FRIDAY

Can I get a WHOOP WHOOP?


Why, you ask?


Because it's Friday!


This would be about the time when Rebecca Black would break into chorus, but I won't subject you to that torture.


Instead, let me shower you with ten useless facts, in the format of pictures! I am, after all, the Queen of Useless and Vaguely Interesting Tidbits.

I personally do not know why hippo milk is pink... but I do wonder who the heck tried to milk a hippo.

It weighs approx. 1,300 pounds, and is so big that a human can slip through the arteries. Dang.

Not good news for people who treasure their wooden possessions... 

I know where I'm getting my first job!

More environmentally-friendly than batteries, at least.

Just one example of the importance of learning a country's language before you visit it. Think how awkward it would be if you said: "I want to shower you with kisses!" O.o

Good news for egg-lovers (cough me cough)!

I wish I had a whale when birthday parties roll around... that'd save me alot of lightheaded-ness.

Everything I knew was a lie... 

I don't even want to think about the labor pains.

Well, hope you liked that. I got all these super-cool pictures at: http://www.learnsomethingeveryday.co.uk/ It's a really cool website for lazy-day web surfing.

Happy Friday everyone!

Writing, Analyzed

I've been writing for a while.


I know. That was a very blunt and uninteresting way to start this blog. But bluntness is the best kind of truth. Or something like that.


So, like I said, I've been writing a while. I believe I started at age eight or nine, and I was very into celebrity romances. I was a little girl who longed for a romance (or, at least, what I thought was romance at age eight), and since I couldn't get that, I turned to the next best thing: the love lives of celebrities. More specifically, the love lives of one Joe Jonas and Demi Lovato.


Yeah, I also watched Disney Channel alot.


So, for a couple years, I wrote Jemi (as it was known) fanfiction... and I was terrible at it. I have countless stories just taking up space in my hard drive that absolutely suck. I didn't indent, so my stories were basically one big paragraph. I didn't add any kind of descriptions, or sensory details, or personal feelings for the protagonists. My grammar was atrocious, my spelling was laughable, and don't even get me started on the story lines.


And yet I can't get rid of them. They prove to be amazing pick-me-ups when I have the writer's blues. They show me how much progress I made as an author in a couple years.

Soon, I began to grow away from Jemi fanfiction, because I finally came to my senses about how ridiculous it all was. I stopped writing for a while, picked up some tricks and got better at it. When I began to write again in sixth grade, they were all original stories, and they were better than the sappy love stories I had in mind for my celebrity fanfiction. They all ranged from a girl who was kidnapped and fell in love with her captor (totally realistic, right?), to a kid spy who had to save the world from an evil dude who turned out to be her birth father. (Sound familiar? "Luke, I am your father.") It was through these stories that I began to develop a writing style.

I also came to a realization when I was writing these stories. Ever heard of the phrase, write about what you know? It was because of that tiny rule that I wrote such crappy stories back when I was an eight/nine-year-old fanfictioner. (is that a word?) All I knew back then was: school is boring, every highschooler has a car, every highschool has linoleum floors, and everybody likes Converse. As you can tell, most of those facts I got from movies. 

But that wasn't the realization I came to. I realized that authors are the biggest copy-cats in the world.

We copy scenes from our own lives, like that awkward barrier you accidentally put between you and your crush by portraying your feelings by hitting him when your were in fourth grade. Or the time or cried your eyes  out back in fourth (or was it fifth?) grade in front of the only guy who liked you because of a skinned knee and your dad had to carry you back to your house, fireman-style.

We copy alot to properly describe certain feelings, like love or betrayal, depression or excitement, and to do that, we have to feel those firsthand ourselves. But we don't copy from just our own lives. We sometimes copy from things in the news, or from our best friend's crazy stories, because her life is more exciting than yours.

And that's okay. It's all part of the job. I just recently got a great new idea for a story by reading a random blog that I stumbled upon here on blogspot. And I'm not ashamed... very much. 

That's why there aren't many teenage published authors out there, because when you're young, you haven't lived enough to weave a story out of your experiences. 

I've been writing awhile. And I'm going to do it for a long time in the future. And hopefully, some day, I'll do it just enough to cross PUBLISH A BOOK off my bucket list.

