These are the "polished pieces" out of my high school Advanced Composition Class, in order of writing. There were supposed to be four, I don't know what became of the other:

( College Application Essay about Libraries and Reading )

Title: One is Silver
Author: astraevirgo
Pairing/Character:
Word Count: 3,800ish
Rating: PG
Summary: A Young Wizards/How I Met Your Mother crossover. It turns out that Barney has other relationships.
Disclaimer: Contains some wild speculation about A Wizard of Mars, of which I have not read the sample chapters; the book won't be published until March 2010.
Author's Notes: YW used to be my favorite fandom to crossover, because they're so open to anything and everything. HIMYM may have over taken it, because so many other stories take place in New York City.

Special Preview Edition Author's Note: Unedited. I am pretty happy with this, but not 100%.

( And the other Gold )

Title: WILL WORK FOR RESIDUALS
Fandom: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip
Pairing: Gen
Rating: G
Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: The characters, situation, setting, etc do not belong to me. I would've rather Aaron Sorkin wrote this, but a fanfic'll do.

( S60 Experiences the WGA Strike )

Kate radiated in eight directions. From where she stood wedges of energy eminated, stretching out as far as she could see.

ETA: This was a snippet of a line that was stuck in my head one night as I was falling asleep. I wrote it down because it sounded cool. There's really no signicance, and when it was stuck in my head the name wasn't mine.

Elizabeth Turner had always been surprised at the myriad ways that Pirates, mythical creatures that they were becoming, had an answer to every occasion. In many ways, their methods were more complicated that the deportment she was taught as the daughter of one of England’s colonial governors.

She was utterly surprised when she began receiving christening gifts. They came too early – a certain prudence waited until the child was far enough into infancy to be sure he would survive.

But they came. They came without notes, they came without any indication to the giver. She couldn’t thank anyone. She couldn’t explain the gifts to the neighbors.

There were some people who remembered her as Elizabeth Swan. There were some who pitied her for marrying a common sailor, who would not (they did not know he could not) return to port. She expected gifts from them in the wary way that one would expect gifts from those who were seeking some higher abdication from their generosity. From the king? She was no longer that well connected. From God? She did not know if he existed. But she had seen Calypso for herself.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO TWO OF MY FAVORITE PEOPLE (WHO ALWAYS LISTEN TO ME WHEN I NEED AN EAR)

For Crystal: ( Leaving School )

For B: ( Crack in Time and Dimension in Now Playing )

Sonnet #116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments, love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.

O no, it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come,
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom:

If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

--William Shakespeare

I am fascinated by this poem.

Yesterday, as I asked for vegetarian chili in the cafeteria, the guy at the Scossa station goes, "Are you a practicing Catholic?"

"Sometimes I pretend," I said. There were ashes on my head, but they came from my mother. She leaned her head with its ashes onto mine, and by contact I gained my mark. I'm not the best Catholic.

I'm uncomfortable with sharing my faith with others, because I feel that everyone's beliefs are their own business. In that sense, I am secular. And so, I don't think I ever posted this, though I know I shared the file with a number of people -- ones I was comfortable with.

I am posting this as a reminder as to why I'm Catholic. After this, I'm going to filter my discussions of religion. If talk of religion makes you uncomfortable, don't read it. If you'd like to be on the filter, please comment.

( My Sacraments, My Religion, Our Traditions )

So, NaNoWriMo 2005 is over.

According to Word, my unofficial count is 7,386 words.

My unofficial nonNaNoWriMo count is 16932, plus reading notes, ideas scribbled on paper, things that didn't get typed but are part of the story all the same.

That's 24300 words total.

So, with this, I present you the other finished scenes that I have written. Don't worry, I haven't abandoned this, I just have to make plans. Because, somehow, I got into November with plenty of dreams but not enough plans.

As for the word count? November has to be THE WORST month to ask college students to write 50k. September or October would be better. Even December with its finals week.

Or maybe I just don't have the discipline.

But I will finish this story some day. It will probably be horribly out of date by the time I'm finished, but I will finish it.

