Nearly free!; Nano

Handed in my last assignment for this semester last night! The task was to write 2 x 500 word "critical appreciations" for one poem each from the Renaissance/17th Century and 19th Century. I ended up analysing John Keats' "La Belle Dame sans Merci" and William Shakespeare's "Sonnet 73". I did a lot better with the former than I did the latter...with the "La Belle..." appreciation I had to cut out words, while with the "73" appreciation I was struggling to meet the minimum word count. I had a tiny bit of a temper tantrum towards the end, with time running out and my stress levels rising and my sugar high (the tail of which I am just starting to come down off, by the by...I haven't had so much sugar in AGES, omg) off the freaking charts...I completely blanked on what to say for "73" and ended up just doing a basic breakdown. I'm hoping the "La Belle..." appreciation will carry my mark to a Credit, at least.

Only one more assessment piece to go: an exam for News & Politics, 50 questions, multiple choice. I'll be sitting it on the 15th of November, so I've got two weeks to prepare...I'm going to give actualfax studying a go instead of just relying on my memory and read through all of my notes and readings and the lecture slides. I think it'll be OK...I test a lot better on exams than I do assignments, so it should work out all right.

NaNoWriMo kicked off yesterday! I went to the Kick-Off Party on Sunday at the Roma Street Parklands and met a bunch of really nice people. It was great to meet so many other writers, who I could talk to about insane plots and rogue characters and XKCD and not come off like a freak...it was nice to interact with people, period. Don't get me wrong, I talk to people at uni and at the store and stuff, but actually having conversatons with people and connecting on a level deeper than "yes, I sign with my credit card" was a lot of fun.

Unfortunately, because I spent pretty much all of yesterday writing my assignment, I wasn't able to do any NaNo writing. However! I did have a couple of scenes that I'd jotted down in the couple of weeks between getting the idea and NaNo starting up (because ignoring the scenes because they're a little early is just a waste, really), so I plugged them into Scrivener and ended up with 1291 words! Which is pretty exciting...I've started my NaNo!


yay word count!

There's a write-in on Wednesday that I'm going to go along to, at a Coffee Club in Milton that is apparently down with the whole "swarm of writers descending to buy out all their coffee, take up all their tables, and take over all their power-points" thing. I'm not sure if it will be fun or not...sitting in an air-conditioned cafe, drinking a frappe, and hanging out with other writers whilst I write has got to be a good thing, yeah? *shrugs*

Anyhoodle...it's late, and I need sleeeeeep. Time for bed.

Oh, wait: mum bought a HiFi system today that has a goddamn phonograph. I set it up when I got home from uni and listened to Revolver by the Beatles! Tomorrow I'm going to listen to The Black Parade while I write...it'll be great! : )

And now to bed. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...