Compositions

Wow... I'm super busy and haven't blogged in FOREVER!

Well, quick updates:
-I now have a pen name: Michaila Curtis.  Like me on Facebook if you haven't already, please!
-I'm currently failing NaNoWriMo.  As much as Calista wanted to come out of my head, her story wasn't fully developed.  That, and my life is insane.  Remind me later to tell you about car troubles.

I'm composing stuff!  Trying to figure out what songs and pieces to send in for a composition scholarship, so I shall post those that I have on Noteflight here: (beware, many of them are works-in-progress)

My latest project: Rain's Dream/Rain Dreaming/Storm Children:


"Princess at Heart" from my musical Twice Upon a Time
"Please" (just a start...need to finish notating)
"Perfect Mystery/Under the Stars" love themes from Twice Upon a Time (just melodies)
"A Day in the Life" from Twice Upon a Time (just look at the end part...first part makes me cringe)  Yeah, so that's about it.  I still have "Changes," a piano piece, "Chasing Mountains," a horn duet, and "The Promise," a clarinet/violin (part can be played by either), flute, and piano trio that need to be entered into Noteflight and/or re-notated.  I also have a guitar piece called "Daydreams"...need to remember to do that.

Surprise and my Mind is a Crazy and Strange Place

I auditioned for the community college's play with a cast of 11 for extra credit and managed to land a part- I'm the Little Nun in House of Blue Leaves.  It's a weird play-very weird, but still.

Wow.  Okay.  Still getting used to the idea.  I did NOT think in a million years that I would get a part.  This is a massive change from the last play I was in, where I was excited about it a year and a half before auditions.  Just came to school Monday- oh, there's auditions today.  I get extra credit for my theater class if I audition- eh, what they hey?  Let's give it a shot.

Yeah.  I'm going to be insane.  I've got a massive history presentation worth 20% of my grade due in 2 weeks.  My topic is Archaic Greece.  My focus, I'm hoping, will be comparing the Greek myths of Herakles to the Disney movie Hercules.  *crosses fingers*  I agonized over this focus peoples, AGONIZED.
If all else fails:
-The Strange and Puzzling History of the Greek Gods and Goddesses- they did some pretty odd stuff.  Athena came out of Zeus's head, literally.  Like Zeus had a headache, had someone chop his head open with an ax and Athena (or Athene) came out.  NO JOKE.

-Comparing myths to fairy tales- Cupid and Psyche to East of the Sun West of the Moon, Pandora's box to Bluebeard...but will I get 10 minutes out of this?  Would also require massive reading of fairy tales and myths and time that I do not have.

-Comparing myths to their modern counterparts-Herakles/Hercules is a specific example of this, but I thought of using Percy Jackson and the like-problem?  Haven't read Percy Jackson.

-Greek constellations and the stories behind them. Problem?  Most constellations are known by their Roman names...

Idea this morning:
Retelling the bible story of Esther, in high school, with a mafia gang.
X is the "king" of a "mafia" thing that hates a certain group of people and wants to kill them.  When X catches his girl cheating on him, he chooses Star, a quiet beautiful girl (much like Belle) rather forcefully to be his new girl.  She is part of this group he hates, and spends most of her time hanging out with her cousin Morrie. X's right hand man, Ham (? name) hates Morrie and they're big enemies.  X grows to really love Star, and she grows to tolerate him.  Ham decides that he's had enough of these people their gang hates and decides that they should get rid of them once and for all.  Now it's up to Star to save her people.
What if Star's people were like fairies or something like that? 0.0  I'll have to mull over that for a while.

My mind is a crazy and strange place..."don't judge my crazy!  I don't judge yours!"

Something Random This Way Comes

http://www.christianfictionbookreviews.org/2012/09/300-kindle-shopping-spree_5.html

Yep.

Anything else I need to say?

No, not really.  Just spent a bunch of time on facebook when I should've been working on homework.  Been listening to Suessical soundtrack, and Hercules, half-wishing I was a guy so that I could sing "Alone in the Universe" and "Go the Distance" and "Proud of Your Boy" a deleted song from Aladdin.  Is my lack of a Y chromosome going to stop me from singing this song?  No way, Jose.  I've already sung "Proud of Your Girl" and worked on "Alone in the Universe" last night.  Also made up a tune to my friend Myriah's lyrics, "My Soul Has a Song"  She wanted a country song, and I don't listen to a lot of country, but I think I did pretty good.  (Here's a video of me just playing it.  For the 5th time ever.)

Yeah, I screwed up, but it works.  I'm going to have to work on it and get a nicer version up later.  Sound country?

