Kseniya Simonova won the Ukrainian version of
"America's Got Talent," for drawing in a thin layer of sand illuminated from below by a light box.
In her act, Simonova tells the story of Germany's invasion and
occupation of Ukraine during WWII. She brought several people in the audience to tears. Thing she does with sand is AMAZING. Have a look and be amazed at such talent!

Earlier this year, I compiled a list of resources in time for MinNoWriMo. I updated the list for this NaNoWriMo, because some sites have closed down, and I've added new ones as well. I thought I'd post it here for everyone else since I know a lot of people on the FList are participating as well and you might find them beneficial for NaNo or other projects. If you have any other resources, please share them so that I can have them too.


( Premade Calendars + Personal Calendar Offer from Me )

( Plot and Character Help )


( Report Cards/Spreadsheets to Keep You On Track )


( Word Meets for your LJ )


( Writing Prompt Sites )

 
( Misc. Resources )
 

( Other LJ Communities )


Know of something else?
Comment here or send me a PM and I'll add it to the post!



Updated: October 19, 2009

Stolen from exalta3 :)

1. Are you a “pantser” or a “plotter?”
Well. I'm honestly not quite sure what a pantser is.*goes to google it* Haha. Definitely a pantser. It makes life a little more complicated sometimes, but it's fun to watch the story evolve. Sometimes I try to plan ahead to make life easier, but I follow where my characters lead me and more often than not, they steer off the trail.

2. Detailed character sketches or “their character will be revealed to me as a I write”?
Most definitely as I write.

3. Do you know your characters’ goals, motivations, and conflicts before you start writing or is that something else you discover only after you start writing?
Well, in the novel I'm writing now, I had a character and made my way through scenes until I found the conflict and all that. I had no idea what the point was other than to just write something. Now it's this huge trilogy thing... I'm trying to think of short stories and stuff. I think for those I might have an idea of the main conflict at least, but then again...


4. Books on plotting – useful or harmful?
It can be helpful to see how others do it, but you shouldn't try to change in order to fit their style. 

5. Are you a procrastinator or does the itch to write keep at you until you sit down and work?
I am a procrastinator, however, when that itch to write shows up, I have to answer it or it drives me insane. So usually, the itch drives me into procrastinating on other things. :)

6. Do you write in short bursts of creative energy, or can you sit down and write for hours at a time?
I can do both. Last NaNo I wrote for most of one Saturday & ended up with 20K words that day. I try not to sit for hours of a time because it aggravates my carpal tunnel, BUT I often lose track of time while writing and see that hours have passed by without my knowledge.

7. Are you a morning or afternoon writer?
Neither. I'm an evening writer. Night Owl all the way!

8. Do you write with music/the noise of children/in a cafe or other public setting, or do you need complete silence to concentrate?
I enjoy writing to instrumental music, usually soundtracks that match the mood of the scene. Writing in public makes me nervous sometimes because I HATE thinking that people are reading over my shoulder.

9. Computer or longhand? (or typewriter?)
Computer usually but if I'm between classes or the idea strikes while I'm on the go, I'll write it down. Certain plotting requires paper too. 

10. Do you know the ending before you type Chapter One?
No. Never. My stories are most definitely character driven in their roughest stage.

11. Does what’s selling in the market influence how and what you write?
No.

12. Editing – love it or hate it?
Considering how many times I've gone back through and edited and changed, I'd have to say I enjoy editing. I consider it part of the writing process and part of the growth process. I NEVER delete my old drafts. Every time I edit - unless it's simple spelling - I make a new document and copy/paste with my edits and revisions. I love how it feels to look back at old drafts and see how I've grown as a writer.,

So, my parents just called. They are working on my grandfather's house to try to update it and put it on the market since he is moving in with my aunt. My mom wanted me to look up a snake on the internet to figure out if I could identify it and find out if it was poisonous. It had wrapped around my dad's car tire, and neither one of them had any idea what to do. I was told it was bright orange, with black bands and gray bands. "And I mean bright orange!" my mom told me. "Its head is orange."

