Color

I bet you thought I was done with the book Poemcrazy. Well, I still have one more post about it after this one.
So, another poem exercise!!

Pick a color. And write a poem about it!
What things are that color?
What does the color make you feel? What emotions do you associate with that color?
What does that color make you think of?

Here's my short, half-ass poem about the color yellow. You should pick a more interesting color. Like Aquamarine. Or Puce (maybe not).

Sunflowers, dandelions, daffodils
Autumn leaves drifting earthward
Furry bees stepping over sweet, glistening comb
Eyes gleaming through the hedge
Warmth and light beaming down from above
Pale, flickering flames
Bright and cheery

Soreina/Magic-Earth Gods

Also been working a lot on the system of Gods for my worlds. I've had it partially developed for a while, but I finally started fleshing it out. Finalizing the list of gods, and their names, and the animal forms they take.
I may still add more of the minor gods, but I think I have my main list of gods about how I want it. I've even started sketching out some of the gods' animal forms. After I finish a bunch of them, I'll probably scan and post them somewhere.
The main thing I still need to do is come up with the Reyan names for the more common gods. I only have two of the Reyan names so far.

Fact of the day: Perfume is mostly alcohol. You rub it into your neck and wrists because of the big blood vessels there. The warmth from the blood helps vaporize the alcohol in the perfume and spread the scent out.
Cologne is almost entirely alcohol.

Naaaames

Went through the main cast of Katani's story and finally changed almost all of the last names to make them better suit the country.
Probably should have taken more notes when I did it though. I forget where I went to figure them out, since I pretty much went to a different place to look for each one.
I missed a couple though, Like Katani's "mentor."
Oh yeah. I need to fix the King's name too. I thought I had it, but the meaning of it is stupid. Same thing with the Lieutenant. So she still needs an entire name. At least the King has his last name (which is what he goes by most of the story anyway). I haven't even written anything of the Lieutenant yet. Though I did draw her.

Sharing Creations

Continuing on a separate branch of the last post.
Ok.
You've spent so much of your time and soul to make your creation as good as you possibly could. But the idea of sharing your creation with someone can be terrifying (Although it can also be really exciting).
What if it's not as good as you think it is?
What if everyone hates it?
The latter can definitely be a problem if you share things on the internet. There are plenty of people out there ready to say hateful things about how much you suck. I wish they'd just get a life instead of messing up other people's lives.
So, yeah. Sharing things can be terrifying. Start with people you're close to you, and who you trust. The internet is a... bolder step.
And it's always sad when people who are wonderful at creating just stop entirely because of the fear of failure. One of my teachers told me about a student he had who was a wonderful writer. But after a while, she got so hung up on trying to be perfect that she couldn't take imperfection. She stopped writing altogether. I wonder if she ever got over it...
Never expect perfection. Anything close to perfection takes many, many attempts. Don't be afraid to create something bad. Everything bad you do is one step closer to making something good. You just need to learn from your mistakes.
In a little book I read, it talked about an exercise used by some authors. They keep a log of what they write each day, and how good it was. And the majority of what they write they labeled as complete garbage. Even professionals will create plenty of garbage.
Work through your lame stuff, learn, and stick it out until you're proud of what you have. It's a lot of work. But that's what makes it interesting.

