February 6, 2011
Community did a AD&D episode last week. A lot of TV series have done a one-off episode involving D&D, but I can't remember seeing one this fun in awhile. Part of it was the little details. The orchestral Enya type music. The dramatic fade-ins. The loving craft of someone who knows the community. Odd, that they were doing 2nd edition, but that's the one I grew up with so I liked it all the more. I haven't had a chance to play since third came out. It's hard finding a group with the right chemistry who has the necessary time to burn.
I especially loved Pierce's throne created out of crates and traffic cones in imitation of a traditional bad guy's throne of bones. Or whatever. Wondered why the players weren't the ones rolling the dice.
Anyway, it was fun but a bit raunchy, so not for the youngins. Catch it on hulu if you have time.
I went to a book sale at the Provo Library and loaded myself down with like 20 books. Hard to resist at $1 a pop. Some of them were old favorites. Mistborn. Anne McCaffrey. Some of them I've never seen before but looking interesting. I'll tell you if they're any good.
School is going well. I had my first test last week and scored a 95%. I wish I had more time for extra-curricular activities. The book I'm writing for my creative writing class is going reasonably well. I've done 20,000 of the 50,000 required words. I'm frustrated because the book looks like it's going to be far bigger than is remotely marketable for a new author, but so is any epic fantasy I try to write. How can I write something less than 200,000 words when all the books I read, study and love are that long? I'm going to finish it anyway, for fun and practice. And who knows? Maybe I'll get lucky. What I should probably do is separate two of the characters off into their own book, but I don't want to. They all fit so nicely together. The world is too complicated, though. I'm trying to find ways to simplify it.
It's weird because this is the first time I've tried writing POVs separately. The syllabus told us to pick one character and write them all the way through. In some ways, it's helpful because I'm getting to know this one character very intimately. Unfortunately, it's also making me lose confidence in the book, because I can't imagine how I can make any character as deep and interesting as the one I'm currently writing. Also, I'm not sure how I'll make the other characters' voices distinct from hers, since hers is close to my natural internal style. I think the only way I have a shot at doing that will be to write those characters separately from start to finish as well and then do the interweaving after, which will mean keeping track of what information should go where. Sigh.
I admire Brandon Sanderson even more now that I've watched his lectures. He's incredibly intelligent and thoughtful. I suspect he sees me as a strange, spastic girl who talks too much and has a tendency to be less than tactful. For some reason, when I get around good authors, my brain short-circuits and I behave oddly. And since I always behave oddly, that means I behave REALLY oddly. I wish I had better control over my mouth. Sometimes, when I get nervous, it's like I develop temporary Tourette's.
Well, I expect he's met worse.
I take my GRE Weds in Salt Lake. I got sick of studying and so haven't for awhile. I need to review again, to remind myself of formulas and strange vocab. My practice scores have gotten much better though. I think I'll get a good score. Whether I get a great score depends on the day. Cross your fingers for me.
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