I wrote a 7-page short story in Chinese as my final paper for Chinese class last quarter. Despite coming up with it on the spur of the moment, and despite no one being able to understand what was really going on in it, I thought it had actual potential (the premise: when the world forgets how to read). So tonight I did a quick rough translation of it into English. And whoa. The story idea is still not bad, I think, but whoa. I wince. Everything has to be completely rewritten, starting with the tone. It's one thing to write like a crazy person in Chinese where I misuse and abuse the language horribly, I'm sure, but knowing exactly what I sound like in English, I just can't keep up the crazy person tone for an entire story. That's why there are only short scenes told from K's POV in my novel, and I still have trouble deciding how crazy she should sound.

Also, I need to stop playing mindless games like Minesweeper and this matching game in the HP game Purble Place. Gaaah. Such a waste of time.

Reading a fanfic online tonight, I found I was annoyed by this use of the ellipse: "For the first time, he felt something like...hope." The line already gets its own paragraph. I think there's an implied emphasis on hope even without the ellipse. Let's look at it ellipse-less: "For the first time, he felt something like hope." Much smoother, mmm.