I still don't learn...

Well, I left my lab report until the last minute. I've always said that if I keep doing that one day I won't get it done on time, and guess what? I was right at the worst possible time! Yeah, I think I'm going to fail this unit, to say the least, and I honestly can't find the motivation to care.
I had my Navy medical some weeks ago, and it doesn't look too bad but I need to get off my arse and get the doctor to fill some forms out, which, as with any trip to the doctors, I've been putting off. I'll have to go when I'm back at campus, since I'm now home for the holidays.
And, on that note, it's only the 21st and I'm already thinking I'll stay at uni next Christmas. I'm not really a Christmas person, and while I suppose I don't really want to see all of my relatives burn to death (if only because there'd be nobody to look after my snake for me) I don't think I can handle any more Christmases with them. Fuck, I'm not sure if I'll last this one. Needless to say, my Mom's her usual self, picking fights over every little thing and having to make everybody else miserable, and it's been quite some time since I've stopped holding out hope for peaceful, productive visits to my Dad's, so you'll probably hear some sort of rant about him in another week or so.
On the bright side, I might actually make the effort to meet up with some friends while I'm home, which will be nice. I generally prefer not to keep too many friends, since I never know where to put them, but I rather like the ones I have so it'll be nice to see them again.

Oh, and I left all of my alcohol back in dorms. So, yeah, those friends may have to stop me from murdering my family, since the old method for that isn't really available right now.

Suicide by Wrapping paper (aka I hate Christmas)

So, I've officially started the Christmas shopping some weeks ago, and now have started the wrapping, too. While I seem to get better at the whole wrapping thing with each year that goes by, I still seem to end up in a tangle more often than I would like. At least I haven't accidentally sellotaped myself to the floor yet, which is always a pretty good thing. And the presents so far don't look too much like they were wrapped by a hamster, which is a definite improvement on last year.
And of course I have to go with the customary "Why does it cost so damn much?" rant. I'm not even halfway through and you wouldn't believe what it's cost me. Needless to say, Christmas is not my favourite holiday. I like Halloween, since I get to dress up and it doesn't cost me any more than I'm willing to pay. Or Easter, as an excuse to eat lots of chocolate and, again, it doesn't cost me any more than I'm willing to spend. Christmas is too expensive a holiday, and as much as I should pretend I love my family, I am pretty much flat broke right now, which is why I hardly ever go out. As with every November/December, I'm spending more money on other people than I am on myself. That wouldn't bother me at all had I money to spend, but, once again, broke.
So, as with every year, people had better like their presents, because right now my bank account hates me.

I Never Learn...

Well, having injured my right leg, I decided not to go to the doctor as I should have done and walked around on said leg. Guess what happened? Because of my right leg being injured, my left leg was having to carry all of my weight, so now I've a strain injury on my left hip. Go figure.
Sadly, this isn't the first time I've left it too late to go to the doctor and had it bite me on the arse. You might think that I'd have learned by now, but you'd be wrong.

I gave in

Okay, so I gave in and went to the shop for more alcohol. Maybe there might be something to that little voice in my head that is pointing at me and screaming "ALCOHOLIC". Fuck.

And the worst part - no bottle openers. They have corkscrews, but no bottle openers. That's alright, though, because I can occasionally come up with some pretty bright ideas, so I just bought my cider in can form rather than in bottles (or in bottles with screw-tops, which don't require a bottle opener) so now I can drink way more than I should outside of essay night and hopefully will leave the blog be and get something constructive done, like my NaNo, rather than just drinking and harassing innocent internet forums as I did last night.

For want of a bottle opener

I knew there was something I forgot to bring to uni. I didn't bring a bottle opener. In all fairness, I'm not a heavy drinker, and when I do drink it's mostly spirits (gin, vodka, etc.) for which a bottle opener is not a necessity. It's a little past five, I've an unopened bottle of cider on my side and it's all but begging me to drink it.
I'm pretty sure they sell bottle openers in the campus store, but that would require getting dressed. Mind, I would be able to buy more alcohol, which is always a bonus.
I've got fuck all done for NaNoWriMo so far, which is no big surprise. Writer's block is a bitch, and she and I are rather well acquainted. Think I'll try getting some short stories done after I finally get some alcohol in me, and see about sending out some submissions.
And yes, I know that wanting alcohol at five pm makes me sound like an alcoholic. And, frankly, I can live with that.