Brothers

So recently, my younger brother and my dad went on a three day hunting trip. I was absolutely ecstatic-- my brother is the single most annoying person on this planet. He's like... a mosquito. But instead of latching on to your skin and sucking your blood, he sucks your sanity. And your patience. He sprouts these never-ending sarcastic and smart-butt comments that make me want to pummel his little--GAH. 


Sorry. That was my frustration leaking out onto my keyboard. Back to their absence. So, they left three days ago to go shoot deer and catch fish and do whatever to quench their desire to hunt, I guess. And so that just left my mom and me, but mostly me, as my mom still had to work. The first night they were gone, we went to Taco Cabana and pigged out on quesadillas and chips and queso, et cetera... and I didn't have to listen to my brother complain about how he doesn't like cheese and ramble about guns and WWII while I tried to enjoy my yummy, Mexican fast-food. It was quite nice.


The second night they were gone, and I turned on Teen Mom and blasted it. Normally, my dad can't stand the sound of the TV because our house is anything but soundproof and his office is rather close to the living room, and my brother hates Teen Mom. But they weren't there to protest. I gloated in their memory. HA.


The third (and, regrettably, last) night they were gone, my mom and I went to this Italian place. I laughed, because I ate spaghetti and that's my brother's favorite food. And no, I did not save him any. Bahaha. And he says I could never be evil. 


But then they came home and my brother once again become his annoying/mosquito-esque self. And my dad... well, he tries. He got me a present. It turned out to be a mini, travel-size can of shaving cream. The complimentary kind you might steal--er, take-- from hotels. I don't know if he's trying to be thoughtful, or if he's trying to tell me something. 


Well, at least it smells good.

Introduction?

This blog is basically the lovechild of boredom and a stifling summer. How much more do I need to say?

Well, let's get the basic introductions out of the way. My name is Lindsay, and I live in the magical, drought-prone land called Texas. And now, let me answer the question that is surely bubbling inside your little head: 

Do you ride horses to school? ... Heck yes.

I am undoubtedly, unquestionably, and without-a-doubt a nerd. I have a precarious-looking pile of books dominating both my bedside tables, and I've read them all. Twice. And those medals glinting on my wall? The result of academic nerdiness. For fun, I practice math. In the summer. And I speak the few words of Spanish I remembered from 7th grade interchangeably in my normally one-sided conversations with my family. (I find I ramble on too much when given too much freedom to talk, so they usually tune out.) And my area of expertise is undeniably Greek mythology. 

I guess I should put it out there that I'm also a writer. I write fanfiction as well as orignial stories, though right now it's mostly fanfiction. I find it easier to right fanfiction, because there's usually already a ground set in place that you  follow. I love exploring deeper in characters' personalities and elaborating on stories that need elaborating.

Oh, and I'm extremely well-skilled in the fine art of pretzel-eating.

My weaknesses include: Harry Potter, musicals, pretzels, ice cream, curly hair, cute romantic stories (nothing like the Notebook; that book bored me to tears), daydreaming, Country songs, and puppies. The best way to earn my friendship? Show me a cutely romantic Harry Potter musical involving curly-haired puppies daydreaming about Country music while eating pretzels dipped in ice cream. We'd be instant best friends! Strangely enough, though, no one has used that tactic to become my friend...

I have two dogs--Shelties, to be exact--that could not be more different. I think the only thing they have in common are their ability to thoroughly annoy me/make me smile and their love for human food. Sofi is dark, small (I'd wager about only a foot high) and... well, chubby. But she is the nicest dog you'll ever meet, and she'd lick anyone, anywhere. Her barks are annoyingly shrill, though, but you get over it because she's like a pillow on legs. And then there's Beau... he's lighter in color, bigger and more slender, and he isn't as nice to strangers. Sure, behind closed walls when he's surrounded by my family, he's gentle and sweet and just downright melts your heart. But introduce him to a stranger, and he immediately goes biserk. It's gotten to a point where he's known by name in my neighborhood.

I've also been mastering my British accent. I'm happy to say that it's moved away from dreadfully Cockney, and has steered into semi-European. I'm quite proud of it, actually. Though I do have a question--what the heck are crumpets? Anyone know? Me neither.

Well, that pretty much says it all. I'll be updating this blog every now and then, telling you interesting bits and pieces of my life, or maybe just to record my frequent and very random thoughts. Until then-- ciao!