Today I have been formatting my book for printing.

As some of you may know, if you reach your word count goal in November for NaNoWriMo, CreateSpace will give five free books of your novel.  Sounds great, doesn't it!

Well, it does.  Buuut, YOU (or, in this case, I) have to format this book, and come up with a cover for it.

So I'm working on those two things.  I've just about finished formatting it (I'll have to ask  my brother to look over a few quick things first), and then it'll be done.

I'm going to read it over one more time though before sending it off to CreateSpace, just to fix up a few things (grammatically).  And to go over some of it just to make sure it make sense.  This will be the fifth draft, and going over it, I'm surprised how many things I've missed...

Anyway.  I know this novel (The Traitors Tale) is fairly terrible (hehehe), but I want it printed out since it's my first completed work - even if it is cliche and not very good.

~The WordWeaver
 
There!  Does it look like an axe now?

T'was hilarious when several people said it look like an axe instead of a hairbow, especially when I looked at it for myself and couldn't stop thinking it was an axe!

Hope it looks better now.

~The WordWeaver
 
Here is a picture of one of my characters from the novel I will be writing in April, May, and July (for Camp NaNoWriMo).  I've been writing a lot about my characters and have got to 'know them' even though they are fictional.  Yesterday I noticed I missed writing about them... anyway, here is a drawing of Tira, a princess from the nation of Tarasia.  She is either just barely 11 or almost 12, there isn't much of a difference, but I can't decide which... but, without further ado, here it is.
Eh, not very good, but at least it's something.  It took me at least half a dozen tries to get it that good, although those failures led me to give her a bow on her hair, so that makes her more unique.  Which is always good.

~The WordWeaver
 
I have no idea how to start this post - I mean, there is so many things I want to say that I just don't know how to start it...

But there I did it.  I already started my post.  And so I'll just continue, anyway I can.  :)  Starting at the beginning, which is always a good place to begin.

Was it Tuesday?  Thursday?  Sometime around then, it got really warm, 50 degrees about, which means I am outside doing something, even though my brother thought I was crazy for doing it, because there was still a bit of ice on the creek.  But, because the Volleyball Tournament was just in a couple days and I couldn't serve for my life, literally.

So, yes, I was practicing basically ALL DAY.  And my hands were purple, no really, I got creepy purple spots all over my arm.

Still, I practiced my hands off (not quite literally), and I was sweating a good bit, so I went 1.4 second creek stomping in the freezing cold stream beside my house.  Again, my brother thought I was wild-crazy for doing that.  Heehee.

Anyway, the sun began to sink, and then I didn't practice after that (Side Note:  That was the last time I practiced before the Tournament except for one or two serves up against the wall Friday Night - normally the Youth practice was on Thursday, but they cancelled it that week).

That next day, I woke to a world of white.  At about 12 of clock (midnight), the snow had begun to fall, or so it is thought.  After I woke though, my brother and I started shoveling the driveway, it was wet and slippery snow, so it seemed as if it would melt very quickly.

Soon, my dad began to help too, and he got an idea of rolling up the snow in a big ball.  Fairly soon, he had a MASSIVE ball, and by the end it took my dad and I to push the ball off the driveway, and I also made a second, smaller ball clearing up some of the other parts of the driveway.

After rolling the larger one off the driveway, my dad decided we should build a snowman, and by the looks of just the bottom part, the snowman was going to be BIG, really BIG.  And as we looked at the second piece of the snowman, we saw that it would be far to hard to pick up the second ball and put it onto the first one, so we made a ramp out of two planks of wood, and rolled it up.  Nonetheless, it was still a challenging task.

The head of the snowman was pretty heavy, but my dad and brother could lift it up and put it on the top.

Still, when we stepped back, the man of snow was HUGE, at least 7 feet tall, and very wide.  Yes, it was very, very, extremely, amazingly, stunningly big.  Hehe, yep, it was very cool - literally.

I'll posts some pictures of it and other things tomorrow, in a seperate post, so watch out for it.

But, for now, this post isn't even half over.