Without further ado... the rest of what is complete and typed:( Read more... )

7,040 / 25,000 (28.2%)

Next chunk of my novel, as I am a feedback whore. No, I don't want to hear about how ridiculous I was for writing UM and MSU into it.

( Scene #3 )

In other news, school is going to kick my ass this weekend if I don't assassinate it first. I'm going up north with Jeff's family this weekend, and Jeff promises I'll have plenty of time to work on things.

I need to do some reading hard core, so I'm going to do that. I don't know why I'm not posting anything substantive about my daily life anymore. I think it's because I have too many people to tell about my daily life, so I don't feel the need to write it down. I need to get back in the habit, but... ::sigh::

I felt like some instant gratification.

( 1240 words of my novel )

"Mr. President, are you planning on any last minute appointments?"

His dark eyebrow tweaked and a wry smile crossed his face. "If I planned them, they wouldn't be last minute. No, Ms. Gould, I will not use that particular trick of the executive trade. I find that it is not in the best interest of a Statesman."

The room errupted into a thunder of questions. "What will you do with your retirement?" shouted a reporter near Stephanie. The rest of the crowd silenced its shouts for attention as it heard a question they, too, would like answered.

"Are you planning on writing your memoirs?" Added a reporter near the back of the press corp -- someone getting their reporting legs on the last day of a successful presidency.

Any semblence of amusement left his face. He frowned, and tugged on the lapels of his suit jacket, straightening the shoulders. "Memoirs, are written by those who are aware of their own mortality. They're written in order to warn the next generation of possible pitfalls and dangers in the world.

"If they're written for the wrong reasons, they become media sensations that simply are post-political career campagining for the history books. They don't offer any advice.

"The problem with the entire genre of memoirs is that the next generation will always make their own mistakes; tell their own stories. I will not write my memoirs because I do not want to foster the false hope that I will make some difference to myself.

"That does not mean that I will not write, that I will not publish. I will. But what I will write will be a warning to my grandparents. And my parents. About how the choices they made shaped me, and shaped my generation, and shaped a nation. I will write to my anscestors because their political, social, and econonmic choices made me. They made their decisions for all the wrong reasons. "

He looked over at the thin, war torn press secretary in the corner. She stepped forward. "No more questions for the President, thank you."

She showered, scrubbing off grime that wasn't there, robbing her body of the precious oils that developed over generations to insure her skin's safety, and ultimately her life, as the first barrier against disease. She scrapped away hairs from their follicles, washed the oil out of her hair and stepped out of the rainstorm to view the damage of the land.

Sixteen, and preparing to be the oldest of the marginalized younger generation.

Lathering on lotions, pretending to rebuild those immunities - one for moisture, one for sun, one for bugs - but simply side stepped them, tried to improve upon them.

She smelled like a jungle, exotic perfumes wafting off her skin as she walked through the manicured wild that was suburbia, carrying iced seafood dishes and cookies for dessert. Down the street, gait practiced and smooth, towards where she was certain boredom loomed. But what she found wasn't boredom, but warm and cocoon-like facelessness she could endure; adult conversations to listen in to, preschool melodramas to watch and manipulate and dusk.

Sunset, her sandals kicked off and under mommy's seat to keep them safe, gap jeans rolled up to her knees. Glow necklaces wrapped once, twice around ankles and wrists, head and neck, she danced in the hazy, humid moonlight, chasing after children in games of tag, and painting glowing lines of pixie light with sparklers lit by citronella candles.

And she was five again. Head throbbing from heat, sweat running down from flame hair in rivulets, wanting to run back for more ignoring point of exhaustion, she was five. And joined by five-year-olds, and others transformed, she wasn't the oldest of the children, she was one of them.

Night, deciding she should retreat to her enclave of normalcy; she trudged up the street like she glided down it. And in the light of her home, where she was sixteen again, she saw she was truly dirty; dirt stained her toes, dust clung to lotion on skin and sweat drew patterns in the dust.

She climbed in the shower, reveling in actually being dirty, in the cold water refreshing fevered body and in knowing how to regress.