Aperture: Hart Family

It's officially been three years since I came up with Quinn!! What did I do with my life before lol I wanted to take today to talk a little bit about her family, which influenced her character design from the beginning. Quinn's family means a lot to both her and the story as a whole, and Aperture wouldn't be the same without them.

I'm also going to talk more about the magical aspect of the characters, since that's something I didn't cover in the post for the quartet. (That may be another post coming up in the future.)

This is really image-heavy, so I'm placing it underneath a cut. Click through for more!

Wanderlust: Las Vegas and SoCal

I've been turning to my experiences from our June vacation a lot in my writing recently, and with this awesome warm weather we've had the past couple days, nostalgia and wanderlust have pretty much smacked me in the face. Multiple times. 

So I went through my camera roll and picked some photos to compile them all into one post! I'm almost certain all of these ended up in the original blog posts I made, but they're spread out and I wanted to be able to look through them all at once. So I can torture myself even more.

These are mostly the photos I'm most nostalgic for right now, especially in regards to my recent writing, but by no means are these all my favorite pictures. There's too much of this trip to try and condense everything down to one post.

What is Aperture?

I talk about Aperture a lot, and I've managed to go almost three years without ever really explaining what it is. (Aperture turns three this year. Holy crap.) Today would be Nate's 19th birthday, so I figured it would be a good day to post something like this.

(If you landed on this page because of a photography-related Google search, sorry. This isn't what you're looking for.)

Short version: Aperture is a story about four kids with magical abilities that get themselves into trouble.

Of course, that doesn't really cover much, so I'm gonna talk a little bit more in depth underneath the cut.

8 Song Challenge: Aperture

I'm finally trying out a new post series I came up with!

My writing playlists tend to get kind of long, so I thought it would be a fun challenge to try and limit myself to eight songs and still encompass the feeling of the whole playlist.

I don't have many posts about Aperture so far, but I do have an old post about character playlists and a more recent post about the quartet. Aperture is my "sandbox" story that I worked on for the majority of high school and it's definitely the story I work on the most.

You can click the embedded video below to play all the songs in the playlist, or you can head to the playlist's page on YouTube, or you can continue below the cut to see a little bit more about the songs I picked!

Aperture Quartet

I know that for a while Aperture has been this thing I bring up but explain to the extent of "[vague waving hand motion] it's a thing that exists that I created", and I figured I'd finally change that a little bit! I want to become more comfortable talking about Aperture to people outside of my immediate friend group. (My friends usually hear me talk almost non-stop about Aperture ...)

The day that this goes up will be my final day as a kid -- Wednesday the 12th is my 18th birthday. I figured that was the most auspicious day that I could publish this post. (Or, y'know. To give me something to focus on other than the fact I'll be an adult. I'm still in denial.)

I'm only going to talk about the stuff that's established around the beginning of the book and not any of the stuff that the characters wouldn't tell someone they just met. A pretty big theme of Aperture is secrets and the versions of truth that people tell each other and I don't want to spoil anything!

In making this post, I realized that Quinn and Nate ended up with names similar to the faceclaim actors I found, and I cannot figure out how the heck that happened. Both of my characters are two years old and I only found their faceclaims within the past year.

I tried my best to find the original sources for these photos, and I'm sorry if I miscredit or made a mistake! I actually had to pass up pictures I'd pinned in the past because I couldn't find even a somewhat-credible source for them. (I spent 20 minutes on a picture of Nate that just kept linking back to itself. I still cannot figure out who it was of.)

actress Molly Quinn (image url / original post)

Name: Quinn Hart

Birthdate: 6/21/97

Height: 5'1"

Ethnicity: Irish-American

When I combined the two story ideas that became Aperture, Quinn had a much smaller part than she does now. As I tried to make the two plots mesh together into one coherent one, though, I kept getting ideas that focused on her, and I decided to make her the main character. June 21st is actually the day I came up with her as a character, right after sophomore year ended and I tried to figure out what to do with my summer without internet.