Need to go do homework.  But my goodness, I love my webcam.  So much.

Bye, Haili's out.

REMIND ME LATER: www.writing.com Get your writing reviewed, but you retain copyright- all they can do is show people.  And once you take the writing down, you retain all rights and can publish it and stuff.  And they do novels.  Yay!

Freeware I Cannot Live Without

My parents kept me away from the internet for quite a while.  My brothers entertain themselves with www.coolmath-games.com while I entertained myself on Powerpoint 2003 (and people always complement me on my powerpoints-gee, I wonder why?)

Well, now that I'm older, I've found all sorts of cool things on the internet-including free programs, games, and helpful things.  So I'm going to share my top 10 favorites with you, because I'll want a list of these later when I go to install them all on my new laptop.

1. Noteflight.  Need I say more?  I love this thing.  It's easiest described as Google docs for music composition.  I love it and it's WAY cheaper than Finale.  And easier to use and share music with people.  It has a limited free version, but I'm a happy camper and got the paid version, Crecendo, on sale.  And once you sign up, the first price you pay is the price you pay to renew it.  I got mine for $30 a year, and it's generally $50. Next year when I renew it, I'll get charged $30, even if there's no sale.
2. Gimp.  Essentially, free photoshop.  And it's easier to use.  I've used it for my book cover When the Stars Fall as I mentioned in this post. 
3. Celtx.  I use it mainly for screenplays, since it formats everything nicely, but it sure works great for organizing characters and the like.  Wrote Twice Upon a Time on it.  My only warning is that Celtx ate 5 hours of my work at the end of June for no reason even though I saw it save.  So save often and in several places, and save to the cloud if you can.  (I was working on Elli's laptop, and she didn't get internet access at the time)
4. Audacity.  It's a sound recording program and works well for all the singing videos I do.  I use it for anything where I record, and it can do multiple tracks and different effects.  Can be a bit glitchy, but I think that's just my computer.
5. Dropbox. Yet another way to back up stuff.  And you definitely do NOT want to be losing words during NaNoWriMo, not when you're trying so hard to write them.
6. Spotify- iTunes+a radio.  You can search and listen to any song you want.  It runs through a black version of your iTunes, so the music you already have on your computer can get mixed in with the other music.  It's free, you can listen to whatever you want, but there are ads every now and then.  Still, it's cheaper than buying them on iTunes.  They do have premium memberships that cost money to get rid of the ads, but still.
7. Astrid.  I'm fairly new to this one, but it's a to-do list online.  You can prioritize things, assign other people to do things on the list, share it with others, and it even pops up to remind you that you have stuff due.  It's even a smartphone and iPad app.  A handy thing, but I'm still using the old fashioned mini notebook I keep in my purse.  That way, as soon as an instructor assigns something, I can write it down, prioritize it (I use a grading system- A is highest priority, F is lowest) and write the due date.  I've got lots of colors, so I color code by class and highlight due dates and things I keep forgetting.
8. CCleaner- a lovely thing that helps your computer move faster by cleaning up the junk.
9. Synthasia- a fun guitar hero-esque piano thing.  You can play midis on it and even use your keyboard to play it like a real piano, but that's hard.  There's an option of hooking it up to a midi piano to play, but I don't have that.  It's just nice to see what a song would look like being played.  Plus, it just looks cool.
10. CamStudio- allows you to make a video screenshot.  The video's not the best quality and the audio's wonky, but it works.

I'll probably come up with more, but for now, I say sianara.  

School...and I'm in pain

So, 3rd day of school.  I'm awake!  I'm alive!  Now I know what I believe inside! Sorry, have been listening to too much Skillet this morning.

So, I had my first day working yesterday- I'm a writing tutor at my community college, and I tutored my first student!  I think it went really well.  And that's all you'll get out of me because I have to keep confidentiality, so yeah.

I'm taking Intro to Theater, Nutrition, Ancient and Medieval World History, and Environmental Ethics and Career Development online.  Spent an hour and a half outlining yesterday for History and only got through 5 of the 20 pages in chapter 1. yikes.  Haven't even looked at Ethics or Career Development yet, but I did finish Nutrition.

