2015 Blog Reflection

Now that I've been posting consistently for a year, it's time to look at how it went!

I've had this blog for a while, but before 2015 I updated it pretty sporadically and didn't promote the posts at all. This year I wanted to challenge myself and see if I could get this blog actually on its feet.

Have I made it obvious yet that I don't know what I'm doing

I'd like to think this year went well! I never set any specific goals, so I guess it's pretty easy to declare this year a success ...

I decided on posting every three days, since that was a consistent number I could reach without stressing myself out too much or seeming too inactive. There were a few times that I struggled to get posts up on time, but there were also times where I had over a month's worth of posts scheduled and had to rearrange them to fit a newer post in.

I definitely could have done better promoting my posts. I starting posting links to my twitter account, but it was usually only for non-book reviews. I also started pinning my posts on Pinterest, but I don't think I have enough of an audience there to make a difference.

I also claimed my blog on Bloglovin this year. Bloglovin has been good for tweeting out links automatically, but I've noticed that some of them don't post until hours after the post went live. I don't know why that is.

My stats went up a lot compared to last year. I'm really glad, but my analytics graph is still kind of a mess. There have been at least two or three times that my blog has gotten crawled. I started using Google Analytics on top of what Blogger provides, which has been helpful in getting more info, but it also hasn't been perfect. Bloglovin also sends me weekly stat reports, but I currently don't have anything to show for it :c I consistently get "0 saves, 0 new followers, 0 current followers" emails. It's a little disheartening, but I know that the links I tweet out get clicked at least occasionally, which helps.

I'm going to keep going strong with this blog and I'm excited for what next year will bring. This time I'm even going to make goals!

2016 goals:

1. promote posts better! This year I'm going to look into other websites and programs that will let me schedule tweets and pins so I don't have to worry about them. I also have to do some research into when and where I should be sharing links.

2. grow a small audience! My sidebar on my blog says I only have one follower currently, but I know I have family that checks my blog, so it's not all that accurate. It would be nice to get rid of the fear that I'm just shouting into the void.

3. comment on other people's blogs! I've seen this advice a lot on "newbie blogger advice" posts, but it hasn't been the easiest for me to do. I've managed to comment a few times, but more often than not my social anxiety kicks in and convinces me to not post what I've typed out. It sucks. There are so many bloggers that I wish I could talk to.

4. find a balance of post types! I started writing individual book reviews in 2015 instead of compiling them by month, which has helped me with consistency, but I can't always find a good balance with them. I've done some pre-planning for next year so I'll have a lot of non-review posts, but whether I'll actually use any of them or not is still to be seen.

And a bonus stretch goal: earn money through AdSense. I added it to my blog this year to see what would happen, but I currently don't have enough of an audience to earn anything. I know the chances of me earning anything substantial are slim to none but it doesn't hurt to try, right?

Hopefully 2016 will be good to everyone! 

Casanova To-Do: Jan 2016

I figured blogging about it would make me more accountable. I don't know. That hasn't worked with my TBRs before, but it won't hurt, right?

"I designed my school's literary magazine," I tell myself as I make images like this.

I'm going to try and keep this list simple because otherwise I would just balk at it.

No, screw it, I'm not gonna lie. I'm balking at this list anyway because I am a lazy teenager and I don't like the thought of work. Even though this is something I'm making myself do for fun.

I don't understand how I function as a human being sometimes.

Anyway!

1. Fill in missing scenes

When I wrote Casanova during NaNo, I let myself write what I wanted to without making it seem "nice". I was struggling enough to hit word count as it was. Forcing myself to write scenes I wasn't excited about wasn't working for me.

This means my draft of Casanova makes sense only to me. Because I skipped a bunch of scenes and wrote out of order. Probably not the best idea, but hey, it was my first draft and nothing said I couldn't.

I should probably make a list of all the scenes I know I need that I didn't write. (Not here. In my sketchbook. But still. It would probably help.)

