I.L.Y.

Well, I haven't posted anything writing-y on here in quite a while, so I thought I'd share something I wrote in Creative Writing Club. I read it out and recorded it, and posted it on YouTube! Here it is. There is a link to the written version in the description. Enjoy it!

Time For A Story

Last year, I went to Germany on work experience with my school. Because it was a school trip, we were made to write diaries in German. Here is a small extract from mine (after my teacher corrected it):

Mittwoch, den 28. November (Wednesday the 28th of November)

...Emma hat mir ein schönes Lied mit ihrem MP3-Spieler gespielt und jetzt schreibe ich mein Tagebuch. (...Emma played me a beautiful song on her MP3 player and now I'm writing my diary)

Are you wondering what the beautiful song that my friend Emma played me was? What a shame, because I'm going to tell you anyway. In fact, I'm not, I'm just going to post a video with the song on it, so that, if you haven't heard it before, you can have the same experience as I did a year ago today (except minus the canteen of a German youth hostel, five other students and two German teachers).

On this day last year, I was introduced to the awesomeness that is Nightwish, and thus, in a more indirect manner, I was introduced to a genre - symphonic metal - that I had never heard of before, and yet that I would come to love. So I thought I would write a small tribute to that moment in time: the moment that the awesomeness that is Nightwish first touched my ears. Thank you, Emma, and thank you to whoever started the discussion about music over dinner, although I'm sure you don't remember just as much as me. Also, thank you to Evanescence, for writing a song (Bring Me To Life) that my mum would hear and like, and which would lead her to buying your album, which would eventually lead to me hearing it and deciding that I liked rock music, which would mean that I would be able to appreciate Nightwish when I finally came to hear it. (Also thank you to Evanescence because I still think you're awesome, and also because you led me to discover my other favourite band, Within Temptation, who are also symphonic metal)

If you liked Storytime, then I recommend you listen to Amaranth next - as it was the second Nightwish song I ever heard. :)

SPOILER ALERT

If you haven't watched the 50th Anniversary special yet, then WHY THE HECK NOT??!! Trust me, you really should go and watch it right now. And I mean that. Right. Now.

So I watched The Day Of The Doctor at the cinema on the 23rd of November (it was AMAZING!! Loved it SO MUCH!! And there were people in full costume in the cinema. And people in fezzes. And people with sonic screwdrivers. It felt like we were all friends because we all love Dr Who.) and all I could think was that the tenth Doctor married Queen Elizabeth the First, so he was king. Now, Elizabeth died, but the Doctor didn't. The Doctor is still alive. So the Doctor is still king.

David Tennant, Tenth Doctor, King Of England since 1562. All hail!

Happy Birthday, Doctor Who!

I can't believe it's finally the 23rd of November!! Happy 50th Anniversary, Doctor Who! I am very excited to see The Day Of The Doctor later today, I can't wait! It's going to be brilliant - a celebration truly worthy of an icon of television over the first fifty years of Doctor Who. Long live The Doctor, and may viewers of the future continue to love you as we all love you now!

#savetheday

Plothole!

Plot-hole! Plot-hole! I have hit an unexpected plot-hole! I didn't plan for this to happen, this event was not in my outline, and now it's turned itself into a bit of a problem, like oh crap how on earth can I get my characters out of this in a way that means they can carry on with the story like I want them to??!!

Sorry, I just needed to share this with someone, and I thought it was better on here than on my Facebook, where there are all those people that I know, ugh... (I have nothing against my friends, btw, it's the people, you know the ones, who you only added because you had no logical reason not to, you do know them after all, you just don't want to share all your personal secrets and shit with them - and what one writes is most certainly classed as a personal secret. Writers may not put their life stories into their novels, but they do put their souls into them, and that makes them very private, so I do not wish to even talk about this novel that I haven't shown anyone to those awkward people who I both know and don't know. Also, I just started craving orange juice.)