Quinn is the middle child of her family; with four other siblings, she's found the right balance of effort that she doesn't get in trouble for her laziness nor praise for ambition. She's very sarcastic and often tells the truth because she knows nobody will take her seriously. She also decides to ignore problems for as long as possible rather than worry about them, which occasionally backfires on her. 

actor Colin Ford 

(image url / original post)

Name: Nate Collins

Birthdate: 2/28/97

Height: 5'5"

Ethnicity: Israeli / Italian / Greek

I found this picture of Colin Ford on Pinterest through someone's character inspiration board and my jaw just about dropped because holy crap he looks exactly like Nate in this set of promotional pictures. Button-down shirt with rolled up sleeves and all.

Nate's grandparents live next door to Quinn's family. He and his dad lived with his grandparents when he first started school, but they later moved to California when his dad got his footing as a single parent. Nate's dad sends him back to live with his grandparents for reasons Nate refuses to elaborate on. He and Quinn have trouble at first adjusting to seeing each other every day again after losing contact.

actress Katherine McNamara (image url / original post)

Name: Fel Skayhill

Birthdate: 4/4/97

Height: 5'5"

Ethnicity: Canadian French

Fel was the first character I created that still exists in the story, and she was initially supposed to be the narrator for Aperture before I tried a dual POV with both her and Quinn and eventually cutting her POV. Her personality has changed a lot since the first draft I ever wrote.

Fel and her sister were both born in Montreal, but they moved to the US when their parents got jobs with the Smithsonian museums. She and Quinn have been friends since elementary school. Fel is the mom figure of the group and is the one everyone turns to for advice or to make the final decision on anything, which is a position she takes very seriously. She practices rhythmic gymnastics (though she doesn't compete) and is an awesome photographer.

Edit: I initially listed Suki Waterhouse as her faceclaim (image url / original post).

actor Tyler Posey (image url / original post)

Name: Sol Dunst

Birthdate: 10/3/96

Height: 6'1"

Ethnicity: German-Puerto Rican

Before Aperture, Sol was actually a girl! I completely changed Sol's character design so the cast was more balanced. The only thing that stayed the same was the nickname and having a German parent. 

Sol lived with his dad in Germany for a while before he decided to live with his mom and younger brother in the US. Sol and Fel clicked almost immediately when they met in middle school and they've been a steady couple for a few years by the time the story starts. He plays varsity basketball and sometimes struggles with trying to balance three languages between school and home.


So there you go! These four have been what got me through junior and senior year and I can't imagine where I'd be without them. I could probably go on forever with some really sappy story that'd probably bring me to tears trying to type it up (not gonna lie, that's happened more than once ;; ), but I'm gonna leave it here for right now. If you're still curious about Aperture, check out my Pinterest board for it! I'm hoping to write up more posts in the future about the plot and more side characters, but I don't know when I'll get to those or where they'll fit into my post schedule.

Thank you for reading and letting me share my bbs with you!! ♥ 

Camp Nano Results July 2015

Who knows which number Camp NaNo this is I've done. It's like the fourth or fifth by now, I think. One day I should go back and actually count. Camp NaNos are always my favorite to do, since they happen twice as often as November NaNos do and they have flexible word counts.

Drum roll:

I won!!

The last couple days of the bar graph are missing since I wrote this blog post a little early -- we went on a mini vacation the last three days of July and I wanted to make sure I had the blog post written.

I use a monthly calendar from the Washington Post to keep track of what I write each day and how much, so here's what this month actually looked like! The word counts per day are up at the top, the red numbers are cumulative word counts from the beginning of the year, and green are cumulative for the month. 

As of July 27th, I had written 25,083 for the month of July and 175,401 words for the year. My Camp NaNo goal was 25k (as usual) since that's half the word count of a November NaNo. I'm really proud of how I did! 

The past couple Camp NaNos I've said I wanted to work on projects other than Aperture but I rarely actually did. This time I actually started out with a different project! I managed to work on the story I'm co-writing with my friend as well as two ideas that are completely my own, and I got a lot more than I expected. I worked on a total of four different projects, though the majority was still on Aperture. It gave me some pretty good groundwork to continue working on the other four though, since I got a better hold of the voices of each narrator, so I'm exited! 

