this month, and all of them were for one of the GTW writing prompts. It was still fun, and I really didn't expect to get any actual writing done this month anyway, but yeah. Also, while I'm actually rather pleased with what I came up with for the prompt (which was to have one of your characters meet his or her future self), I'm probably not posting it here. 
• I did a bit better on editing, getting in about 1,661 words. Admittedly, most of that was re-editing new scenes that I wrote last month, but oh well. Better than nothing. Also, the number is lovely and symmetrical, which makes me happy.
• I did figure out the problem I mentioned last month, I think, thanks to a lecture on the music of the Romantic period. (Fun fact: Franz Liszt was a total drama king who associated himself with the Faust legend- as in, he played up the idea that he sold his soul to the devil in exchange for insane musical skill- and on top of that, he was an egotistic playboy to rival Tony Stark. I will leave you to wonder how, if at all, this possibly relates to a medieval-esque fantasy story.) The solution to the problem will involve a fairly extensive rewrite of that subplot . . . but it should make for more conflict in that subplot, while taking out the character altogether would mean less, aside from random encounters, and would require just as much work, if not more.
• Also, editing on Fight Song is currently not in progress, but I hope to make it in progress soon, and I'll start posting the story as soon as I have a few chapters done- that way I have a bit of a buffer, but not so much that I can't adapt to any feedback I get.

Reading!

• So I totally thought that I read a lot this past month . . . but actually I read next to nothing and just took a long time to do it. 
• I finally satisfied my Discworld kick, but not before I'd finished The Truth (a good story, but one that put me very much in the mood for Moist von Lipwig), a reread of Making Money (to satisfy the desire for Moist von Lipwig), and Hogfather (which I'd intended to read around Christmas, but which I couldn't get from Overdrive until this month). By that time, much as I love Discworld, I was ready for something new.
• "Something new," as it turned out, was The Fires of Heaven, the fifth Wheel of Time novel. Yes, this is the same series as that one book that took me a month to finish. I don't think The Fires of Heaven will take quite that long . . . but it's hard to say, because I've currently paused reading it. Why? Well . . .
• I got a blind date! With a book. Not a person. A love life is a thing that happens to other people right now, thank you, unless you count getting crushes on fictional characters. And in any case, I'm generally opposed to blind dates with people on principle, but with books? Sounds like fun! So, after perusing the tables full of "masked" books, I picked up one that advertised itself as "fantasy" and "Greek mythology" and found myself reading . . . Daughter of Smoke and Bone. Which is not something I ever planned on reading, but that's rather the point of a blind date with a book. Overall, it wasn't bad, but it's not one I would recommend either. 
• That said, I got to pick up another blind date book (at this point I'm probably either addicted or just aggressively procrastinating on The Fires of Heaven), and this one is more promising: East by Edith Pattou, a retelling of "East of the Sun, West of the Moon." At the time of writing this post, I'm not quite done with it, but I'm really enjoying it. (By the time you read this, however, I'll probably be done with it, so feel free to ask what I thought.) Unfortunately, it's making me want to work on editing Monster in the Castle, but other things are higher priority and I don't even have the notebooks . . . ugh. Writer problems.
• Oh, and towards the beginning of the month, I read Blood Ties, which was pretty fun. It wasn't quite what I'd expected (for one thing, I thought it would be funnier), but I enjoyed it on the whole. It's urban fantasy, which I'm always hungry for more of- and it includes a berserker who happens to knit as a hobby, so that's awesome.

  Watching!

• Same old same old: still watching Merlin. Still on Season Two. Still facepalming over certain characters' bad life choices.
• Seriously, though, I really want to write an AU fanfic in which Merlin tells Morgana that he has magic too and then she doesn't end up turning villain and they team up to take on the actual villains who inevitably threaten Camelot every other week (or so it seems, which would be great except for the fact that neither of them is much good at telling each other anything about what they're going to be doing- but somehow, they don't kill each other and the villain gets found, so it works. And everyone things that Merlin is developing a thing for Morgana and vice-versa, even though he's really not (well, maybe before a certain point, but not after), but they let people think that because it's a good cover for what's actually going on. And yeah. Everything would be awesome. Except Uther would still exist, but oh well.
• Back to the actual show, not my fantasy of the fantasy- I would be almost done with the season by now, actually, but my roommate went home for one weekend, and we were both pretty busy the weekend before. So that made two weekends where we didn't watch anything, which is sad. We are hoping to get one more episode in before spring break, though, particularly since the next episode introduces one of my roommate's favorite characters.

