OUUROBOROS

Finished editing the stories on paper this morning ♥‿♥ Huge relief. Now they just need to be typed up, but I have encountered a bit of a problem.
I absolutely hate the fifth story, We've Lost Our Moral Compass. Absolutely, unequivocally hate it. I've never liked it much, even when I wrote it (it took a month, and I had pretty bad writer's block on it.) And when I read the stories in order, I found that to me, it kind of ruins the whole set. It feels out of place and even when I edit it it doesn't work.
There is only one solution - a complete re-write. Different plot, different everything. I already have ideas, and it shouldn't take a huge amount of time. It's a bit annoying, though - especially considering that I thought I could have a break from writing things for a while! (Also, I can't wait to move on from this project as a whole, it's starting to get wearing after however many months I've spent on it. I want to start my proper novel!)

Incidentally, I've been working extensively on the plot of this series in my spare time and it's expanded into four books instead of three. It's something I've been putting of doing for ages, but it's also something that really needed to be done. The story is cut up far more neatly, now, and I'm quite satisfied with how it's working out!

Back to the shorts, on a positive note, I am very happy with the edits I have done to the other stories. The older ones needed a lot of work, and it's either testament to some improvement over the year or that I wrote them too recently to see mistakes that the newer ones didn't need so much. I'm choosing to believe the first, because it makes me quite proud. :v

On the thirteenth April I went to see the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at the Warner Bros. Studios  ♥‿♥ And the reason I haven't posted about it yet was that I couldn't find my camera cable and I have tons of pictures. Harry Potter has and always will hold a really special place in my heart, seeing as I grew up with it and it was what first inspired me to be an author. I first started reading them when the fourth Harry Potter book came out in 2000, when I was six, as my parents already had the first three books and hadn't let me read them in case they were too scary. They bought the fourth book and I remember racing through the first three as fast as I could, in order to read the fourth (partially because the cover had a dragon on it, but also because that thing was huge. I'd never read a book as fat as that one, and was determined to do so. I've always had a thing for nice, fat books that took me a good while to finish.)

Needless to say, I loved Harry Potter. I read those books again, and again, and again. I got them on audiotape, my mum read them out to the family after tea. When the fifth book came out we went to buy it from Waitrose at 7am, the shop's opening time, and when we asked for it the manager said we were his first customers and gave it to us for free! Excellent marketing strategy, as then everyone we met in town we told about it. We later bought a second copy for my mum, which we then did ever since as me, her and dad would fight over who got to read them first.

I read Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix in a day, and every release after that we went at 5am to ASDA to buy the books. I would get so excited for the release days, I wouldn't even sleep! And then I wouldn't put them down until I finished reading them. They were the only days  I was allowed to read at the table, although little-kid-me always tried it. I miss those days so much! They were some of the happiest of my life. We even got a system going - I was the fastest reader and would finish within the day, then passing it on to my dad. My mum would finish her copy in two days, and then give it back to me to read again. ♥‿♥

The films were never as good as the books to me, but they were Harry Potter and so I loved them anyway. Thus, I was really excited when I heard about the studios tour, and desperate to visit from the offset. But the tickets are kind of pricey, so we had to put it off for a year. Finally we came across some vouchers to go (we are so cheap) and jumped at the chance ♥

These are the photos of the day! Be warned, this will probably be a stupidly long post. This isn't even half the stuff we saw that day, and the pictures don't do it justice at all! So if you are a fan of the Harry Potter series and you haven't been, go. It's absolutely fabulous, and I got quite emotional about it afterwards! It really was the end of my childhood, and I may just have teared in the car on the way home. Honestly, I think nothing will ever replace Harry Potter. Nothing will be quite the same, touch people quite the same. I can't imagine it, and that makes me really quite sad - but also happy, because I got to grow up with Harry.