I don't generally worry about sharing my stuff on the internet. I post drawings and photos of stuff I made on my DA account. I know I'm no expert at either of those. And I don't more than a couple comments even on the things I"m proud of.
But I don't think I'd ever want to be really popular on DA, because the most popular artists are the ones that attract those jerks I mentioned before (plus they get hundreds of messages, and that looks terrifying). I'm content with my few watchers. Even if the only comments I get on my stuff are "awesome," or "it's so cute!"
I'm just glad that I'm improving enough that people actually like my stuff.
As for fanfic, I don't really worry about that either. I spend time on my fanfic chapters, and enjoy writing them. I'm generally pretty confident in their content and quality. At least as far as a single edit goes. Again, I may not get a lot of comments, but I have watchers that follow my stories and comment on my characters and conflicts. I'm always excited to hear from them.
But I don't go as deep into my fanfictions as my other stories. For fanfictions, I write one chapter, edit it, and post it. I don't usually go back to further edit it. For my other stories, I'm constantly changing and re-writing things, and am much more intertwined in everything. Plus, unlike fanfictions, my own stories take place in my own world with all of my own characters. I don't get to lean/stand on other creators.
Even so, I'm generally fine with showing my stories to other people (though I will not post them on the internet, because that could cause big problems when I try to get published.)
There are, admittedly, a couple people I'm kind of nervous showing my stuff to.

Creation and Criticism

For a while now I've been planning a post in my head (there's a lot of them in there. They just take a while to come out, and sometimes they are better for it - like this one). The more I think about this topic, the more it grows.
About a week ago, a small chain of events happened on Youtube, with one piece of it ending with a video made by Hank Green. And it ties in very much with one half of this post.
So, first of all, watch the video.



Now for part one (which doesn't really tie into the video - that comes later).
Criticism.
If you are a creator of something, anything, then criticism will be an important part of your life. I'd mainly thought about it in terms of writing until I had a conversation with a friend of mine (a professional artist named Jane). Jane and I compared writing to drawing. No matter what it is, no matter how well you think you did, when you have an editor look at it, especially a professional editor like Jane's, you'll usually have your work returned to you, "bleeding ink." Referring to the red pen people often use to mark notes on something.
Which can be disheartening, to say the least.
But here's something you have to know.
Get over it.
Seriously.
People comment on your work to help you get better, not to make you mad (and even if you know this, it can be hard to follow your own advice. What? Don't look at me... okay. Maybe some.) Another thing to think about. Are you mad at the people giving you advice? Are you annoyed that the found the holes you didn't think were noticeable? Or are you annoyed that your work wasn't quite to the level you hoped it was? The latter is probably what gets me.
In my writing class last semester, the author wasn't allowed to speak when people were commenting on his/her work. Which made a lot of sense. Because given the chance, most creators will try to justify their work, or make excuses. Granted, sometimes the author is right. But if people are mentioning that they didn't understand something, or that you left something out, then you as a writer did not complete your job. This is where it helps to have a big group of people, to confirm or deny the comments of the others.
Even so, some people really just can't take suggestions or criticisms of any kind. And these people are a freaking pain to work with (I've fortunately had little experience with these people). Suggestions are not meant as a personal insult. And you are not perfect. People have good advice to offer, if you let them. They take time out of their day to read and make suggestions on your stuff.
Also, there's no way you can follow everyone's advice. This is where you, as the author/artist need to figure out the best way to fix the problem.
So, suck it up, make a note of it, and look at it again. Even if you need to let your head cool a bit first. Because what might annoy you at first will often make much more sense in hindsight.
And if you're confused, ask the person. Maybe if you explain why this happened, the reader will go, "ohhhh yeah! I didn't notice that!" And even after that, you might want to check that you were clear enough. Maybe the reader read too fast, or wasn't paying enough attention. But maybe you really could make it clearer.
A lot of criticism is good, assuming it's the good kind of criticism. A kind that points out your flaws, hopefully letting you know what you can do to fix them.
Telling someone that their stuff is full of problems and that the suck and should just give up is bad. That's just plain mean and completely not cool.
At the same time, just telling someone that their work is "good" or "bad" doesn't help much either.

So, criticism is good. Usually.

