Back on the Blog

Wow, what a week. I'm sorry I missed the promised post last week but with the way my life went, it was the last thing on my mind.

But hey. I survived and I finished Camp NaNoWriMo in time. Huzzah!

In the meantime, Annalise Green tagged me for a 10 Random Facts Meme, which I will gladly do. You should check her out, because in the last week I've seen talk of Phoenix Wright, scary monsters, Earthbound, coffee and, of course, writing. All things that are downright awesome. (Also, she slays dragons with lasers. Epic.)

Also in the list of awesome writers discovered through the Campaign is Ari Susu-Mago, who just passed the Liebster award over here again.  Thanks a lot! Among other things, she posted this fascinating video. Sharing-worthy!

Now on to the ten facts, hm?

1. I love the letter W. I don't know why. It's one of those irrational, quirky love I carry around. It's a rare letter in French (worth 10 points in Scrabble), which is happily not the case in English. I once spent 20 minutes of walk making long W alliterations.

2. I used to think I'd read a lot of fantasy until I started hanging around fantasy writing communities. Then I realised I was missing out on most of the genre. It was one of the happiest discovery of my life.

3. I once joked to my ex that "Purple was Evil" in a very random context. The joke went viral in my circles of friends. All of them. Today Purple is my favourite colour (along with orange!)

4. I start school tomorrow!!!! I've been waiting for this day for about a month now. Although one could say that since this is the start of my Creative Program, I've been waiting for it for a year and a half.

5. My biochemistry program almost killed my love for science. Now that I'm (nearly) done, and with this blog frequently posting about it, I am finally rediscovering why it makes me so giddy.

6. I'm a squid. I even have a squid hat (which is cuddly and makes a wonderful pillow). True story.

7. I have Einstein in my bedroom. Not a poster. Not a plush. A puppet. It is from Prague, renowned for its puppet, and I love it to pieces. Best birthday gift ever! Look:

8. I haven't written a word in about a week now, and it feels so good. It was time for me to take a break. Apparently said break is called Minecraft.

9. I love to wake a hour earlier than I need to and enjoy my coffee and breakfast, read my newspaper and take it easy. It relaxes and awakens me. I don't do this often enough.

10. My bloganniversary is coming and I am planning something for you guys. Oh yes. To Be Announced this week or the next!

The Last Hours of Mad Typing

I meant to have a really nice post here today, about the balance between writing craft and on-the-spot inspiration when writing or rewriting. It's been on my mind a lot lately as a struggled through the rewrites of my WIP.

Here's the thing, though. I have less than 24 hours to hit my Camp NaNoWriMo wordcount -- a goal for which I still need to write 8000 words. I'm typically a NaNoWriMo overachiever, and my pride as one will not allow me to fail the 50k. I can do it, I've written more in a day before. I just have to, ah, sacrifice the quality.

So I'm going to vanish for the next 24 hours and type like mad. I have a couple of new ideas I wanted to explore, and there is no better time than NaNo-speed surge of words to spill an exploratory drafts.

Check back on Thursday, all! I'll be a Camp Winner, and I'll have a nice, shiny post for you. :) Two, in fact, with Wicked & Tricksy.

Göbekli Tepe Or The Ruins That Predate Civilization

Most of the science on this blog is linked to biology or chemistry in one way or another, in large part because it's what I study in.

Today we take a look at something a little different. And by "a little", I mean a lot. I have the awesome Steph Sinkhorn to thank for one of the most major mindblowing discovery I've made in the last month: Göbekli Tepe. 

What is Göbekli Tepe?

Göbekli Tepe is a set of ruins discovered on a hilltop in southeast Turkey. The complex appears to be a sanctuary of sorts. It contains multiple round subterrean structures, each of which has a series of massive limestone pillars (we're talking 8 feet tall and seven tons here). The pillars themselves are decorated with complex carvings of animals, plants and other enigmatic pictograms.

The construction of Göbekli Tepe, which involved the carving and carrying of the pillars uphill, would take a staggering amount of manpower - estimations speak of 500 men.

Okay. But the Egyptians built the pyramids, so what's the big deal?

A Little Historical Context

The big deal came with the carbon-dating. At the moment, the oldest dating on Göbekli Tepe places it at 9000 BC. They are not done digging the site, however, and most archeologist estimate the ruins' beginning to be in 11,000 BC.

Mesopotamian writing systems are estimated to the end of the 4th millenium BC.
Animal husbandry is estimated to 9000 BC.

What this means, in short, is that Göbekli Tepe was built before the Neolithic Revolution, when humans were still hunters-gatherers. Before agriculture and animal husbandry.

The hilltop sanctuary speaks of a level of organization that was never associated with the time period. Archeologists now believe a priestly caste supervised the work (good job on gathering those 500 men, there) and, afterwards, the religious ceremony that took place there.

Kind of awesome, how wrong we were about the small packs of hunter-gatherers, eh?

