A day of reading and little writing

Today wasn't much different from the last two days (yes I know I'm boring). When I began I found myself struggling to get through a single page; I struggled immensely with the editing of my book. So today I spent most of my time reading Inkspell and I even went to Lollicup and free wrote for a time. I did do a little editing, but as I said before today was just not my day. In all honesty I expected the last two days to be the same. Ever since writing a massive botany paper for my science class (my class has been doing college level science this entire year even though we're still in high school; talk about tough) I have been suffering from fatigue and haven't had much stamina for writing. It has been getting better, but once in a while it resurfaces. Now I know that I can't blame my problems on this one school paper, but it did cause me a lot of stress and the final draft was due only about two weeks ago so I can still clearly (or relatively clearly) the stress that I was put under to complete it to my teacher's insane standards.

Another day with hours lost

I didn't get much more work done today then I did yesterday. Today was my step-mom's last day here before returning to California so a lot of my time today was given to her. She says that she'll come back and I hope that she's telling the truth. Luckily I got a lot of editing done. I was intending to research and practice with different writing styles but that didn't pan out. I noticed that yesterday I didn't really take the time to read my manuscript so I went back through the first three chapters and I managed to catch a lot of typos. There were so many that I felt incompetent and illiterate. The upside is that I managed to move my book from 92 pages to 94 pages in a single day. I know that may not be much, but to me it is because I did it all on my own without any outside help (and I miss things like typos and the like easily, it usually takes me several tries to find them). I read some more of Go and Come Back and I even read some of Inkspell by Cornelia Funke. Hopefully Matt will have emailed me back about working together on this project (I haven't managed to check my email yet). Hopefully I will manage to get more done tomorrow. I may drop by my school to check up on my request for funding for the Expedition.

The First Day

My Expedotion has started well enough. I spent most of the day going over the first few chapters of my manuscript. A few hours of my day were lost to spending time with my family. My step-mom came to visit for a few days after a year of being in San Francisco with two of my three step-sisters (including my biological sister, I am one of five daughters. Hey! Fiddler on the roof!). But I have to admit it is not the worst thing to loose my time to. I even spent an hour with my dog in the park playing fetch. I think that the time out of the house allowed me to maintain a clear head during my time at the computer, and is probably the reason my eyes don't sting like hell right now. I spent some time this morning writing/editing while alternatly watching The Darjeling Limited (many of you are probably saying "Pffft! Yeah right! She was totally watching the movie." and you may be right). I also spent some time this afternoon re-reading one of my favorite books Go and Come Back by Joan Abelove (may be misspelled) because how can you write if you don't read. My book is titled The Last Dragon. I have been working on it since the 7th grade (a total of six years). When it comes time to finish it (because the time has to come eventually when I can't work on it any more) I will be more then sad to see it go. This book has become such an important part of my life that I can't think of one where I am not working on it. It has literally become my baby (well not really, but you get the point). I emailed an editor of a publishing company (who also happens to be the step-dad of one of my classmates) that offered to help me edit my book only about 30 minutes ago to try and figure out a plan of how we are going to work together over the next month. Hopefully this Expedition will go well and by the end of it my book will be in a place where I can be proud of it (not that I'm unhappy with the way it is now, but it could be better).