Blog Hiatus

Sorry for the lack of posting lately. I'm still pretty active on Twitter and Tumblr, but I'm taking a break from blogging. I'm not sure when I'll be back to regular posting, but hopefully soon. My dad died completely unexpectedly on November 2nd and I'm a little busy dealing with that right now. I'm going back to school on Monday and have a ton of stuff to catch up on. I decided at the last minute to do a version of NaNoWriMo but had to abandon that. Hopefully I'll be back to blogging and back to writing and caught up with school soon. Thank you to all my online friends who have been there for me through all this :)

 - Nicole

A Post Of Random

I was planning on having a nice, well-thought-out post today, but frankly I'm too tired. So instead I bring you several RANDOM things:

1. YESTERDAY WAS MY 16TH BIRTHDAY!!! It was fun. I got lots of B&N gift cards and a camera and my AP history teacher got my donuts and I went out for sushi with my friends. And the fun continues tonight. Yay. It was a pretty good Monday.

2. The day before my birthday, Sept. 18th, marked the one year anniversary of my current writer friend/critique partner (CP) Heather first emailing me! *Waves to Heather*. We met through one of my favorite writing sites, Let The Words Flow and have been sending wacky emails back and forth since. Knowing Heather (you can follow her on Twitter HERE) has showed me how important good CPs and good writer friends in general can be to your sanity. If you don't have a CP(s), you should :)

3. Tonight is the season premiere of Glee. OMGOMGOMG I'M SO EXCITED!! But I'm going out to dinner with my dad's family and have to tape and watch it later... Oh well.. Not like I need sleep ever....

4. The teaser trailer for The Hunger Games movie is out!!! I'm not ashamed to say I started seriously tearing up watching it <3 I can't express how excited I am!

5. Just checked email and saw that my Barnes and Noble order shipped!! Ahhh!!! *Does the New Book dance*

6. I'm currently reading The Scarlet Letter in my English class and really liking it.This is a good thing, since, ya know, I have to write essays on it whether I like it or not.

7. I can't think of any other random things to say.

- Nicole

Eat the Metaphorical Vegetables

I really do want to blog today. Honestly. Something good and thought-out and meaningful. But I can't. See, I have to finish my biology homework and hopefully even my pre-calc homework before I eat dinner before I go to babysit at 6 PM . . . etc, etc. I want to blog. And I want to read. And more than almost anything right now, I want to write. Whether a poem or a song or my WIP (yeah, right) or the short story I'm working on and love . . . I don't care. Today was not good. Today was bad. When the day is bad I write. But I also owe my very patient friend an email, but I haven't even read the story she emailed me to critque daysss ago. Deep breaths... deep breaths... So basically this is me blogging anyways, in miniature, to offer you lame excuses you don't care about explaining why there is not proper blog. It's cause I'm doing what's GOOD for me (frakkin bio homework) instead of what I want (which, face it, is probably not blogging or writing, but napping.) Whatever. I'm eating the metaphorical good-for-me vegetables (though in actuality I love vegetables). The bio homework veggies taste pretty bitter though.

- Nicole

Something High School Taught Me

Thursday and Friday were my first two days of 11th grade. It's going to be my hardest year, I can tell. I have AP classes and a full course-load and a lot of obligations. And that's okay. If there's one thing everyone who's ever been to high school can agree on, it's probably this: High school is a really hard place to be yourself, and high school is a really hard place to be happy. With the people (friends, acquaintances, etc.) I'm around a lot there's a kind of shared mentality that basically goes "Holy crap we're pretty smart but this is so hard we're gonna fail this sucks so much we can't do this OMG OMG I can't believe we have this much homework . . ." going on a loop through our heads. Or hell, maybe just my head. But probably everyone's.

Friday was my first day of creative writing class, my elective this semester. I knew no one else in the class, but I wasn't that intimidated 'cause at least I'm a junior. And the class is taught by one of my favorite teachers EVER, my sophomore English teacher. (I've been really lucky with English teachers in high school :D). So the environment was comfortable even if my fellow students weren't. I knew two things going into the class: A) it was really, really work-intensive, B) it was a workshop class and required students to share a lot of their writing with the class. As a high schooler who has a hard time being herself, I almost didn't take the class just because of that.

We had to write a short piece and share it during the first class. Four people opted out of sharing. The vast majority did though, and I'm proud to say I did too. It was kind of a cool moment. Nobody shouted "that was awful!" When I was done. It wasn't the end of the world. I didn't pass out. I guess in that class for once we all had a different attitude towards ourselves and each other. I wish it could be like that all the time. But it made me hopeful for the rest of the year. Sure, it's going to be hard and stressful at times. I can do it. I can be brave . . . sometimes. That's good enough for now.