Also, as a note for how my calendar works: all the words written in black are for Aperture. Words or phrases in parentheses mean they're chapters or scenes that don't have titles yet, but everything else not in parentheses (like Guess Who) means they're named chapters. The non-Aperture projects (Rewrite, Casanova, and Duality project) just had the story names since I don't know if I'm going to use chapter names for them. Those projects are still really young compared to Aperture and don't nearly have as many ideas behind them yet. 

Speaking of Aperture: I'm going to have a blog post specifically about it coming up in the next week or so! That's all I'm gonna mention right now ;) I'm really excited (and a little nervous) about it. Please look forward to it! ♥ 

June Vacation: Overview

So for a while now, I've wanted to go out west and visit Burbank, which is the hometown of one of my OCs. Google Maps just doesn't really cut it, you know? I've also wanted to go back to Little Tokyo and The Last Bookstore, because when we visited them on our way back from Hawaii, it was too early in the morning for anything to really be open. There's almost no Japanese stores here on the east coast other than in New York City and it's been a year and a half since we went to Hawaii. I was feeling a little deprived.

And guess what? I actually got my wish! Mom found really cheap airfare to Las Vegas, which is about a 4.5 hour drive from Los Angeles. We flew out west a week after I graduated and spent a week out there.

It was actually kind of strange re-visiting places we'd already been -- that's never really happened before. In the past, if we'd been somewhere more than once, it was usually somewhere we had family.

I had a lot of fun on the trip! It was a lot different than the previous vacations we'd taken -- other than the drive between Las Vegas and Los Angeles, there weren't long car rides. We actually stayed in hotels for more than one night (twice!!). A lot of it was stuff I'd wanted to see for a while, so I was really excited for everything.

We flew out to Las Vegas on the 3rd, drove into Anaheim the 4th and stayed in California until the 8th. In addition to all the stuff I mentioned before that we'd done before, we also went to Disneyland, visited Burbank for writing research, and drove down to San Diego to see a decommissioned battleship. (I think that's what it's considered. I'm not sure.)

So yeah, this whole trip was different than what I've been used to in the past. It was a lot more chill since we had less ground to cover, and a lot more of it was doing things (things that I'd picked!!) rather than sitting in the car for the majority of the day. Mom commented on how I was visibly more agreeable than I've been on past trips, which made me feel kind of bad;; Looking back, I can appreciate all the trips we've taken, but I'm also not gonna lie and say that I particularly enjoyed sitting in the car for half the trips or being so isolated from my friends. Both of those have changed as we took more trips as a mix between shorter / smaller trips and getting devices that made talking to my friends easier.

Honestly, I'm still amazed that the trip worked out. It was actually an idea I had for my story, and for once, the idea influenced real life instead of the other way around. Aperture has been a really big defining project for me and going on the trip has given me a lot of good ideas that I probably wouldn't have otherwise had.

I have four more posts planned to talk about some of the days in more detail, so please look forward to those!

In the meantime, I compiled all of the music that defined the trip for me. I almost always associate songs on the radio with specific times / places, so I kept track of it this time so I wouldn't forget to add in any. There were a lot! It's strange to hear these songs without any road noise, though. Especially the ones I didn't know about before. It's almost like listening to a different song without all the background noise from driving and the acoustics of the inside of the car.

EDIT: I put together a YouTube playlist if you want to listen to the songs back-to-back! I also replaced the video for Sugar since the original one I linked from YouTube was removed for copyright violations.

I don't think I heard this before we went on the trip, and holy cow it is really catchy. I'll probably end up buying it. 

This song has been in like three blog posts before this hahaa;;; I'm really glad that it's popular right now because it's the song I associate with Aperture the most as of recently! It always makes me really happy to hear and I'm glad that I get to associate it with the vacation as well as Aperture itself. 

I also associate this song with seeing the new Cinderella movie with my friend for her birthday, so Sugar is kind of a weird mix for me. 

