And the search goes on...

The search, that is, for my inner muse to emerge and finally drive my creativity. I'm feeling a little distracted, and sometimes it really frustrates me that I can't focus.

You have no idea how many hours I'd spend going through my music library and just staring at a blank page (or screen, seeing as I'm using MS Word). Or I just end up book-licking over again, editing and revising sections of my novel at a time without actually getting anywhere.

On the plus side, though, I found some more cool music to listen to.

I'm really loving B.o.B.'s "Airplanes," featuring Hayley Williams of Paramore. I don't usually listen to rap, mostly because they're all the same to me, what with all the references to money and cars and "sexy bitches." I'm so glad B.o.B. is different and actually talks about things that are more positive in his lyrics, and even respects women (hence, his song "Nothing On You")! I'm looking forward to listening to his other songs.

And OH MY GOSH. I can never get tired of Tegan and Sara. Their music never ceases to amaze me. If you ever get a chance, try listening to "Fix You Up," "Alligator," "I Won't Be Left," and "Downtown."

I was also doing a random Google search for cello rock bands -- bands that use the violin or cello in their music along with the staple electric guitars of rock. The curiosity came out of my fascination with the band that composed the theme song for the tv show Angel, called Darling Violetta. But when I checked out the other bands, they didn't really WOW me as much. Until I discovered Darlingside (don't ask me why these bands like to have "Darling" as part of their band name... there's another one I know of called "Daughter Darling," but getting back to my point...). So I checked out Darlingside's website and listened to some of their songs. My favorite turned out to be the lovely and mellow sounds of "Surround" (below, via Youtube).



Isn't this calming? :)

I also don't normally listen to Coheed and Cambria (not really a big fan of heavy metal sounding bands), but their song "Far" totally blew me away. Puts me in a daydream-y kind of mood.



It's kind of romantic -- in a sweet, vulnerable, yet powerful way.

Another band that I found is called The Letter Black. They mostly do Christian rock. The female lead singer has some pretty amazing vocals. My favorite song from them is called "Best of Me."



I love how sad, strong, and optimistic it sounds all at the same time. Check out the chorus:

"I swear, You're the only reason I keep breathing
I swear, You keep on giving me the reason to keep believing
Finally I'm worth it, though I'm not perfect
It still feels right, and I keep on giving
Trying to make a difference, in my life
But I know another way to show
Everything I can be for You
You're all that I'll ever need
I'll give you the Best of Me"

The lyrics are awesome!

And if you're in the mood for groovy, funky tunes, try listening to this band called The Colour Experience. Yes, that's 'Colour' with a U, like the British way of spelling it. They're on Purevolume if you're interested in layers of dynamic tunage. "Retronics" is particularly interesting. ;)

Moving on to books... in my next post (just thought the topic deserved a post of its own).

Blogger Can Suck Sometimes

I hate this. I'd just finished writing a rather lovely and motivational post about my newfound purpose to pick myself out of the slacking-off gutter and to finish this semester with a bang. Then I clicked "Publish Post," as usual. But did any of what I thoughtfully wrote out appear?

NO.

Instead, I got redirected to a page that said, "Please sign into Blogger." So I thought to myself that okay, this is no biggie. Just sign in and the post will show up because it's been auto-saved. But did this actually come to pass?

UGH.

So I'll be short and sweet -- Blogger fails!

A tip for future posts, and something that me as an idiot should have done after writing a post:

Always copy & save what you've written and put it onto Microsoft Word before pressing "Publish Post." Otherwise, if Blogger decides to have another trusty brain fart, you might lose your paragraphs of cleverly and poignantly written insights.

But Blogger's brain farts aside, I just wanted to say that I'm going to try hard to finish this semester with a bang -- which means I'm going to have to suck it up and finish all the homeworks and chapters I missed in my Stat Methods for Psych class (thank goodness my professor's letting us hand in homeworks late!). Where did this new sense of motivation come from?

Frankly, I'm getting tired of feeling burned out, induced to a catatonic stupor. I refuse to be a walking zombie. So consider me a zombie arising.

Most of this motivation came from registering for Fall 2010 classes today. I have to go to school on Saturday from 9AM to 4PM for Experimental Psych, but at least I get Mondays, Wednesdays, and a good portion of my Thursdays free. And I'm getting some General Education Requirements out of the way, so that's another plus. And I'm taking a couple of classes where I know at least one person, so it won't be that lonely. I just hope I'm motivated and inspired to learn next semester.

A Scrambled & Fried Brain

Hello again, blog. I'm sorry I've neglected you. I really did mean to write more posts... but I've been busy. How busy?

Good question.

One test after another can really fry your brains out. Don't even get me started on my utter lack of motivation to crack open my Statistical Methods in Psychology textbook and take a stab at my homework. I'm already three homeworks behind. I'm just grateful that my professor is a really understanding guy who'd rather be lenient than a hard-ass toward his utterfly confused students (which is to say, pretty much my entire stat class). I also sometimes feel stupid around my classmates who frequently participate in class discussions. It's like they have a weekly subscription to Psychology journals and read all the articles cover to cover. Is that something I should be doing? Am I showing enough interest, enough effort in my major?