And Now the Actual Crazy Inspiration Part

There is something else unique with Göbekli Tepe, and I'll admit that's the part I found the most interesting. It spoke to the writer in me, because it implies a story.

Göbekli Tepe was deliberately buried under 300 to 500 cubic meters of sand. They took the sand from elsewhere and filled their sanctuary with it, and no one knows why. Protection from invaders? Preservation for future generations? Respect for a religious site no longer in usage?

We don't know. Chances are, we never will.

If you're like me, though, you are weaving an epic tale that would lead hundreds of hunter-gatherers to work together and fill their holy sites with sand, in the desperate hope that when danger passes, they can return to it and honour their gods.

Images are from Ancient Wisdom, where there's a lot more to see.

A Year in Creative Writing

If you've been hanging around here for a while (or, well, if you read the description next to my name XD), you know I'm a biochemist student. For the last three years, every class I've taken was related to DNA or microbes or proteins or chemistry.

I love sciences. I love it enough that I'll be going on to do a Masters. But before that, however, I am allowing myself a year of break. And by break, I really mean insaneness.

There is a short Creative Writing program at my University that can be completed in a year. I'm jumping in, and plan on completing it along with the two last Biochemistry class (which means I'm having extra classes each semester, which is why this is insane, but let's ignore that). Starting this September, I'll spend almost all of my time writing.

I don't know how useful it'll be. Very, I hope. I do know that a friend of mine did it, and loved it, and I hope that all of the critique groups and writing experiments will help me along the path.

That's my brand new adventure! You know the ironic part? All those classes... they are in French.

heehee.

The Complete Disconnect

Hello, interwebs!

You might've noticed my vacations where spontaneously extended. It's not often that I pull the plug on my computer and leave the strange lands of the internets for so long. It felt strange, at first. I kept wondering what you guys were discussing, what I was missing. I was worried I'd miss the gem of information that I needed to push me further as a writer.

Then I realised I was being silly. I stopped thinking of my life in potential blog posts. I stopped wondering what the internet was going on about. I pulled the plug on twitter, on the forums, on everything but e-mails.

It felt so good.

And I got so much done! I moved in a new house, I took a hot air balloon trip, I finished my third draft, planned its revision, planned a short story in the same universe, saw four music concert (it's the Summer Festival here. Lots of concerts all the time for 10 days), had fun with friends and boyfriends and just... lived. Without the internet. Yes, I assure you, that's possible!

Now I feel recharged. I won't be posting every day of the week. I want to ease myself into this smooth and easy. I think I enjoyed the taste of what can be done with all the freed time. But I promise you, by the end of the week there will be pictures taken from a hot air balloon.

Until next time!

Another Year and Another Draft

News!

I am 22. Whoo! I don't feel any more mature, though.

That alone wouldn't be worth a blog post, but I happen to have something much more awesome to say:

I have finished my third White Echoes draft. I had celebratory cake for the occasion, of course. :)

Then I immediately got back to replanning the entirety of Part 1. It looked real good in outline form, but when I wrote it, it felt all kinds of wrong. It had months to stew in my head, however, and is much smoother now. As soon as the last kinks are worked out, I start writing again.

I'm excited and relaxed. Vacations are going well.

Vacations in the Sky!

Ten days ago I announced I would be taking a blog vacation*, to go along with my actual vacations from work. I love you guys, but I believe this is a great time to take a real break for my brain. I'll try and keep up with the blogs, will certainly keep an eye on my e-mails, and might throw an extra post here and there, but I make no promises.

These are my vacations. I intend to do as I damn please with them! Enjoy these three visual clues of what that implies:

photo credit: maxymedia

Yeah, I'm taking off with the whole house.

For real. Real real real! Weeeeee.

Fun times ahead. I will, of course, bring a notebook to the balloon flight and harass the pilot with every single question I can think of. Who wouldn't want to do research when it promises to be so fun?

Oh, and I have a little something special in the works again. You'll hear more of it when I return. Secrets!

Enjoy your summer. See you around the interwebs!

*Wicked & Tricksy is excluded in blog vacation. I'll still post on Thursdays. We have a blogfest coming, after all!

Something Wicked..!

It would seem June is the month for giveaways and blogfests. The little contest to win a copy of Transfection is still going on, and you have until Wednesday to participate. Hurry! All you have to do is answer one tiny question.

In addition to this, my awesome Wicked Teammates and myself have collected items and books related to our genres and put them into Secret Boxes of Mystery. Which you can win!

You can click on the button for more instructions, but it's actually quite simple. When we launched Wicked & Tricksy, we told you why we loved speculative fiction. Now it's your turn. There are three potential questions you can answer.

The blogfest is from June 27th to July 1st. We'll reveal the Secret Boxes of Mystery content right before that. We promise it will be epic. If I could, I would hoard them all and breath fire on whoever dared to try and steal them.