And it's nearly the 23rd of November!! And I managed to swap my shift to get the night off work after all!! I can't wait and I can't believe it's so close!!! (I was about to say, the world had better not end now, when it's so close, but if it's about to, it's fine, the Doctor will save us). We're going to the cinema to see it. I'm not entirely sure who "we" is, because personally I'm going with my boyfriend, but two of my best friends will also be there somewhere, and a few other people we know are going too. Basically, my boyfriend and I are going, along with as much of the Whovian population of our town that Cineworld can fit into two screenings at once, and it just so happens that approximately half of that Whovian population of our town are at our school and are a similar age to us.

In Other News

Also, I sent off my UCAS application today, which means that once my teachers have checked it, it'll be sent off to the four universities I'm applying to. I'm so excited! It's like - you know that future thing that you're dreaming about? well, it may well be about to happen. :)

And I had my second driving lesson this afternoon, and this time I didn't panic, and my driving instructor didn't have to tell me to pull over so I could have a bit of an emotional breakdown because driving is absolutely terrifying without a huge traffic jam behind me! I'm quite proud of myself.

And finally, I also discovered that s'mores are better with chocolate digestives than with plain digestives, and if you melt the marshmallows on an actual campfire rather than tealights.

It has been a pretty good day. :)

(Except that I still haven't finished my German essay yet, so I still can't allow myself to write my novel - which I'm still several thousand words behind on, by the way)

Being A Writer

An English teacher of mine once said (I lie, he said this several times) that words (as well as similes, metaphors, personification, etc) are the tools of a writer's trade, like saws and hammers and things are the tools of a carpenter's trade, and a novel is the writer's equivalent to a carpenter's wardrobe. To make the wardrobe as best as he possibly can, the carpenter needs to use exactly the right tools at exactly the right time, (he can't hammer the pieces together if he hasn't cut the pieces yet), and it's the same with being a writer. You need to use exactly the right words at exactly the right time to make your piece of writing the best as it can possibly be.

Having been a writer for a rather long time compared to my fairly young age (I used to staple pieces of paper together when I was little, draw the front cover, occasionally write, or begin to write, the first page if I could be bothered, and call them books), I do always like to pick the right words to use. Like, all the time. Which is fine, until you consider my memory. It isn't very good. So I pretty much spend my life trying to remember that one word that I wanted to use, because the synonym that means exactly the same thing doesn't fit with what I want to say - yes, it gets my meaning across, but only just. I want the word that gets my meaning across perfectly.

The time when this gets most in the way is in German lessons. I've been learning German for maybe about six years now, and am taking an A Level in it, so I'm fairly capable. But I'm just because I'm good at German doesn't mean I'm fluent - I may be able to write essays in German, but I still need that humongous German/English dictionary (and sometimes the grammar textbook) in front of me for reference. So far so good - but what about when I don't have my dictionary? And that, my friends, is where I begin to run into problems. Because whether I know that I know a word in German and have just forgotten it, or whether I've never come across the translation at all,  I am going to want that one word that fits in exactly the way I want it. And likewise with sentence structure; if I think of an English sentence that I want to say in German, that is exactly how I want to say it - but in German. So if I want to say he went into space, I want to say he went to space, not something equivalent, like he was an astronaut. It gets the same message across, and that's what you have to do when you can't remember the German word for space. But I didn't want to say er war Kosmonaut. I wanted to say that he went into space. And that is where my being a writer gets in the way of my German - mostly in my speaking, when I have to think of something to say on the spot, and also just in any situation where I don't have a dictionary in front of me.

Talking To Friends

The one thing that usually happens when I talk to my friends, even when I talk to them on Facebook, is that things go crazy. Well, talking to one friend, Ross, today led to two things that are a bit crazy.

Firstly, I discovered pirate metal. It's metal, perhaps slightly similar to symphonic metal, except that it's all about pirates - you know, the swashbuckling ones from like the Victorian era, like in Pirates Of The Caribbean. It's absolutely insane, and quite awesome. I would say that if you like Nightwish, you may well like Alestorm, which so far is the only pirate metal I have heard.