Doesn't this remind you of Coraline? Yikes.

Is it really horrible that I'd rather write stories than read my psychology textbooks at this point in the semester? Or that I'd rather watch TV instead of write a review for my theatre class on a low-budget mediocre Hunter College Theatre performance of Brecht's Threepenny Opera?

I'd sooner sleep than study.

Don't get me wrong. Theatre is really a creative form of art -- in fact, it's the synthesis of the arts. But there are some plays that I have no interest in. Other times, I have nothing particularly interesting to say about a performance. Sometimes I'm just annoyed at the actors and grumpy at the director for an over-ambitious overarching metaphor for a play. Just tell the story without the hokey gimmicks, dammit! Give me something I can relate to, something I can really enjoy thinking about.

And okay, here's my ditty about my chosen major... Psychology and all its subfields are very intriguing -- really, it's an eye-opening subject to empirically explore the boundaries of people's thinking patterns, behaviors, emotions, and interactions with other people. But I can't see where my life is leading in terms of a career I want to get out of it. A clinician? A researcher? A guidance counselor? A therapist? Thus, the dilemma of having too many choices.

And the dilemma of not having much of a choice -- I wanted to be an English major. But there's not much of a career you can make out of a BA in English Literature, aside from teaching (which I don't think I have the patience for) and publishing (which I wanted to try, but the typical salary doesn't really pay well enough to cover rent in NYC).

So the compromise would be to become a psychologist and write novels on the side. But I really don't know how that'll turn out. I just told my dad the premise of my book this morning. He knew I was working on a manuscript, but I never told him what it was about until today. I know I should take his technical questions as a way to challenge myself and come up with innovative ideas to tell a story about mythical creatures that have become as cliche as Santa Claus in contemporary pop culture.

Suppose you combine the two salient pop culture images into one mega picture of human imagination:

Pretty darn frightening, no?

I seriously think I have something original going. Not the vampire Santa hybrid creature, but my story.

I know that my dad was really just trying to help me by offering different perspectives on some of the key details (like, what kind of human in his/her right mind would attack and pillage a group of dragons? or how exactly does a dragon shape-shift? or how will a dragon blend in with humans?). Really, they're good questions that I have to work through in order to get my story's details straight. But I have this nagging feeling in the back of my mind that the novel I've been working on sounds completely ridiculous.

I felt so embarrassed talking about it with my dad. Probably because he's not the kind of person who would pick up a sci-fi or fantasy novel right off the bat at the bookstore. He's the kind of reader who enjoys reading books written by Sidney Sheldon, Sue Grafton, Tom Clancy, Isabel Allende, or Kahlil Gibran. He reads everything from religious perspectives and philosophies, to ghost-written James Bond adventures and Alexander McCall Smith's Ladies' No. 1 Detective Agency.

Only occasionally will my dad voluntarily select a novel to read from my book shelf. I'd even gotten him to read Airhead and all the books from The Mediator series by Meg Cabot. He even read a few titles that I bought in middle school from the Scholastic bookfair, like Carolyn Meyer's Young Royals series about the Tudors (which, by the way, got me interested in learning about European history when I was 10 years old).

But he's never picked up In the Forests of the Night or Shattered Mirror by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes. Nor did he even bother picking up any fantasy novels I happened to borrow from the public library (like the Wicked Lovely series by Melissa Marr or the ). My dad enjoyed watching the Harry Potter films, but it wasn't something he would try reading. He didn't really understand the sweeping epic of Lord of the Rings. Ditto with Tim Burton's kooky, fantastical films like The Nightmare Before Christmas or Sweeney Todd.

I guess some people's suspension of disbelief can't stretch that far. Which I suppose is the reason why I felt embarrassed telling my dad about the premise of my book. He looked at me the entire time as though he had no idea what the excitement's all about.

"You need to make it sound really believable," Dad said, "otherwise an editor might not be willing to publish your story. Fantasy's okay, but you need to make the story relatable to your readers and have a very lovable main character so that your readers will keep buying your books."

Thanks, Dad. I already knew that. But he does have a point.

I'm hoping that my book comes out as a Young Adult novel, considering that my protagonist is a teenage girl who's only just realizing her heritage and her potential despite her angst and anxiety over fitting in with the rest of the world. Though there's some romance, but I wanted it to be more of a coming-of-age story, a kind of bildungsroman. I'm not sure my readers would love Danica right away -- she's whiny, angsty, pessimistic, and has a frequent tendency to overreact. But I hope that by writing her story, she'll grow into a strong, wise, independent woman.

Right now, though, I can't really think. I don't exactly have writer's block, but I'm stuck. I'm having some trouble writing a fight scene. Mostly because I can't really get into the mood of the moment. Sounds pretty flaky, but there are certain things you have to be in the right emotional state and mindset for, otherwise your work will end up sounding like crap. Lately I haven't been able to fully immerse in that creative mode. Blame it on school, on other responsibilities taking a toll on my mind. So I end up not feeling it, despite my efforts to find fast, aggressive, heart-pumping, adrenaline-rushing music to write to on Google.