Not much to go on, but I scoured the Internet for references from our state about snakes. The description made me think of a snake in my head, but I couldn't figure out what type it was. I found very few orange snakes, and when I was about to call back my mom, she called me telling me that they had found the owners of the snake.

Owners?

Yes, owners. The snake belonged to the next door neighbors' son. Now, this would be a lovely tale about finding a lost pet, but it's even more spectacular. The snake in question went missing back in December. How the snake managed to survive the winter cold is a miracle, and there's no telling what he's been up to since then. Apparently the son's mom had been searching for the carcass, having long since thought the little guy was dead. However, she reports that the beloved snake looks no different than he had in December. "He's neither gained weight nor lost it. He must have been eating mice under the house or something!" Now though, they have to come up with a new home for him, having giving his previous terrarium to a group of frogs. "He would slide the lid open," my mom told me after speaking with the mother. Let's hope the new terrarium is a bit more secure so the lovely snake does go for a walk on his own again.

The next door neighbor also showed my parents a picture of it from before he left, and though I'm not there to see it, I have an idea of what he looks like. Furthermore, the snake breed rang a bell with my mind, having been the snake I thought of based on the description.

So, what was the lovely little guy?

A corn snake.


Image courtesy of wikipedia.org

ETA: Apparently my mom thinks it looks nothing like this. It was a brighter orange with a gray head and the black/orange circles went all the way around it. *shrugs*

These two wonderful entries regarding the elections in Iran are written by one_hoopy_frood . I found it through wysteria and I feel like it's something we should all think about. It's a lot of text and pictures, but I will not put it under an LJ cut.

Spread the word. Repost codes are located at the original LJ. Just click the link back.

Why you should care

 

For more information:
PICTURES:
here and here
NEW INFORMATION:
Here - near constant updates
Here - ONTD_political live post
ON TWITTER:
@StopAhmadi, @ProtesterHelp

Why I will not let it go (and neither should you).

i realize now i do not fear death... i fear my daughter will not be free when i die

- From the Twitter of an Iranian medical student

"If it bothers you so much, then why don't you stop watching?" seems to be the question of the last few days from my friends and family who know how invested I have become in the cause of the Iranian people (as I have explained in great detail here) The answer is simple: one day of caring is not enough. We must be the voice for the people of Iran who would otherwise be silenced. They are without reliable news sources, they are without mobile phone calls, text messaging, facebook, twitter, youtube, AIM, Yahoo, Google, and pretty much every other useful outlet for information you can think of. Yet they persist on the streets and on the internet in any way they can. The least we can do, whether we are across continents, oceans, or time zones, is spread their words safely.

My death is irrelevant.Wht is important is that u do not forget my words.We want freedom.i will die 4that

- From the Twitter of a protester in Tehran

Right now, brave men and women in Iran, both young and old, are sacrificing their lives for their voices to be heard. They must fear not only the police, but also the Basij -a force of men loyal to the government who plant themselves among crowds in plain clothes in order to discretely attack protesters and incite chaos.The protesters are peaceful. They mass together in crowds that are reported to grow in size every day. At night they have very few, if any, safe places to stay. Houses with satelite dishes were attacked by the Basij tonight, and during the 50 minutes of Twitter's maintenance, another university was attacked.

140 characters is a novel when you're being shot at.

- From another Iranian Twitter

WHAT CAN YOU DO TO HELP?

1. The most obvious thing to do is stay informed. Keep an eye on reliable sources on Twitter, refresh blogs and news sites that are covering the stories.


2. If you are on twitter, retweet information from reliable twitters, but REMOVE THE USERNAME if they are in Iran. People have died because of the lack of responsibility by fellow tweeters and the media in this front. They can be tracked down by the government of Iran.


3. Spread the information elsewhere. Repost this article or write your own on Facebook, Myspace, Tumblr, or anywhere else you can think of. If you write your own, make sure you are concise and accurate. Link to your sources for people to learn more.


