I'll admit, I had a strange day yesterday. To start things off, I was sick all day. So I was already miserable, right? Well my mom, my brother, and I decided that we were going to try another church that was highly recommended by friends of ours, so because our pastor was out of town this weekend, the three of us and another friend of ours, Mark, headed off to this other church. And let me tell you, it sucked. After sitting there for two hours of a too-passionate pastor (I never actually believed that was possible before; I guess I haven't seen it all with PJ.) talk about how the church needs to keep up with the young ones (aka. "my generation"), we left early and went to lunch. Seriously, you couldn't PAY me enough to go back to that church. I think I'll stick with South Side, thank you very much. It's small, people actually know each other, no veins pop out, and there's no annoying lady behind me the whole time saying, "Amen, Alleiluia" like a broken record.

So then after that, we went to lunch, which was equally as bad. (This day does have a relevance to writing, I promise.) We went to some noodle place, and I ended up getting spaghetti. It wasn't that good. Overall, the day was not looking very promising. But then everything started changing. I got home and I read this absolutely incredible book by Sarah Dessen called Just Listen. I highly recommend it to anyone who is looking for an absolutely amazing novel. And I guess the novel really inspired me or something, because I was just on this frenzy all night long. I got, like, 10 pieces of paper and three colors of permenant marker: red, green, and blue. On two of the pieces of paper, I wrote All Daqu, All The Way! in green and blue and thumbtacked them to two different walls, to just remind me that there's no need to change something that's already working. That's kind of been my theme since I had my "daqu revelation," so I now have two signs in my room to remind me of that. Then on one of the papers, I wrote the passion quote from Buffy the Vampire Slayer from the season 2 episode, Passion. I would put it on here if I wasn't so lazy and not running on about 4 hours of sleep. (I'll get to that part of the story later.) And then on the other pieces of paper, I wrote (in green) a few quotes from my quotes masterlist, where I keep all of the cool quotes that I see in different places. I really felt like I was on a roll.

So this is where the writing part comes in. For the longest time now, I've been trying to think of a good story that I could write that kind of really follows a character through life. Keep writing a good, long series about them to the point where I feel like I know the character more than I know my best friends. Really give myself a chance to get invested in their story. I tried doing that with a girl named Alana Gardener, first, when I was in 8th grade. That didn't work out. I tried writing about 5 girls who all go to boarding school, and that didn't work, either. Then I tried Alana again, and I thought it was really successful. But looking back on it, I really screwed up a lot of her story. And there was also a big character, Lucy Parker, who was missing from Alana's story. I tried to put her in in the form of Alana's boyfriend, Jay, then her eventual friend, Alyssa, whom she meets in her junior year of high school. Lucy, too, had an interesting story that was just begging to be told. So I eventually worked out the story so that I could write almost a two-part series. Starting with a book about how Alana and Lucy came to being friends when they were in 8th grade, then a book for each of them for each year of high school. For instance, a book about Alana's freshman year, a book about Lucy's freshman year, a book on Alana's sophomore year, etc. In total, the series would turn out to be 13 books. That is quite a big project. So naturally I wanted to take the easy way out and write all of these other stories that are floating around my head. Alana and Lucy will still be there when I'm in college, I told myself.

Well, yes, but here's the thing: Alana and Lucy feel real to me. I really feel like I could pick up my cell phone right now and call them. In some ways, they are two of the greatest characters I've ever created. And I've created some damn good characters, if I do say so myself. Their story has everything that I want in my next project. Great characters, a long enough and good enough story that I can really get invested in them, a great plot, and the epic aspect of it. And the fact that at its core, no matter what else is going on in the lives of these two girls, the central theme of the story is still two girls who are both very anti-social who found comfort in each other and became inseparable best friends. Their experiences (especially Lucy's) are based on my own, and I love writing Alana because I can love her and hate her so much at the same time because she possesses the one quality that I really wish that I had that I don't: she's absolutely brilliant. I'm very smart, but people can't always see that in my grades, mostly because I write too much when I should be studying or doing homework. But Alana doesn't. She's pretty much effortlessly brilliant, but she has enough flaws that she still seems real.

Man. I could go on forever about how wonderful these characters are. And not just because they're so perfect, either. They've just been formulating in my mind for so long that they're just so real. I've had multiple dreams about them, and even used the dreams in the stories. And that's really what I've been searching for in a story, and honestly, I've been telling myself over and over again for the past several weeks that I shouldn't try to change what's already so perfect, because the second try is never as good as the original. So until farther notice, I'm pretty much only going to be writing about Alana and Lucy. The story originally started when I was probably about halfway through eighth grade and now I'm about halfway done with tenth grade, so that's a full two years that this story has been in my mind, and it never, ever had a name until last night, when I finally decided that yes, this series really needs and actual name. I've just literally been calling it The. I know what it means, so anywhere on my computer that I'm talking about The, I'm talking about Alana and Lucy. Last night I named it the "Promise" series. The name fits well, if you really think about it.

I'm still planning on doing the monthlong novel thing in the spirit of NaNoWriMo, and to keep me practicing. There are a friggin 13 books in this series. They don't even have to be written in order, because I just know the story that well. My next monthlong novel plan is coming up in March, then maybe one in May, most definitely one in July, and then, of course, November. (And, in case I didn't mention it, my monthlong novel plan is my way of attempting to combat that annoying binge-and-purge writing style that I described earlier. It's where you basically write a novel in a month, or at least 50,000 words of a novel.) I might throw in a couple more, too, depending on how I feel. But it doesn't really matter anymore. I'm going to keep writing about Alana and Lucy, no matter what.

So, anyway, the reason that I stayed up until 3:30 this morning was because there was a scene in Alana's senior year book that I really wanted to write, but since I thought I was giving up the series, I didn't bother to convert the documents back to MS Word when I finally got it for my computer. (Long story.) So I did that, so that had to have taken at least an hour. Then I wrote the scene and completely screwed it up. I'm definitely going to have to rewrite it. It was supposed to be a heartwarming scene between Alana and her boyfriend, and then they ended up fighting over something they are not allowed to even talk about at all. But at least I wrote it. And I just wasn't tired. So I went to sleep around 3:30, and I still woke up at, like, 7. I hate my body.

Okay, and I have one final note. (I know this is getting awfully long.) It's about Equilibrium. I have my writing group on Saturday, and I really don't know what I'm going to do. I just have no idea what to do with the story. I'm pretty much at a dead end, no matter what I do with it. It's just like little fragments of a story that I think once had a lot of potential, but now it just...doesn't. I either need to give it up or take a long break from it, because it is just plain not working. I just feel like I did everything I could to save it, and yet I couldn't. Kind of like my ex-boyfriend. Hm. But now that I have Alana and Lucy to write, I just really don't see how I can make Equilibrium work. Which really makes me sad, but I just can't. You cannot force a story that really doesn't want to be written.

Okay. I'm really done now.

xx daqu