If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulder of giants.

Guess who's gonna be a Municipal Liaison for National Novel Writing Month 2009? :D

I'm so excited/overwhelmed/ecstatic. I've already read through the whole ML Guide to Life in lieu of studying for a theology test later this week. I'm ready to see Lynchburg, VA listed among the regions for NaNo '09. I'm so excited to get our forums going so we can all meet one another and plan kick-off parties, write-ins, and TGIO extravaganzas. :)

Now I've just gotta figure out how I'm gonna juggle my most difficult semester ever, a new job, dorm leadership, and writing a novel in November. -headdesk-

Did I mention my current state of combined enthusiasm and distress?

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.

It's been so long since I blogged. This is my third week back at Liberty for the fall semester of my junior year, and I can already tell it's going to be one of the most challenging semesters of my undergrad career. I'm taking:

• Theology 202 at 7:40 a.m. Enough said.
• Western Civilizations, taught by one of the most intimidatingly intelligent history professors I've ever encountered.
• Philosophy 201. One of our textbooks concerns the philosophy behind The Matrix trilogy. Enough said.
• Biology... I would argue "enough said" here, but honestly, my professor is so enthusiastic and really such a great teacher that I'm not really dwelling on the fact that it's a science class.
• World literature -- which is actually the reason I'm blogging now. I have to keep a blog for this class and write a post for each reading assignment we have. Check it out here.

I was thinking I'd have more to say, but that's really enough to bother you with in one blog post. I'm counting down the days until NaNoWriMo begins (60!!!) and trying to keep my head above water. I applied, interviewed, and successfully wrangled a job as a cashier at the Lowe's Hardware Store in town and, in the short term, I picked up my copy of Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins today and intend to read until my world lit class starts in four hours. =)

Live long and prosper, dear blog readers. <3

How sweet I roamed from field to field, and tasted all the summer's pride.

Hello, dear neglected blog readers. It seems I've failed to write a blog post for... well, basically all summer. There are many reasons for this, and, as we all know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, so I'll spare you the more boring excuses and give you the lowdown on the last two months of my life.

I had many ambitions for my summer, and none were terribly far-reaching, so I'll spare you the gory details and instead illustrate for you how the average day in my summer was spent.

1. Wake up sometime between 10 and 11 a.m.
2. Get online.
3. Play games and chat with Vultures.
4. Eat breakfast.
5. Play more games. Chat some more.
6. Do something productive around the house.
7. Hang out with my family.
8. Have dinner. (Most of the time I skipped lunch.)
9. More hanging out with the family.
10. They go to bed. I get online again.
11. Chatting and/or Buffy-watching with the Scooby Gang.
12. Maybe go to bed before 2 a.m.
13. Probably not.
14. Finally pass out and repeat it all again in a few hours.

It may sound terribly boring, but the summer has been a great refresher for the coming school year. (And isn't that the point?) My three-month summer hiatus from Liberty University was interspersed with a lot of travel and a lot of church activities. I didn't work on a lot of concrete writing projects, but my imagination never shut down, and I have lots of outlines going on files all over my hard drive, so there's no shortage of fictional worlds to explore in my writing soon.

I'm really looking forward to NaNoWriMo '09, taking 15 hours of difficult, strenuous classes this fall semester, and possibly juggling a job in there, too. Should be a while ride, eh? I plan to make this blog a little more life-friendly in the coming months, because I've been focusing on the writing aspect of my life and I wish I'd given myself more freedom to ramble about everything else. So that's your warning. :)

Also, as a sidenote, I'm now on tumblr! (http://ashleyscript.tumblr.com/)

Suddenly, it seems as though all the world's a-twitter.

@ashleyyosaurus:
I want to write, but I also want to sleep. I think the compromise is going to sleep thinking about my story, and hoping I dream about it. :]
a few minutes ago from TwitterFox

I'm kind of sick of finding quotes to use for my post titles. So there.

:) <- That's pretty much how I feel right now about my writing. I've done some writing on my summer novel today -- about 1600 words worth -- and it feels really good. I was going to post the intro passage on Ashley Does Writings, but it's lengthy. (To give you non-NaNoWriMos an idea of how long 1600 words is, it's ten times the length of this post.) Granted, in the grand scheme of things, 1600 words is nothing. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is about 190,000 words. The goal for NaNoWriMo novels is 50,000 words in 30 days, and my NaNovel ended up being about 65,000 words.

Needless to say, I won't be posting the entire passage on any blog.

