Books! And cleverness! There are more important things.

So just now I learned the difference between "each other" and "one another". I Googled "grammar each other" (I'm the master of Googling for obscure facts -- ask me about the time I Googled "guns heiress house" to great success) and found that website. Each other refers to two people, and one another refers to more than two. So, to say "Rose and I enjoy hanging out with each other when our roommates are gone for the weekend" is correct, but "Lauryn, Shalie, and Monica are all home for the weekend, but if they were here, we'd all be enjoying each other's company" is incorrect. So yeah.

I love learning the proper uses of grammar rules. It makes me feel like I'm one step closer to literary awesomeness.

On another note, this is the last day of January, so I guess it's as good a time as any to stop titling my posts with Harry Potter quotations. Problem is, I don't have a clue how to theme my February titles yet. Sigh.

Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?

Some days, when I'm writing and I get that nagging desperation to just get it out of my head and onto paper (or, less romantically, Microsoft Word), it's really a good thing after all. Because when the time comes that I just want a story to help me escape and the perfect book has yet to present itself, I can always write my own. I'm very thankful for this talent with which God has blessed me.

A day like today is going to need all the distractions I can get in my free time, and I think the happy stress of trying to find just the right word or whatever is going to do the trick quite nicely.

I take my hat off to you -- or, I would, if I were not afraid of showering you with spiders.

I just took my NaNoWriMo 2008 participants' survey. I was so thankful for the opportunity to share with the Office of Letters and Light staff my experience as a first-year NaNo. I might send them a little testimonial about my November and how much their hard work means to me, but then I realize I have made little by way of progress on my NaNovel, and I don't want to have to admit that! =X But I did purchase an OLL t-shirt though, jumping at the chance to get great $10 apparel.

Recalling my November, I got kind of pitifully emotional, and I'm more than ready for it to come around again, serving up a nice, hearty helping of motivation and glorious goal-reaching. What a great team the OLL are.

You sort of start thinking anything's possible if you've got enough nerve.

A read a book yesterday -- Kristin Cashore's Graceling -- which made me feel totally capable of publishing my own YA novel one day. It wasn't that Graceling was bad. It does, however, make me feel much less hopeless. It's a good feeling. And confidence is important.

The mind is not a book, to be opened at will and examined at leisure.

I'm quite confident that my Twitter account holds everything I'll ever need to recount my life in a memoir or autobiography. The updates I send and the conversations I hold through text message with people I have never really met are some of the most honest -- albeit, occasionally trivial on the surface -- notes on a life lived.

I just finished reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith and I have a better understanding of reality. I can't really explain what I mean or how I feel about that book. But if ever I write a memoir, I hope those who read it take away a better understanding of those around them, and the differences in the way others live, and what that means for the world as a whole.

"'Dear God,' she prayed, 'let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry...have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere -- let me be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.'" (p. 421 of my edition)

I hear you, Francie. I hear you.

Time is making fools of us again.

I haven't blogged in a while, as you may have noticed. If you hadn't noticed, let me spare you the inevitable date comparison: it's been about ten days. Which, to me, constitutes a minor failure in the blogosphere.

The thing is, I've had little to say by way of this blog in the past ten days. I haven't been writing at all because of laziness and pure slothfulness -- it's been my last week of Christmas vacation and I've savored it. I've been blissfully distracted by iilwy and the Vultures. It's been glorious.

Also, my computer's been on the fritz. My Microsoft Word freaked out on me and my disc drive technically disappeared off my computer just in time for me to receive my new Microsoft 2007 installation discs in the mail. After a long, hard-fought battle, in which I bravely wrangled and outsmarted a machine, I restored Word to its rightful place on my PC and I'm ready for a new semester at school.

My first semester as an official, honest-to-God English major.

Glorious.