2. Put everything in chronological order

I have a better sense of the order scenes should go in since NaNo ended, but I still have a lot to work on. And a lot of it is dependent on step #1 and writing the scenes I'm missing. I'm pretty sure I wrote overlapping scenes at least a few days of NaNo and it's going to be an adventure trying to figure out what vignettes to use. A lot of the vignettes also have no context and can go pretty much anywhere, so the question is then where the heck do I put all of them?

I have my work cut out for me.

3. Replace remaining (xx)s

Like I said in my reflection, I used "(xx)" as a catch-all placeholder, which ended up making my life harder. I've only defined one of the values I used (xx) for. I still have a lot of characters to name and situations to explain.

Luckily my cousin has been a godsend and helping me name characters when I tweet at her. I should really enlist her help more. And probably buy her chocolate for all the decision-making she does for me.

4. Determine in-book universe laws

Not only did I skip a bunch of scenes in the first draft, I didn't really bother coming up with how their universe works, either. There are a lot of things regarding how Hell is supposed to work that I was just like ┐(° ヘ° )┌  and left them as plot holes.

This is probably gonna be the hardest part and it's likely not gonna be "done" until at least a few drafts in. I definitely went into NaNo with less planning done than I usually do and I wrote with a very ┐(° ヘ° )┌ attitude the entire month.

So yeah! I'm going to be very surprised if I complete all four. Or knock out more than half of these in general. I'm not setting the bar very high.

Since this post feels really short, I turned to a random page in my print masterdoc and screenshot one of the vignettes:

I have a lot of these kinds of vignettes that I probably won't keep, but they're hands-down my favorite thing to write. I'm almost tempted to see how many of these I can get away with in Casanova.

Ideally, I'll have at least the first two steps done by the time I go back to school on Jan 25th, but I wouldn't bet on it. The more serious deadline is by March. I'll check in again about my progress mid-March (if I don't make in-between posts before that).

Wish me luck!

Casanova Writing Research: Arlington, Texas

So in the off chance you've actually read my other blog posts / my twitter this past month, here's the explanation you've probably been waiting for!

One day I'll pick a standard format for these pictures. Bear with me.

If you have no clue what I'm talking about, I was lucky enough to go on another writing research trip to see where I set Casanova. My mom managed to get us cheap flights out to Dallas and back that fit in the weekend before exam week. I'd been asking to go to Dallas in order to do more in-depth research than Google Maps could give me, so I was amazed when it really did work out in my favor!

Why did I pick Arlington, Texas? Primarily because the songs that really brought Casanova together as a concrete story idea were country songs. Casanova is a collection of a couple different plot bunnies, and the song "American Kids" started to bring them together in my mind. My dad usually listens to country music when he's out in the garage and it was pure chance that I caught the songs I did. (I actually think I heard "American Kids" for the first time when I was heading to my high school for class one morning. That might've actually been with my mom. I don't remember.)

Anyway, "American Kids" gave me a really strong urge to set the story in Texas. The song never really mentions any specific place, but that was what my mind jumped to. My initial research focused around the Dallas area since we'd already been there and I was vaguely familiar with it. (Not as much as I thought, tbh.) I knew that I needed something close to a university because of Carter's backstory, and I think UTA was the first college I really looked at for the story. And settled on it since it worked out really well for what I needed. We also have an Arlington in our area, so the irony of that really cemented the decision for me.

So what did I learn?

First Semester Reflection

My first semester of college is officially over!! I took my last exam on the 17th. I wouldn't say I had the easiest time adjusting to college so far, but it definitely also wasn't as bad as I feared it would be!

Sometimes I think my design skills are getting better, and then I make pictures like this where I wonder if I'm just lying to myself. I can't tell anymore. 

This semester I took 14 credits, but one of them was a 1st year student seminar that only met until mid-October. I also didn't take my classes for my major in the right order ... but that doesn't matter as much. I still survived all my classes!

I haven't gotten back all of my grades at the time I'm writing this. I got As in Physical Geography, Seminar, and Communication, which exempted me from the first two exams! That was a really nice bonus since I was afraid I'd have to cram for the geography final.

I was exempted from my Color Theory final as well because of how the exams were set up. Our professor took the better grade of our midterm and final, and since I got 100% on the midterm, I asked if I could be excused so we could go to Dallas. Luckily my professor said yes!

