How to Be a Muggle in the Most Fantastic Way Possible

So, I haven't blogged for two months; since nearly the end of January, my blogger account says. I've tried a few times, thought I did once, but I guess it never published. How fantabulously annoying.

Hopefully this one will. Not that it has a lot to say, but it would just be nice for me to have a blog update.

Well, there are a few things, both life-altering and not, that are going on right now.

1. I am going to England in 5 days. 4 in one hour. This will probably take up the entirety of the blog, so I will save it for last.
2. I am getting over the longest-lasting cold that I have had in a while, and the first ear infection that I have ever had. I was out sick for four days last week. I have never been out sick that many days in a row before. It was... uneventful, but nice to not have to wake up for seminary.
3. Over the past four days, I have had more than enough opportunity to write my book, which I have taken, but now I just feel discouraged.

So, Number 2. Yes, I've been sick. And, although I'm not "sick" anymore (I have a normal temperature of 98.6 degrees fahrenheit) I still have congested sinuses, an aching ear, bloodshot eyes, a cough, and cannot sustain more than two hours of being up and about. I had to take a nap in the back of the van as my mom went to Costco today, because otherwise I probably would have fallen asleep inside of the shopping cart.

I just want it all to go away. I want to be fighting fit for England, I want to be well-rested and non-congested, but will that happen? Probably not. I will most likely still be exhausted when I touch down in London, because I have 4 days worth of work (which includes over 5 tests) to complete before I leave. This will mean after-school time with teachers that I dislike and staying up late to study for some stinking test that I don't want to take.

Numbers 3 and 1 could both have me ranting for hours, but as Number 1 seems a more relevant connection, I will begin there.

I go to England in 5 days. Me, little old American me, who has never travelled across an ocean and never been to another country without my family, will be leaving for the airport at 4 o'clock next/this Thursday afternoon. My flight leaves at 8:30 from Newark, and from there I will head across the Atlantic Ocean, overnight, and wake up in an entirely different country. Honestly, I don't even know if I'll be able to fall asleep.

Going to England has been my dream since I was small, small enough to think that my English accent was golden and that the British sitcoms that I watched must be funny because they were British. This was even smaller than my smallness that led me to believe that my letter from Hogwarts was still in the mail. I was so disappointed when I had reached September and no owl had flown down my chimney and dropped a letter written in green ink on the envelope on my head. I was not excited to be a muggle. I am still not.

And I'll be in LONDON. For four days. And then I'm riding an overnight train to Scotland! And I'm seeing at least three castles, and riding the ferry to Ireland with attractive rugby players and footballers, and flying Eer Lingus back to Heathrow, and I seem to have skipped Wales altogether, and then I get five more hours in London because of our layover, and when I come back I will be a new person. I will not be one of those Americans who never step outside of the country. I will be free.

I can force myself to stop talking about the Britannia trip now. When I get back? Probably not.

Last, my novel. Okeanos is... coming. Slowly, because I never have time for it. It's getting hard to write, honestly, because I feel like I'm starting to lose a grip on the beautiful things and it's starting to come out as average. That happens, I've found, with a lot of dialogue. It's just discouraging, because I do not want it to be average, another fantasy adventure story in the YA section. I want it to be poetic and beautiful so that no one can make fun of it for being fantasy. Perhaps it's because of my tendency to overwrite.

You're right. These are things to concentrate on when I edit, not as I write. It is only distracting me from the first part of my dream-come-true: write a novel. The editing comes into the second part, publish a novel. Before I leave teenhood. Which is also stressful, because that gives me about a year and a half to write what looks to be a lengthy novel and edit it and find an agent and get a publisher and have them publish it all before I turn twenty. (self-publishing is for losers.)

Actually, if you'd like to read it, what I have written is online, although it's not what you think. It's a website run by HarperCollins, a very successful and well-known publishing house, and it's not like I'm giving them the rights to my book, either. It's also a socializing ground for teen writers from around the world (I've made quite a few friends from England and one from Cyprus, even), which is completely refreshing, to be read and critiqued by fellow wannabe professional writers.