I actually hadn't heard Bad Blood before the trip! I've heard a lot about the music video, but honestly, I still haven't watched it. I really like how catchy the song is but I'm kind of upset that I can't find any audio-only videos on YouTube. I tend to listen to songs a whole bunch online before I buy them, and the fact that there's 40 seconds of non-music before the beginning of the song in the video is off-putting. 

I also associate this song with prom / graduation, so like Sugar, this one is kind of a strange mix as well. 

I only heard Style a few times before we went on the trip, and a lot of the song is really catchy, so I'll probably end up buying it. (And maybe Bad Blood, too.) It's really strange to think how I didn't like Taylor Swift's music back in middle school, when she was still kind of country-ish, but that her pop music is really good. My middle school self would probably never admit that. 

There will be more blog posts coming up soon! 

Las Vegas (Jul 7th)

Disneyland (Jul 10th)

SoCal (Jul 13th)

Food (yes. Just food. Jul 16th)

What I Really Learned in High School

No, not what I actually learned in school. I don't think that'd be all that interesting.

Like the slam poetry my English teacher recently showed us said, the most important lessons aren't actually the ones we've been taught.

At the time this is posted, I'll be sitting through my high school graduation ceremony. I figured I'd reflect on what I'd picked up non-academically through four years of public high school.

This is actually the closest picture I can find to the beginning of my freshman year;; We apparently have no pictures from the first day, which honestly, is only slightly surprising. 

This was taken on Friday at our senior picnic. This last week or so of classes was hands-down the most fun I've had all of high school, and I'm really glad I was able to document some of it. 

Friends are #1

I've been lucky in the fact that my middle school was the only feeder school for my high school, so I've been with most of my classmates since 6th grade. I was lucky in that my closest friends from elementary school ended up at the same high school, too, despite the different tracking we did in middle school. 

I'm also lucky in the fact that (what seems like) half my graduating class is going to community college, which means I don't really have to say goodbye to them yet. I may not have talked to a lot of my classmates much, but I still have enjoyed seeing them every day in class or even just in passing in the hallway. I've made a lot of good friends over the years and I've learned a lot from all of them. I still can't imagine what it will be like in the future to not see them every day, or to see them move across the world to follow their dreams. 

Find your effort level. 
As I like to repeat over and over again, I've had senioritis since freshman year. I actually did my homework back then, of course, at least on a semi-regular basis. But what's the fun in that?

I got my first "hard" class in sophomore year when I took AP NSL. I actually had to read for that class. And I kept up! I also had a really good teacher who was scary when we all failed, so of course we tried our best collectively not to get on her bad side.

After passing AP NSL, everything else has seemed pretty easy. I've taken five AP courses -- just one short of getting a medal ;; 

Of course, I've gotten more lectures than I can count about "needing to try harder in school" and "developing a better work ethic", but I don't really see either of those developing in college, either. I've been spoiled by public school and all the regulations of No Child Left Behind. In case you haven't been in school since 2001, NCLB basically brings everyone down to the lowest child instead of trying to elevate the lower kids in the class. The HSAs we took for our graduation requirements were so easy you'd probably have to actively try to fail them.

I can't tell you how grateful I am that I took 6 elective classes this year. I had so much more time to devote to what I actually wanted to do. Honestly, if you're an underclassman, please don't stress yourself out by taking too many hard courses. I don't think it's worth it. Enjoy your life!!

Work smart, not hard.
My English teacher told us this last year and it was a complete revelation for me because I'd finally found a way to put my outlook on life into words. A lot of kids at my school -- especially the underclassmen -- put in a lot more effort into their schoolwork than they need to. Like, I know getting good grades is nice, but I really don't see the point in sacrificing health and friendships just to get the best grade on an assignment.

Of course, I'm pretty sure a lot of people could argue that this motto has just made me more lazy, but ┐( •̀ᄇ• ́)┌ Sorry not sorry that I had hours more free time to do what I want than you did because you decided to do work the hard way.

