Yes, I am that old. And if you want to know how much of a nerd I am, I'm majoring in Computer Science with double minors in Mathematics and Writing.
Although honestly if my school offered a writing/creative wring major, I probably would have double majored in that.
Anyway, back to the "daily grind" of school means that I am doing a lot (and I mean a lot) of reading. Seriously. When you go to college, everyone will be like "yeah, join a lot of clubs!" or "take classes you think you even might be interested in!" or "make friends with everyone!" or something like that. My advice: don't spend the summer forgetting how to read academically. Seriously. I did that, and I keep hitting walls in this first week of class because I forget how to read critically/mark up text/etc.
Oh, more advice: write all over everything, as much as you possibly can. And remember, you own your books (if you're like me and went to a public school, this is new and different). That means you won't get in trouble for writing on your books. (I mean, don't do it on the ones you take out of the library.) Seriously. I've never been a huge history person and even though I've only so far done one reading for history, I wrote all over my book (which I got for six dollars*) and it's already helped me remember stuff from it.
*More advice: I'm going to guess that when you find the books you need for a class, you'll be provided with an ISBN. (If not, google should give you one.) I would definitely search by ISBN when looking for your book online, because the ISBN of different editions of the same book is different. And if you're lucky like me, you'll find somewhere that is selling a lightly used textbook for $6 including shipping. Of course, you need luck. But hey, I don't think I normally have any :)
So that was just a bunch of random side notes. Basically I just wanted to say I'm reading interesting stuff. (But you know me, I ramble.) So, you might see some interesting new ideas floating around, say, my figment account.
Showing posts with label explanation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label explanation. Show all posts
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Livejournal + fanfiction
http://thecolouryes.livejournal.com/
Go. Read shit. Enjoy yourself. I don't have anything new there really except one ramble of an intro post that might be amusing if anyone enjoys reading my rambles.
Also, I'll probably be scouring the lj depths for fanfiction since ff.net is sadly lacking in my new favourite ship.
Go. Read shit. Enjoy yourself. I don't have anything new there really except one ramble of an intro post that might be amusing if anyone enjoys reading my rambles.
Also, I'll probably be scouring the lj depths for fanfiction since ff.net is sadly lacking in my new favourite ship.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Sequels
Normally, I try to stay away from sequels. Mostly because real sequels are just cop-outs. They're generally just throwing new drama into a plot that's already been tied up with an elaborate bow. So the sequel becomes like confetti on top of the bow, which just makes it look excessive, or a second bow on top of the bow, which just makes the whole thing look stupid.
But if you're tired of metaphors, I'll stop talking about bows. The point I'm trying to make is that good sequels shouldn't really be called 'sequels' at all. They're the kind where the original story isn't entirely tied up, and you need more story to resolve the conflict. Those are the kinds of sequels I like, and there are often multiples of that kind of sequel. Those kinds of sequels make up trilogies and quartets.
Why am I talking about sequels all of a sudden? I'm working on a sequel to The End... as I use this to procrastinate from actually writing it. (Ironic, really. I started this blog to talk about writing, and it's ended up as somewhere I can procrastinate from writing by talking about it. I never think to post here when I'm not writing....) And some of the time, this sequel is being stupid and obnoxious. Actually, all of the time, so far, this sequel is being stupid and obnoxious. But if/when I finish it, it will resolve that ambiguous ending for you.
I mean, if you want the ending resolved for you at all. I wouldn't.
But if you're tired of metaphors, I'll stop talking about bows. The point I'm trying to make is that good sequels shouldn't really be called 'sequels' at all. They're the kind where the original story isn't entirely tied up, and you need more story to resolve the conflict. Those are the kinds of sequels I like, and there are often multiples of that kind of sequel. Those kinds of sequels make up trilogies and quartets.
Why am I talking about sequels all of a sudden? I'm working on a sequel to The End... as I use this to procrastinate from actually writing it. (Ironic, really. I started this blog to talk about writing, and it's ended up as somewhere I can procrastinate from writing by talking about it. I never think to post here when I'm not writing....) And some of the time, this sequel is being stupid and obnoxious. Actually, all of the time, so far, this sequel is being stupid and obnoxious. But if/when I finish it, it will resolve that ambiguous ending for you.