Booze, NaNoWriMo, and why I shouldn't be used as a role model

Well, I got my English essay in, an impressive one minute before the final deadline. I had to pull an all-nighter to do so, mind, and it's probably shit. I did the exact same thing with my psychology essay, too, only it was in a half hour or so before the deadline, I didn't have to run to get there, and I had time to get dressed before I left my dorm.
Please note, having to half-jog-half-limp on an injured leg wearing flip-flops and still wearing my pajama top was not a pleasant experience, and I sincerely hope that I will learn from that in the future and not leave these things until the last minute.
On the bright side, my leg is started to get better on its own, and I managed to last an entire fencing session without wussing out and limping home. Which is, of course, a good thing.
My fencing is still shit mind, but that's not a huge shock. My archery is pretty shit, too, as is my quidditch. My netball's shit, but that's been shit for many years now, so that's not really a shock. Honestly, it's not like I've ever 'not enjoyed' sports, because I've always liked playing, but I'm not very good at them, and being the short fat kid I never got many chances to improve, either.

I've been so busy with essays this month that I've literally nothing done on my NaNoWriMo project, either. So I've been out and stocked up on junk food and alcohol, and will likely be up for most of the night. I might skip the story I had planned (it was only really a vague outline held together by a few key scenes, anyway) and just make some shit up. I mean, I'm going to be drinking myself stupid and beating my head off a keyboard anyway, since that's actually how I write, so I may as well just wing it and see what happens. Honestly, I'm not expecting it to go well, but failure is something that I've gotten pretty used to so I'm just going to have fun with this one and see how much my drunken mind traumatises my not-so-drunken-but-still-pretty-incoherent mind in the morning.
And that, for me, is what writing is all about.

You know you're a student when...

... Essay night is drinking night.
... You find yourself up at 6am, halfway between drunk and hungover, trying to finish as essay due in in a few hours.
... You the follow that by half-running to the subject office, in your flip-flops and a pajama top, still halfway between drunk and hungover, in order to get your essay in.
... Said essay is in a whopping 1 minute before the final deadline.

... You repeat the whole process a week later.

WKD, Busted and the Nostalgia filter

I am procrastinating.

I have an English essay due in Tuesday, a Psychology essay due in some time next week, and I am sitting here blogging. This cannot be good.
Luckily, next week is reading week for psychology, so I only have English and Dinosaur class. That gives me plenty of time to work. Now the question is, will I actually do it?

Right now I'm drinking WKD (the drink of underage kids who can get served but haven't the balls to drink real alcohol and/or lightweights)  eating Doritos with salsa, listening to Busted and trying to resist the urge to play with the mini-babybel wax. I never thought I would miss high school, and let me tell you... I was right. If people had known I was a fan of Busted I might actually have had more shit to deal with than I already did.
However, it does have quite a nostalgic feel to it, and I have to say, with the number of nights I was up late finishing off coursework in just this situation (though with an adored but now sadly departed CD player instead of a laptop and youtube) you might think it'd get me in the mood.
You'd be wrong. Even then I was a dreadful procrastinator and struggled to meet deadlines. I've actually gotten significantly better about it, which really says a lot about how bad I used to be.

Well, I do actually need to get this essay in if I want to pass my course, so I need to go. Which basically means I'll be heading back to the year 3000 and trying to imagine what it would look like if Matt Willis and James Bourne had a son (sorry Charlie, nothing personal, honest :) )

You know you're a hipster when...

... The word 'mainstream' is a legitimate part of your vocabulary.
... You yourself don't know who half the bands on your playlist are.
... Most of the T-shirts you own have either the name of some band nobody's ever heard of or some 'edgy' slogan, just for the sake of making people look at you funny.
... You spend your English class discussing poetry you never bothered to read.

I can dress myself

I seem to have been hit by my yearly existential crisis earlier this week. They always seem to come in October. It doesn't help that so far university has been nothing but an exercise in reminding me of all of the things I'm not very good at and all of the people that are better than me.
Writing out Author bios on Monday evening and realised not for the first time that I've done nothing of value with my life.
Tuesday, Fencing, and I correctly put the kit on without assistance. You'd think I'd feel good about that, but it's basically saying that I can dress myself.
Wednesday, overslept and turned up half an hour late for a lecture. Teacher didn't hold it against me, though. We then spent the lab putting toy dinosaurs in buckets of water and doing maths. I dropped a bucket when I was filling it (well, it actually fell off the side as I was leaving to fetch a jug) and made a mess, so not good.
Yesterday went alright, because I didn't really do anything. I made spag bog and didn't actually food poison myself, but apparently you can't actually get food poisoning from mince beef, so that probably explains it. I froze half of it and have just microwaved it, which is the half of cooking that I don't struggle with. Might do chile tomorrow, as I have the stuff and still have mince I need to use.