I love writing.
I'd written on and off through elementary and middle school, but it was never coherent and I never shared it with anyone. (And I never will. It was terrible.) Two of my friends were working on a Pokemon fanfiction, and that inspired me to write my own. It was my first real attempt at storytelling coherently, and while I can't write off my fanfics as "worthless" or anything like that, I obviously didn't really know what I was doing. And I still don't really know even now.

But that basis in fanfiction that diverged from canon opened me up to a ton of "what ifs" that have now become Aperture. It's two years old at this point and I can see how much I've improved just by looking at where I started with it.

Aperture has also allowed me to preserve some of my experiences and memories into writing. I have to adapt a lot of things in order to make it fit, but doing so helps me remember it better, and I'm glad that I have so much to look back on later. A lot of my friends have become or have inspired characters -- whether they know it or not -- and I'm really grateful to all of them. My friends have put up with endless talk about Aperture and have helped me brainstorm and improve the story, and I can only hope that I do them justice in my writing.

Anyway, I guess I was lucky in the fact that high school wasn't absolute hell for me. I actually enjoyed it -- this year especially. It's strange to think that today is something I could never really picture happening. Back in elementary school, or even in sophomore year, I could never really picture myself being here. I'm sad to think about how I have to move on from this period of time, but I hope that the coming years are just as bright.

Recently, I've been thinking more and more about that rhetorical question about how your younger self would see you. I specifically remember trying to picture myself here in 5th grade, but I don't really know how I would've reacted to how I am now. I don't think I've changed much. I actually think I would be amazed at how little has changed, to see that I still have such great friends and that I have so many wonderful memories.

I'd also be really embarrassed of the melancholic mood I've put myself in trying to write this, so I'll stop here. I guess I don't have too much to be sad about, because like I said, I'm not losing as much as I could be.

Edit: I've officially graduated!!

I cried during graduation. More than once. I only made it fifteen minutes into the ceremony before I turned into a hot mess. Despite that, though, I had a lot of fun today. I got to spend a lot of time with my family and friends and I'm really grateful for that. 

Camp Nano April 2015 Reflection

I won again this time! Even though I bumped my word count down 5k pretty early on, I still made the 25k mark by the end of the month! ( ᐛ )و

Yeah man, look at all that productivity at the end of the month B)

I reached the 20k mark on the 23rd (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:・ﾟ✧

I didn't get as much written as I wanted to, and all but three days that I wrote were for Aperture, but it's still progress! I got some good ideas going and I decided that the first couple chapters I have of Aperture need re-written in order to be stronger. 

Part of the reason I worked almost exclusively on Aperture was the fact that I'm really stuck in Quinn's narration. Her narration is very close to how I think and speak to make it easier for me to write, but I've been developing her voice over the past year and a half and I find it hard to switch into a different perspective. The stuff I have for Eigengrau is kind of stiff so far, but I just haven't found Hanne's voice yet. 

I also reached the 100k mark for the year on April 30th! It's a little overwhelming to think about how many words I've written that won't make it into the final version of Aperture, but all of them are necessary to develop it in my mind. I often have to write scenes upwards of five times before I find the version that I like and that works seamlessly with the plot. 

Still, I'm super happy with my progress so far ♥ 

Pinterest Story Boards

I've been running so last-minute with these blog posts recently;; I swear I'll catch up again soon!

In the meantime, I decided to share the boards I use on Pinterest! Click on the link at the bottom of each widget to see more, since I learned that clicking on the photos will only bring up that specific pin.

Also, I don't really know if it'll let you see the whole board without an account, so I'm sorry if it tries to cut you off! :c

Follow Joy's board Aperture on Pinterest.
Follow Joy's board Sugar Plum on Pinterest.
Follow Joy's board Casanova on Pinterest.
Follow Joy's board Eigengrau on Pinterest.
Follow Joy's board Rewrite on Pinterest.

I'm not gonna describe any of the plots, since pretty much everything but Aperture is still in a brainstorming phase, but I think most of the boards have details about what I want to do with it! (I think Sugar Plum just has pictures of snow and Eigengrau just has Hanne's hair;; I'm getting there, though!)