4. Change your location on Twitter to Tehran or Iran, and your time zone to GMT +3:30.


5. DO NOT auto-refresh and take down websites, even if you are asked. It slows down the internet for the rest of the people in Iran.


6. If you make a proxy DO NOT post it publically, otherwise it is useless. Send it in a direct message to a trusted source.


7. DO NOT spam the hash tag #IranElection with useless things to "confuse the government". This does not help at all.

USEFUL SITES TO FURTHER HELP

Cyber War Guide for Iran Elections

Green Revolution - How to Help

Anonymous - Why We Protest - Iran

STAY INFORMED!

Follow on Twitter: @ProtesterHelp and @StopAhmadi

(REMINDER: DO NOT REPOST PERSONAL TWITTERS OF THOSE INSIDE THE COUNTRY, EVEN IF THEY ARE RELIABLE!)

Chronology of events

Live-blogging by Andrew Sullivan

General information from a poser on Fark.com

Live-blogging on HuffingtonPost

دنیارابگوییدچطورآنهاانتخاباتمان دزدیده اند
Tell the world how they have stolen our election

- original article by one_hoopy_frood on LJ. Original entry here (with repost codes)

( NFPS result: The Guru. View Description? )



~~~~~~~~~~~~~

( I serve tzeentch, God of Chaos. See results and description? )

I compiled this list for minnowrimo  and have since decided that I should keep it on my LJ somewhere. Feel free to explore if you wish. It's mostly for NaNo-like endeavors. I'm going to keep a list of writer's resources that I discover here. Please feel free to add any that you know of!

( Stay on Track with Excel Worksheets! )
( No Plot? Starting to Panic? Some Questions to Jumpstart your story. )

( Word Meters! Adding Pizazz to your LJ since ... March 2009! )

( Writing Prompts Galore! )
( Random Other Places Because I like MISC categories. )

( Other LJ Communities of Interest to Inspire You )

My Reading List Project... I'm simply trying to make a list of all the books I've read in a lifetime (or at least represent as many as possible...) The word 'the' has been omitted from titles for alphabetizing purposes.

This is in no way a complete list and only reflects books I read in high school and books that are currently on my shelves. More will be added at a later date.


( More Modern List )
 
( The Classics List )

Updated Jun 13, 2009.

Tags here are categorized under headings and subheadings. For instance: art: comics. Art is the heading and comics is the subheading. Some are more complicated than that (e.g. writing: wip: project nope: info). After every : is a subheading. The subheadings are usually pretty easy to understand so long as you know the main headers that they fall under.

These main headers are as follows:

"art" tags are for any posts containing my art. I created a comic stip last year for NaNoWriMo entitled NaNo Tails, which is why there is a art: comics: nano tails tag. Furthermore, items crossposted to my deviantart account at http://sibe.deviantart.com is given the art: deviantart tag.


"misc" tags are for anything regarding life and LJ as well as for anything that just doesn't have a category. The misc: dragcave is for items pertaining to my dragons at http://dragcave.net/user/dsnet06


"reading" tags are for anything relating to reading. There are two reading challenges that I am participating in too. They are: reading: 1001 book challenge - for all posts relating to the 1001 Book Challenge - and reading: 50bookchallenge - for all posts relating to the 50bookchallenge  :)


"review" tags are for any posts where I review something. 


"writing" tags are for any posts that have to do with my writing. writing: *all is given to every post. There is also genre tags to sort the genre and status tags (writing: *completed & writing: *wip) to indicate the current status of the piece. WIP stands for work in progress. The main WIP at this present time is referred to as Project Nope. All posts related to it can be found under the writing: *wip: project nope headline. There are other breakdowns for it too.


"y-archive" tags are for old journal posts that have been merged with this LJ account. The subheading following is the name of the journal that the posts originated from.


"zsort" tags are for my own personal tracking of security levels on posts.


The only exception to these heading and subheadings is * about this journal tag, which contains valuable information about the journal such as its founding, information regarding the y-archives, the tags, etc.