It it that time already?

So here I am. I am back after a long period of not writing, and I have brought a new blog layout and style with me.

It is Summer once again, and I am back at my summer job. Once again I'm working with bats, and I'm in the process of getting rabies shots that will let me work with live animals! This is exciting. Right now I'm doing work with analyzing pictures of wings with a high school volunteer my age. I'm having a lot of fun with it, even though I'm only two days in.

I love being on the 'cutting edge' of science even in a small way. It is interesting to note that the cutting edge is made of a lot more duct tape and zip ties than one ever imagines watching the discovery channel. Labs? Not the shiny white places that you have been led to believe. Offices? messy, filled with all sorts of odd things, from bags labeled 'skeletons,' (no, really) to comics, to origami bats. Or plush ones. Or wire ones. Or paper ones. There is a certain theme in the lab I am working in. I occasionally make a game of counting how many bats I can see from the place that I am sitting at any given time. The number is often in the twenties.

In terms of writing: the project is going well. I am now writing eight hundred words a day, which feels a little crazy since it is not november. I have 72162 words, not counting today's. That is, I suppose, pretty respectable.

Recently I have been working on a story about a pair of girls who go on a trip at the end of their time in high school. they split up on bad terms at the end of the summer, and do not talk for fifteen years. The story takes a break there, and picks up with the girl who walked off. She had decided to go on a trip to find her friend. I have more than twenty thousand words on that story, and I am pretty excited about where it is headed. I also write nonfiction pieces that are reflections on myself and my life pretty regularly.

Finally, on the academic front: I have finished Junior year of high school. Finally. It was long, hard, dreadful some might say. But I finished it, and I passed everything, even getting a solid B in Physics. I have signed up for five AP courses next year, and I have summer homework in five courses, including German four but not AP Statistics. Senior Year will be an adventure to say the least.

I have decided that I am not so sure about engineering, but that I might like to major in English literature, after loving my junior research paper. I wrote about feminism in Shakespeare's play, Cymbeline. Have I mentioned that I love Shakespeare? I do.

I have done some college visits, and right now Smith and Mt. Holyoke are my favorites. Who knows where I will actually end up.

Earth Day and Hedging our Bets

Today, April 22 is Earth Day. People have decreed that on this day everyone will think about our world and protecting the environment. Technically, the people who made the decree, and are therefore most likely to follow this decree already cared. However, it does raise awareness, and it gets people who do want to help the earth but do not place it as their number one priority to think about it.
This is great. It is really, truly, awesome. However, there is a problem, because some people, a lot of people still slip through the cracks, so to speak. There are a lot of people who do not, for example believe in global warming. Earth day is never going to convince them. That is the realistic truth.
The problem is that it is very easy for people to believe what they want to believe. We do it all the time, and a quick glance at a history book is all that is needed to bring this fact into sharp, painful focus. The world did not want to believe that human beings of any sort could commit the sort of atrocities that the Nazis committed on the Jews of Europe. So they refused to see it. Look at the papers today. What do you not see? Stories about Joseph Kony’s child soldiers. Because the world would rather not know.
So global warming cannot be real. The first reason that people do not want to believe it is simple, and it is basic to human nature. The terror of devastating floods has been a part of our psyche for as long as we know. Look at stories like Noah’s Ark. Many cultures have similar myths about giant floods. It is a fear common across all places. And if global warming is real, then floods are our future.
Because as the polar ice caps melt, the waters of our oceans will rise. There are only so many places that the water can go. Not to mention that other phrase, climate change. More storms, and worse ones, are the predictions for our future. If global warming is real, then there are events on our horizon that will be a little too close to apocalyptic for comfort. It is much nicer to believe that humanity is safe.
There is, naturally, a second, less basic, more selfish reason that people do not want to believe in global warming at least as something caused by man. If it is our fault then there are certain basic practices that we have to stop. And no one actually wants to give up modern conveniences. Moreover, many people are deeply invested in current fuel methods, or do not want to have to do or pay for research to find other power sources.
This means that the idea that global warming is either not real, or at the very least not our fault is very popular. But it is not necessarily anything more than wishful thinking.
To my mind, it does not really matter whether our use of fossil fuels is causing a global warming trend. Regardless, I think that we should be working on reducing carbon emissions.
The things is at least from where I am, in a spot that it uncomfortably close to sea level, that it would really be a very bad thing for our coastlines to start disappearing. It does not matter whether or not we cause it. It will still be a bad thing even if it is natural. Therefore, I figure that even if we were pretty sure that it was not our fault, if there is even the smallest, tiniest chance that we can at least slow down the danger, we ought to take advantage of that. Even if it does not work, at least we tried.
Second, reducing carbon emissions seems to me like something that makes sense anyway. I assume that I am not the only one who notices that the air in cities, where there are lots of cars and factories, smells less clean, and is harder to breathe. It seems that in the interest of continuing to breathe oxygen we should be trying to work on that, rather than adding to the problem. Personally, I like breathing clean air.
But maybe that’s just me.

