I swear I made this post yesterday, but I'm either looking in the wrong place or it's not showing up for some reason... :p
By Kingston, I preferably mean Kingston University, but really to find anyone near me would be cool :D I refuse to believe out of the thousands of participants, not *one* is near me. Nope. (though I did recruit someone in one of my classes today :p)
So, I'm Josie (yes, my username is jozie, that was a password mix-up) Neither's my real name though, lol.
I'm 20, turning 21 during nano.
I'm at Kingston University, doing Journalism and Creative Writing.
This is my fifth nano, and I intend for it to be my fifth win, too :D I have no plan or outline yet and I'm not going to... I tried planning once and found out it's not for me. Seat-of-the-pants-ing, yay!
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50k. 30 days. No Plot? No Problem!
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Okt 6, 2009 - 08 19
Hey! I'm currently at Kingston University myself, surprise surprise. Creative Writing with English Literature, first year!
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Okt 6, 2009 - 08 55
Yay, an answer! Hey :D
I'm a first year, too. (Well, the complicated explanation is "I should be in my second year of Law but I transferred courses so I'm back to the first year"... but yeah :p)
Trying to pick a CW teacher to tell so I can try and advertise it a bit :D
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Okt 6, 2009 - 12 57
Read 'The Visitor' yet? I certainly wouldn't want a grandmother like Mrs. King! ;P
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Okt 7, 2009 - 23 42
Read it? I haven't even bought it yet :p Really need to do that today... I'm not a slacker, honest!
Once I've found out who Mrs King is, I'll let you know :D
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Okt 7, 2009 - 23 43
Finally, I got it :D The Foreword makes it sound nice and depressing, woohoo! [/sarcasm]
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Okt 10, 2009 - 10 37
I thought it was the happiest book I've ever read... ah-hah... yes.
Gah, not really that long till November, and I still don't have a clue what I'm going to write about! xP
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Okt 10, 2009 - 12 32
Lol :p I really need to at least start it tomorrow...
I'm in the "no idea" camp, too. But I can't plan, and I have no willpower against not writing if I know what I'm doing, so that's a good thing :D Except for when I get distracted in lectures because I've just thought of something I could use. Margins are wonderful.
I use nano as a way to write about all the bunnies I've gotten during the year that I haven't managed to play with, so I probably do have some ideas... my stuff's usually YA and about detectives, so I'm pretty predictable :D
Btw, that nano-related email that you hopefully got was from me. And no one's responded to it :-/ It's been 48 hours! Whaddya mean I haven't had hundreds of "I'll do it!"s?! :D
(I received it, so I assume everyone else did, anyway)
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Okt 10, 2009 - 13 02
Aye, that does seem like a good way of using NaNoWriMo. I've got a helluva lot of unused ideas I've practically forgotten in my head, and they're all starting to pop up. xP I tend to jump around a lot with what genre I'm using, though; one moment I'm writing cosmic horror, and then suddenly I've gone into fantasy! I'll just have to see where I end up this year. ;D
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Okt 10, 2009 - 13 32
I always feel guilty for forgetting about those poor bunnies, most of them could probably be really good :( But half the time they're way too complicated for me to handle anyway! :p The main series I'm playing with at the moment went from being one story, to two, to a trilogy... I'm on #9 now :p
Yup, nano's my time for throwing loads of bunnies into one story and not caring about how they turn out :D It's liberating!
I don't often play with other genres. I think the most different thing I ever wrote was my '05 nano, where I played around with magic. That was fun :D I keep meaning to go back and finish it, but it hasn't happened yet...
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Okt 12, 2009 - 03 38
Alright, since there's no one around to bothered by it, I'm just gonna start talking about The Visitor :D
[To everyone else: If you haven't read it and don't want to be spoiled, STOP. Not that there's a terrible lot to spoil.]
I was expecting to find it dull - and the writing style was a little odd, IMO - but it actually wasn't that bad. I managed to read it in about three hours... I need to read it again and make notes of things, but I've read it for a first time :p
It took me about five minutes after I finished to figure out the title - Anastasia was the visitor, in her own home, which is kinda sad :( But at the same time, she comes back, refuses to leave for a while and then just gives up - huh?? Did make for a fun last scene though, lol.
It's probably a bad thing that the part that got to me the most was Miss Kilbride's story and request... way to miss the point of the book :D I can't help it, last requests get to me every time - especially if they're unfulfilled. And I think the fact that the ring was thrown into a bottomless pit is symbolism for the same way their love - or ill-fated relationship - is never going to be fully resolved.
(On an unrelated note, I think I just realized something about myself. I say I'm not a romantic and don't like romance novels, but stories like Kilbride's (not so much the mother and father), Wuthering Heights, Romeo and Juliet... they all get to me. Or maybe that's more a morbid fascination with star crossed lovers, rather than the romance itself :D)
Definitely agree Mrs King was horrible :-/ I can see why she was mostly referred to as "the" grandmother, rather than "my" or "her." Which would probably make me sound horrible for saying I can sort of see what she was saying about bringing the mother back - yes, it's not just a body and she should be with her family, but she's been buried and has a "good" (Catholic) grave, so why dig her up and move her now?