But progress is being made, and while I have to admit, for me, some aspects of exposition are excruciating to work through, and aren't quite going as planned, it's all part of the process, right? And it's not like I have anything better to do with my time. :)

Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous.

// Before you read this, please know that I've avoided writing this post for several days, because it falls under the category of "admitting I'm wrong" in my mind. I certainly don't enjoy admitting I'm failing at something I was previously so excited about. With that said...

Well, in stark contrast to what I'd assumed I'd been doing with my first weeks of summer, I haven't written very much at all. I've been bored to crocodile tears, and finding a job to occupy my time (and give me an activity to, in comparison, make writing seem like an escape) has become impossible. No one wants to hire a college student for two months, when she's just going to leave the state in August. (Oh, I can't imagine why not...)

So, although I'm still constantly dreaming up little clips for my summer novel, and progress could be made by simply writing those down. So I may need to just begin there.

I think this is just a hurdle I'm going to have to get over with old-fashioned perseverance. I'm starting to think, also, that my on pause sort of relationship with the Lord isn't helping my waning interest in my stories.

I love the place; the magnificent books; I require books as I require air.

Last week, as I was packing all my things to come home from college, my mom was appalled by how many books I had accumulated all year. Books, packaged up in cardboard moving boxes, are incredibly heavy and bulky, but I can't imagine having gone all year without those books at school with me.

The problem is, I'd spent way too much money on books throughout the duration of the school term. So I've resolved to not buy a single book this summer. That's how you find me at the public library, where I am now -- I'm going to check out a library book for the first time in years. I missed this place.

Either write things worth reading or do things worth the writing.

This is one of those blog posts which is way overdue, and should have been penned in the -- well, in the heat of the moment. As it is, I've been home for the past few days, recuperating from a particularly grueling semester of college, and tweeting my days away (see below). Thus, a delayed post.

Last Thursday was my first morning home from school. I took it easy and slept in, and my mom and I just hung out and appreciated our time off. The week before, I'd sent out for my free proof copy of my NaNoWriMo novel, the one I was entitled to after writing 50,000 words last November, from CreateSpace. I'd finished putting together the proof online weeks ago, but I delayed sending out for the copy for one reason and another. But, finally, I put in my NaNo coupon code, entered my home shipping address, and squealed with glee.

So on Thursday, when I opened the front door and saw my package, I couldn't believe it was actually the paperback copy of the book I wrote. I tore into it, and there it was, in all its flawed glory. The cover image didn't look quite right, but there was my name! My name on the cover of a book! Oh, joy! Oh, rapture!!

My subsequent tweets (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) tell the rest of the story. It was a very prideful few days, while I carried around the book and waited for anyone to ask me about it. And now, that feeling of having a real, tangible representation of my imagination is driving me onward in my next project, which, for now, is untitled and will be referred to as the summer novel. My goal is to finish, edit, and submit it for scrutiny/acceptance/rejection by the start of August. :D

The bitterness of studying is preferable to the bitterness of ignorance.

Hmm. On Tuesday, I'll take my last final (for theatre appreciation) of my sophomore year. The next day, I'll be home for the summer. The following day -- Thursday -- I will definitely already be bored out of my skull.

The good news is, I already have the story in mind that I'm going to write, per my last blog post. I've forced my roommates and my family to listen to me explain the complicated plot and the backstabbing characters, and they've all feigned a healthy level of excitement about my summer endeavor. I, personally, can't wait.

But for now, I'm still a college student persevering through final exams.

A thought comes... it's a true feeling, a funny feeling. And I get to develop it.

This weekend, I brought my roommate of two years home to see my town and meet my friends. The whole time, I've been looking at my town the way she might be seeing it now, for the first time.

Honestly, this place is beautiful. Right now, everything is alive, and breathing. The trees -- thousands of different breeds, all dreamed up and grown by a creative God -- are lush and green, the mountains, rolling along below sparkling blue skies, are covered in life. My small town is populated by happy people, full of love, and has so much to offer by way of culture and storytelling. It took me two years attending college in another state to drive 200 miles home again and realize all this.

Anyway, I tell you all this not just to make you jealous and wish you lived in northwestern North Carolina, but to share that I'm desperate to write a story about it all. And I think I'm going to spend my summer doing just that. I'll be living here, and experiencing the story to some degree, at least, so it'll be fairly easy to accurately capture what I'm aiming to. I just want to be sure I record the eccentricities of the customs and lifestyles I've grown up with in the south, without being stereotypical -- because there's nothing commonplace about the way I felt today.