Suffice it to say that a majority of my search yielded less than savory results. I hate power metal (sorry, metalheads) and rap really isn't the kind of vibe I'm looking for with this particular fight scene.

Take this scene from The Vampire Diaries, for instance:

How does a writer put the Salvatore brothers' (and their enemies') emotions and actions into suspenseful, words?

But I did manage to find some cool tunage to occupy my caffeine-induced neurons as I wrote. Like the theme music from Angel (YES, the vampire that David Boreanaz used to portray before becoming Agent Seeley Booth in Bones) and Buffy the Vampire Slayer or the ominous-sounding score from Batman: The Dark Knight. I also really like the dark, romantic mood of Michael Nyman's "The Heart Asks Pleasure First/Promise" from the movie The Piano (I think it goes by either title; not sure about that).

In no particular order, here's the music that gets me through writing the fight scene (or any scene in my story for that matter):

• Pony (It's OK) by Erin McCarley
• The Breakdown by Alexz Johnson
• Ruthless by Something Corporate
• Syndicate by The Fray
• Over My Head (Cable Car) by The Fray
• When You Were Young by The Killers
• Sick Cycle Carousel by Lifehouse
• Practice Makes Perfect by Cute Is What We Aim For
• Naive by The Kooks
• Sunrise by Yeasayer
• The Con by Tegan & Sara
• No One Sleeps When I'm Awake by The Sounds
• Disturbia by Rihanna
• Feel It In My Bones by Tiesto featuring Tegan & Sara
• Rooms On Fire by Stevie Nicks
• Fader by The Temper Trap
• Naked by The Goo Goo Dolls
• Reinventing Your Exit by UnderOath
• Howl by Florence + the Machine
• Drumming Song by Florence + the Machine
• Hemorrhage by Fuel
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer Theme
• The Sanctuary (Extended Remix) by Darling Violetta [Angel theme]
• The Heart Asks Pleasure First by Michael Nyman
• Aggressive Expansion by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard

Of course, this list is still subject to change according to my mood and crazy as this might sound, my characters' moods. If you want to hear the playlist, check out the "Tunage" tab underneath "Turn the Pages." Hopefully you'll find some artful arias to inspire you as well.

In case you haven't noticed yet, I pretty much changed the layout of my blog again. ;)

So there you have it, friends -- another rambling from a girl who currently has addled brain cells from reality scrambling and frying her mind to anxiety-ridden putty. Still recovering, but coping well enough.

More later, lovelies.

Love, Save the Empty...

My friend Liliana wrote a very insightful entry examining the overemphasis we place on investing our time and devotion to someone who just won't reciprocate our feelings. Originally, I meant for the following information to be a comment on Lily's post. But seeing as I exceeded the limit on typed characters in the comment box, I decided not to let it go to waste. So here it goes...

Most of us live under the delusion that it's better to have loved than to not love at all. Or some variant of this statement.

Right now, I'm reading this book called Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, and I was both surprised and amazed at the fact that this woman has gone through much of what Liliana discussed in her blog entry (it's Gilbert's memoir). Liliana's post post reminded me of it, and I felt that I have to share this excerpt from the book with you, because I think it's terribly relevant (pages 65-66):

"I barely had an adolescence before I had my first boyfriend, and I have consistently had a boy or a man (or sometimes both) in my life ever since I was fifteen years old. That was -- oh, let's see -- about nineteen years ago, now. That's almost two solid decades I have been entwined in some kind of drama with some kind of guy. Each overlapping the next, with never so much as a week's breather in between. And I can't help but think that's been something of a liability on my path to maturity.

Moreover, I have boundary issues with men. Or maybe that's not fair to say. To have issues with boundaries, one must have boundaries in the first place, right? But I disappear into the person I love. I am the permeable membrane. If I love you, you can have everything. You can have my time, my devotion, my ass, my money, my family, my dog, my dog's money, my dog's time, -- everything... I will give you all this and more, until I get so exhausted and depleted that the only way I can recover my energy is by becoming infatuated with someone else.

I do not relay these facts about myself with pride, but this is how it's always been...

Dear God, I could use a little break from this cycle, to give myself some space to discover what I look like and talk like when I'm not trying to merge with someone... When I scan back on my romantic record, it doesn't look so good. It's been one catastrophe after another. How many more different types of men can I keep trying to love, and continue to fail? Think of it this way -- if you'd had ten serious traffic accidents in a row, wouldn't they eventually take your driver's license away? Wouldn't you kind of want them to?"


So there. We all want to believe that something as wonderful and as magical and as powerful as true love exists. We go out searching for it, trying to confirm this bias, trying to persuade ourselves that things will get better (even if they hardly ever do). Sometimes we just end up settling. Why?

Because it's better than considering the alternative -- the thought of being a single complete human being, independent of another person's heartbeat pulsing. In other words, we mistake being single for being alone. For being lonely and forlorn, for being utter romantic failures. And this hurts like a bitch.

Then comes the cycle of self-pity, of self-deprecation, of self-doubt in one's self-worth. But what, praytell, is the SELF?

