Lately

It's been a busy couple of days.

Oddly enough, right when I decided to change my major, the school's major change website stopped working and the advisor that I needed to sign my papers to verify the change went out of town. Luckily, the adviser also happens to be the adviser in charge of the school newspaper, so I know where to find him if I need to know.

And speaking of the school newspaper...

About a week or two ago, the Chief Copy Editor circulated an email amongst us copy editors, asking who wanted to take on her job next semester. (It changes per semester, which means I could be a writer one semester and a copy editor the next.) I debated going for the job since it pays about $300 a month, which would be a nice little chunk to store away for the summer. However, I thought that one of the girls that I copy-edited with would do a better job of it. Long story short, she (the copy-editing friend) convinced me to go for the job. When I went down to talk to the Chief Copy Editor, she told me the job would basically go to whoever spent the most time training. I was also supposed to write a mission statement, which she said I have a slight edge on since apparently I'm the only copy that actually calls contacts to check the spellings of their names and facts that they gave the writer. So, Tuesday I went in for my first day of training and I will continue to go in to train on Mondays and Tuesdays until the end of the semester. I'm running against one other girl, another copy editor (but not the friend), so we'll see how it turns out. All I can say is that, if I get that job, I'm going to feel really guilty while sitting in basic journalism classes with freshmen and sophomores and that being my first semester of journalism.

Although I haven't posted anything for the past couple for days, I am still doing NaNoWriMo. If you haven't seen it yet, I have a box right underneath my profile that changes as my word count goes up. I'm still above the daily word count but, unfortunately, writing has been an effort this week (as the staff of NaNoWriMo told us it would be.) I was also looking forward to going to the Night of Writing Dangerously on November but, due to some mishaps, the car husband of the woman who I was going with broke down so she might not be able to go. So, if I still wanted to go, I would have to pay double price and, personally, I don't have the money for that. It's unfortunate but I'll live and write on.

Excerpt from Chapter Seven:

He remembered back, to a day of smiles and gloating, a day he still despise with all of his might. His mother had stood in front of the castle, removing the crown from her eldest son’s head as he traded it for riding leather, trading his kingdom to a life of living off the land, and she kissed that head, looking upon him so fondly that Jacob had wondered if she had been trying to remember his face in her mind forever. They had said their farewells, Tristen clasping his sibling’s hand in a tight grip and wishing him luck on his new journey. Then, after his brother had disappeared with his new mentor, Jacob’s mother had approached him, tears in her eyes, and thrown the ownerless crown down at his feet. “Do your best to live up to it,” she spat at him, stalking away. She had hidden herself in her room for weeks after that, leaving him without counsel, and died only a year after Tristen had left the castle. His brother had returned for the funeral, his face stony and unrecognizable even though Jacob had only seen a month before. Jacob avoided him that day and was relieved to find that Tristen did not search for his sibling; instead he left on his dragon directly after the funeral had commenced, the same way he had arrived. You couldn’t even bother staying alive after he left, could you? the king silently questioned the tombstone.