I went riding for the first time in a very long time on Sunday.  Horseback riding.  It was fun, though the horse I usually ride, Angel, is limping, so that's sad.  My neighbor has horses and she lets me ride them sometimes.  Anyway, the saddle I usually used when I rode more was broken, so I had to use a different saddle.  Well, the reason why I used the one particular saddle was because it was the only one with the stirrups shortened enough for me.  Well, the saddle I used Sunday had one of the stirrups (the right one) short enough, but the left one hadn't been shortened enough.  I could still reach it, but it was harder and I could only get my toes in.  So whenever we galloped, I lost my left stirrup and ended up holding on for dear life, bouncing all over the saddle.  I've also been having issues with gripping things-I played one song on the guitar and my hand just about killed me it hurt so bad.  I also had an issue writing half a page of Calista's character profile.  Yeah.  I don't know why.  So, I'm gripping the pommel or horn of the saddle and my hand is protesting in pain.  I knew I was going to get saddle sore, but because of all the bouncing, I bruised my legs and may or may not have done something to my lower back.

That pain may have more to do with my 23 pound backpack. (Yes, I weighed it)  So now just about every part of me hurts.  I feel like an old lady.

In good news, I finished Twice Upon a Time!  You can like my facebook page, www.facebook.com/3kingdoms2girls1fate My mom was visiting her mom last weekend and my grandma had just finished When the Stars Fall.  So my mom told her about me finishing my screenplay, and she was really impressed.  She says to me, "You know, my friend knows Dan Disney.  When you get it edited, I could see if he'll take a look at it"
ME: OoO or something like that.  Trying to keep myself from screaming in excitment.  Hello, DREAM. COME. TRUE.
Everything's extremely iffy so I'm not getting my hopes up too far, but still- MY GRANDMA'S FRIEND KNOWS DAN DISNEY!!! What?????


Yeah.

I got a laptop.  I found a mac (I need one for the music program at Concordia if I go there) for less than $500, so yeah.  It was about $370, but my dad wanted to get a warranty, so we got a 2 year warranty for $105.  It's coming Tuesday and I'm so excited.

Oh, am Disneybounding as Flounder today.  Having too much fun with this.  Tried to get Elli to be Ariel, but she was too lazy to figured it out.  Thinking I'll be Terence tomorrow and Marie (from Aristocats) Friday.  I have a flourecent yellow and aquamarine striped tank top on right now with a blue shirt thing over it.  Two of the three items I own from Aeropostale.  My mom decided I needed to get them.  Didn't realize at the time how perfectly they'd work for a Flounder Disneybound.

OK, gotta go.  Class in an hour and I need to read through some history.

My random project of the weekend: a mock-up cover of Beauty is Blind:

I love the black background- it really shows her living in darkness.  And the purple text is perfect-am not a fan of the font, but Createspace doesn't offer much for fonts.  And the painting is one by Diego Velázquez so it's now public domain since he's been dead for a long time.  I'm still going to credit him.  It's called "Portrait of a Blind Woman" and it looks EXACTLY like I imagine Calista.  The only thing I don't like is the fact that her eyes are closed so you can't see that they're purple, but still. It's perfect.

I'm really good at procrastinating

I'm sitting at 44,500 words (88 pages).  I have Noteflight Crecendo (the super awesome paid version of Noteflight).  I have the ending planned.  I have 12 fretting pages to write.  That would take me an hour and a half, most likely.  Why am I not writing?

I'm too busy getting distracted by random stuff on pintrest and facebook and buying a laptop. (maybe-we'll see.)

In other news, Haili has been very busy.  Today she went to tutor training at her community college to learn how to be a writing tutor and offered to write a little blurb for the school newspaper about NaNoWriMo to see if she could get a group of people together for write-ins and stuff.

Why am I writing in third person?  Just another Really Random Me Moment...yep.

So...yeah.  I got a job!  I help people with their papers...so if you know me and know where I go to school (PSEO, not high school) come see me if you need help!  I'll be there Tuesday and Thursday mornings and Friday afternoons, plus one random hour on Wednesday at 2...but hey, it pays $8 an hour and I work 15 hours and get paid for training, so I've already earned...$52.  Nice.  And I Disneybounded my tutor picture- blue striped shirt and a white rose-lace trimmed cami, complete with a blue hairbow as a headband.  Can you guess?  Also had to take my senior picture with a panther for the yearbook Tuesday.  I brought When the Stars Fall and the panther read it with me.

I've also discovered that two things can go together.  Fairy tales + Bible verses = one happy Haili.
Whilst planning my novel for November (or looking for Beauty and the Beast wallpapers for my desktop...one of those options might be more truthful than the other) I stumbled across this wallpaper showing Adam (the beast) during/after his transformation.

