In which Krist woke up early and discusses stuff.
GRE exam today. I'm nervous about the fact that I'm not nervous which only makes me worry more, which only makes my stomach in knots. When I'm anxious, I feel nauseated -- and when I'm nauseated I'm convinced that I'll be sick, and when I think that I'll be sick it adds to my anxiety. It's an ouroborosian cycle of panic.
I have to keep reminding myself that for the schools I'm intending to apply to, they either have no minimum requirement for the GRE exam (Columbia's English department) or they don't even care about the results (schools overseas in England and Japan). I have to remind myself that I went into my SATs not giving a toss, and I ended up doing well -- not exceptionally but well enough. I have to keep reminding myself that this one hurdle should not stand in the way of me enjoying what remains of my summer, and that the more I focus on this the more I'm likely to not enjoy other things the days ahead offer to me, though I'm not entirely sure what that is.
In more important news -- Oslo :( Norway :( How completely heartbreaking and horrible, how undeserved (as if any attacks of this nature are anything but undeserved), and how inspiring, the way they've pulled together, the composure and grace in which they've responded to the attacks. It feeds not into petty revenge and bloodlust but something more productive and useful, like unity and determination. My heart wrenches at the thought of those victims at the rally -- what the fuck. I just. What. THE FUCK. It's so easy to get mad, it's so easy to call for blood, but it's not... it's not going to help, is it? We have to understand what the fuck led this person and those working with him to do what they did and correct it, but then there's the clusterfuck of figuring out how to correct it and then it comes back to there being no words whatsoever to encapsulate how terrible this is, and how frighteningly easy it is to be deceived and attacked by surprise, to have innocence taken advantage of and used against us. There's in no conceivable way that innocent people are to blame, it just makes me so fucking disgusted that there are people in the world who want to corrupt that.
I usually don't comment on world events in here. I don't think my opinion matters on the subjects, and that smarter and more relevant people have more important things to say on the events, no matter what they might be. I don't even talk about the bullshit that goes on in my own country, since it'll all just amount to me wondering why the fuck anyone can honestly say that the US is so great when those same people are turning around and oppressing half the population based on their sex, their creed, their race, their sexuality. There's nothing great about this country. There's nothing noble or commendable. If such a thing remains, it's being overshadowed by the corruption and viciousness. I'm so sick of men (and the occasional band of women) inflicting their god and their skewed view of his teachings on people who want nothing to do with their hatred. How the fuck can we consider ourselves so fine and free when the unborn have more importance over the women in which they reside? You can't have freedom if you don't have choice -- your OWN choice, your OWN decision to make. You can't have freedom if you live in fear of admitting who you are, who you love. You can't be free if there are idiots in this country who see you as a "minority" or an undeserving squatter on a land that we didn't fucking know from Eve.
Get your fucking act together, US. I won't "leave it" because I don't "love it" -- I'll criticize it because it needs to improve and live up to its origins, and I'll be damned if some right wing bible-sucking douchebag tries to tell me otherwise.
I've been querying agents, by the by. Only two so far, and two rejections obviously, which prompted me to consider a lot of uncomfortable things (before realizing that hey, I make worrying into a non-profit self-organization [is it non-profit? or not-for-profit?]). And then I took a look at the manuscript and felt quite ashamed because the writing in the beginning is... not my strongest. This isn't me having too high expectations, either, this is me honestly acknowledging that what I put forth in the manuscript's early pages is not something I'd want anyone to see, much less a person I'm asking to represent said work. Bless these women for having the decency not to write back and say, "Seriously, Kristin?" I'm too mortified to even mention the errors I found here, not out of pride (I have very little of that), but because the mistakes I made were ones that you'd think I'd learn to avoid and fucking spot -- but oh well. Writing's always like that, and you're always too close to the source and you always see what you know you meant and not always what's flat on the page. Though in my case it's never on a page since we don't have a working printer, so I have to do all edits via LibreOffice document, a fact that I lament because holy shit it's annoying. It might save trees but it does make the editing process more difficult and at times completely unhelpful.