There's your dose of random musings and ramblings for the day ;)

- Nicole

My Favorite Authors - With Pictures!

For people who truly LOVE to read there are no worse questions than "What's your favorite book?" Or "Who's your favorite author?" Because you probably don't have just one answer. At least, I don't. There are so many authors I love and admire and okay, kind of want to be, but I do have five all-time favorites. It is one of my life goals to meet all five of them. So far I've met three, which isn't bad! In random order (because how could I rank them???) My favorite authors are:

Cassandra Clare - Author of The Mortal Instruments and The Infernal Devices series (for me to consider someone a favorite author I have to love more than just one or two of their books.) I've been lucky enough to meet Ms. Clare twice at book signings.

Sorry the quality is a little bad. This was from the first time I met her in NYC on Aug. 4th, 2010

The 2nd time I met her on April 22nd, 2011

Scott Westerfeld - Author of the Midnighters series, the Uglies series, the Leviathan trilogy, Peeps and The Last Days, So Yesterday (those are the ones I've read and loved). I've also met him twice!

Incredibly bad picture of me with Scott Westerfeld, Oct. 19th, 2009

I met him again at Cassandra Clare's signing on Aug. 4th, 2010.

Ally Carter - Is the author of the Gallagher Girls series and the Heist Society series,  both of which I love SO much. I haven't met her yet. But I will. I WILL. *Insert maniacal laughter*

John Green - If I HAD to pick one favorite author, I'd probably say John Green. He and his work are just so brilliant. And the fact that he's one half of Vlogbrothers/founder of Nerdfighteria doesn't hurt :) I haven't met him either . . . YET. I must meet John Green one day. And hopefully Hank Green too.... Yes, I have weird dreams. He is the author of Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, Paper Towns, and the upcoming The Fault in Our Stars (all pre-ordered copies of which WILL BE SIGNED).

Sarah Dessen - Is the author of ten books. I'm not crazy enough to link to them all individually, but I have read them all. They're all amazing. Read them :D I was lucky enough to meet Sarah Dessen this summer. I wrote a blog about it HERE.

Sarah Dessen and me on July 22nd, 2011

Do you have favorite authors? Have you met them? Do you want to?

- Nicole

Scrivener and Spotify

I feel like I haven't been blogging enough, but my grandma is visiting from Australia; we hadn't seen her in three years, and one of my stepsisters is here from California and we hadn't seen her for five years, so blogging and writing and tweeting took a backseat :) Not to mention rushing to do tons of summer work now, since school starts for me on the 31st...

My work-in-progress is going really well, though! And I'm definitely contributing some of that success to several new programs I've fallen in love with. I learned about Spotify from one of Natalie Whipple's posts. It's like a hybrid of iTunes and Pandora - so basically a free iTunes with some commericials - and it's amazing! I made all of my novels' playlists on there. I highly recommend trying it.

And I've wanted the writing program Scrivener forever, but until recently it was only available for Mac. The Windows beta is out now, which is what I'm using, and it's every bit as genius as I knew it would be from watching the YouTube tutorial a million times. I write completely linearly, but it's still SO helpful when it comes to outlining and collecting notes and research. I am so in love with it and can't wait to get the real version when it comes out. I never plan on using any other writing program, if I can help it.

Sorry if this reads a little like a commercial :) I really love these programs and they've really helped me feel organized and inspired with my WIP.

- Nicole

Introducing Salem and Voldemort

I have two black cats. They do ridiculous things. Sometimes they are brats. Frequently they are adorable. This past weekend when I was at my Dad's house (home of said cats) I took some pictures of their adorableness. Sorry the quality is crappy. My phone's camera really is the worst, but I'm getting a new for my birthday on Sept. 19th!! *Squeal*

This is Salem. He came to visit me when I was writing my WIP, longhand (computer is broken).

This is also Salem. I wasn't giving him attention because I was writing so he had to increase the adorableness.

This is Voldemort, aka The Dark Lord or Vol or Voldy. He is a little pudgy, but we love him anyways. He also thinks he's the cat's meow... *bad pun intended*.

Vol again. I got a new bookcase over the weekend (it's like a ladder, cool, right?) So of course the first thing he does is jump in it....

Aren't they cuteeeee? :)

- Nicole