Who is this "I," this "me," this "my," this "mine"? WHO?

I don't know if this is the case for most people, but I think that's the central problem here. Often, we lose our sense of self because we "disappear into the person [we] love." We're fools who can't see anything of consequence until the cracks break right in front of us.

So maybe, like Miss Gilbert has realized and implies in her book, we have to find ourselves first and come full circle before we give of ourselves completely to that person.

As far as I can tell, Love -- in its truest, sincerest form -- displays symptoms of dissociative identity disorder (or split-personality, if you will). Despite the flaws and the petty fights, Love will still cherish, adore, and care unconditionally for as long as Love is welcome to stay.

We just have to learn to let Love BREATHE for a change. Forcing it will only make Love bitter and declare war on us. Best not to aggravate it. Love's fatigued and overworked as it is. ;)

The Mini New Year -- Easter Greetings

There's something to be said about Easter. I don't mean the cute fuzzy chicadees or the cuddly bunnies surrounded by baskets of colorfully painted eggs, nor do I mean the holiday hubbub that the media and commercialized advertising talk about. I mean Easter, the day that Christ emerged from the tomb, totally alive and shining in all his divine glory. I think of it as a mini-new year. A new beginning. A fresh blank page on that book, that roadmap to the rest of your life.

I guess it's probably the sunshine that's been gracing NYC's pavements this past week, shining brightly and warmly through windows, begging us to venture outside and do something with our lives. Or at least, take a walk and breathe in all that is Spring. Dog-poop and garbage bags on the sidewalk aside.

But I'll let the sun drip its after-effects my brain, as long as I'm feeling as close to content and complete as possible for the moment. I've been worrying too much about deadlines. What an awful word, tinged with the sinking feeling of finality and certain doom. Just think about it. Go on...

Dead. Line.

Even better -- try out the plural form for size. Dead. Lines.

Try saying it again, just for good measure. Deadlines.

It's more than enough to make you want to shriek "ICK!" and shudder, perhaps even lock yourself in your room and cower in a corner so that painful pest called Panic and its best buddy Dread won't find you. What a wonderful way to murder one's good mood.

But you know what? That Deadline can just dig its own grave and crawl in it. Time's already wasted as it is.

So rather than get cranky and catankerous over the lack of time we have in our lives, maybe we should figure out how to better spend the time that we do have. No doubt, we should learn to become open-minded, open to new experiences, to novel ideas, to the unknown waiting to be unfurled. Should is the operative word. Here are a few pointers I've come up with to help you along, fellow seeker of inner peace:

Be patient -- even if that impacted tooth is taking advantage of its sweet time hiding in your gums and you have to continue wearing your braces for the next three years (or more) because of its stubbornness. Or you find yourself stuck for nearly an hour in the subway on a train that just won't budge, or wind up at the wrong stop because the conductor didn't have the decency to give you fair warning that the train will bypass your destination.

Take the time out to explore that which prods at your curiosity -- even if that means staying up all night to finish a really engrossing and magical novel that's at least 600 pages long, and your mother waking you up in her grouchy mode switched "on" because you neglected to turn off your bedroom light before your eyes drooped shut for the sweet surrender of sleep.

Try out something new -- even if that means potentially overcooking the pasta noodles you were planning to use with the new clam sauce recipe you wanted to try, only to find out that you're running low on the actual sauce... and clams. Just hope you can make a feast out of the food that you do have.

Do some Spring cleaning -- even if that means turning your bedroom (and perhaps your entire home) inside out as you donate your outdated and unwearable hand-me-downs, give yourself a paper cut as you rifle through the dusty stacks of papers that you've shoved into a forgotten corner of your desk/bookshelf. Or sweep and mop the floor, even if the dust and the overpowering scent of detergent trigger the worst of your allergies.

Watch a classic movie -- even if you might end up falling asleep through an old black-and-white film because you found it boring and kind of hokey. (Although, I have to say, watching TCM can get really addicting, but more on that in some other post...)

Read a challenging novel -- even if you wind up wanting to defenestrate that lengthy and wordy Tolstoy title because its so-called heroine was such a repressed and dreary character.

Go for a jog, go exercise -- even if you discover that you're wheezing after just a mere distance of 1/2 of a block when you thought that you were correctly pacing yourself.

Forgive my sarcasm. And I know that this phrase is spat out more times than the word cliche itself, but we should all think of life in this way: no pain, no gain. Take the good, the bad, and the ugly all in stride and just suck it up. Because maybe you'll learn something. Maybe you'll find something. Or maybe you won't. But at least by then you'll know. You'll know from experience what worked well and what didn't, so maybe you'll gain the insight to make things better.

That's really the only "hope" there is -- mending one small broken hope at a time so that everything else looks a little less hopeless. So that your world, and everyone else's world in general, can become a brighter place. A dim one, but nonetheless a slightly brighter place.

So as I said earlier, think of this time of year as a miniature new year celebration, your own little resurrection from the dimness of your daily complaints and catatonic complacency. Smile like you mean it, and maybe you'll infect someone.

Happy Easter season, everyone. :)

A Million Things Since February...