Quick post:

So, here I am. I've been writing for seven days, averaging a little more than 1000 words per day for a total of 7690. It's fun not having a requirement for the day, and working on a bunch of different stuff. I don't know if I'm going to start another novel, but I've got a few characters that are starting to talk, so we'll see. I may write more later tonight.

day three, and what am I thinking

So here I am, day three. It's terribly exciting, except for the part where it really isn't. Because the thing is, I've done this before, at least sort of. If I make it past a month, then I can be proud, until then, I"m not writign as many words as I did during NaNo, so what is there to brag about? Except that this is different. Today I wrote a descriptive-type essay about my thoughts on words. It is not particularly long, nor is it really very coherent, but it had a lovely extended metaphor comparing words to a river that catches you up and sweeps you along until you surface for air, gasping for breath. At least, that's sometimes how it is for me.

It's different from spending a month working on a novel. When I did that I got incredibly wrapped up in the story. Everything became fuel for my book, and everything reminded me of it. Now I'm not just writing one big story. This time it's a lot of little things. This time it isn't about the content so much as it is about the act, and that turns out to be way more different than I expected. I will probably do some more work on the novel at some point this year. Really, with 365 days to fill, and an unfinished novel, I don't see how I could not. But it won't be the only thing, won't be the only focus.

That thing I just did up there? Where I used that comma to create something that maybe is not the most gramatically correct sentence? I'm discovering that that is a part of my 'voice' as a writer, something that really excites me. I'm discovering that I have a style, and that makes me feel like maybe this writing thing isn't as crazy as it seemed.

Now for the what am I thinking. As you know, I'm a nerd, and a bit of an overachiever in school at times. Next year I'm considering doing five AP classes. I could just do four, and not take Statistics in addition to Calculus, but knowing that there are people taking five AP classes and that I'm not one of them, that kind of bothers me. So here I am. Be forewarned. You'll be getting updates on this all year.

Well, I'm off to a great start. I wrote a 2421 word story today. It's in first person, with an unidentified speaker, telling a story from its (the gender was not made clear, and I refuse to use the abomination he/she, and they is plural) childhood. They are telling a somewhat rambling story about having seen a fairy, so it's obviously entirely fictional, but it was fun, and a little more into the realm of the real world than most of the stuff that I write.

One logistical note: I'm counting the writing that I do here on this blog.

Summary wordcount day two: 3274.

My Challenge to Me

So. Here I am. I haven't written in a long time, but I don't apologize. I've done a lot over the past few (or many, depending on your definition) months, and there are only so many hours in a day. Physics is as bad as I expected, and my other classes aren't exactly easy. I wrote 50,000 (actually more) words of my novel this November, winning NaNoWriMo for the second time.

And really, that brings me to the reason that I'm updating today. I am going to start blogging again, because I've started a project of my own. It isn't quite like NaNo, but it's similar. For the next year, from now, until February fifth, 2011, I plan to write at least a little every day. It can be an essay for English, more of my novel, a short story, or a personal essay. It can be one hundred words, or several thousand. My only requirement will be that there is writing. This blog will document these words. I'll probably be keeping track of what I write and when, and I may post it on this blog.

I feel that there is a certain nice symmetry in starting this today. Three months ago, to the day, was November fifth. I was still getting into the swing of a school year that is harder than I expected, and I expected a lot. I was struggling with Physics, and honestly feeling lonely. I had concluded that I could not do National Novel Writing Month this year, not with all of the time that I had to devote to homework. I laid aside plans to write, to never miss a NaNo again after last year, my first. I did my homework. But I could not stop thinking about writing. I wanted to do it. I was going crazy with my work load, but on that friday, November fifth, I came home and sat down to write.

It was not an awesome English class that inspired me, as you might expect. It was not talking to a friend, a teacher, a family member who encouraged me. Instead, it was a chemistry lab. My partner and I made a really great density scale, to the point that the rest of the class was coming over to gaze at it in awe. Well, that may be a slight exageration, but they were impressed, so I would argue that the point stands. I was ecstatic. It had worked, and it had done so at jus the right moment. That afternoon when I sat down to write, I started by doing 1000 words. Then I went to dance. Then I came home and wrote another two thousand words. I wrote three thousand more each on saturday and sunday, and on the 28th of November I hit 50,000 words two days early, even though I had started five days late.

So now, sitting in my room, tapping away at my computer, I am setting myself a challenge three months later. I haven't written anything, not really, since the first few days of December. But now I will. Now I am going to write every day. I'm going to do it for a year, and I'm going to do it because even though that month was hard in some ways, and really busy, it was sort of worth it. Because I have never felt as alive as I did during these past two Novembers. Because writing really is what makes me tick in some basic sense that I can't explain to save my life. But maybe by writing I'll learn how. So here I am. I'm announcing my plan, even if I'm saying it to a world that isn't listening. And I'm doing that because I have to. Because I have to tell someone, even if someone is really no one. Because now that I've told you, I have to do it. Because I can't back out, I can't quit. I don't have it in me. If I did, I would be out of physics by now.

So here it goes: A yearlong project started on a date that doesn't matter, to do something that the world will not look at. I, Emuroo, will write something every day for the next year. I will post some of it for you to see, and at the end I'll tell you how much there is, even if you aren't there. It'll be awesome.

That stuff you see up there? That's day one.