Driving Adventures

Whenever someone suggested that I drive somewhere myself, I always said, "I'll get lost, I guarantee it." Well, turns out I was right. See, I supposed to drive to Ginanne's house, then with them, go to the NaNo Kick-Off Party, then back to their house, and then back home. Sounds simple, yes?

Not so.

You see, I knew the way mostly to Ginanne's house, but I got lost at the very end. I ended up wandering Ginanne's neighborhood for about ten minutes, searching for her street, before Lydia remembered we had the GPS. Lydia turned it on and led me to Ginanne's street. Still, it took us three tries to find her house on her street, because we didn't recognize it with the Halloween decorations.

We picked up Ginanne and Jordan, and I drove us to the Associated Industries building, where the party was being held.

The party itself was fun. We started by folding origami "plot bunnies". The ML said to be careful not to make too many, or they might multiply, and it's definitely a problem when you have way too many plot bunnies, because they start creating plot holes. :)

Next, we ate. Well, I stuffed myself. It was a potluck with a ton of great food.

After eating, we all worked on a collage, showing a glimpse of each of our novels. It was interesting trying to search for pictures that might represent my novel in magazines.

Then, we went back to Ginanne's house, and Lydia and I went on our way. Unfortunately, I made a wrong turn and ended up somewhere that I had no idea where I was. Suddenly, I found myself at a stop light at a familiar road. Division. "That'll take me home," I said.

It was a one-way street.

It wasn't until I saw the sign saying, "Welcome to Oregon" that I knew we were going the wrong way on Division. (Okay, okay, I'm exaggerating...does Division even take you to Oregon?)

I turned off and spent about twenty minutes wandering around, trying to find a way to cross Division and get to it's counterpart, heading the opposite way. At one point, I made a U-turn in a parking lot while a cop watched on. I was hoping at the time that  he wouldn't stop me and question what the flip I was doing, but looking back, he probably could have given us directions.

Finally, we found a way to cross Division and turned left onto Ruby. We followed that back in the direction home was.

It was crazy how far into Spokane we had managed to get as I started to see familiar landmarks.

Then, we were on the Newport highway, heading home in the RIGHT direction. It was foggy out, and very secluded, and in the times that you could see the sky, it was very cloudy and the moon was full, or very close to being full. The setting kind of reminded me of a horror story. O_O

We did arrive home in safety, though, and nothing too dramatic happened.

So, I got lost driving a route that I've drive quite a few times, and isn't all that hard, really. Now, imagine what'll happen when I drive to Colville for a Stake Dance. I could end up in Canada. Lydia says she doesn't mind though. She wants to see a polar bear. XD

NaNo Looms

Only twelve more days until NaNo arrives, and yet, I am not freaking out at all. This pre-writing thing really does wonders. How did I ever write anything without it? Just kidding. I really do enjoy just writing randomly sometimes.

I took on two dares today, for my novel, one including a zombie apocalypse (you must be wondering, 'on the moon?' but trust me, this actually works) and another including a space whale.

Oh, and I'm sure you noticed the banner I made for it. ^^^^^^^^^

The first NaNo get-together is next Saturday, and I'm pretty excited at actually being able to go to this one.

I don't have much to talk about, other than NaNo. The blog will be updated with a new page tracking my progress and a widget or two for my word count soon.

Just Another Update On My Mostly Boring and Average Life.

What's the scariest thing that's ever happened to you? Hum...well, nothing REALLY scary has ever happened. There's been all those near car accidents that have happened since I started learning to drive, of course. Then, there was that incident with those stupid cops that nearly gave me a heart attack. Last year, MusicFest was really scary, mostly because it was new and made me super nervous.


The scariest, though, was probably when, on the way home from Seminary, mom got really sick and ended up having to go to the hospital to get a tumor removed. That scared me a lot. 


~~~


On a lighter topic, I got my Driver's License yesterday. Finally! Although it'll only really change with driving to Seminary and Mutual, there's just something to having your Driver's License...independence maybe?


Today for the October NaNo Prep Challenge on writing.com, I was supposed to draw a setting that was part of my novel. I chose to make a map of the city that is on the moon. I made it on Excel, and I think it turned out pretty well, although I couldn't manage to fit in quite as many house as I would have liked to. All well, I guess the Moon civilization is restricted to only 452 families.....


So, I think I'm going to change The Brotherhood II's title to either The Uprising  or The Innocents' Revenge.  I asked for title ideas from my fans, and then put all the suggestions to a vote, and those two are the only two that have been voted through so far. I do like them both, though.

So with school, things have changed a bit since the start of the year. First of all, I'm finding myself, wait for it....almost ENJOYING history! That's a far cry from where I've always been, hating the lessons and just trying to get them done.

My second favorite class is French, actually. I don't like the speaking part of it, so much, but I like learning the new words every week and being able to form sentences. I'm  thinking of, way later on - possibly next year, when I'm in French II, trying to write a story in French. Maybe even translate one of my existing stories into French.

Digital Video Production is my next favorite. Of course, it's super slow, like all the rest of the tech class I've taken. I don't like it as much as the other two tech classes, though. It's not something I'd consider for a career.

Next is Journalism. The actual classes and lessons are super boring, but the Yearbook ClassConnects make up for it.

Then comes literature. The last two units have been boring, but the next one is about mythology, so hopefully it'll get better.

Lastly, is Music Appreciation. It's all about jazz, and you'd think that it was interesting and stuff, but the lessons are actually very dull. Plus, for the tests, you have to go through and memorize all these names and dates of jazz performers and what type of jazz they created. There must be around fifty types of jazz.

It's funny, really, that the classes I was looking forwards to most, ended up being my least favorite, and the ones I was kind of dreading ended up being my favorite. That's very strange, for me. Things don't usually happen like that.

Pre-NaNo Warm Up

Tell us about five things you want to do before you die. 

1) Write and publish at least one book/novel.

2) Travel - visit every continent - or at least Egypt, Italy, France, India, Guatemala, and Scotland.

3) Swim with dolphins in their natural habitat.

4) Find a spouse and raise a family.

5) Something incredibly reckless, like skydiving or something... O_o

~~~ 

NaNoWriMo is right around the corner, and already I'm preparing for it. I'm participating in a Pre-NaNo Contest on writing.com where you pretty much write your outline, develop your plot, and define your characters for your novel all during October. It's going pretty well and my plot is going to be epic. I'm trying for a sci-fi of sorts again, rather than another fantasy. It's going to take place on the moon. :)

My drive test to finally get my license has been scheduled for next Tuesday. I'm super nervous for it, especially since I'm not really sure about parallel parking. Seriously, it can't be that hard though, everyone has to pass it to drive, right?

The Brotherhood II is all plotted out. I've got the outline written, plus the first three chapters. I plan on posting up the Prologue tomorrow. The only problem is that I need another title other than 'The Brotherhood II'. I'm not that great at coming up with titles, except on the rare occasion, like 'Involuntary Notions' and 'Tentative Reality', both of which were complete accidents, but that I decided I liked after all.

I was also planning on posting up Everlasting Heartache this month too, but I might wait until December, when I'm less busy writing other things to post it up. It's not like anyone's going to miss it, like they will The Brotherhood II.