It's been a really long while since my last post. I've been very busy with school -- apparently March happens to be midterm month. I was writing out pages and pages of endless pages of review sheets for each test, as well as reading up on materials for class. It takes a toll on you after a while, and you find that you're missing hours of sleep and can't write anything because you're so tired and eventually find yourself drooling near your laptop's keyboard. But there has been some progress and high points.

This past weekend, I had the honor of becoming a Grand Representative to Georgia and Oregon in my youth group, the International Order of the Rainbow for Girls. I'm so proud of my friend Samantha, who's the new Grand Worthy Advisor of NY. Her mascot is that curious little monkey, Curious George, who's holding a bunch of balloons. "Reach for New Heights" is her theme and her motto, and it's a big challenge this year to step up to the task.

We have new charity and service projects, and many things to be thankful for. One of the surprises I wasn't expecting was that my assembly, W. Mark Sexson #15, actually won the Membership Award and was named "Assembly of the Year"!!!! We brought in five girls since we first started, and we've also helped to initiate two other girls from another assembly. (I have a LOT to memorize, as we're having another initiation of new members into our organization in May.)

It was pretty funny that some high school kids who were there at the same resort for their senior trip thought that we were all taking part in a wedding or a beauty pageant, since we were wearing our white gowns. And I'll never forget when Hannah was awestruck by one of them, a guy with long locks whom she admired from afar and affectionately called "Blondie." He splashed me when he did a cannonball into the pool as I was drying myself. When I told Hannah this, she was just all the more excited, ahahaha. And Jasmine... I can't believe she actually went up to one of the guys and said, "Hey, I think you're cute." To which the boy answered, "Hey, if you wanna chill, I'll be on this floor so come holla at me." LOL. And then she just walked away, thinking, "Uh... NO." And then there was the "Oooga Boooga" ceremony after the banquet-dance... every advisor and Rainbow girl who visits Grand Assembly for the first time must go through it. It wasn't that bad... aside from the fact that I wet my pants, ahhahaha. But anyway...

I'm so glad to have made new friends at Grand Assembly, especially Dawn and Gabby, and to have the opportunity to do my part as a Rainbow girl. I just hope that I can set a good example for other girls, and get them to join in the fun and rewarding experience of helping others be all that they can be. So, here's to hoping. ;)

Grand Assembly wasn't the only highlight in the past three weeks. I went to the MoMA twice this month and saw the Tim Burton exhibit with some friends from high school - Priscilla, Liliana, Amy, and Renee. It was like walking into another dimension, or some kind of time warp as we set foot inside the giant mouth...

It's so amazing and pleasantly kooky to get to know the inner workings of Burton's creativity. For a preview of the exhibition, you can go here and explore the site: http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2009/timburton/

Also, here's a checklist for all the different odds and ends at Tim Burton's art exhibit at the MoMA... I guarantee you'll find something terribly intriguing: http://moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2009/timburton/includes/pdf/checklist.pdf

It was great to reconnect with my old friends. I just wish I had more time with them. And I wish that I could see other people from my high school - Tegan, Arielle, Katie, and Agatha, to name a few. They're some of my closest friends (and in case any of you guys are reading this, I miss you!), and I love our crazy-yet-sane-talks about life and music and books and movies and tv shows and vibrant creativity and.... and... there's too many. I hope that I can see them again sometime soon.

I also reconnected with my teachers and some of my classmates from St. Aloysius, my elementary/junior high school. We've all grown and we've all changed. It was all Kim's idea. I almost didn't go because of the crappy weather that day, but I'm glad that I did. We met up with four of our favorite teachers, and they will always hold a special place in our hearts. We just sat and ate pizza at California Pizza Kitchen in Atlas Park, talking about our favorite memories and about where we were now, and what we hope to do in the future. It was nice, and it was a wonderful time getting to know everyone again. We're hoping that for our 10-year reunion (2010), we could all go to Vegas. I don't know if that'll actually happen, but at this point, who knows? ;)

There's a song called "Let It Go" by Debra Arlyn, and it's such an inspiring piece of music. It gives me hope when I'm feeling confused, frustrated, or insecure. It calms me down. Because the most important task is to focus on the postivity, the things that you've already got, the family and friends who are there to support you no matter what, and the aspirations you hope to achieve in the future. Just take a deep breath and take things day by day, one small step at a time.

"The change in the weather is affecting me deeper this year
It's another reminder that the time is passing by
Am I doing the right things, pursuing the right dreams?
I'll go for a drive
As I take in the scenery, look up at changing leaves
It's then I decide

To let it go
Out the window
Just let it flow
Out of my mind
'Cause I'll never know exactly what's in store
So the best thing for sure
Let it go"

Wanna know another exciting thing that's happened to me? :)

I got to chat with one of my favorite actors, Ethan Peck!

Ethan currently plays Patrick Verona on ABC Family's tv show remake of "10 Things I Hate About You."

You may have seen him in one of my earlier posts, you know - the ones where I've pretty much exalted his hotness factor and thought that he would be absolutely PERFECT to play one of the characters in my novel, should it ever be turned into a major motion picture (I wish, you have no idea how much).