Anyway, I hope they're interesting to look through!

Apr 2015 Camp Nano Progress

I do NaNo a lot. I think this is, like, my fourth Camp NaNo or something. Usually it's a good motivator for me. It bothers me to think about running behind, or even worse, ultimately not reaching word count, now that I know I can pull off the full-blown 50k NaNo. The fact that I did that twice and am somehow failing this 20k month is honestly kind of funny. 

NaNo is basically motivation / competition for getting your current novel WIP done. The "traditional" NaNo in November is a set 50,000 words, but Camp NaNo has flexible word counts and mediums (including short story collections, plays, or revisions). It's usually done twice in the warmer months; I wanna say this year it's in July as well. 

This time I decided to give myself a little wiggle room and let myself work on the story that's being published in my school's lit mag as well as the story I've used the previous two NaNos (and however many Camp NaNos). 

It doesn't really help when I'm at a loss for ideas all across the board ... 

My word count is on the left. I initially set my goal to 25k, but I lowered it to 20k after getting back from vacation the first weekend and having almost no words to show for it. 

Camp NaNo lets you do "cabins", which are little groups with forum boards that will track your collective progress. I did a private one with two of my friends, but we've all been suffering from writer's block. I think I'm the only one that's updated their word count since the second day >:|

Writing for my "newer" project Eigengrau helped me catch up. The only writing I have for it is the abandoned first version I based off a dream (and vaguely off a fandom crossover concept) and an assignment I did for my creative writing class that I submitted to our lit mag. It's got a lot of stuff I'm unfamiliar with, including diplomacy and aliens and sign language, but it's been fun so far to work on it. It's a lot different than Aperture. 

I will catch up at some point this month, I swear. I've barely written anything over spring break (which is pretty much over for me now), and I'm kind of mad about that. I'm hoping to get lots of writing done once some of my school obligations are out of the way this week.

Aperture Music

EDIT: Grooveshark is no more :( Most of the links I have in this post have broken, but please check the Google Doc link at the bottom! Hopefully soon I'll re-make all of my now-defunct Grooveshark playlists into YouTube ones.

Today I decided I'd share the playlists I've made for writing my NaNo, Aperture! I don't usually get to talk much about my NaNo, mostly because it's such an organized hot mess right now, but the music has stayed pretty consistent since I first organized the playlists.

A lot of the songs have been chosen because of their lyrics -- there's honestly a lot of Fall Out Boy music;; Some of them I picked because of their mood / feel alone. 

I don't know if this is going to embed correctly;; This is a playlist for the series in general.

I've also made playlists for each of the characters: Quinn, Nate, Fel,and Sol. If you look at the song titles and the lyrics closely enough, you can probably figure out their "secrets", or what they end up having to tell the other three about by the end of the first book. 

I guess this isn't a very impressive post, but I figured I'd take a break from all the book reviews I've been posting lately. (That, and I haven't finished one in time to write a review to post;; ) 

I think in the near future I'll make a post of some of the music I really enjoy outside of Aperture-related stuff, once I can organize it into some coherent playlist. I don't really like 8tracks, and YouTube can be a little inconvenient because videos aren't always just the music, but I've also run into problems with Grooveshark removing certain songs due to copyright. I had to update half the playlists to add back in songs that had been removed since the last time I checked. 

I uploaded a list of the songs in each playlist to a Google Doc in case Grooveshark removes any of them before I update the playlists again. (There's a sixth playlist listed at the bottom, but because those characters don't come into play at first, I didn't think I needed to list them. It's here if you're really interested.)

Hopefully I'll be able to post more about Aperture soon!

Animal Crossing: New Leaf

At the end of August, my cousin gave me his old 3DS that he didn't use anymore. The first game I bought for it was Animal Crossing: New Leaf (after deciding that Pokemon XY was too expensive), and I'm really glad with my choice! AC:NL is my favorite Animal Crossing game ♥

I take a picture of my outfit and house when I start playing each day. It's really fun to see how everything progresses!