So with all that being said I'm once more going through an edit of my second novel and this one will probably be in a series of at least two or three more, so I can add more meat to the story and only then will I be satisfied in attempting to show an agent or two. I know a few of you expressed interest in the story thus far but I'm not sure I can justify showing people a weak manuscript. I'm sorry, but I'd rather only show what I consider my best attempt at my work than to settle for something marginally subpar.
I had a dream last night that the zebra finches we have somehow gained little baby versions of themselves (though that's impossible considering they're both girls and... baby-making doesn't work that way), and we had to make sure the little baby versions wouldn't slip through the bars. After this happened I remember opening the front door to let in one of our cats but then all these imitation cats kept coming in, and soon kittens were lining up outside our door and sitting on the porch and I have no idea why they were all there, but I remember being able to count with savant precision each and every one as they arrived (and this is the girl who often reverses numbers as she counts them in a numerical form of dyslexia [shut up it really exists]). I was going to throw dry food on the lawn to feed them, so they could graze like cows or something, but... I don't think that happened because next thing I know I'm in this sort of sideshow of oddities with a group of people from high school and I utterly loathed high school and felt nothing but apathy to every unfortunate soul in it (save for the few friends I made, though we don't really talk anymore), so this wasn't necessarily a welcome reunion. All I remember is a fish tank full of people that had the mindless shuffle of zombies down pat without being actual zombies. So. That happened. But the dream ended with this sort of... sepia toned part of the dream in which there was a mirror which reflected not only ourselves but some invisible portal to a world of color and each person I asked about it, if they could see it, all began to recognize it too and we were all smiles and happiness. Some of the people were my mother, and two members of Dir en grey (what) and the only one who couldn't see it was Toshiya (:c). The series of questions we asked were vaguely similar to what I remember of the tea ceremony I attended while I was in Japan -- the delicacy and the careful, precise movements. We'd kneel and we'd put our hands on the floor before us and do a little bow and ask about the mirror, but the only person I didn't ask was Toshiya, and I remember him and Kyo not being there afterwards (because they've got other shit to do, clearly) and I felt so guilty for not asking the former about it. My mom told me to write him a letter but I wasn't sure he'd ever get it.
Dreams are weird, yo.
I have to keep reminding myself that for the schools I'm intending to apply to, they either have no minimum requirement for the GRE exam (Columbia's English department) or they don't even care about the results (schools overseas in England and Japan). I have to remind myself that I went into my SATs not giving a toss, and I ended up doing well -- not exceptionally but well enough. I have to keep reminding myself that this one hurdle should not stand in the way of me enjoying what remains of my summer, and that the more I focus on this the more I'm likely to not enjoy other things the days ahead offer to me, though I'm not entirely sure what that is.
In more important news -- Oslo :( Norway :( How completely heartbreaking and horrible, how undeserved (as if any attacks of this nature are anything but undeserved), and how inspiring, the way they've pulled together, the composure and grace in which they've responded to the attacks. It feeds not into petty revenge and bloodlust but something more productive and useful, like unity and determination. My heart wrenches at the thought of those victims at the rally -- what the fuck. I just. What. THE FUCK. It's so easy to get mad, it's so easy to call for blood, but it's not... it's not going to help, is it? We have to understand what the fuck led this person and those working with him to do what they did and correct it, but then there's the clusterfuck of figuring out how to correct it and then it comes back to there being no words whatsoever to encapsulate how terrible this is, and how frighteningly easy it is to be deceived and attacked by surprise, to have innocence taken advantage of and used against us. There's in no conceivable way that innocent people are to blame, it just makes me so fucking disgusted that there are people in the world who want to corrupt that.