After the warm day, and the snowman-building day, it was not time to sit easy and rest.  Friday was Co-Op day, and so I had to write up several things for that, and that didn't go so well - meaning it took a long while to write it.

After Co-Op was over, I tried to get so sleep early, as it was about an hour and a half journey to the Tournament, a college in Juniata, and we had to get up at a quarter 'til 7 to meet the other youth at my church before we set off on the trip, to travel together.  Buuut... well, we got delayed, so we were a bit late, and when we did get going, the GPS said we had 6 minutes to spare once we got to the college, and that was hardly enough to race into the doors, find our team, and to see our plans for the games.

Anyway, we took some shortcuts the GPS didn't know about, and arrived there before 9:00 AM, (but still very close to it).  We ran in, and I took a deep breath as I heard the District Executive still talking.  Once he was done, we went over to the bleachers, met up with the other youth, one of the youth leaders showed us our positions on a green paper diagram.  I was in the dead center, (although since we only had 8 players, there was no one directly behind me).

And then it began.  My feet pounded on the gym floor, the noise ringing through my ears as other teams took up their positions, and my teammates and I at our volleyball court.

Now, as the time slowly passed for me, and my heart thumped as a great blacksmith's hammer on an anvil, and I began to sweat from nervousness (like, not on my face, but at my underarms and on my hands, making them sticky).  (Anyway, back to my first sentence), Now, as the time slowly passed for me, I'll tell you what the college courts looked like.

The main room had courts 1, 2, and 3, (with other balls always rolling into the other courts in this room), and then outside of the main gymnasium, a hallway, on which the scores were posted, and then a left turn, a second gymnasium was revealed.  This gym only had one court, which was better to play in because the other team's balls weren't going every which way.

But, back to the first game.

I absolutely failed.

Yep, I served the ball UNDER the net.

But, the next game, I served it over twice, once scoring immediately.

Then some other games went by.  I got it over a total of 8 times.  Out of like the 4 times I served.  So that was good, but I wasn't very helpful to the team...

Anyway, we won 3rd place medal, so I'm fine. :)

Well, I'm going to stop rambling and post this while I can.

Have a good day!

~The WordWeaver
 
I was proved wrong on Thursday - apparently volleyball wasn't intended to torture short twelve year olds.  *Grin*

I finally served the ball good enough, so that it actually went over the net.  So I'm getting better at serving, and the other things in volleyball are improving, I've been trying to hit the ball more often - rather than just stay in the back, and only hit the ball when absolutely necessary.

Writing, however, isn't going so well.  I still haven't been able to finish my Short Story, and my novel is dragging its 'feet' in being written quickly.

Other than that, I'm doing alright.  And I still want to finish the series about originality soon.  Keyword, soon.

So that might be a while because  I've been busy - staying up late and getting up earlier than I would like, though its nothing to be proud of, the times I get up, that is.

In other news, my Homeschool C0-op started once more, and I'm in a writing class my mom is teaching, so I had a couple writings I had to do, no more than a couple hundred words, but it forced me to write something interesting (sort of) and complete in a time frame.  Something I should be pressing on myself to have much more.

At this rate, my novel will be finished next Fall, as I also intend to finish Vengeance's Blade throughout the summer.

As said before, today was co-op day.  But it was also Spontaneous Clean-Up Day, in which my parents, me and usually one of my brothers, clean up a room.  My dad helped my brother clean up his half of the room, while my mom helped me clean up my half.  I assure you, it wasn't an entirely pleasant sight (think of dirty clothes strewn across an un-swept floor), but now its bearable to look at. :P

Also, I've joined a sort of contest for this month, March, in which I dress up like a character from one of my novels.  This month's addition, I am taking pictures of an item my character would have, the creator of the contest likes to spin things around each month.

So, that item originally was going to be a viking cloak clasp, since I want to buy one off of Ebay for a while, and this gave me an excuse to.  Unfortunately, I haven't, and probably won't for a while, so now I'll have to think up something different.  Oh, and by the way, this item can't be a weapon, so yeah.

And I guess that basically wraps up this post.