 

The ice sculpture from the Yule Ball ♥‿♥ so much prettier in real life than in the picture!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I finished it! The final short in my collection. City of the Damned is finally completed.  ♥‿♥
It's actually sort of a weird feeling, because as I've said before - I didn't really expect to finish. I'm terrible for starting a ton of projects and not finishing them, and when I set out to do this the ending was something really far off to me. Sure, maybe I'll write those stories... but ages away. It's not happening for ages.
And now it's happened, and I guess I'm really proud. There have been a hell of a lot of half-finished stories since I was little - this is the first thing I've actually completed. That sounds terrible, but it's true. So in a way this gap year was to prove to myself (and everyone who said I couldn't do it) that I can finish things, and therefore can maybe be an author. ✖‿✖

Now I just have to edit everything. I guess it'll take a while, but for the first time I'll be able to read all the stories in order and see how it all flows. And then, figure out how to get it onto an ebook. I have some ideas for the typeface and the way I want it laid out, it's just formatting/coding it all to do that. And then everyone can read it, which is slightly terrifying.
I'm at once concerned about people hating it and it being completely ignored. Really, I'm not sure which is worse! I mean, I'd really rather not be responsible for more horrible literature hitting the market, but it sucks to have your work ignored.
Toss a coin.

At least while it is unpublished I can imagine that people will actually like it. :> I'm so lame.

Next, I'll get around to posting those Harry Potter photos. While I'm editing I might also post a couple of things I've been considering - namely my opinions on certain topics/why I include them in my stories, maybe some politics thrown in for good measure, and also how exactly I wound up wanting to be an author. My work with the birds came to an end (I only had eight months) and it's really sad; I miss them a lot! But I will still visit and see them, and meet up with everyone for drinks, so it's not as though I don't have plenty of time on my hands.
I really need to find a job. But I've been putting it off because Mum, Dad, can't you see I'm a writer??

And with that sentence I became the laziest gap year student in existence.

A continuation of my previous post. Have some more interesting words! I enjoy all of these, and recommend using them with unadulterated abandon.

♥Avarice - greed.
♥Bellicose - aggressive, hostile. Currently being chucked around by the media in relation to North Korea.
♥Bleb - learned this one in Biology! It's a little bubble.
♥Cirrous - resembling slender tentacles or filaments.
♥Fescennine - extremely rude. Therefore, a stronger version of agrestic.
♥Finnimbrun - a trifle, a trinket.
♥Harbinger - a herald, a forewarning.
♥Jejune - childish.
♥Masticate - no, nothing like that! It means 'to chew'.
♥Mesonoxian - related to midnight.
♥Nacreous - relating to mother-of-pearl, pearlescent.
♥Otiose - without a practical purpose.
♥Pejorist - someone who reckons the world is going down the drain. Me, then. 
♥Perspicacious - being very perceptive.
♥Requiem - a mourning song, a funeral song.
♥Sidereal - relating to stars.

I will get around to uploading all the Harry Potter photos soon! It's just there are a lot of them and effort, but! What I really wanted to say (and should have said before) was that Quantum Entanglement is completely finished and now I'm on the final short! It's been renamed 'Spidermusings', which is at once apt and a casual abuse of the english language.
It's also so nearly done. It's been a lot of fun too - it's from the point of view of a particularly nasty and unreliable narrator; and getting into his head has been pretty interesting. However there is now about one more thought-track to write and I cannot find the motivation to do so. Never mind that this is the last story in the collection that I have left to write, it's the culmination of almost a year's work.
I'm so damn useless.

However; my next update will probably be that I've finished the collection! Which is really rather exciting - I'll have to edit/copyedit, and I'll finally be able to read the whole thing in the order it was intended. Then, I can somehow learn how to make it an ebook and publish it.
Which is a really scary thought.

I also drew this picture of Lilia, because gas masks are awesome.
For those who are interested, the lines by this were originally drawn by hand. Then I scanned it into Photoshop and utilised the 'multiply' setting on the layer, so that I could colour below it. Then, I continued detailing over the top. I'm quite proud of this one! ♥‿♥