Secondly, we started a new blog. It's a blog about writing, and the idea is for it to become of sort of online writing community; a small, cosy one. It's called "Surprise Duck!", because we're mad like that. It's only just starting out, we have posted two things, and so far nobody but us has seen it. But anyway, it's there now, and the link to it is going in my list of links down on the left. :)

Tumblr Teenagers

On the few occasions when I'm out and about I do worry about whether old people find me intimidating when I walk past them. Okay, so I'm probably about five foot three (I don't know, I haven't measured myself in years, I just know that I'm small), so I'm probably not that intimidating, but I'm still very aware that some teenagers are intimidating to old people - you know, those kids that hang round smoking or drinking or whatever it is that they do, and just generally being a bit thuggish, a bit scary, a bit gangsta. I feel like, as a goody-little-two-shoes teenager, I have to show people that the future of the human race aren't all terrifying idiots.

But at the same time, there's another bad teenager stereotype, and this time I am one of the ones that fit into this category, I admit. It's that whole computer generation thing: that a whole generation of kids are just spending their lives on the internet and on computer games. And what made me think of this is that just now, my mum came and asked me how I'm doing with my schoolwork, like she normally does, and I was like, it's fine, even though I've actually spending most of my time on YouTube and Facebook - like I normally do. But then she said to me, "Hurry up and finish off, and then you can come downstairs and chill out."

I don't know if anybody reading this is at all like me, but if you are, you'll know that right then all I could think was: do I really have to go downstairs to "chill"? Can I not do that up here, in the glorious isolation of my room, with my laptop and my internet and my Tumblr account and my fangirling and my music and my earphones and my book? Cause I'd much rather do that.

Music Recommendation: For My Pain...

I believe that many people in the metal world, especially the symphonic metal world, will have heard of Finnish songwriter and keyboardist Tuomas Holopainen's band Nightwish - they're pretty big, and that's because they're pretty damn awesome. But compared to Nightwish's huge success, not many people seem to have heard of Holopainen's other band, "For My Pain...". I only discovered them maybe about half an hour ago through Mr Holopainen's website; I have been a Nightwish fan for almost a year now and I haven't heard of For My Pain before. It seems they only released on album, "Fallen" in 2003, but the website doesn't list a date for the band breaking up, so technically they're still around here... somewhere. Maybe.

Firstly it is necessary to point out that For My Pain... is not Nightwish. The most obvious difference is the vocals; male vocalist Juha Kylmänen sings for them as opposed to Tarja Turunen (or later Anette Olzon or Floor Jansen). There are obviously other differences - I do not think I would class this as symphonic metal like Nightwish, the style is quite different - but I haven't listened to them enough to be able to spot them.

Either way, I have listened to a couple of their songs and they seem pretty good. Personally I prefer Nightwish - by a huge margin. But still, it isn't bad, and is quite possibly underrated. I think most of the songs from the album Fallen are on YouTube. I personally like the songs "Dancer In The Dark" and "Tomorrow Is A Closed Gate" although I haven't had chance to listen to them all yet. But basically, if you like Nightwish, or in fact any sort of metal, go and listen to For My Pain...

Mid-Month Update

So now we are halfway through November, and halfway through NaNoWriMo, so every novel written by NaNoWriMo participants should, by now, be at least 25,000 words in length - halfway to that winning 50,000. Of course, there will be people who are nowhere near that and people who have given up, and people who are a couple of thousand words behind. At just over 18,000 words, I am one of those people.

Now, it could be worse. The last time I took part in November NaNoWriMo, I think I got about 5,000 words - definitely no more than 10,000. I had exams to revise for. I had no time for writing. Technically, I don't have any time for writing this year. With a new part-time job, school, actually having a bit of a social life for the first time in my life (which is basically watching old Dr Who episodes with my boyfriend - although I'm still slightly surprised I can actually say that) and starting driving lessons, more is going on in my life right now than has ever gone on before. It's a bit tiring. It might be alright if I'd kept up from the beginning and not skipped a couple of days, but now I'm trying to catch up more than the required daily word count, and I don't have time.

According to the stats graph on my account on my website, I will finish my novel on the 14th of December (this year, luckily - I'm not doing that badly) if I carry on the way I am, and I need to write 2,119 words every day to finish on time. I don't think I'll make it, but that's not to say I'm going to give up! Wish me luck, and I may well cross that 50,000 word line yet!