I mean, if you want the ending resolved for you at all. I wouldn't.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
The wonders of 250 gigs...
That's how much memory I have on my hard drive. Since the most of what I do is word processing and internet browsing (not that this poorly tricked-out netbook can handle much more), I still have like 90 gigs of free space, even though I don't think I've deleted a single thing since I got this computer two years ago.
(Useless Update: I have 199 files in my recycle bin. I'm pretty sure 175 of them are music files which somehow imported into iTunes twice.)
Returning to the point, however, requires me to explain a few things. For the first four years of writing fanfiction, all my work lived on a 1 gig flash drive. This meant: 1) I actually took the time to properly back up my things 2) When I was done with a story, I would toss it away on the backup drive and promptly forget about it 3) I started freaking out whenever my flash drive got close to full, because that meant I would have to not carry around one of the stories that my life depended on, and 4) I thought 1 gig was a lot of memory. Granted, technology changes so quickly that this was back when external backup drives were 80 gigs and the size of a small novel.
However, my point here is that because of that kind of disturbing practice of getting rid of all my stories in some obscure place where it wasn't easy for me to find them again on a whim, I never really went back to old stories, at least not unless I was willing to devote a bunch of time into digging them out. Now, however, because I never delete anything, I spent a bunch of time re-reading my semi-recent stuff.
Another advantage -- almost entirely for you readers -- is that re-reading my semi-recent stuff inspires me to finish it, or to realise that I had a fanfic sitting on my computer finished but not entirely good enough for publishing, that on re-reading I decide, screw it, this is going on the internet. Because if I was brave enough to post the awfulness that was Letters to No-One back when I was twelve, I can bloody well publish some of my lesser works now.
In conclusion, I have posted a new fanfic. No, it's not my best. Yes, I am stupid for leaving it on my computer for so long without publishing it. I'm sorry. It's okay; I'll make it up to you by returning to fanfiction for a while. Fanfiction is far more comforting than original stuff, because at least fandoms come with pre-made characters.
(Useless Update: I have 199 files in my recycle bin. I'm pretty sure 175 of them are music files which somehow imported into iTunes twice.)
Returning to the point, however, requires me to explain a few things. For the first four years of writing fanfiction, all my work lived on a 1 gig flash drive. This meant: 1) I actually took the time to properly back up my things 2) When I was done with a story, I would toss it away on the backup drive and promptly forget about it 3) I started freaking out whenever my flash drive got close to full, because that meant I would have to not carry around one of the stories that my life depended on, and 4) I thought 1 gig was a lot of memory. Granted, technology changes so quickly that this was back when external backup drives were 80 gigs and the size of a small novel.
However, my point here is that because of that kind of disturbing practice of getting rid of all my stories in some obscure place where it wasn't easy for me to find them again on a whim, I never really went back to old stories, at least not unless I was willing to devote a bunch of time into digging them out. Now, however, because I never delete anything, I spent a bunch of time re-reading my semi-recent stuff.
Another advantage -- almost entirely for you readers -- is that re-reading my semi-recent stuff inspires me to finish it, or to realise that I had a fanfic sitting on my computer finished but not entirely good enough for publishing, that on re-reading I decide, screw it, this is going on the internet. Because if I was brave enough to post the awfulness that was Letters to No-One back when I was twelve, I can bloody well publish some of my lesser works now.
In conclusion, I have posted a new fanfic. No, it's not my best. Yes, I am stupid for leaving it on my computer for so long without publishing it. I'm sorry. It's okay; I'll make it up to you by returning to fanfiction for a while. Fanfiction is far more comforting than original stuff, because at least fandoms come with pre-made characters.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Strange
I suppose that I should probably take the time to explain Strange, before I start talking about it and confusing the heck out of everyone.
Strange is the working title of my longest, original WIP. The 'original' part of it is more or less self-explanatory -- it takes place in my own fantasy world. The 'longest' part applies to everything you could think it would apply to. I've been working on it for five years now. It's nearly 100k words long. It has a massively complicated plot that can be simplified into 'girl is fated to win a major war in her country', but doing so really loses a lot of its fun.
