Outly(n)ing Areas
Finals’ time is here again, meaning fire season and impending doom. Things are actually looking pretty light this year, even though this semester holds the record as my worst academic performance pretty much ever. Senioritus is a flaming bitch. I’m actually convinced it hasn’t left me since high school, since most of college as-is has been like, “wait, I have to do work?”
That said–things are continuing to progress with Cloudnigh. Its been so long since I’ve been 100% dedicated to a fresh project like this that I’ve almost forgotten how exciting it is. Better still, is the feeling of streamlining and improvement of process that I’ve gained since the last time I undertook something like this. What’s weird is I’m actually taking to outlining this time. Nothing too restrictive–but something to go off of as I push forward. I’m recognizing that I really can’t just wing it like I’ve done in the past, since I’m actually (hopefully) going to have readers this time and I want to tell a solid story. The outline was actually finished last Sunday night (or early Monday morning, however you want to look at it), leading to a very interesting and demented flight back to Burlington (due to the sleep, of which I only got an hour, not the outline).
What was refreshing was realizing I had a pretty solid idea of the story already, after working on it throughout the summer of 2008, and the little bits I did even further back. Now that I’ve got a shell, my structure, character and continuity problems are a lot clearer, meaning I can now focus on where the story *will go* rather than where it *might* go.
In other news, I finished Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions last night. Without a doubt one of the funniest books I’ve ever read. There’s just something about his depravity that I can identify with–even initially I had no idea if he was just being flippant with his self-insertions, literary crutches, and commentary on the holes in the plot, or brilliant. That, and there were innumerable penis jokes, which everyone knows I’m far too mature to partake in pretty much made the book. I’m going to head back to reading Atlas Shrugged and its numerous philosophical posings and self-absorbed, romantically-materialistic, individual-exalting sex scenes.
Thanks for reading!