Communication and Statistics were more of a challenge for me than Geography and Color Theory. I was put into a pilot program for Stat since I came from the local school system, so they put me ahead of where I tested into. I did okay for the most part, but I definitely should have put in more study time ...

Communication was hard for me because we had to do class presentations, which I hate. It was really difficult for me to give speeches to a class I didn't know after having the same classmates all of middle and high school. I actually skipped the first speech we were supposed to do ;; Luckily my professor gave us an "amnesty day" where she let us make up assignments, so I ended up doing it after all.

My favorite class was probably Color Theory. I've never really used painting as an art medium other than for cosplay and the odd art class project. We were given a lot of freedom in terms of what subjects we could paint, as long as it matched the palette we were using, so I was able to paint copies of photos I took. That was a really fun experience and I'm hoping I can continue re-doing my photos and making fake screencaps in the future.

This was my final project for Color Theory. The concept was to make fake pictures that Carter would've taken during the course of Casanova. I initially wanted to do more, but I had two weeks from idea to presentation and not many pictures to reference beforehand. The top left was freehanded and the other three used my pictures from the June vacation as a reference. 

Geography was definitely fun for me, but it was also a challenge because it was a class
focused on the science side of geography. The only other related class I'd taken before was AP Human Geography, which focuses on the cultural aspects. Physical Geography was a class I was supposed to take my third semester, not my first, which I didn't realize until it was too late to do anything about it. But I survived!

To be honest, I had no idea when I decided to go to my college that they even offered an Applied Geography associate's. I already have credit for about a semester's worth of classes thanks to the AP tests, so I got to jump straight into knocking out courses for the major.

I'm really glad I chose to go to a community college. I knew for certain that I wouldn't do well going to college out of state, but I don't think I would've done too well taking classes at UMD, either. I had almost all of my close friends at school with me and I got to hang out with all of them three days a week for lunch. (That was pure serendipity, but we've arranged to all have the same time block for the spring.)

I'm on winter break until Jan 25th. I've signed up for classes for the spring semester, but I haven't paid for them yet ;; We're working on that. Right now I'm signed up for two geography courses (Geog 101 and Political Geography, I think), a meteorology course, and Italian 101. I'm looking forward to it ♥

Casanova Playlist

I'm back safely from my writing research trip out to Dallas! It was a lot of fun and I'm really happy that it worked out well. I learned even more than I was hoping to on the trip ♥

I'm trying a vertical post this time because it's supposed to be more Pinterest-friendly. I figured I should try it out. Let me know if you think it works any better. 

I said I would have a post about the trip up on the 24th, but I decided to share my Casanova playlist as a separate post. I actually had some troubles with this -- my original playlists are through Spotify and Google Music, but I can't share the Spotify one since it's connected to my Facebook and I can't figure out how to share a Google Music playlist ;;

I ended up compiling a YouTube playlist instead. I usually try to avoid music videos with sound effects or non-music time, but I made some compromises in order to minimize the chances of the videos getting taken down and breaking the playlist.

If this embedded playlist doesn't work, here is the YouTube page for it! It should hopefully play through YouTube if it doesn't want to play through my blog.

Please let me know if any of the songs get taken down so I can replace them! As soon as I figure out how to share my Google Music playlist I'll tack that onto this post as well.

Apologies for this post being really short. I'm still worn out from this weekend and I'm writing this post instead of prepping for my last exam.

I should probably at least include a little bit of an explanation about the music, shouldn't I? The first half of the playlist or so is country music (or at least country-sounding music) since that's where a lot of the aesthetic of Casanova came from for me. "American Kids" was the first song that made the story come together. After I went to the Halsey concert with my friend in October, I switched over to more pop / Top 40 music. I ended up picking a much more suburban setting for Casanova than I initially intended, so the playlist reflects both my initial ideas and what ideas I actually used for the story.

I hope you guys like the playlist ♥ Underneath the cut is a list of all the songs in case the links don't work. Keep an eye out for my post about Dallas and Arlington on the 24th!