It was a good thing I found out about the live chat on Facebook about an hour before it started, otherwise I would have really missed out!

My burning question was this: "What first drew you to play Patrick? Do you feel that you share anything in common with your character?"

To which he answered (and I love, love, LOVE his answer!), "Patrick drew me because he's such a loner, something I've been for most of my life, and he's searching, deeply searching, for love and meaning, like many of us, but he's very angry too, something I don't have in common with him."

Someone else asked him what his dream role would be...
Ethan Peck: "Right now? Anything good! I like truthful stories that teach good lessons, with depth and soulful complexity."

Another person asked him if there's anything he doesn't like about his character, Patrick Verona...
Ethan Peck: "Lots of things! He's such a jerk! And mean sometimes, too. If I knew him I'd make him tell me about his childhood--it seems most of his problems stem from trust issues that I imagine began with his upbringing. And he's pretty cocky, not an attractive quality, in my opinion."

HA! I kind of drew inspiration for writing Seth's character from Patrick, both from the movie and the tv series. I wanted Seth (one of the main characters in my novel) to be a bit of an a-hole... but a likeable one, hehe. One who has a past and anger issues, but one who can also rise to become the well-loved and redeeming hero of the story, who can bring out the worst and hopefully, the best, in the heroine.

Ethan's such a deep thinker, so thoughtful and introspective, and so focused on his career and honing his skills as an actor. Pretty intriguing guy. ;)

I would absolutely watch any other productions Ethan's part of in the future. So far besides "10 Things I Hate About You," I've seen him in the Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen movie "Passport to Paris." Though, that probably doesn't count because I was like, 12 years old when I saw it. But I will definitely watch his other movies, mostly independent films, which I hear were really good and won some awards.

You can read the entire live chat with Ethan Peck online; just click here.

Well... that's it for now. I realize that this post may be a bit too long, and I apologize if you're having difficulty straining your eyes from staring at the monitor screen for so long. I'll try to update a tad more often, and to write more often. One step at a time, folks, just one step at a time. ;)

Music to Write to

I know I said in my last post that I would love to do some sort of communal writing project, where a small group of us would either get the ball rolling with the use of one theme or line. But I guess maybe it'd be better over a long vacation, such as either Spring Break or summer vacation, so that academic or job deadlines won't be an issue. I myself have a pelting of exams to zip through in the upcoming weeks. So, this literary challenge is post-poned, at least for now.

Meanwhile, thanks to the recommendations made by my friend, Liliana (whose blog can be found here), I was able to uncover some new music that could possibly work as background music during one of my story-storming and writing sessions. These have an overall dark mood - perfect for scenes meant to feel creepy or loaded with fast-paced action.

The first one is by Gossip, called "Heavy Cross." Really haunting with the beat and the girl's vocals. It feels like a '70s kung-pow disco kind of vibe - fresh, funky cool. ;)



I heard about Florence + the Machine about a year ago when I was searching Youtube for some clips of Fox's hit tv series, "Bones." A fan had made a video of scenes between Agent Booth and Dr. Brennan with the song "Kiss with a Fist" in the background. I thought the song was weird (it's about a dysfunctional relationship, if you haven't already guessed), but really groovy. So I downloaded it and put it in my mp3 player. I'd been meaning to search for more songs by Florence + the Machine, but I just never found the time or it would always slip my mind.

And let me tell you, I fell absolutely in love with her music all over again, especially with "Drumming Song" and "Howl." They're absolutely fantastic, filled with passion and charged with the hot vibrancy of conflict. I was easily able to write some more details for the action scene I'm currently working on.

Here they are below, courtesy of Youtube...

First, "Drumming Song"


And now here's my absolute favorite, which was also featured in a trailor for season 4 of "The Tudors." This one is called "Howl."



Dark, seductive, and fast-paced aren't they? Absolutely compelling.

Then, during another search, I came across this excellent band named Explosions in the Sky. They mostly do instrumental compositions - lots of melody and great balance between light and dark moods, kind of like the musical scores done in movies. So if you're the kind of writer who prefers songs without sung lyrics, this may be a great group to listen to as you're crafting your story. This particular song is called "Greet Death."



If you like more music like this, and more bands similar to Explosions in the Sky, there's another band that I noticed many people liked.

Listen to the band Sigur Ros if you're more into lighter melodies for easy listening, especially if you're writing a fantasy story. They're an Icelandic band, and although you might not understand the language they're singing in, their songs are very soothing and optimistic. I wouldn't be surprised if they were included in a Pure Moods compilation; their music is beautiful.

Here's one of Sigur Ros's songs, called "Staralfur," for example. Give it a go, and I promise you that you'll feel a comforting calm wash over you.





I have a lot more on my list of story-writing songs, so check back later the next time I blog about music. I'll try to find some more interesting songs for writing as time goes on. You're also more than welcome to add any of your suggestions. In the meantime, enjoy the tune-age! ;)

Sentence + Song Suggestions, Anyone?

Okay. So I have writer's block. Not that I don't have ideas floating around in my sleep-deprived brain or anything - in fact, it's actually quite the opposite.

