Literary Throwback: Grade 12 Writer’s Craft (November & December)

Third month in, let’s see if things get weirder. I’ve noticed that my handwriting has shifted to exclusively cursive at this point. This makes it somewhat harder to read, but I’ll do my best to decipher everything.

It seems that this folder only contains journals from September to December (and only one entry from the latter at that), so this marks the last post of the very short series of literary throwbacks as I am 99% sure that the rest of the journals were recycled the day after school ended.

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Literary Throwback: Grade 12 Writer’s Craft (October)

Back at it again with the awkward teenage writing journals! This time, we venture into the month of October, when school was still relatively stress-free …

Literary Throwback: Grade 12 Writer’s Craft (September)

Recently while I was cleaning out parts of my room, I stumbled across a folder of old journals from my Writer’s Craft class from four years ago, when I was in my last year of high school. I thought it might be fun to share them with you over the next few days in their relatively unedited format. But first, for a bit of background.

You might ask yourself, “Why share old high school work? There better be something brilliant in there!” Well, there is a reason and it will sound sappy, but there’s something about it that compels me to put these journals out there.

Recently Played Visual Novels and Thoughts On TyranoBuilder: Visual Novels Galore!

This is sort of a hybrid post, considering I don’t have too much to say about the three programs I am about to discuss, but I’d like to get my thoughts out there.

On today’s program (what), we have:

• Cursed Sight

• Asphyxia

• TyranoBuilder Visual Novel Studio

(links to Steam store pages)

Around the time I bought Hatoful Boyfriend: Holiday Star (link to my review), I also picked up a few other visual novels (VNs) including two shorter titles, Cursed Sight and Asphyxia alongside the second chapter of Higurashi (which I have yet to play–it’s the sort of thing you save for when you’re in the right head space). As I mentioned in an earlier post on visual novels, I’ve grown more selective when it comes to which visual novels I purchase. Ever since I picked up Dysfunctional Systems: Learning to Manage Chaos only to find out that the team who made it had disbanded and were not planning on releasing the latter parts of the story, I’ve been careful to check Steam reviews as well as game release dates. Oftentimes, if a VN installment came out a few years ago and there has been no news from the developer, chances are you’re never going to see the rest of the story and it will become one with the pool of cliffhangers plaguing the Steam store.

Luckily for me, both Asphyxia and Cursed Sight are finished. However, I feel that they represent two ends of a spectrum in terms of “serious”, non-dating sim VNs. By serious I mean ones that don’t revolve around breaking the fourth wall constantly with jokes and gags–these ones are the polar opposite of the dreaded One Manga Day (free on Steam, but regrettable nonetheless). They both tell a story and are good in their own ways, but since they are quite different, why not throw them together in one review post?

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Oh, NaNoWriMo

Way back in 2011, I ventured out of my comfort zone and into the realm of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). For those who don’t know what it is, NaNoWriMo is a month-long writing challenge wherein participants set out to write a 50,000 word novel during November. Sounds daunting, yes? The recommended average word count per day is only 1,667 words, but that can get onerous after the first few days.

I completed it successfully only twice and attempted it once more after those two successes, only to “fail”. But, thinking about it, I realized the other day that essentially there is no way to fail NaNoWriMo. Not when you think about what the challenge really is.

Thoughts from Class Readings

Seeing as I am swamped with readings, I thought I’d share a fun nugget of wisdom that made me chuckle. I’m currently in a “Modern Chinese Prose” class and, for the most part, I feel like a fish out of water. However, sometimes the translators manage to phrase things in such a way that everything feels more familiar and less distant … seeing as I cannot speak Cantonese or Mandarin and cannot read the Chinese characters of the original essays.

“The writer is commendable for his modesty: while knowing how to get ahead in the world, he refrains from hankering after social position and eschews complacency with his lot. In truth, the writer’s own view of himself is sometimes more scornful than that of the ordinary outsider looking on. He finds it singularly annoying that he is a writer and goes to great lengths and with considerable expenditure of words, labor, time, and paper to prove how unwilling and dissatisfied he is to be a writer.”

— Qian Zhongshu, “On Writers” (trans. by Philip F. Williams)

Modes of Writing: I saw Fury Road, but I can’t write about it

The other day, I went to see Mad Max: Fury Road. I really, really wanted to write a post about it and eventually I will, after I hopefully see it again. Why do I need a second viewing? Well, aside from wanting to experience all of it again to a) capture more details and b) enjoy every bit of the film anew, I need to watch it in a different way in order to write about it for a post. This might sound odd, but humour me.

Thoughts On: Finding Motivation

This post comes to you from a lack of motivation. I have three posts sitting in the drafts section and, while I could finish them, I can’t find the drive to write them right now. So, for the purpose of having something for you, I thought I’d talk about my struggles with becoming and staying motivated. This won’t be the most entertaining post in the world, but there will be more game-related posts during the week when I pick up the two drafts I’ve been working on. The third installment of my East Asian studies series will be out next Sunday.

I was diagnosed with ADHD in 2013. Some people with ADD/ADHD find that only their work (academic and/or professional) is compromised by their condition. For me, my whole life is affected. If I don’t put something in my calendar, I will likely forget about it. Important items need to stay in the same place or be in a place of extreme visibility. My medication has to be in the same place each morning or the likelihood of me almost forgetting to take it increases significantly. Nearly every time I’ve set something in a specific location “so I don’t forget it”, it will probably be left behind. I’ve recently changed the sounds on my alarms so that this week when I start my summer courses, I won’t drown out the sound of the alarm and fall back asleep. Getting out of the nearly-nocturnal sleep schedule I’ve been in since the end of last term will be a struggle during these first few weeks of school.

Why am I telling you this?

Creative Writing is Hard

Note: my creative writing efforts will likely surface on here at some point, but for now I decided to write about them instead.

I’ve been surrounded by books my entire life. My mother is a huge bookworm and was a really good reader from a young age – she has a picture of herself reading the TV guide when she was only two years old (actually reading it, not just flipping through). My father was also a bookworm growing up, as were all of my grandparents. Heck, nearly everyone in my family likes to read. As you’d expect, my sister and I followed suit. For both of us, a love of reading turned into a love of writing and creating stories. Over the course of my childhood, adolescence, and now into my adulthood, I’ve honed that excitement for the written word into a skill that isn’t too shabby.

That being said, writing is hard. Really, really hard.