February in Review: Trials and Tribble-ations

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For the non-geeks, "Trials and Tribble-ations" was the 100th episode of Deep Space 9 in which they pay homage to The Original Series episode about tribbles. 

February was full of Trials, in fact, they were almost multiplying at the rate of tribbles! Not quite though, fortunately, or I would have been completely buried. Between myself and my friends we had 2 ER trips, a hospital stay, car accidents, parasite infections, and a multitude of housing problems. Ugh. Just ugh.

Because of this, February was less than stellar. I got a little bit of writing done (10,233 words) but no where near as much as I had hoped. This month, instead of focusing on the writing part of the equation, I'm going to focus on editing. I'm doing NaNoEdMo - National Novel Editing Month!

What's that? Well NaNoWriMo is for writing the novel, NaNoEdMo is for editing it! 50 hours of editing in one month, which really shouldn't be as bad as doing NaNoWriMo. I know I put in more than 50 hrs in November! On the other hand, editing is harder, so maybe it will be just as hard. I have no way of knowing. I've never done this before.

I wasn't really planning on doing NaNoEdMo because I thought I'd be far into the editing by now. But, well, the last two months haven't exactly gone the way I expected. And I work better under a deadline! 

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In other news - I read 14 books this month (15 if you count the beta read I did for a friend) although that number doesn't show up on the good reads tracker yet. I have a couple books to put reviews in on the site still. At 30 books for the year I'm right on track for my 180 this year! Which is just a silly challenge to myself, but still fun.

I'm not really "back" to blogging yet. The parasite I mentioned up there? Yeah, um, that was me. *sigh* I'll be fine in the long run, but really still not feeling good, so I'm not going to commit to blogging regularly again until I know I'm better, and that I'm well in the groove for NaNoEdMo. See you next week maybe? 

~ Ruthie ~ 

The Fault in Our Stars Tour

On the 29th Gordon (my brother - ie - the guy in the orange hat in the picture with me) and I went to the Fault in Our Stars Tour and I have been wanting to talk about it ever since! Ahhhhh!

Yes, this is the awesome thing I've been wanting to talk about for the last week. Well, the start of the awesomeness.

Backing up, The Fault in Our Stars Tour is the book signing tour of author John Green, but it was also so much more than that!

John and his brother Hank make up the Youtube team the Vlogbrothers. A Vlog is a video blog, and they are brothers, so it's a perfect name! These two guys are very, very smart, and awesome. They are one of the more well known vloggers (among people who watch these things) and they call their followers the Nerfighters.

Yes, I said Nerdfighters. No, not those who beat up nerds (who we can safely call losers), but nerds who fight "To increase world AWESOME and decrease world suck." Anywhere you see DFTBA pop up (Don't Forget To Be Awesome) you are seeing the influence of these Nerdfighters.

Let me let you in on a little secret, in case you hadn't guessed it yet, I'm a giant nerd. When I was younger I took great pleasure in sitting and reading our junior encyclopedia, I am a writer who thinks nothing is more awesome than being in a room full of other writers all talking about writing, I love Star Trek, Star Wars, and most all things fantasy and sci fi related, and I've been known to craft in weird places.

Remember this picture? I was knitting while listening to the guys talk and Hank sing. Getting back to the tour itself, the tour was a combination of promotion and signings of John's latest book (The Fault in Our Stars), John gave a talk, Hank sang, and of course, there was lots of nerdyness. Everywhere you looked there was nerdyness. People talking about Dr. Who (I saw a knit cap that looked like the Tardis!), singing songs about particle physics, and screams. Lots of screams and yells and cheers and goofy dancing.

Guess what? They even made a video with footage from the event we were at! No, I'm not in the video.

Now one of the things that John (the one who wrote the book) talked about was, well, living an awesome life. That is, after all, one of their main focuses! It really got me thinking. Is my life awesome? Why or why not? Then I read the book and...

Well that's a story for anther post. What? Yes, I'm not going to delve deeper into my thoughts on living an awesome life today because I have a lot I want to say. So, aside from my updates on how my writing life is going, I'm going to focus on this for a few posts (maybe many posts). Check back, join in the discussion, and leave me your thoughts, I'd love to hear them :)

~ Ruthie ~

Ps. I'm having blog comment problems and we are not sure why. Feel free to send me a message at jedimarri(at)gmail(dot)com instead. We are in the middle of a family crisis so I haven't had time to contact blogger about it yet. Any information you can give me will be useful when I am able to contact them. Thanks!