I have so many ideas and scenarios in my head that I'm having some trouble transposing them into legible sense. If I can't understand my own thoughts, what more my readers? I would hate to confuse anyone and have the story ruined as a result of my brain farts (and partly due to an insomniac cat outside my house that whines incessantly all night and provides me with ample distraction. Though, I kind of feel bad for it sometimes, but that's besides the point.)

Two of the characters in my novel have reached a point where they're both running through the woods at the edge of town from something insatiable and sinister.

Consider this sentence and please tell me if it's a good line to put during a chase scene such as the one previously described:

Breathing - heavy, harsh, and heated - followed right behind us...

Is the alliteration too much, or does it add something to the suspense? Please tell me what you think.

Also, wouldn't it be cool if we all wrote a story or a poem using a particular line or phrase and see what we each come up with? You know, kind of like what Mary Shelley did with her literary friends (hence we have Frankenstein), or the song-writing challenges that Jason Mraz would do with his fellow music buddies (The Dynamo of Volition, for instance, came about from the challenge of writing a song using the phrase "blind man's bike"). Isn't creativity a wondrous thing? ;)

For inspiration, I've been listening to UnderOath's "Reinventing Your Exit" on repeat during the tense, adrenaline-filled moments of my story. I could never really tap into the zone of writing these particular scenes without it. The odd thing is that even though I absolutely love rock music, I'm not particularly fond of the screamo kind. But this song is one of the few that's made my list of exceptions. I guess it has to do with the fact that the harsh, grating screaming is balanced with really compelling and really good singing. Together, the song strikes a great balance between anger, desperation, and raw power. This song's been on my mp3 player since I was 16, so maybe that means something, hehe.

If you guys also happen to have some song suggestions for action/suspense scenes, please share them. I'd love to hear them - I'm always in search of awe-inspiring music.

Meanwhile, if you're interested in the song that I'm talking about, here it is, along with the lyrics on the screen.




Lately I've also been listening to the dynamic duo Tegan & Sara. They're amazing! Here's the acoustic version of their song "The Con," which also plays in my head occasionally during my story-storming sessions.



Enjoy! Maybe these songs can invoke some kind of inspiration for you, too. ;)

One-Liner Limits

I should have started studying for my Statistics test hours ago. But my sister kept bugging me to proofread her cause-and-effect essay on reality television (another blog will be dedicated to this topic sometime in the future). I edited it for her, and on top of that, pretty much expanded her paper... but we had to cut back some paragraphs and sentences in order to fit her anal retentive teacher's requirement of an absolute maximum of three pages. The guy actually threatened to deduct a complete letter grade if his students did not "strictly adhere" (his favorite word, according to my sis) to his requirements. What a picky, picky butthead. Whatever happened to quality and not quantity? No wonder journalism didn't work out for the dude.

Sorry I sound so irritable right now.

But I have as much ownership to that essay as my sister does, and I feel that required page numbers are arbitrary. If the point is clearly stated and duly supported with specific examples, as well as a host of critiques on existing views, then the essay would be sound and at least offer some interesting insights. Why the heck should page numbers matter?

Society has gone batty. I mean that in the most serious way. Blogs - well, aside from the usual celebrity gossipmonger sites - are slowly becoming extinct. I'm sure everyone's heard of Twitter, an entire website dedicated solely to one-liners frequently updated (every 10 seconds or so for some people) based on the question, "What are you doing?"

But who really cares? What's the point of these so-called status updates? Aren't we limiting our capacity for self-expression by sticking to word-limited one-liners?

Okay... so maybe they're meant as conversation starters. But how far can these conversations go? About how your butt really itches right now, or how the eerily perfect Edward Cullen rocks your world (when he's really just a figment of imagination), or how you just ate a sandwich, or how you just got totally wasted at some random party and are retching miserably in your sleep... Unless you and your fellow conversationalists have somehow rambled on and found something substantial and meaningful to talk about. But my guess is not very far, given such topics of no consequence.

It's like society has attention-deficit disorder. Are we running out of patience? Out of creativity? Out of individuality? All because of the desire for instant gratification - here, now, within the span of a finger snap, just like that.

Well, let me tell you something. I refuse to let word limits and page limits define who I am. Screw that. I'm not going to go on ranting madly in the style of "Grrr, I am Woman, hear me ROAR!" But words... they're powerful instruments. I just wish people used them a bit more wisely and sought something deeper than the superficial.

Anyway, I should really get back to studying. More later.

Twenteen and counting...

Today at around 4:01 PM, I will officially be twenteen. A big shout out and thank you to everyone who wished me well for my birthday! You guys are awesome -- or as my good friend Tegan puts it, "awesometastic!" :)

As you can probably guess, I still wish I could be a teenager forever. Whereas most people would rub their hands together with sheer delight at the prospect of getting one step closer to the legal drinking age limit, it wouldn't have mattered much to me. I kind of like my liver the way it is. Okay.. maybe when I turn 21 next year, I'll  indulge in a couple sips of white wine. It's the only alcoholic beverage that tastes as sweet as it smells. But anyway, that's besides the point.

