"Playing Blind"

So, I often find myself purposely not turning on lights, going around with my eyes closed, or  just not looking at what I'm doing.  I'm trying to understand what it must be like for Calista. And I've found that all this "practice" at being "blind" has some advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages:

• When cutting onions and you tear up, you can keep your eyes closed while you put the onions away.
• Too lazy to turn the light on? No biggie.
• Power outage without a flashlight? No problem.
• thirsty? still no problem.  Made it down out of my loft bed, found a cup, went to the bathroom, filled it, and brought it back without spilling it.

Disadvantages:

• Spilling said water all over the place the next day because you're a klutz and forgot it was there.

Yeah.

Idea I had today while reading Alex Flinn's Cloaked (which combines several fairy tales: Frog Prince, Elves and the Shoemaker, Six Swans, and more)
A combo of The Little Mermaid and The Six Swans: Main girl is half-turned into a swan by the evil step-mom, but something interrupts the spell, and as the youngest, she only gets partially affected.  Retaining her human shape, but losing her human speech to swan-speak, she has 3 seasons to either make shirts of flowers or have someone fall in love with her.  Or something like that.  There's a prince, too.  And the girl and swans are heirs to the Air Kingdom.  Perhaps they were winged humans.  I like that idea.  A lot.  Though I suppose they could still be merpeople...

What happens when you write about a blind girl...

Now, since I've been thinking about Beauty is Blind a lot, I find myself not turning on the lights when I go to the bathroom or enter my room.  Or I close my eyes when I'm at home and walk around.  Just to get into Calista's shoes.

We just got back from a road trip to my grandma's cabin- so first stop is by defult, the bathroom.  So yeah...there I am in a dark bathroom, with the door closed and peeing, and my poor brother's so confused because he hears someone in there...but the light's off!

Ah, the dangers of writing first person stories from a blind girl's point of view.

I'm going to try to do Camp NaNoWriMo again- I realized that I have been doing the work of 3 and the fact that I made it almost half way's a big achievement.  At least for a musical.

Need to apply for colleges (St. Ben's, Concordia, and Coe) *groan*
Need to find a job. *groan*

But I took senior pictures this weekend- they turned out pretty good- will be posting them soon.

Umm, have had a lot of weird moments with Calista lately.  Writers, do you ever feel like your characters are talking to you?  Like, literally?

Once, you may remember this because I blogged about it, I was working on a scene where Calista was locked in a cellar and had just come to and was trying to figure stuff out.  Then it started raining and I got the idea for Storm Children (Ciro, Elysia, Ferren, and Rain) So I abandoned poor Calista in Julian's cellar and worked with Rain and the gang for a while, nurturing a new story.
The next night, I went back to Beauty is Blind and Calista was none too happy with me for leaving her locked in a cellar.  I could've sworn the conversation went like this: (all in my crazy little mind)
Me: Hey, Calista, I'm back.
Calista: It's about time!
Me: What?  What did I do?
Calista: You left me locked in cellar, that's what! (she continues to rant and rave for a while)
Me: (thinking) maybe I should let you get angry more often...

And this morning, I'm trying to pay attention in church and the climax scene is stuck in my head.  It involves Calista accidentally falling into a body of water.  (She's terrified of water- she almost drowned in a watering hole when she was little, but Aurelia saved her.  She's been deathly afraid of it ever since.  There's water separating her from Damien in the climax) Anyway, she takes a step, (this is all slow-mo in my head) Briony tries to warn her, but it's too late.  Calista goes splashing in the water, confusion all around.  She panics...

I try to pay attention to church... but then I think of what happened the last time I left Calista in a precarious position... so I resolve to finish the scene... but I can't.  Yeah.  I think I tried to apologize to her.  Called her Callie, and she wasn't too fond of that nickname.  Yeah.

((okay, done being insane))

And my brother (Lee) put his shirt in the freezer before he left.  He's now wearing it.  Weirdo.

gotta go.  bye!

I'm doing a terrible job of listening to myself when I tell myself no.

No, Haili, you cannot go and waste time on TVtropes.org even though they're very interesting.
No, Haili, you cannot read your novel.
  or Ellyn's
  or Elli's,
  or James Dashner's
  or Chris Baty's
  or ANYBODY'S, for that matter
No, Haili, you cannot go on a youtube karaoke session
No, Haili, you cannot watch Lee play Gus's skateboard game on the computer
No, Haili, you cannot practice "By the Limpid Stream"
  I don't care if you have lessons tomorrow and still don't have it memorized.  And I don't care that you need to practice
No, Haili, you may not fill out that Advanced Character Questionnaire for Calista.  I don't care how many good ideas you've come up with for her.  You have to wait until August when you can do Camp NaNo.
No, Haili you cannot ignore the fact that you need to make dinner
No, Haili, ignoring your paper will not make it go away.
Do you want to have to stay up late tonight?  You're sick, remember?

I don't remember.  But... 
Don't deny it, Haili.  Get the paper done and I'll stop nagging you.
Fine! 
Off to the stupid logical fallacy full land of my boring paper about genetic engineering and blah blah blah...
*sigh*
sorry peoples, I broke my promise...