I don't know though... it doesn't redeem her, but later when she has her moment of niceness (unless Anastasia's just desperate and imagines it) and then starts saying "there's no rush to pack, do it later" - did you get the idea that maybe she didn't want her to leave? I started thinking that she *thought* she wanted to be alone with her memories, but after she got used to her granddaughter being around, she didn't want to be left again. Also might have been because her best friend had just died, and she realized how lonely she was.
Was I the only one who found it creepy that she wanted to be buried with her son? Husband + wife + mother/family, maybe, but just mother and son, if he's been married? No. (can't remember right now, but did she want a grave next to him or to be in the same grave? Because same grave would be about the only thing that could be MORE wrong.)
Her and the father sounded similar to Kilbride and her mother, I'm suprised she didn't want them to be buried together :D
Someone told me Anastasia kills herself at the end, and now I'm not sure if they were teasing or I've missed something. Maybe we're supposed to think she gets hit by a car for standing in the middle of the road? Freezes to death? Or was she a ghost the entire time? She does say she's "dead" at one point :D (though that was "dead tired")
**All entirely my own opinion and not intended to start any arguments, just conversation. Feel free to disagree :p**
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Okt 12, 2009 - 14 01
Mrs King, wanting to be buried next to her own son, irked me. There is not one single mention of the grandfather - by the sounds of it, it feels familiar. Anastasia (that's her name right? The "visitor"?) fled with her mother to Paris. Was it the same with the father and his mother Mrs King? Heh, I'm probably not even making any sense. xP I need to read it again, too.
As for Killbride and her last request - aye, that really pulled my strings, especially when Anastasia lobs the ring away. It was her defeatist nature slipping in, I noticed. She had given up by then. I agree with the symbolism, though - such a relationship they had had nowhere to go.
I always felt so uncertain about Mrs King. She was so subtle, and I loved that. She had her "nice" moments, but I felt underlying venom in her words. She's possessive and desperate. The "there's no rush" moment just showed her "clingy" nature. But that's just my opinion! :P
Oh, and by the way, I managed to convince someone in my English Lit. lecture (who's also doing Creative Writing) to take part! Hopefully she'll sign up! Had anymore e-mails from people who are interested? I think there should be a get-together, because everyone knows, writing's a lonely job! ;P
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Okt 12, 2009 - 14 53
Oh good, it was next to her son... that's slightly better.
I think the two main topics of the book are negative (or maybe even lack of) male characters and clingy mothers :p Even Anastasia's mother could be seen as clingy, to a point, she did ask her to join her in Paris.
Anastasia's bad examples of love might be another... a grandfather not important enough to mention, a mother who gets into bed with her rather than stay with her father and then ran away, Kilbride and her guy... the "best" relationship is between Mrs King and the father :P (at least Mrs King loved the son, we don't know as much about the other way round)
I hadn't actually noticed the no grandfather thing... that's a good point. There could be a family tradition of running away from fathers :D (only took a few reads for me to get it. Mostly my fault, I'm half watching The Amytiville Horror - very bad idea, being the wimp that I am)
That's true, she was subtle. But she also didn't really give anyone a chance to argue - did you see how quickly she tried to change the subject from talking about the mother? Or if she wasn't changing subject, she felt awkward about it, cos she went from "she is *not* being brought back, she's a terrible person" to "god rest her soul" pretty fast.
I literally laughed out loud at the "no rush" line. It was so random after she'd been being so horrible, first desperate for the girl to leave and then "don't leave me!" In a way I suppose it could make you feel sorry for her, though... it's either her being clingy or her not wanting to be lonely, I guess it depends on how you look at it. Or how the lecturers decide the best way to look at it is :p
Yay, you got some people. I found two (neither through emails, no) - both in my Journalism class, one's done it before and is doing it again, the other's new to nano and seemed interested... but then wasn't in class today, so I didn't get a chance to pester her about it more :-/ How dare she get sick! :p
Definitely we need to get everyone we can together! Writing might be lonely, but when you're doing the same insane challenge along with 30,000 other people, it doesn't have to stay that way :D
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Okt 15, 2009 - 07 35
Well that felt like a waste of time... buy a book and read it to spend five minutes talking about it in one lecture? I was expecting bit more than that :p (okay, more than five minutes and we can/have to do a review on it, but stiiiiill) Though I guess when we studied books at A-level and sat analysing every sentence, I didn't like that either...
Anyway. In the interests of the thread not dying, thought I'd ask if you'd found anyone else :p I've still only got the two... someone else sounded interested today, but didn't say she'd do it. In fact, the others haven't mentioned it since either :p
And I'm kicking myself for missing the *perfect* opportunity to tell a whole class about it today. We were given a list to tick off "things we'd like to do by the time we leave university" and one of them was write a novel - and stupid me wasn't un-shy enough to go "you can write it next month" when someone chose it :p
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Okt 27, 2009 - 08 03
One more week! Not even, it starts on Sunday :o
Thinking about sending another email around, let people know it's their last chance :D
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