Now, one more thing about that week. It happens to be both my birthday, and my first move out of my parent's house. Important things, I daresay. As such, I will be taking a vacation from blogging, between June 27th and July 8th.

I promise to read your awesome entries to the blogfest, and I will still be featured on Thursdays, on Wicked & Tricksy. The rest of my freed time will be spent enjoying myself with a sangria out in the sun (or crouched over my keyboard, finishing my first draft. Whichever!)

Now go and check out the blogfest! It'll be worth your time.

Winter Tug of War

May 30th! What is May 30th? It is the School's Out 4Ever blogfest!

This is a winter story, though. Yep, snow in May.

My group of friends in cégep* were crazy and awesome, both. I was a part of the student's café and spent every single minute between 8 am and 6 pm that I wasn't in class there. Sometimes even minutes I should've been in class.

We did a lot of mad things in our time. The best of them, though, ought to be when we registered for the Winter Carnival's Annual Tug of War contest.

We had big guys at the Oxymel (that's the café's name). We could build a solid enough team, train a bit and have fun. After all, Quebec's Winter Carnival's is meant for kids, too!

We missed the footnote that said the army was in charge of organising this. This is what we were up against:

The man at the very back (you can only see his head) is Hugo Girard. He won the 2002 title for World's Strongest Man

No. It wasn't until January, when our team's captain had her first meeting with the organisation, that we realised what we were getting into. Imagine our surprise when she gathered the group, an amused and sadistic look on her face.

"You're going to kill me," she said. "All the other teams are made of military men, police or fire fighters. They're huge."

She could laugh. As captain, she didn't have to tug.

We went anyway, with out splendid "uniforms". This isn't an underdog story: we were crushed every single time. Well, except when they let Hugo Girard tug for our side. And that one match, at the very end, against the Navy team (they weren't as beef, and had the icy half of the terrain).

The animator kept teasing us. We had our vengeance when he asked us to pick any player to help us tug, and we demanded he did it (that was my idea and I am so proud of it. M'hahahaha).

This event was, without a doubt, the most fun I had all winter. We had all the other teams sign one of our aprons. We had snowball fights in the freshly-fallen snow. We were given consolation prizes and made friends with the Navy team (they were super awesome). It was humiliating, but in a way, that was the great part of it. We didn't have to be serious.

Our team was called the Carebears. We had silly aprons as a uniform. We chanted "Love and Happiness" as our 'war chant'  (it was Love and Dignity, but someone pointed out we'd lost dignity somewhere along the way).

 So, here, have a picture of my awesome team:

I'm second from the right, second row, with the stripped scarf!

Enjoy the summer! ;)

*Cégep is a special type of school we have here in Quebec that is kind of a mix between high school and university, which lasts two years and goes between the two. Our "high school" is a year shorter. It's complicated.

New Beginnings

Apparently, Monday May 9th is the day of new beginnings. I've been running around the internet speaking about the first for two weeks now, so unless you haven't hung around the blog in a while, you all know about Wicked & Tricksy.

The first post - Sommer's Community Post - is up at the moment. There's even comments on it, whoo! Click on the button to read the awesomeness and learn how to get wicked bookmarks!

That's not all, however! The second beginning is technically more important, and nearly as cool. I am starting an internship in a research lab, which is the last major hurdle between me and my Biochemistry major.

What that has to do with writing? Not much, except perhaps that this autumn, I am jumping into a one-year Creative Writing program.

Exciting things!

Tune back in tomorrow (tuesday) for more fluorescent proteins goodness!

Experiencing Life at its Fullest

(Would you believe this is my 100th post? It feels weird!)

Writers, I believe, have a special way of experiencing life. I, at least, no longer blitz through it without paying attention. Ever since I put the first word on a page and attempted to describe a scene, I discovered a new facet of life.

I had to see, smell, taste and touch everything. It's as if someone turned up my perception button one day. I have to feel the world and understand it.

Everything can be material. People talking on the bus. A strange customer at my grocery. The rich smell of fresh croissants. The super sweet candies I eat by the dozens on Thursday evenings. The foul smell of sulfur in my labs. There are no exceptions.

I realised this more fully last weekend, as I hiked through a forest with snowshoes. It's winter and most birds are gone. The forest was silent safe for our steps. The day was hot and snow melted, falling from the branches and to the ground. I stopped to listen. My boyfriend was a bit confused at first but when I motionned for him not to talk, he knew right away. I was doing this writer thing.

And then in the middle of a winter forest, I heard the strangest of sound. A fire crackling. It was the melted snow from the trees touching the still cold ground. Admist the tall pine, with not a human being in sight besides of us, it was magic.

I recorded this in a little part of my brain, which stores peculiar experiences for future descriptions. I'm not sure I would have stopped to listen four years ago.

When we started walking again, the sound of our snowshoes crushing the snow covered the crackling. I knew it was there, however, and I was glad I'd stopped.

The writer in me did it. I never loved him more.