Which brings us to part two.
Okay, great. You have people willing to spend their time editing your stuff. Even if it annoys you, you listen and try to fix your mistakes.
But this is only half of it.
Sure, you have your mistakes.
But what did you do right?
I thought about this for a while and managed to convince myself that fishing for praise was just stupid and vain. Which it can be.
Then I saw Hank's video (above), and rethank (rethunk?) this idea.
Fishing for praise is usually a rather vain thing to do. But that does not mean that you can't know what you did well. After all, as Hank said, you've been pouring yourself into this creation, spending hours, days, weeks on it. It's part of you. And showing it to others can take a lot of courage (I think I'll write a post just about this). And yes, you definitely need to know how to improve.
But you also need to know what you're good at!
Maybe your reader said that your descriptions of the setting were really vague. That you needed to put a lot of thought into where your people are, what's around them, what they look like.
But maybe they absolutely loved your character development. You'll never know unless someone tells you. Because like you didn't notice how bad your setting was, you can't be sure how good your character development is until an outside person peers inside.
My creative writing teacher obviously understood this. Because every time we read a story, we had to write not only our suggestions, but also what we liked about the story.
So, not only do compliments make you feel happy (sometimes happier than it really warrants, even if they're very non-specific) but they can help you improve too.

Fact of the day:
You had a long post, so you get an article as opposed to me writing more.
Basically, there's good cholesterol and bad cholesterol. You want low bad cholesterol, and high good cholesterol. Here's some tips on achieving the latter.

Books n Songs

So, John Green made a video about literature, so I thought I'd share it.



And his newest book, The Fault in Our Stars, was voted one of the ten best books of the year! That's amazing! Congratulationsssss!
It was a good book.

I think I've been singing too many romance-ey songs recently. It's put me in the strangest mood. Though not a bad one.
Although maybe right now it's just beause I'm hungry...
While at first it might seem like I should blame Nicole, who got me hooked on Your Song and Come What May (from Moulin Rouge. I have no real opinion of the movie, but I did like the ending with the play. And I loved a bunch of the songs!). But there's plenty of other songs that I've known for a long time. Like a ton of the Beatles songs, Ai no Melody, and People Will Say we're in Love, not to mention all them Disney songs.
Except, looking at these titles, these aren't the ones I've been singing in the car for the past few weeks.
Yeah, okay.
I blame Nicole.
I think it's them songs from Moulin Rouge.

~~Listeeeen to my heaaaaaart, can you heeeeaaaaar it siiing!~~

I guess it's inevitable. New songs just eat my brain sometimes. Like when Nick made me listen to Defying Gravity, from Wicked (There's nowhere to watch it, so I had to watch it on some illegal video someone took of the original play, which was all fuzzy in both visual and audio, so I missed some details. But it was good!). That one still floats around a lot too. It will dissipate eventually. I wonder when my next brain-eater songs will come along.
It's really late, and I"m really tired. Can you tell by my nonsensical blabbing?

~~Yours are the sweeetest eyes that IIIIIIIIIIIIIIII've ever seeeeeeen!~~

Application Done

Phew.
Finally got the last apart of my application submitted this morning.
I sent off a lot of it about a week ago - my writing sample and the rest of the stuff that needed to go to the creative writing department.
Then I had to do the online application for the school. They're annoying. Bleh.
But I finally finished this morning.
So, as far as I know, I have officially finished applying for my creative writing graduate program!!

(It's cool hearing about how you develop your world, Crystal!)

Fact of the day:
I'll just give you an article. Because we have such screwy food and stuff nowadays.
8 Ingredients You Never Want to See on Your Nutrition Label

Deforestation Plot

I really need to stop watching depressing documentaries. The last one I rented was about how horrible Wal Mart is. So boycott it. It's horrible in may ways. To its employees, the surrounding community, and the environment.

Ok, enough of that.
I'll start writing about the environmental plots I mentioned. I'll start with the easiest one first.