Strange is about a girl named Leyha. She was raised in a foreign country, because her parents' love was incredibly frowned upon. The two sides of her family run two subsections of the country right next to where she was raised, and have a long-standing feud between them. When she is taken from the only home she's known at the age of fourteen by her father's family, she discovers that she is supposed to possess a great power that will help her father's family win the war. She eventually gets fed up with the way her uncle, who has power over the throne after her father's death, and his lords are treating her, so she runs away to the other side of her family, where her mother is still alive. Her alliance goes back and forth and gets more confusing as time goes on, because her father's family is the one that's supposed to be the "bad" side, according to people outside of the country.
The fun part of Strange is that it gives me a place to play with the ideas of "good" and "bad". They're words/ideas that have interested me for a while, and I have lots of fun little things that I've done in the way of playing with the two ideas, and our preconceptions about what makes something good versus bad, especially in literature and film. For example, the Menla (Leyha's father's family) have their symbolic colour as black, and they are seen as the evil side by outsiders, but it turns out that they're much less restrictive and much more open with their citizens than the Pilo (Leyha's mother's family) are. It's a whole lot of fun, especially because good and bad become nothing more than ideas by the time the whole giant story arc is done.
Right, so, the reason this is coming up at all is because I wanted to have a reference of what it is, so that when I reference it later, you guys know what I'm talking about -- or can have somewhere to look. Also, I'm bringing it up because I'm nearly finished what is looking like it will be the first of three or four books (probably four), because apparently my story arc is too big. 100k words, where I am right now, is barely finished the first half of the expositionary stuff. So, yeah, I don't know who would want to read a 400k book in one go either...
Anyway, just wanted to let the fanfiction readers of mine who may actually, on occasion, look at this, that I'll be working for the next maybe week or so to get this whole first part finished so I can figure out what I'm doing with the rest of it. So I'll be around, but rather sporadically, and not really with fanfiction all that much. Oh well. Sorry guys.
Strange is the working title of my longest, original WIP. The 'original' part of it is more or less self-explanatory -- it takes place in my own fantasy world. The 'longest' part applies to everything you could think it would apply to. I've been working on it for five years now. It's nearly 100k words long. It has a massively complicated plot that can be simplified into 'girl is fated to win a major war in her country', but doing so really loses a lot of its fun.
Strange is about a girl named Leyha. She was raised in a foreign country, because her parents' love was incredibly frowned upon. The two sides of her family run two subsections of the country right next to where she was raised, and have a long-standing feud between them. When she is taken from the only home she's known at the age of fourteen by her father's family, she discovers that she is supposed to possess a great power that will help her father's family win the war. She eventually gets fed up with the way her uncle, who has power over the throne after her father's death, and his lords are treating her, so she runs away to the other side of her family, where her mother is still alive. Her alliance goes back and forth and gets more confusing as time goes on, because her father's family is the one that's supposed to be the "bad" side, according to people outside of the country.
The fun part of Strange is that it gives me a place to play with the ideas of "good" and "bad". They're words/ideas that have interested me for a while, and I have lots of fun little things that I've done in the way of playing with the two ideas, and our preconceptions about what makes something good versus bad, especially in literature and film. For example, the Menla (Leyha's father's family) have their symbolic colour as black, and they are seen as the evil side by outsiders, but it turns out that they're much less restrictive and much more open with their citizens than the Pilo (Leyha's mother's family) are. It's a whole lot of fun, especially because good and bad become nothing more than ideas by the time the whole giant story arc is done.
Right, so, the reason this is coming up at all is because I wanted to have a reference of what it is, so that when I reference it later, you guys know what I'm talking about -- or can have somewhere to look. Also, I'm bringing it up because I'm nearly finished what is looking like it will be the first of three or four books (probably four), because apparently my story arc is too big. 100k words, where I am right now, is barely finished the first half of the expositionary stuff. So, yeah, I don't know who would want to read a 400k book in one go either...
Anyway, just wanted to let the fanfiction readers of mine who may actually, on occasion, look at this, that I'll be working for the next maybe week or so to get this whole first part finished so I can figure out what I'm doing with the rest of it. So I'll be around, but rather sporadically, and not really with fanfiction all that much. Oh well. Sorry guys.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Toasts
I'm not talking about the slightly-burnt bread. I'm not really talking about what you do with alcoholic beverages, either. I'm really talking about a new collection of one-shots which I started posting yesterday, for the Sanctuary fandom.