Note: I said before that I should be at 25,000 words by now - well, it seems now that I checked on the website that I lied. Today's target word count is 26,666. Which means I am about 8,000 words behind. I think I will definitely need that luck you were just in the process of wishing me. :P

The Time Lords?

So I found this song here, right here (please click here and press play on the thing that says "listen"!) on tumblr and I reblogged it. I since found out that it's a real song, called Doctorin' The TARDIS, by The Time Lords.

Except it's not.

Because HERE is the original (below) and the song which plays from the link above is NOT the same. Notice the different introduction? Notice the different guitar-y bit? Notice the verses with lyrics? Those are not in the original, it is not the same.

Now, I'm not saying anything bad about either song. I just have a question I want to ask.

And my question is this: where on Earth did the one in the top link come from? I looked up covers of the original song and none of them match this one. So who made it and where did it come from??

And more importantly: WHERE CAN I DOWNLOAD IT???

In the meantime, if you don't know the answer to these questions, which you probably don't, just listen and bask in the awesomeness of a song about Dr Who. :)

Emma Blackery's Thoughts On Google+

And I must say, I think I agree with her.

The Last Dream: NaNoWriMo 2013

When all else fails, you still have your dreams... don't you?

When you have come to despise the fairy-tale figures that dominated your entire childhood, it's just your luck that the alien invasion that comes to tear your world apart brings the characters that have haunted you for years quite literally to your doorstep - and right after you discovered your sister has been lying to you (again). Seriously, it's just not your day, is it?

I thought I'd share the synopsis and cover art for the novel I'm writing for NaNoWriMo this year - The Last Dream, originally called The Cloudmaker. The inspiration for it came from driving past a small white building in a field in Scotland somewhere between Edinburgh and the English border which I think was some sort of mini power station (I can't really remember what it looked like so I can't tell you what it was), but it looked to me like it should be a cloud factory. I was annoyed at myself for wanting to write about this cloud maker for NaNoWriMo, because I'd wanted to write a novel about a fangirl this year. And then I had a weird dream which involved an alien invasion, and I'd wanted to do my NaNoWriMo novel about that too. So, I combined the three together, and this is the result. :)

Will be the result. Will be the result, when it's done. (I'm currently about 2,000 words behind but there we go).

The book cover is a pretty picture of some clouds that I found on Google Images, and I used the programme Paint and the font Shelley Volante BT (the Nightwish font) for the text.

Also, I am putting the link to my NaNoWriMo profile in the list of links down on the left of the home page. Visit it if you wish. :)

A Fictional Setting Brought To Life

This photo appeared on Kristin Cashore's blog a day or two ago. It is my belief from this blog that she's in Iceland at the moment, and this is one of the pictures she took of her travels. If you have read Fire you may well know what I thought of as soon as I saw this picture (particularly because of the rocks):

Kristin Cashore, you have found The Dells.

It made me very happy, so I thought I'd share. :) The blog post this picture is on can be found here.

Song Recommendation: Paradise (What About Us?)

I was literally in hysterics when I heard about this song coming out. It is the new single (released about two months ago now, I think - I'm only just getting around to blogging about it) of Within Temptation and Tarja Turunen. You might wonder what sets this song apart from other songs - what exactly had me hyperventilating, when the song wasn't even out yet? Well, Within Temptation are awesome. They are my favourite band. Fair enough, you might think. Nightwish are also awesome, they are my second favourite band. What does that have to do with anything, you might ask. Well Tarja is the ex-lead singer of Nightwish. Tarja is also awesome. And awesome + awesome = CRAZY AWESOME! Knowing that a song that was practically a collaboration between my two favourite bands was like a dream come true.

And "Paradise (What About Us?)" well and truly lived up to expectations. It's amazing. (Dr Who fans - notice that there's a sort of background noise in the build up that sounds kind of like a TARDIS?) I think I am slightly in love with it. This song on repeat = perfection. I simply cannot wait to hear Within Temptation's new album (rumoured to be out in January, I believe), and Tarja's new solo album has been out since August, methinks.