Whirling

5 days until National Novel Writing Month

Can you believe it? Less than a week! Good thing I'm going to be super busy this week or it would drag on forever. I've got a field trip that will last all day tomorrow (from 8 AM to 4 PM). We're going to tour the OU campus. It's a GT thing so all my friends are going and I'll know almost everyone that goes. On Thursday morning I have a National Junior Honor Society meeting, and that afternoon I'm going to my sister's soccer practice. Friday afternoon is for Academic Team practice. Best of all, Saturday is trick-or-treating! (Even though Halloween is on Sunday. What is up with my community?) Yes, I still go trick-or-treating. Why in the world would I give up free candy? I'll be going as Mother Nature (the real one, not the one from that stupid commercial). This is partly inspired by this poem I write a while back, maybe I should post it on Halloween. For more teen type things, after getting the free candy we (I'm dragging Lizzie, and possibly Alisha, with me) are going to Nicholas's party. Then after all this fun, Lizzie and Alisha will (hopefully) be spending the night.

I think that is the most my age-group-type paragraph I've written so far. Now, back to more serious, writing related things. Even though I'm super busy there are also times (ie - now) when I'm doing nothing but sitting at home and the time would drag incredibly if I didn't find other things to do (preferably on the Internet as time always seems to pass so quickly when I'm online). So currently I'm checking out some posts on Query Shark, a blog where an agent critiques query letters sent to her. It has pretty good advice on it that might come in handy later. I'm hoping this will hold my interest for a couple of days (there are quite a few posts).

Something that's been occupying my mind (and thankfully keeping me from complete insanity while waiting for NaNo) is submitting one of my poems to Teen Ink, a magazine whose content is written completely by teens. You can sign up for their site and post your writing that way, hoping that they'll see it and put it in their magazine, or you can just send it to them via mail or email. I'd prefer the sending through mail or email. If I signed up I would be tempted to post more writing and they (Teen Ink) get non-exclusive rights to anything you submit and I'm a little protective about these things. You have to include a signed little piece of paper stating that the work is completely by you. I guess if you send it through email you have to scan it onto the computer, one of the reasons I'm taking so long to submit. Another is I would be overtaken with worrying about if they had got it and if they liked it and so forth. Not really rejection but not knowing. It would just kill me if they didn't send me a reply. A rejection actually wouldn't be that bad. I could stick it in my still non-existent rejection scrapbook (have I mentioned this, pretty sure I haven't).

For some strange reason, I've also been thinking about writing a short story series. Usually, I try to steer away from short stories as I'm not good at thinking up ideas for them and I tend to extend it way beyond a 'short' story as I don't know how to end it (hence why, for my novels, I always try to think of an ending and a last line) but I've been thinking that if I made it into a series it would be easier. I may have possibly gotten an idea for them a few minutes ago but it's kind of vague. Maybe I'll write this week's Poetry Peak (yes, I decided to have one this week, it's not November yet, sadly) about it. Hopefully that will make it more firm.

And to top all of this off I'm starting to feel like working on The Lullaby. Five days before NaNo starts. It's like a curse and a blessing in one. I feel like writing and that's awesome but if I get too wrapped up in it, I may not feel like starting NaNo when I'm supposed to (pssh, me, not interested in NaNo). And to go with that I know what I want to happen in Chapter Five but I don't really know how I want to write it. Tomorrow, on the bus for the field trip, I'm going to write up an outline for it. This is so going against my rule never to write on buses but I'll get over it. My mind is whirling with all of this, but it's a good kind of whirling.