Two Quotes

The first is for your enjoyment, and the second I'd like to hear your thoughts on.


"Criminal: A person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation." - Howard Scott


(approximated) "Romance novels are like Playboy for women."

A Wrinkle In Time

Caution: somewhat complex science-y things to follow.


Have you read Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time? You should. It's downright fantastic. Probably one of my favorite books.


I first read it in 4th grade, as part of an in-class AG assignment. The entire Time quartet is fascinating and very well-done, but this is the best. My favorite part was the explanation of the tesseract. 


Of course, in the real world, a tesseract is a four dimensional cube (well, technically five, but four spatial dimensions). The best way to represent it in its true form in 3 dimensions is a cube within a cube, with lines connecting the corners of the inner cube to the corresponding corners of the outer cube.
The only true way to represent it in 3 dimensions is its net. The net of a cube is six squares forming a cross. I'm sure you've seen it before. The net of a tesseract is like that, except made out of cubes.


However, in the book, a "tesseract" is a folding of space-time in order to travel instantaneously from one place in space-time to another.


Ms. Whatsit asks Meg questions. All questions and answers are approximated quotes, as I sort of lost my copy (my cousin has had it for at least a year. I don't expect to get it back.)


What is the first dimension?


A line.


What is the second dimension?


Well, you square the line, so you get a square.


What is the third dimension?


You square the square, leaving you with a cube.


Good. And what is the fourth dimension?


Well, you'd square the cube. Um, I think it has something to do with Einstein and time..Time! I guess it would be Time.


And then we have the fifth dimension. (Which is speculated to be the thing that is waving in a light wave.)


I can't possibly explain to you how incredibly cool I found this. And still find it. And I understood it, too. Really understood it. I wrote up sheets and sheets of paper explaining it, just because I was so enamored. I tried to explain it to people in my class. They didn't get it.


**gushes for a while longer on how awesome the book is**


In 7th grade, the book was an option for our reading groups (I didn't choose it, but that's not the point.) When giving short summaries about each book, our teacher said something like "It's kind of confusing to understand, so come ask me if you have any questions."


My mental response was something akin to "WHAT?! NO IT'S NOT!" The funny thing is, I have a friend whose experience with this book is the same as mine, even though we were in totally different classes and didn't meet until a year ago.


So in the past year (mainly as a result of meeting him- he had books on the subject and let me borrow them), I've been reading a lot about current advances in physics (mainly quantum physics) and other related topics. I just started Hyperspace by Michio Kaku today, which is what made me write this post.


Basically, I love the idea of "higher" dimensions, and my love for them came from literature, and you should all go read that book if you haven't already.


Everyone with an interest in the realm of physics has a starting point. For most people, it's science fiction. Asimov, or Herbert, or Bradbury, or any of the other Big Names. For me, it was A Wrinkle in Time, even though I didn't know it was physics back then. To me, physics was gravity.


It's fascinating. Sorry for bothering you with my gushing/positive rant.

We're Tough

One quick thing before I get on to my main topic.

I hate when people say "You have great taste in music." All it means is "You like the same music that I do!" It's very arrogant (yes, subconsciously arrogant) to presume that your tastes are the objective standard for "good/great taste."

Anyways.

My sister and I were having an...um...argument, of sorts today. I was giving her critiques on some of her writing...and perhaps I was a bit harsh.

 I think I have less inhibitions about telling her exactly what I think, as opposed to keeping my mouth shut, because as my sister, she's "required" to "like" me. Friends are only your friends because they like you. Siblings and other family members have no choice. So you have to be more careful and polite with friends. Because they can always leave.

Now, I usually don't have many negative things to say about my friends, and usually the ones I do have aren't very negative at all. Even my criticism of writing or whatever isn't negative. It's just "it would be better if..." But still

But that isn't all.

At writing club, I'm used to my work being torn at. And I'm glad for it, because it ends up better. I don't take it personally. I take it as a compliment that you care enough about me and my work to want to make it better.

And you all are used to it as well. We're tough, but sometimes I forget that other people aren't used to it.

Also, I'm participating in Life in a Day. It's a YouTube project where you upload stuff filmed on the 24th that answers any of the following questions: "What do you love?" "What do you fear?" "What makes you laugh?" and "What's in your pockets?"

My parents were gone most of the afternoon shopping for furniture, so I didn't get to do the thing I was planning on, unfortunately. But I'll still upload what I have, and that will be that.

The One With All The Embedding

Here are the songs I recorded at the ROFLCOPTOUR concert last Tuesday, in chronological order. There were a lot of other ones, of course, but I had limited battery power and memory space.

(about John Green's book Paper Towns- my favorite of his. The book is a lot more serious than the song, although still very, very funny. I highly recommend it to everyone, as it's one of my favorite books of all time.)

I hope you enjoy the videos, even though there were a lot of people in the way.

If You Are Depressed...

...or otherwise not in the greatest of moods, make a list.


Make a list of what is currently making you happy. 


I know it sounds like one of those stupid things you hear about psychologists saying...but it works. It works amazingly well.


On a related note, I'm borrowing a book from my friend called The Book of Awesome. It lists things that are awesome and has a page or two on each one.