And it dawned on me that bible verses could go with fairy tales.  I mean, fairy tales and the Bible are kind of teaching the same thing- how to live a better life.  The fairy tales just go about it in a more entertaining and sometimes odd/disgusting way, that's all.  (Though you Prodestants don't know what you're missing- Tobit is a fretting awesome book.  Tobit goes blind because he didn't put cloth over his eyes, slept outside and birds pooped on his eyes and he got cataracts.  Then the archangel Raphael comes down in disguise and helps Tobit's son Tobiah go on a journey, and free a woman from a demon that killed the last seven husbands she had...just read it.)

So, realizing this, I went into research mode.  And found this gem: 1 Peter 3:3-4. And if this isn't Beauty and the Beast, I don't know what is.

"Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight."
Or this:
"Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart."
-1 Samuel 16:7 

I've also discovered a theme in this novel: the theme of light and darkness. Being blind, Calista lives in literal darkness.  Damien as well lives in shadow, but his darkness is more what's inside.  Both have to overcome the darkness to find the light.  Which is why this last verse is so awesome.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
-John 1:5

And now this child needs to go live in darkness for a few hours and get some sleep- after she writes 5 pages, that is. And there I go with the 3rd person again...geez.

Adios, peoples!

PS:
Where was this when I was looking for a beauty and the beast dress?

Dress (clipped to polyvore.com)

Of course, I don't think you can buy this. But still...

NaNoWriMo Moments and A Name for M

Camp NaNoWriMo is upon us again, and I am knee-deep in the chaos.  I discovered a facebook group (now that I have facebook...whohoo!) and have started a series of "NaNoWriMo Moments" my personal form of procrastination, (well, one of them, anyway) I have 13 so far.  It all started when I realized I had to eat dinner and found myself craving sourdough bread and baked beans- the same thing Connie had been eating in my screenplay.  I've seen things like this on facebook before, so I decided to make my own.  And spent the whole day doing them, (wrote at night)

 

Guilty of most of these, especially 4 and 5...

On another random note, my hair, if you don't already know, is pretty short.  It's layered (because it's super thick) and just brushes my shoulders.  Usually it's puffed out, like this:
I'm the one in the teal t shirt- this is from mission, so it's even worse than usual.
Anyway, my mom spends most of her time trying to make her hair pouffy while I spend the day I take my shower trying to tame my wild locks.  The day after the shower, it looks like I want it to.  But then I have to take a shower again, and the whole cycle starts over.  Anyway, today I just said "to heck with it" and had my mom pull my hair back into one french braid (regular braids are impossible, but I can pull off a french) just so that it was not around my head like a lion's mane...and I would know:

Well, the payoff for tidy hair is that what's left at the bottom of the braid is this teeny tiny tail of hair.  It's about an inch long and is very thin.  I feel like one of those princes or pirates with their little ponytails.  It's very fun to play with...okay, I'm done.

Word count update: 39,500.  YAY! (71 pages) Biggest concern:  I'm just about finished with Act 2 (I'll get no more than 5 more pages out of Act 2) and Act 3 is already 1/5 finished (I wrote the first scene of Act 3 first, so that's in my page count) I'm concerned that I'm not going to get 100 pages...MORE MUSICAL NUMBERS!!! And maybe a sword fight or two... more twin switching?  Nolan and Micah have embarrassing moments when they realize that they're professing their love to the wrong twin? *tehe*

Was editing When the Stars Fall today on the way to a family reunion and read a part where Halyn is talking to a guy named M.  Now he's been named M since December 2010, when I came up with the story.  I had no problem with the name until today, when I read her line "M..." as "mmm..." as in yummy.  This is problematic.  Now, M's full name is Martin- I named him and his twin brother after my own brothers.  But I don't like him being known as Martin, so I decided to give him a name.  I'm down to 2, maybe 3: Matt and Max.
Which sounds better: Matthew and Daniel Gailbraith, or Maxwell and Daniel Gailbraith? Matt and Dan or Max and Dan?  Max Gailbraith or Matt Gailbraith? (He would go by Matt or Max for the majority of the book... there are a few moments where he would go by his full name.)  Also wondering about Mike or Gus.  Moe?  He's kind of a quiet guy, and M suits him pretty well.  He doesn't say much, but he's very good at what he does, just doesn't socialize very much.  But "his" scene is so amazing and he knows just what to say.  Except I'm reading it thinking that Halyn wants to eat him or kiss him or something because she calls him "mmm"

So...
Matt or Mat?  I like the idea of the same number of letters. (They are twins, you know.) Is Mat too weird?
Mike
Max
Gus
Ben
Sam

I cannot do Mark or Marcus because Esteban's (my MMC) little brother is named Marcos...
 Ideas?