i am a busy little bee
i am all full of projects!
i went up to LA to visit my friend eli, who used to be a dancer on the ship. we always have lots of fun and i hadn't seen him since december -- it was great. i was there from tuesday until thursday night and we did all sorts of touristy stuff, like going to the getty (i'd never been, can you believe it?) and to disneyland. plus hung out, watched "rent", went dancing, had lots of fun. we went out in west hollywood -- although apparently all the cool kids are calling it "we-ho" these days. we spent more time in the car, trying to go from one place to another, than we did at any of the places we went. ah, LA. anyway, it was fun.
so now i'm home, and have been seized with a desire to redecorate / reorganize. i need to decide what to do with all my stuff, but since it looks like my parents aren't getting rid of the lakeside house too soon, i'm not feeling any sense of urgency. i do need to get everything into boxes so that if they do anything with the house -- my dad is talking about drastic stuff -- they won't need to do any packing. that would be scary. anyway, i was going to do that, when i realized how much i wanted to paint my room. paint? luckily, my dad is a pack rat of the highest order, so i just had to find him and he dug some paint out of somewhere. it's pale baby blue, and so pretty on my walls. i'm only painting half of the room, and he also found some green that i'll use on the doors. hopefully it'll be a whole new room when i'm done! plus, i have tons of crap to get rid of, and maybe i should unpack sometime, so i can repack.
also, i've been trying to write more, and i was so productive tonight that it was only about 10:15 when i sat down to start a new story. yay me! i'm celebrating by putting up some tips for writers that my mom sent me. they're funny.
1. Avoid alliteration. Always.
2. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
4. Employ the vernacular.
5. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
6. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
7. Remember to never split an infinitive.
8. Contractions aren't necessary.
9. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
10. One should never generalize.
11. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
12. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
13. Don't be redundant; don't use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.
14. Be more or less specific.
15. Understatement is always best.
16. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
17. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
18. The passive voice is to be avoided.
19. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
tomorrow: more painting, organizing, etc. hopefully i'll be in the mountains soon, where i can do laundry and some real internet-ing. silly dial-up in lakeside.
by the way, a few book recommendations. i recently read two non-fiction books that were pretty cool: ark fever by robert cornuke and 66 days adrift by william butler. ark fever was about a guy's quest to find the remains of noah's ark. apparently there are quite a few people out there who have devoted their lives to finding it. a very interesting book, although it got a little heavy-handed with the religious stuff at times (which i didn't realize it would when i bought it). the other, as its title should explain, was about a man and his wife who were shipwrecked in the pacific ocean and drifted in a tiny lifeboat for 66 days. interesting stuff, although this guy couldn't write dialogue to save his life. good lord, every time they started talking, i skimmed to save my life and sanity. but the story itself was cool. yay for non-fiction!
i went up to LA to visit my friend eli, who used to be a dancer on the ship. we always have lots of fun and i hadn't seen him since december -- it was great. i was there from tuesday until thursday night and we did all sorts of touristy stuff, like going to the getty (i'd never been, can you believe it?) and to disneyland. plus hung out, watched "rent", went dancing, had lots of fun. we went out in west hollywood -- although apparently all the cool kids are calling it "we-ho" these days. we spent more time in the car, trying to go from one place to another, than we did at any of the places we went. ah, LA. anyway, it was fun.
so now i'm home, and have been seized with a desire to redecorate / reorganize. i need to decide what to do with all my stuff, but since it looks like my parents aren't getting rid of the lakeside house too soon, i'm not feeling any sense of urgency. i do need to get everything into boxes so that if they do anything with the house -- my dad is talking about drastic stuff -- they won't need to do any packing. that would be scary. anyway, i was going to do that, when i realized how much i wanted to paint my room. paint? luckily, my dad is a pack rat of the highest order, so i just had to find him and he dug some paint out of somewhere. it's pale baby blue, and so pretty on my walls. i'm only painting half of the room, and he also found some green that i'll use on the doors. hopefully it'll be a whole new room when i'm done! plus, i have tons of crap to get rid of, and maybe i should unpack sometime, so i can repack.
also, i've been trying to write more, and i was so productive tonight that it was only about 10:15 when i sat down to start a new story. yay me! i'm celebrating by putting up some tips for writers that my mom sent me. they're funny.
1. Avoid alliteration. Always.
2. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
4. Employ the vernacular.
5. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
6. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
7. Remember to never split an infinitive.
8. Contractions aren't necessary.
9. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
10. One should never generalize.
11. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
12. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
13. Don't be redundant; don't use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.
14. Be more or less specific.
15. Understatement is always best.
16. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
17. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
18. The passive voice is to be avoided.
19. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
tomorrow: more painting, organizing, etc. hopefully i'll be in the mountains soon, where i can do laundry and some real internet-ing. silly dial-up in lakeside.
by the way, a few book recommendations. i recently read two non-fiction books that were pretty cool: ark fever by robert cornuke and 66 days adrift by william butler. ark fever was about a guy's quest to find the remains of noah's ark. apparently there are quite a few people out there who have devoted their lives to finding it. a very interesting book, although it got a little heavy-handed with the religious stuff at times (which i didn't realize it would when i bought it). the other, as its title should explain, was about a man and his wife who were shipwrecked in the pacific ocean and drifted in a tiny lifeboat for 66 days. interesting stuff, although this guy couldn't write dialogue to save his life. good lord, every time they started talking, i skimmed to save my life and sanity. but the story itself was cool. yay for non-fiction!