And none of that had any relevance to anything, and has probably bored anybody reading this senseless. Oh well. It's not like anything interesting ever happens to me anyway.

All I can taste is string...

I meant to upload this last night, but...
meh...

So, I actually did go to my quidditch social, which was a quiz night. I was rubbish, to say the least. But the last round was a physical trail, and my team ended up volunteering me, because nobody else wanted to do it.
I had to eat doughnuts off a piece of string without my hands.
All that I could taste for the rest of the night was string. Doughnuts or no doughnuts, it was not a pleasant experience.
Still, we came second and only lost on the tie-breaker, so the night wasn't a complete bust.

Go Figure

So, my last week has been... hectic, of a sorts. I've already missed deadlines, maintaining my track record of "How the hell is she not failing". I've got quite a bit of work, to say the least, and I'd been hoping for a couple of weeks of getting it easy to start with.
Sunday is quickly turning into one of my worst days, just because it's the day I do all my sports on. Yesterday it was archery, netball and quidditch, because I'm just awesome, but I'd somehow pulled an abdominal muscle some time prior to this, so I now feel pretty much dead. And I have lessons all day on Monday to boot, so I don't get much of a rest.
But, I don't suppose I can complain much, given that the sports are optional and all. I just don't like the painful realisation of how out of shape I am. I mean, I knew I was out of shape, but they didn't need to rub my face in it.
And, today, as often happens, people seem to be seeking to cost me money that I don't have. This time it was in the shape of a used CD sale outside of the SU building, which is pretty much a given where costing me money is considered. I picked up a couple of CDs, so I now know what I'm doing tonight. That, and possibly making an actual attempt to cook. I think there may be a social on tonight, but I still have fresher's flu, my stomach still hurts and I probably look worse than I feel, so there's no guarantee that I'll go. They've probably all seen enough of me anyway.

And I've just realised that while this was originally intended as a writing blog, focussed on my writing funnily enough, it's basically turned into me bitching about my life. Go figure.

You know that you're an alcoholic when...

... You accidentally water the houseplants with gin and tonic because you mistook it for tap water (I haven't done that in a few months, mind, but alas, it has been done).
... You go to the shop in flip-flops when it's cold and wet out, because you can't be bothered to put proper shoes on but you've ran out of gin.
... You can't decide which you need more out of a poster of cocktail recipes and a poster of hangover cures, so you get the 'Shit Happens' poster instead.

P.S.

Almost forgot: I'll be putting up a publishing list, letting you all know when I've unleashed a new piece of writing upon the unwitting world. It can be found at
http://ljperrybooks.blogspot.co.uk/

I may put up separate ones for pseudonyms, or I may just put them all on the same one. I haven't quite decided yet. I'll get back to you all on it.

You know that you're in the middle of nowhere when...

~Not when one of your uni buildings has a field with a horse next door, because while it is odd some people do have enough land in the outskirts and suburbs to keep horses (there were some such people round the corner at home, and I kind of miss being able to walk the dogs past the horses. Maybe I'll go visit the horse here)
~Not when there are fields with cows in them, as while you do not get that even in the outskirts and suburbs you do see such fields lining the motorway and most people who live in cities have indeed seen a cow before.
~Yes, when you see random pheasants off the edge of the path when you're walking across campus. Seriously, a frickin' pheasant. You don't even get those things at nature reserves. I mean, I have literally only ever seen them at my Dad's golf club, and I think somebody puts them there deliberately just to make it look posh. That is how far out in the middle of nowhere I am right now, there are pheasants walking about the place and I swear I was the only person who looked even remotely surprised by it.

Notably, I am procrastinating right now. Not only was I given an essay over a week ago now that I've not yet even started (and I think may be due in for Monday) I also HAVE to start editing, for a story going into an anthology, and I DO have a deadline for when it has to be done by. As anybody whom actually reads this shall soon learn, I am not a fan of editing (and it would seem my stories do need a lot more editing than I often assume, although that's partly because I look for any excuse I can to get out of editing). So, yeah, that's why this blog is being written, because I'm actually supposed to be doing something else.