Basic town details:

Town name: Anderson

Mayor: Quinn

Other player characters: Nate, Fel, Sol

Native fruit: oranges

I decided to take a slightly different route than I usually did with my Animal Crossing games: my town and villagers are based off those of my NaNo, Aperture. For the past three games, the town name and players were just kind of random. I used my name in both Population Growing and Wild World, but used the name of an old OC for City Folk. It's really fun to see and work with my characters in a new universe!

I think New Leaf is the most fun of the Animal Crossing series! There's much more to do than in previous games, especially when you play as the mayor. I'm amazed with the possibilities for town customization! The island makes it really easy to earn money, especially if you play at night and get all the beetles, and the minigames are fun as well. (The island minigames are where I got most of my flowers, too, I'm not gonna lie.) I love the unlockable furniture customization and QR code reader. I've had a ton of fun looking up QR codes and fixing up furniture to give to the villagers. 

I earned a lot of money in the first three days I played...

There are a lot of cool little details, too. You can hang certain things on the wall of your house, like shelves or pictures or clocks, and the camera angle goes around 360 degrees. Fruit and non-fruit trees are slightly different colors, and there are, like, 20 different fruit types to get. The dirt patterns look slightly more realistic. The villagers themselves seem to be even more unique! I've received a couple letters from my villagers out of the blue, even when I hadn't written them anything first, which had never happened to me before. I wrote them back and got another response the next day! They wave when you leave their house and are always understanding if you have to turn down one of their requests or otherwise can't follow through. 

I went to Anime USA about a month after I got my 3DS, and I was able to streetpass at least 300 people. I also completely filled up my HHA showrooms! It's so much easier to order furniture through the model homes than have to wait for Nook / Timmy and Tommy to stock it, even though it can be a couple hundred bells more expensive. 

I just recently unlocked Dream Suite! I'm working on funding it. 

I know I'm definitely behind on the ACNL bandwagon since the game is over a year old, but I would definitely recommend it if you haven't played it yet! It's a very cute and lighthearted game with a lot of leeway in terms of game play. (◡‿◡✿)

NaNoWriMo 2013

National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNo) is a fun challenge: write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. The goal is to write about 1,667 words a day to reach 50k by the 30th.

This is my third year attempting it -- the previous two didn't go so well;; However, I used those to figure out what I did wrong and how I could fix it. As of the 17th, I had 42,186 words! It's definitely going much better. A lot of that is because I went ahead and planned my novel (Aperture) throughout September and October. "Pantsing" is actually pretty hard! I always lost motivation. It helps that I have computer access this year, too.

NaNo is super fun, especially when you have writing buddies! My school has a NaNo Club so we meet on Mondays at lunch (aka today) and talk about writing, or even whatever else we want to. It can be pretty hard once the new excitement wears off, but I think the bragging rights of completion is cool. I've been working super hard this November because of a challenge Marissa Meyer proposed -- you can win prizes if you write more than her. It's also a lot easier to write more than needed when you're working towards a goal.

Word counts so far! It's so fun to watch it go up :) 

I'm definitely working more on Aperture than I would have without the pressure of reaching word count (and beating Marissa Meyer), which is nice! I made sure not to write any scenes of the story before the month started so I wouldn't run out of scenes, but at this point I'm running a little low on ideas. And that can actually be a good thing -- while the scenes I'm writing are pretty bad, I'm learning more about the characters and they're growing even more than they have during the planning stages.

I've also been asked if I'm going to publish them, as a book or online. I was originally going to update my work every day on tumblr, but I didn't have internet access the first weekend of the month, and there was also concern that the official word count would raise a flag if it found a copy of it on the internet. I probably won't publish it as a book. That's a lot of stress and extra work I'd rather not go through. I'll go back and fix it up, and then post it by chapters / scenes onto tumblr. It's something I'm doing for fun, so I don't want to "taint" that with the effort of trying to make money off of it.

Anyway, I'll try to remember to post about the outcome of NaNo in December!