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.

Oh yeah, so this is why I need more angst in my life--so that I can write

Friend A was somewhat offended that Friend B had told all their other friends about her (Friend B's) problems a while ago and only now chose to include her (Friend A) in her confidence. I wrote to Friend B, "Well, now she knows how it feels to be left out of the loop when everyone else knows."

As I typed these words, bitterness I thought I had conquered three years ago welled up like bile in my throat, irrepressible and undeniable. An old wound of betrayal, scarred into an ugly shape; a memory that will never be happy; a thousand regrets. They clog my senses with salted pain. Go away, I whisper. Ghosts of the past have no place lingering in the daylight of today and tomorrow. Go away. The apparition remains. I close my eyes.

Describing something in a beautiful way makes you suddenly realize that what you are describing is actually exquisite. Mmm.

So, grad school: I'm going! Very likely to Yale for a Master's in East Asian Studies, seeing that they've accepted me. Yay! I still have to hear back from several more schools, but chances are I'll choose Yale. On the topic of grad school applications, perhaps I could have saved a lot in application fees if I'd thought out what I wanted to do more thoroughly. But the whole reason I applied to two different types of programs because I couldn't decide, and I wanted the schools to decide for me. Yay fate. Though I applied to thirteen schools (11 MFA, 2 EAS), I didn't exactly have a reach school--with MFA programs, there's no guarantee I'd get into any of them. If I had a school I thought I should get into, it was Yale. And that was mostly because Jeff got in when he applied, and I don't want to think that I'm any worse than him, academically. Hah. But Yale's not a safety school either. Because it's Yale. Obviously. So yeah. Anyways. Yay for having a place to go next year! Yay for East Asian Studies!

...And now I need to stop my brag-fest and get working on my novel before I run out of free time.

Uwwah, okay. I really can't keep up blogs. I don't know how some people do it.

So right now, I'm working quickly through Chapter 5. The plan is to get a first, hasty draft done by my birthday next month, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed, when they're not typing or otherwise engaged.

I applied to 11 MFA in Creative Writing programs and 2 East Asian Studies M.A. programs. So far I've heard from 5 MFA programs: 4 rejections and 1 waiting list. Keeping fingers crossed on the waiting list school. I guess perhaps I aimed too high and underestimated the competition.

NaNo is not going wonderfully. I'm deleting about as much as I'm writing, and I'm just not writing very much because I'm busy trying to figure out where to take the plot, for the umpteenth time, and I'm doing a lot of cutting and pasting of old scene snippets that I've written in the past. Gah.

I reread my novella, and aside from being completely appalled by the writing (although the end was still touching, in my very biased opinion), I noticed two stylistic habits that are still present in my writing today, and that I need to cut down on. One is that I use ellipses too much...Waaaay too much. Go away, ellipses... And the other is attaching two similar-meaning words or phrases together with a comma, such as in, "'Drink,' she urged, pleaded." I guess it adds emphasis and shades of meaning, but it also stands out if overused, and that's bad, if you're trying not to stand out as the narrator.

It's NaNoWriMo month! I'm participating in my own version--50,000 net words for my work in progress is the goal for this month (net words meaning the things I delete and then write in don't count. So if my total word count for my novel at the beginning of this month is 59,365 words, I'm aiming for 109,365 words at the end of this month. Almost double what I have. If it goes well, it should be a very productive month).

Also looking into MFA programs in creative writing and MA programs in East Asian Studies. Should aim to get apps done and ready to send by the end of this month too, somehow...=_= Well, okay. Taking into account the traveling I will be doing in the latter third of the month, within the first couple days of December should be more realistic. I just need to remember things take longer to send from here.