Toasts is, IMHO, a fun collection looking at the development of the relationship between Helen and Nikola. First off, you should know that I am a HUGE Teslen shipper and a major Tesla fan in general. I love him. He's arrogant and sexy and brilliant, and Helen is utterly perfect for him.
Okay, so, I know the first two in the series haven't been too terribly shippy. I was trying to stay true to canon, and where the stories lead me while staying in that wasn't to their professing their love for one another. Oh well. The next one should be good -- with a title like "Toast of Love", what else would you expect? :D
Does anyone else think it's funny that sometimes story ideas run away with you? First this was going to be a simple one-shot, and then two, and then three, and then five, and then four, and now I think I'm back to five again but one of them will end up really smutty if I keep the current title which didn't seem as bad the first time. Oh well. Fun stuff ahead!
Toasts is, IMHO, a fun collection looking at the development of the relationship between Helen and Nikola. First off, you should know that I am a HUGE Teslen shipper and a major Tesla fan in general. I love him. He's arrogant and sexy and brilliant, and Helen is utterly perfect for him.
Okay, so, I know the first two in the series haven't been too terribly shippy. I was trying to stay true to canon, and where the stories lead me while staying in that wasn't to their professing their love for one another. Oh well. The next one should be good -- with a title like "Toast of Love", what else would you expect? :D
Does anyone else think it's funny that sometimes story ideas run away with you? First this was going to be a simple one-shot, and then two, and then three, and then five, and then four, and now I think I'm back to five again but one of them will end up really smutty if I keep the current title which didn't seem as bad the first time. Oh well. Fun stuff ahead!
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
About Me
My name is Lucy. You may or may not know me under another name. My many personas include thecolouryes, thecoloryes, TCY, Lucy, Nyssa, moonchild94, and others, but they're really more or less not important.
I'm (currently) seventeen, and the first thing you should know about me is that I'm a complete Anglophile. My Scottish Keyboard-Pal on fanfiction.net awarded me the title of Honourary Brit. I have no idea what it means exactly, either, but I like to boast about it ;)
On the subject of my creative endeavours, I have plenty. I've been reading religiously since I was about seven, writing stories since I was about eight, writing fanfiction since I was about twelve, pretending I have the skill to make banners since about the same age, watching Doctor Who/Torchwood/a few other brilliant BBC shows since I was about fourteen, and been mental since about... well... I could blame it on the concussion I got when I was eight, or my mates who are just as... unusual, shall we say, as I am, or blame some combination of the two, but who wants to blame when it's so much fun?
And, I'll tell you a secret. All the best people are mad.
I'm (currently) seventeen, and the first thing you should know about me is that I'm a complete Anglophile. My Scottish Keyboard-Pal on fanfiction.net awarded me the title of Honourary Brit. I have no idea what it means exactly, either, but I like to boast about it ;)
On the subject of my creative endeavours, I have plenty. I've been reading religiously since I was about seven, writing stories since I was about eight, writing fanfiction since I was about twelve, pretending I have the skill to make banners since about the same age, watching Doctor Who/Torchwood/a few other brilliant BBC shows since I was about fourteen, and been mental since about... well... I could blame it on the concussion I got when I was eight, or my mates who are just as... unusual, shall we say, as I am, or blame some combination of the two, but who wants to blame when it's so much fun?
And, I'll tell you a secret. All the best people are mad.
Monday, August 1, 2011
Why not the colour no?
If you're here, I'm about 65% certain that you have, at one time or another, wondered why on earth I use the name "thecolouryes" (or the American spelling) as my username on just about everything. The answer, in fact, comes from all the way back in 8th grade. (Wow. I'm finally so old that 8th grade feels like a while ago.) Back then, I was close friends with a few people who would get together after school once a week in the art room and mess around with the art teacher's supplies. One day, I was hanging out with them there and playing with paints and mixing colours and things. When one of my friends asked me what colour the weird mixture of paints that was somewhere like "dark puke green" (imagine the green-ness of puke, only much darker so it's not an awful colour), I answered "yes" because that was my default answer to things, especially when they weren't yes or no questions. And thus, "the colour yes" was born. Somewhere along the way, I decided to start using it for all of my usernames, and it's stuck. If you see anything to the effect of "the colour yes", it's more than likely me.
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