Do I even have a point? (Laughs to Self.)

This might just be one of my rambling blog posts, unfocused and everywhere all at once, so please just bear with me if you're actually reading this.

I've been feeling a bit scatterbrained lately, ever since I became Worthy Advisor of my assembly in Rainbow. Just yesterday the girls and I initiated 4 new members -- my youngest sister Juvy, Judith's friend Julia, and two other girls from another assembly in upstate. It was a LONG day of rehearsals (the entire afternoon and evening), and after memorizing paragraphs and pages of the ceremony, all of that hard work paid off. I'm so happy that my friends in Rainbow have done a great job. Let your true colors always shine through! :)

That's us Rainbow girls up there. ;)

Hmm... what else? Sports.
I don't follow football, but I just thought it would be interesting to mention that the priest that visited my church today made a somewhat funny joke at the end of mass. We all knew which team he was rooting for -- because God was supposedly rooting for them, as well. And good for them -- the Saints won! :)

On the other hand, switching over to the sport that I actually do follow.... The Knicks really need to pick it up a little and kick it up another notch! From the looks of it, the dream of making it to the playoffs seems a little farther and farther with each loss.

This pic above pretty much says it all...
I just hope the Knicks beat the Sacramento Kings tomorrow!

And let's see... School.
My classes are getting along fine. One of these classes is a requirement for all Psych majors -- Psych 248: Statistical Methods in Psychology (a very expensive class, I might add, due to the required texts). I was freaking out Thursday night because of the mumbo jumbo in my textbook regarding central tendency. It comes as no surprise that mean, median, and mode would be the concepts discussed in the chapters, but reading it was just so long and the explanations so confusing that I pretty much panicked for a bit. But after making myself a soothing cup of hot papaya-and-pomegranate tea, I calmed down a little and tried to take a stab at my homework.

After that, I signed onto Facebook and at the request of my friend Kim, I signed onto AIM. The funny thing was, I had to relearn how to use it and forgot the online aliases of a majority of the people on my buddy list. The only ones I remembered were my close friends' screen names. But everything else was just a blur. I would clean out the clutter, but I don't want to accidentally delete anyone. Because that would be inadvertently mean.

Sometimes it's a little awkward to talk someone via IM, especially if they're IMing you or you're IMing them for the first time. Since there's obviously no way to decipher who's who on the basis of facial recognition, we're forced to ask the impertinent question of "WHO ARE YOU?" (Not in caps lock, of course... but don't deny it. You were probably thinking in caps lock inside your head, like a fight or flight reflex at encountering an unfamiliar stimulus.) But then a silly giggle escapes your breath once you realize the person behind the unfamiliar screen name is actually a really nice girl you shared your Math B class with in high school. Another thing that I had to retrain my brain to get accustomed to was the experience of having three different conversations at once.

Multi-tasking gets a bit more complicated with AIM -- at least, in my recent experience. I just need to get the hang of it again.

Some people have been wondering how far I've come so far with my novel. Eighteen chapters (about 120 pages), is the status as of now. But with the spring semester of my college sophomore year starting, I haven't had the time to outline and sketch out Chapter 19. When I try, my brain feels a little fried from everything else I've been reading or studying, or my hand would feel a little achy from scribbling notes down all day. Other days, I just feel like this poor little kitten:

But I'll get back to the story when I can. I'm trying to take things a little easy in my free time. But I'm keeping my mind open to new possibilities and new twists and turns that pop in my head occasionally that could possibly work for Danica & co. I'm trying to draw inspiration from my Theatre 101 class - some of the plays that we're going to read seem very promising. So I shall soak in all of it, and squeegee my creativity onto the pages of my novel whenever I get the chance.

Speaking of theatre, I have to see a theatre production within this month for a review paper to be submitted in March. The Hunter College theatre department, while very good at announcing free performances at Hunter for students toting a Hunter ID card, won't actually have another production until April. How unfortunate for me. So I had to ask my mother if she could somehow get an employee discount at her job for some cheap Broadway tickets. I'm kind of hoping she can score some for Wicked.

I would LOVE to defy gravity if I could. ;)

As for other awesometastic performances...
The conclusion of the mini-series of "Emma" on Masterpiece Theatre Classic on PBS was tonight. I have yet to see it, and I can hardly wait to switch on the television tomorrow once my Statistics homework is all done and after I've eaten at least three helpings of my birthday cake. Jonny Lee Miller as Mr. Knightley just gets better and better with each performance. This guy is an amazing actor! You should see him portray the poet Lord Byron in the BBC production of "Byron". PLUS, he's pretty dreamy... almost hotter than Gallo.

I explored the website for "Emma" and was just clicking through. I guess you could say I became somewhat obsessed with this movie. It's just that GOOD. You've got to see it -- the full episodes are online (until March 9th)! But anyway, I took a fun quiz -- "Bachelors of Highbury quiz" -- and guess who's my perfect match?

I just about swooned when I found out the result. I wish I had my own Mr. Knightley for Valentine's Day. I really, really, really want the DVD!!!!!!!! :)

So I shall leave you with happy thoughts and happy dreams of tomorrow!