September 2019 Doings!

Hey'a, everyone! So, I was super worried that this post was going to come out a day late because this has been a busy week and will be a busy weekend . . . but I actually managed to finish up the post earlier on Thursday than I normally do! Success! It helped that September, despite being super busy, had less bloggable busy stuff than August did — but there's still plenty to report.

Writing!

• Ok, so for one thing, graphic design classes are super time-and-energy-consuming, so I haven't had half as much writing time as I would've liked.
• And when I do have writing time, I typically have to spend it on creative nonfiction rather than novels. I'm sure my cnf professor is thrilled about that, but I'm not.
• And on top of that, I managed to work myself into a wall on cnf for over a week, so I wasn't writing my novel because I wasn't allowing myself to work on it if I hadn't done some nonfiction writing in the last 48 hours, but I also wasn't doing any nonfiction writing because I either hated the idea so much that I kept putting it off or I would work for ages and end up just starting the same piece over five times because it wouldn't come out close enough to right to be editable.
• There was at least one point where I really just wanted to tear the pages out of my notebook and throw them into the sun. Not going to lie.
• On the upside, I think that between what I have drafted and what I have edited, I have the required number of pages for the first actual turn-in-an-assignment date.
• Now I just have to catch up on my novel . . .
• On the upside, the D&D campaign I'm running is going well! We've had two sessions so far, and everyone seems to be enjoying themselves. We have learned that my brain sometimes shuts down in the middle of character dialogue (accidentally creating the impression that the character is struggling for words in a suspicious way) and that my group has terrible luck with spiders (spider-related combat always ends up taking longer than it seems like it should), but otherwise, it's great. My plan of using a laminated grid battle map and gumdrops for enemies seems to have worked out well — I'm more easily able to keep track of distances, and the players get excited when they're able to eat the enemy gumdrops.

Reading!

• So, the good news: you know XKCD? The stick figure science webcomic? I finally got around to reading one of his books: What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions! And it's magnificent and awesome and really fun! And I need his new book to come in at the library! (With my luck, it'll come in over Thanksgiving break . . .) There's lots of sarcasm and humor and explosions all wrapped around actual science and I can't believe I didn't read it sooner.
• H.L. Burke's new-ish book, Daughter of Sun, Bride of Ice, is pretty great too. I will admit that the romance kind of overshadowed the plot at times, but it wasn't too bad, and I'd read enough snippets on Facebook that I was already invested in the romance. Also, I really enjoy the world — it's tidelocked, so you've got a sunward side that's all desert and a spaceward side that's all cold and snowy and stuff, and it's just really cool and well-done.
• On the downside, I'm trying to read Northanger Abbey and I'm stuck about a third of the way through and it's a problem. In theory, I want to read it, but in practice, there's no plot and I'm not invested enough in the characters for the lack of plot to be unproblematic. I kind of want to DNF it, but I also feel guilty about wanting that (I mean, it's Jane Austen), and as long as I'm in the middle of it, I feel vaguely guilty about starting any other books . . . gah.

Watching!

• My roommate and I watched all but the last two episodes of the first season of Avatar: The Last Airbender! And it's awesome!
• We would've watched the last two as well, but then we both got sick and I got busy and we had to return the DVDs to the library. It was tragic.
• But I'm really enjoying the show! Zuko is probably my favorite character, which should come as a surprise to no one. All the major characters have really good characterization, though, and I don't dislike any of them. (Well, except for two. But I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to dislike both of them.)
• Outside of Avatar, I haven't really watched anything . . . well, not unless you count YouTube videos. (That said, I did discover someone's D&D story series, and it's kind of awesome — it started with accidentally causing an almost-apocalypse with karaoke and wild magic, and it just got better from there. Also, Zee Bashew's animated spellbook is pretty fun.)

Life!

• This is always the hardest section; I don't have as clear a record of life stuff as I do of anything else, and I think half my memories get overwritten before they're fully formed.
• Anyway. That said: what happened this month?
• The biggest thing that happened was probably the Ren Faire. I ended up going by myself this year — my roommate was sick, my sister didn't want to spend the money, and my other friends were busy. It was still fun, though! I got to wander around at my own pace, I watched the joust (and the knight for my side won, whoo!), I ate fish and chips, I bought cool necklaces as souvenirs. It was a good time.
• The same weekend as the Ren Faire was the TDK Kickoff Party, which went pretty well! We had a much better food situation than last year, and we reorganized the schedule in a way that I think worked better. (Namely, it allowed people to eat close to the start of the party instead of all the way at the end.)
• The weekend after the Ren Faire, my friends and I went to the local sunflower fields to take portraits. Although pictures in the sunflower field is kind of a stereotypical Cedarville activity, only one of the people in our group had gone before. I was excited for a chance to take pictures of my friends at their request, and I think the pictures turned out pretty well. I still need to edit them, but yeah.
• And then social activities kind of crashed to a halt the week after that because my roommate got sick again and I got hit in the face with allergies and it was not a good time.

• Classes are going fairly well, though I spend more time feeling overwhelmed than I'd like. My two graphic design classes are uncomfortably synced so big assignments are due on the same days, and that's kind of frustrating (especially since it cuts into the time I'd like to spend on other classes, namely nonfiction). That said, I made a cube! So that's cool.
• I already mentioned the D&D campaign I'm running, but I would also like to mention the fact that in the D&D campaign I'm playing in, we just fought a whole army of drow and met up with the Big Bad of the campaign. Who then proceeded to congratulate us on how well we killed those drow and to thank us for dealing with them so he didn't have to. Cue indignant sputtering from my neutral-good-paladin-self and considerable confusion from our rogue, whom we apparently didn't fill in on the situation as well as we thought we did. Oops.

• I also accidentally drank coffee in the form of a specialty drink that people told me was frozen hot chocolate. It was, as it turned out, a frappucino. I am neither pleased nor impressed.

October Plans!

• I'm hoping really hard that the graphic design workload will slow down a little so I can do more writing of both fiction and nonfiction. I'm still holding out hope that my 12DP retelling will be done in time to publish with the Arista Challenge again, but it looks like it's going to be tight. And I'm torn between "hurry and write as much as possible so you can edit in November for NaNo," "don't overdo it or you'll burn yourself out and not be able to do NaNo," and "do you really have time for NaNo anyway?" I should probably listen to that last one, honestly.
• I have the next couple D&D sessions planned, though only one is fully written. They're going to introduce some of my favorite NPCs that I've created so far, and I think they'll be really fun for everyone. Hopefully I'm right.
• I'm also really looking forward to fall break! I'm going to my roommate's house, as usual, and this year my sister and her roommate are coming too. It's going to be a little crazy, but hopefully still fun. The current plan is homework, animated movies (Disney and/or Studio Ghibli), board games, and possibly some crafting; we'll see what actually happens.
• And, of course, the end of October means Halloween! I'm super disappointed that my dorm probably won't have any Halloween events, but my major will still have its party. My cloak is coming along reasonably quickly, so I'm hopeful that it will be done in time for the party. (If not . . . eep. I'll figure something out.)

How was your September? What plans do you have for October? Have you read Northanger Abbey, and if so, does it ever develop a plot? What books have you gotten stuck on and then felt guilty about? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!
-Sarah (Leilani Sunblade)