Cutting down forests.
Definitely the one you see the most of, though a lot of the details are often absent.
It's definitely a very important topic. And one most people agree on.
We lose thousands of acres of rain forest daily.
Rain forests have some of the highest biodiversity (number of species) in the world. And rain forest species are going extinct at an unprecedented rate. And a lot of these are plant species. The plant species in the rain forests can have a wide range of medicinal values. There's supposedly a mixture that can be made from Amazon plants that will cure diabetes. So, we know that a lot of these plants have medicinal value. But there are countless unidentified species in the rain forest, plenty of which go extinct before we ever discover them. An argument I've heard before is that perhaps one of these plants can cure cancer, but we may never know because it could go extinct before we even discover it.

Why are forests being cleared?
In the old days, it was to make room for the expanding human popluations.
Today you might think it's for logging. And to an extent, that's true. That's definitely true for the old-growth forests in America. There is only a small fraction of old-growth forests left in America, such as redwoods, whose wood is very valuable. The vast majority of American forests was clear-cut long ago and has regrown, though it does not display the characteristics of the ancient forests. The trees are younger, and the complicated network of species hasn't regrown. Many animals require ancient forests to live. Despite the small amount of old-growth forest left, it's still being logged at a frightening rate.
But the reason for deforestation in the rain forests is to make room for agriculture. A lot of crops are grown in areas where rain forests once grew. The problem is that the nutrient content of rain forest soil is very low. So it makes very poor farmland. This probably leads to a huge use of chemical fertilizers. And most of the trees that they clear are simply burned, since it's not economical for them to sell the wood.

Another problem that's often not thought of are the human inhabitants of the forests. These are people that have been living sustainably off of the land for decades or centuries. When the modern world creeps in, it introduces that desire for more. While before they were content to hunt as much as they needed to live, now they'll want to hunt more so they can sell it and make a profit to buy televisions and things they never knew they needed until recently. But just as important is the fact that these ancient cultures are getting snuffed out as modern languages and lifestyles are picked up (Human Planet is a great series about the humans who still live off of the land).

Roads are often the very worst thing for a forest. They let people intrude deep into the wilderness with rifles and saws. They open up areas that were previously inaccessible.

Fragmentation is another big problem. As forests are shrunken down and broken apart by roads and cities, it becomes much harder for animals to move between the remaining pieces of forest. This will make it harder for them to search for food and mates. If you get small enough populations stuck in small enough areas, you'll get in-breeding. It can have a big effect on their gene pool as different populations are cut off from each other.

All of this may seem bad enough. Our forests are disappearing and the animals and plants are dieing off. But it's not as simple as trees getting cut down.
Trees use something called transpiration. Trees need to pull a constant flow of water from their roots up to their leaves. They can't let this flow break. Since the flow of water is constantly happening, the tree brings up much more water than it actually needs. It releases excess water vapor through its leaves. Large forests release so much water this way that it has a significant effect on the local climate. Especially in rain forests. If the number of trees is reduced by a certain amount, there will no longer be enough trees to release enough water into the air. What this means, is that if enough trees are cut down, the climate in the rain-forests will become drier and could destroy what remains of the moisture-loving ecosystem. Evidence of this is already beginning to appear.

You may think that it's easy to tell people to stop cutting down forests. But it's never that simple. People's jobs depend on logging and clear-cutting. The families that set up farms in cleared rain forests use that land to grow food for their families. The fate of a few trees and animals isn't as important to them as the fate of their children. And there's a demand for farmland and timber, or the deforestation wouldn't happen in the first place. It's a deep problem that has to do with humanity's huge consumption rate.

I don't think I really need to explain how you can use this topic. It's been done so often before. It's a pretty simple scenario. People cut down the forests, and the creatures that live in the forest get mad and fight back. You can have all kinds of fun with the creatures you decide to put in the forests. House-sized insects, little orange loraxes, moving trees, or blue people with tails.

Princess Mononoke
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind
The Lorax
Fern Gully
Origin: Spirits of the Past
Lord of the Rings
Avatar

Leopard Fern Reference Sheet

Since leopard spots are a pain, I drew Fern's clouded leopard form from several angles so I could get the pattern consistent. I had to go back and tweak the other pictures I've done of her though.