And in other news, I actually cooked a whole stir-fry all by myself the other night and I haven't died from food poisoning yet - yes, I did actually eat it, and it was for the most part tolerable. I'm quite proud of myself for that.
So, that's about it really. And now I have absolutely no excuse but to get back to work (I always swore that I would never come to think of writing as work; oh how wrong I was)

Research

I have just had my first ever experience of fencing. I have to say, it was a lot of fun, but bloody hell it was exhausting.
As a writer one thing I pride myself on is that I actually do, occasionally, do research, and I do believe that all fantasy writers should at least try a few of the things, like fencing, that their characters are going to have to do. I plan to join the fencing club properly, and will hopefully be giving archery a go this week, all under the guise of 'research'. Truthfully, I'm just a bit of a geek, and archery and fencing are things I've wanted to try since I was a child, along with horse-riding. I couldn't afford it back then, or more my parents couldn't afford it for me, so the fact that my uni has fencing and archery clubs is wonderful for me.
Of course, they also have an equestrian club, but I still can't afford that and I really don't expect that to change any time soon, so I'll just have to settle for watching showjumping on the TV.

Scrambled Eggs

So, it is Thursday afternoon. I moved into university dorms on Saturday, and spent the weekend getting settled in, meeting my new dorm-mates and making an adequate mess of my new room. I was going to post something about it on Monday evening, but one of my Dorm-mates convinced me to go out instead.
Well, I say convinced me, but I'll admit that he didn't really have to work very hard. I
Anyway, Monday evening I got drunk. I got in such a state, in fact, that I received the closest thing to divine retribution there is in the form of a two day hangover. I am not proud of myself, to say the least.
So, I couldn't blog Monday for obvious reasons, nor Tuesday because I think I may have temporarily died, Wednesday I didn't quite feel up to it though I did just about manage to leave the dorm and today is Thursday. And... that's probably all that I have to tell you right now. So, yeah...

Also, in case you were wondering about the seemingly random title, scrambled eggs is my 'hangover food'. As in, it's what I eat when i feel like shit and can't actually blame anybody but myself. Thank F- I can actually at least cook that much.

Lessons Learned

It's been a moderately busy summer, and by moderately busy I mean that I've had absolutely nothing to do. I had some technical issues earlier in the summer, which were repaired some weeks back now, and have gotten back to some projects that had been left unattended over the summer.
I also got a few new stories out, and have just learned a very valuable lesson. You see, I just got an acceptance for an anthology, which is absolutely wonderful, especially since this was quite an out-of-genre experience for me, to say the least (and also because I might be making some money off of this one, but really that's not what I write for). As it's so different to what I normally write, I'm using a pseudonym.
So, my important lessons learned. I could tell you how I've learned that, even if I'm not used to writing something I should give it a go anyway, that I should have more faith in myself as a writer, that I've learned to step out of my comfort zones as an author and try new things in my writing... But what am I saying; what I've actually learned is that, at least when there's payment involved, authors have to fill out quite a bit of paperwork, and that is something that I do not enjoy.
Small price to pay to put "Published Author" beside my name, I know, but it's times like these that I really wish I could afford to hire somebody else to take care of the tedious tasks for me.

Editing

Editing is the absolute bane of my existence. I loath it, I really do. Unfortunately, in writing, it is a necessary evil, and whether I want to do it or not I'm going to have to at some point. The problem is that there just always seems to be better things to do.
I greatly envy the professional authors who can hire other people to do their editing for them. I also envy them that they get paid for doing something which (I assume) they love, and that they're all richer and more successful than me, but lets just ignore all of that for the time being.
However, I am quite lucky in that I find my writing doesn't tend to need a drastic mount of editing or redrafting, though I really should go back and add in a little more description at some point.
More often than not, I can't really cut anything out because I find that there's nothing to cut. Should I ever be given a word-count quota, I seriously doubt I'd be able to meet it.

Virtues I Lack

I sent out a couple more submissions to journals today and checked the status on a few I have pending. No response yet. Now, I understand perfectly well how many stories these poor editors have to read through, and given that some of them are my terrible excuse for writing you have to feel sorry for them, and I also know that it's actually usually a good sign if they take a while getting back to me because it usually means they're actually considering me and I know that they need to wait until near the deadline when they'll have almost all of the submissions for that issue in to make the final decisions.
Yes, I do understand these things and I do appreciate it. But I'm just so damn impatient. I don't like having to wait for things and I get easily frustrated when I do have to wait for something. And the longer I have to wait for a response the more I want one.
It's a good thing I didn't have working on my patience issue as my resolution this year, because I would be failing miserably.

Introductions

Why did I create this blog? I'm not entirely sure, because I really doubt that there is anybody out there that might be reading it any time soon. But on the off chance that there is, here it is. Here I will write about my life, my writing, and just whatever is on my mind. I make no promises of coherance or sanity, or even of correct spelling. And on that note, I will now leave to eat a cookie.