I usually don't comment on world events in here. I don't think my opinion matters on the subjects, and that smarter and more relevant people have more important things to say on the events, no matter what they might be. I don't even talk about the bullshit that goes on in my own country, since it'll all just amount to me wondering why the fuck anyone can honestly say that the US is so great when those same people are turning around and oppressing half the population based on their sex, their creed, their race, their sexuality. There's nothing great about this country. There's nothing noble or commendable. If such a thing remains, it's being overshadowed by the corruption and viciousness. I'm so sick of men (and the occasional band of women) inflicting their god and their skewed view of his teachings on people who want nothing to do with their hatred. How the fuck can we consider ourselves so fine and free when the unborn have more importance over the women in which they reside? You can't have freedom if you don't have choice -- your OWN choice, your OWN decision to make. You can't have freedom if you live in fear of admitting who you are, who you love. You can't be free if there are idiots in this country who see you as a "minority" or an undeserving squatter on a land that we didn't fucking know from Eve.
Get your fucking act together, US. I won't "leave it" because I don't "love it" -- I'll criticize it because it needs to improve and live up to its origins, and I'll be damned if some right wing bible-sucking douchebag tries to tell me otherwise.
I've been querying agents, by the by. Only two so far, and two rejections obviously, which prompted me to consider a lot of uncomfortable things (before realizing that hey, I make worrying into a non-profit self-organization [is it non-profit? or not-for-profit?]). And then I took a look at the manuscript and felt quite ashamed because the writing in the beginning is... not my strongest. This isn't me having too high expectations, either, this is me honestly acknowledging that what I put forth in the manuscript's early pages is not something I'd want anyone to see, much less a person I'm asking to represent said work. Bless these women for having the decency not to write back and say, "Seriously, Kristin?" I'm too mortified to even mention the errors I found here, not out of pride (I have very little of that), but because the mistakes I made were ones that you'd think I'd learn to avoid and fucking spot -- but oh well. Writing's always like that, and you're always too close to the source and you always see what you know you meant and not always what's flat on the page. Though in my case it's never on a page since we don't have a working printer, so I have to do all edits via LibreOffice document, a fact that I lament because holy shit it's annoying. It might save trees but it does make the editing process more difficult and at times completely unhelpful.
So with all that being said I'm once more going through an edit of my second novel and this one will probably be in a series of at least two or three more, so I can add more meat to the story and only then will I be satisfied in attempting to show an agent or two. I know a few of you expressed interest in the story thus far but I'm not sure I can justify showing people a weak manuscript. I'm sorry, but I'd rather only show what I consider my best attempt at my work than to settle for something marginally subpar.
I had a dream last night that the zebra finches we have somehow gained little baby versions of themselves (though that's impossible considering they're both girls and... baby-making doesn't work that way), and we had to make sure the little baby versions wouldn't slip through the bars. After this happened I remember opening the front door to let in one of our cats but then all these imitation cats kept coming in, and soon kittens were lining up outside our door and sitting on the porch and I have no idea why they were all there, but I remember being able to count with savant precision each and every one as they arrived (and this is the girl who often reverses numbers as she counts them in a numerical form of dyslexia [shut up it really exists]). I was going to throw dry food on the lawn to feed them, so they could graze like cows or something, but... I don't think that happened because next thing I know I'm in this sort of sideshow of oddities with a group of people from high school and I utterly loathed high school and felt nothing but apathy to every unfortunate soul in it (save for the few friends I made, though we don't really talk anymore), so this wasn't necessarily a welcome reunion. All I remember is a fish tank full of people that had the mindless shuffle of zombies down pat without being actual zombies. So. That happened. But the dream ended with this sort of... sepia toned part of the dream in which there was a mirror which reflected not only ourselves but some invisible portal to a world of color and each person I asked about it, if they could see it, all began to recognize it too and we were all smiles and happiness. Some of the people were my mother, and two members of Dir en grey (what) and the only one who couldn't see it was Toshiya (:c). The series of questions we asked were vaguely similar to what I remember of the tea ceremony I attended while I was in Japan -- the delicacy and the careful, precise movements. We'd kneel and we'd put our hands on the floor before us and do a little bow and ask about the mirror, but the only person I didn't ask was Toshiya, and I remember him and Kyo not being there afterwards (because they've got other shit to do, clearly) and I felt so guilty for not asking the former about it. My mom told me to write him a letter but I wasn't sure he'd ever get it.
Dreams are weird, yo.