Anywho, just click on this link (it will take you to the website) and click on the Read/View Project link on the side. Don't read the pitches, they make it sound lame and normal.

http://www.inkpop.com/projects/21672/okeanos/

And I don't need to tell you this, but be careful with it, OK? It's my child. I know more things about it than anyone else ever will. I'm not saying that you can't dislike it, in fact I need you to be truthful with me. I demand the respect I deserve, and as a blossoming writer this means that I need honest feedback. That is what you could do to please me the most, tell me why you dislike it and tell me why, because I can still fix it, if I deem it necessary. And do show it to your family, because I love them and trust them, and even friends if you'd like. But this is a piece of me, much like a secret, so don't... I dunno. Flash it around. Keep it close to the chest.

But I do want you to read it, and I do want you to share it if you so choose. And I do want you to print it out and correct every grammar mistake it contains, if that's what would make you happy, or I do want you to tell me that there are too many y/ie/ee endings in the names or that I use too many adjectives and toning it down would work wonders. Because these are things that I've been told and agree with and plan on changing during the editing process.

Alright, you can leave now.

Wordsmith

Today.  It's so cold that the cars look like rocket ships, spitting out smoke from their tail pipes as they climb into the freezing nothingness of space.  Yesterday it was hot and limpid as I learned how to say goodbye.  Last week, I was in third grade, crying as I realized that I was just not smart enough.  Last month, I was crying because I had no words to use.

Now I have words.  Buckets and fistfuls and lifetimes of words.  I have English words and French words and Spanish words and Japanese words and Hawaiian words and happysadgladmad words.  That's a lot more than I had last month.  

Sometimes, I wonder what it will be like, to have a life full of words.  I wonder when I will finally get to the point where I eat words for breakfast, play with words on the swing set, dream about words as if they were my one true love.  I already know that my life is filling with words, from big words to little words to words that I will never speak.  I decided, somewhere between my first Aa Bb practicing to the time in 6th grade when I wrote my first book, that my life would always be full of words.  I love them.  They are everything to me.  They run through my head all day, narrate what I see in front of me as if I am reading an endless story.  "She smiled, thoughtfully.  You could see all of her hopes and dreams in that smile, a great wide door to her soul where her eyes are the windows."  Most of the time I don't even notice them.

It's a lonely profession, wordsmith, because words can be ornery little things, and when they are it can take hours to untangle them from the brambles of distraction and pull out the string of words that you need.  In that way, I was built to be a writer.  I've always been lonely, and usually I sort of like it.  It's only when I'm sitting in my health class or my study hall and everyone around me is talking and laughing and joking and I'm reading a book or wishing that I could write, when I choke on the urge to say, "I wanna be friends, too".  

I like the taste that you get in your mouth when it is bitterly cold outside.  It's like you have a well of freezing water bubbling up from your tongue, so that you're never thirsty and you always have that clear taste.  Water.  I mean, really, how do you describe the taste of water to anyone?  I feel like I'm trying to do that, when I write.  Describing water, or describing the look in a child's eyes, or the way a hand can fit perfectly in another.  It's something you have to know for yourself.

When will my words start being full of life, too?  A life full of words full of life.  When will I be able to write something down, hand it to someone, and when they read it they can taste frost just like I do?  They can come back to me and say, "Wow, that's the best thing I've ever read!  I've never thought about things that way before."  And I can be proud and say, "Thank you" like every gentleperson should, but secretly inside have that narrator saying "Watch her as she smiles.  This author wrote words that touch other people.  She's interacting with hundreds, thousands, millions!  Look at that twinge of pride smirking in the corner of her wrinkly, twisty mouth.  Look at the way she tries to hide it."  When will I be able to meet someone on the street, and say "I wrote a book!"  And they'll say "Oh yeah, I read that!" and then I won't have to be lonely anymore?