Life!

 

• This month, for me, basically centered around three big events: The Music Man, my speech, and the Ark Encounter. I already posted about The Music Man, so I won't go into that more- but it was pretty great.
• My speech also went well, thankfully. As I think I mentioned last month, it was on character archetypes, specifically character archetypes in popular media, which meant I got to talk about LOTR and Marvel and Star Wars and a few animated films in the process of explaining the different archetypes. And I didn't freak out or forget what I was supposed to say, so that was good.
• Oh, and after I did my speech, I ended up going to the Career Fair, which was . . . overwhelming. I'm glad I wasn't actually looking for a job, because I think I would've died. I did manage to talk to a whole two companies, though, so that's something. And then I went back to my room and called my mom and ate a sea-salt caramel truffle. And had a brownie sundae for dessert after dinner. (Chocolate: the ultimate reward/nerve-calmer!)
• Anyway. Third major event: the Ark Encounter! I've wanted to visit both the Ark Encounter and the Creation Museum basically since I found out they existed. I still haven't managed the museum, but one of the orgs I'm in put together a trip to the Ark . . . which only three people total ended up wanting to go on, because they scheduled it right after the planning session for our major essay of the semester. But I put off schoolwork for the day to go, and I really enjoyed it! They did a great job showing what life on the ark might've been like, what animals were on the ark (differentiating between species and kinds), evidence for creation and the flood and such . . . Basically, the whole thing was awesome. Expensive, yes, but awesome. If you're in the area, I highly recommend stopping by.
• Other events: I got to see my aunt and her family the weekend before the Ark Encounter, which was a lot of fun. She also took me out to lunch, which made it better- don't get me wrong; my college has pretty good food for a cafeteria, but Sunday lunch, they don't even try. It's terrible. But that Sunday I got to eat good food (specifically, a falafel pita) with family (rather than eating alone), so yeah. That was great.
• Also, one of the guys from the other section of the honors class put together a trivia bowl thing that meets every Friday. Essentially, people show up, they somehow split into teams, and they answer trivia questions. It's super fun; I've been three times so far, and . . . well, I don't do super great, but I have answered some questions. Fewer than I've gotten credit for, since bonus questions don't count towards your personal score. But I've really enjoyed it and I'm going to keep doing it the rest of the semester.

March Plans!

• Spring break! Spring break! Spring break! I get to see my family again! And be at home! And not go to class! And hopefully work on editing a bunch of stuff! And it's going to be awesome! And it's almost here!
• If you can't tell, I might be a tiny bit excited about break. You probably couldn't tell. 
• Other than that . . .  business as usual, pretty much. Classes, papers, speeches, tests . . .  I think I have to do an advocacy presentation sometime in March for speech, but that might be happening early April. And I have a big paper for Cultural Anthropology that I need to start research for. I'm probably going to do that over break(!!!), if all goes well.  
• And my roommate and I need to pick up the pace on Merlin . . . I want to be done with season two and a good bit into season three by the end of the month so that we'll have half a shot of finishing it before the end of the school year.
• As I said earlier, I'm going to work on editing stuff, hopefully. I want to get another several chapters of Destinies and Decisions done, plus I want to start on Fight Song and get through a few chapters of that. We'll see which one takes priority over break(!!!).
• And I'm probably going to have to figure out next fall's classes . . . I already have a pretty good idea of what I'm doing, so it's just a matter of figuring out how to make everything line up. Shouldn't be too hard.
• Oh, and Gillian Bronte Adams is running a birthday blog tour for Songkeeper, which'll last all this month and into April and it's going to be pretty cool and I'll definitely be following that. (There's a giveaway involved. And a mug. And I'm hoping for sneak peeks of the last book. We'll see what happens.) 

 How's your February been? Boring? Or surprisingly exciting like mine? Please tell me in the comments!

Thanks for reading!

-Sarah (Leilani Sunblade)