I've finished my driving lessons. I almost hit someone today while changing lanes. They were in my blindspot, and I forgot to check. Someone else almost hit me, because I was changing lanes and put my brakes on.
Conclusion: I'm bad at changing lanes.
But now I don't have to worry about it until after my birthday in October, so that's good.


Leaky Con 2011 (A Harry Potter conference I plan on attending) is having "Lit Day," where several authors, agents, and people from publishing houses will come and talk about related things. I'm unbelievably excited about this. However, it's proving difficult to get my parents to allow me to go, seeing as how its in Orlando and the hotel is rather expensive.
If only one of those agents I queried miraculously decided to represent me and got Clockwork sold...then I would have enough money. Haha.


Emily has declared that my query letter "needs work." Be excited, people, for the day when you get to attack it draws nearer. :D

In Which My Paranoia Sets In

This is all new to me, right? Sure, I've taken a class where we talked about it some, and read loads of personal accounts and blogs and whatnot...but I've never done this whole getting-published thing before.

I know Clockwork is good. I worked hard on it, and I've had loads of help from you guys. That's not what worries me. I know it's just a matter of time manuscript-wise.

But what about my query letter?

The query I wrote for Ishaera for my exam only got points taken off for phrasing and tense (I wrote it as if I was still working on the book as opposed to having finished. The directions confused me so I thought that was the way he wanted it.)

But that's just one. It's an entirely different thing. Prose I can do decently. Poetry is subjective. But a query letter? I've only written three of those in my entire life. Okay, maybe four. But still. 

And I know two rejection letters is nothing. Really. I know this. But that doesn't keep me from worrying. So I'll be reading my query letter to you next week, and you can have at it.

Yes, so I sent four or five more queries out this morning, and I got one reply so far (I'm actually impressed by how fast he was in getting back to me.)

One of them asked for people to send the first few pages along with their queries, and the first chapter of Clockwork is definitely the best (in my opinion, anyways.) Another said to attach the first 50 pages. Strangely enough, I'm more nervous about that one. The first 50 pages are very Queste-centric and set-uppy. And we all know that Queste is annoying. It's very girly YA and not much sci-fi. However, it does have the tea people in it, so I think that's good. It's pretty much immediately after that point that things start getting interesting (she finds the library, talks to Ronald for the first time, etc.)

Driving-wise, they took me driving around downtown Raleigh today (scary, right?), and then afterwards my mom and I went over to the elementary school and I practiced parking (I'm not very good at that. Especially right-hand parking.)

The Parselmouths are an excellent band. This is my second-straight time through their CD I bought last night at the concert.

And also, since I wrote some reviews of it on here during the beginning of the season (which I won't be doing this time around), I figured I'd tell you that Syfy's Caprica will be starting up again in January. 

You Never Forget Your First...

...form rejection. Haha.

Yep. That is what I received in my inbox after the ROFLCOPTOUR concert tonight (speaking of which, Emily, I thought you were going to be there?).

It was a very nice one, though. I archived it. :D

As my Facebook status says, it was exciting for about ten minutes, and now I'm just sort of "yeah, that's what I expected." I only said "dejected" because of the similarity to "rejected." I'm actually okay with it. 

Unfortunately, for most of the other agents I plan on querying, I'll need to write a synopsis. Yay. Of course, it was something I probably should have done at some point anyway.

Also: I started my driving lessons with the Driving School Teacher today. I'm either paying attention to my speed and turning too far to the right, or paying attention to my steering and speeding or going too slow. But I've only been behind the wheel for less than two hours total, so that's alright as well.

The concert was awesome. I'll be uploading footage to my YouTube channel soon. I bought two new CDs and got my ALL CAPS one signed.

So that's cool.

And So It Begins

About ten seconds ago, I did something rather important, relatively speaking.

I emailed my query letter to an agent. Kristen Nelson, of the Pub Rants blog, to be precise.

And now I wait 5-10 days. Far more than likely, I'll get my first rejection letter, which will be ironically exciting in and of itself.

On an unrelated note:

Following a lot of literary blogs can get confusing. Ms. Nelson is the agent representing the Gallagher Girls series, which is the book of the month at Readergirlz  The Eragon fansite I follow posted about the Harry Potter Alliance last week. Various authors and agents know each other, and they mention each other in their posts. It's rather annoying to have to figure out who a person is before I read their post.

Also:

I found some romance earlier today that is non-cliche and slightly cheesy, except since its so unbelievably honest it doesn't seem that way. Unfortunately, I can't read it to you at a meeting, as it is private. Private, as in the "letter from my dad to my mom" kind of way. And non-cliche in the "We're already married and have kids" sense. 

I don't want to say anything more than that, but my dad is a great writer when he wants to be. I only wish he had the time and inclination.

An Opportunity

Now, I don't know if this is actually going to happen or not, but let's pretend that it is.


I've been given the opportunity to be a part of a collab channel on YouTube. Five of us would each read one book per week, and then post a video with our review of that book on our assigned day of the week.


It's not like I was invited specifically or anything. I hope we follow through with this. I haven't been reading as much as normal lately, so this would get me motivated again, and I'd be exposed to books I've never read, plus the opportunity to interact with people I don't know.


Should be fun.

Quote

"The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible." - Bertrand Russell