Tag: nationalnovelwritingmonth

It’s official – I am done with all of my finals. All of my essays, tests, homework assignments, and even tutoring – all done until the first week of February. Granted, I am still working on my capstone – but that will be ongoing until the end of Spring 2021.

This has given me time to sit down and do what I enjoy doing – read. In the past two days, I have read I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Ian Reid and Farewell, Earth’s Bliss by D. G. Compton. Reid’s book was phenomenal – my best friend Mikaela had been recommending it to me for a year and I finally had time to sit down and read it (on top of the fact that it was assigned to me to read). The ending was confusing at first, but I talked it through with her afterwards and it all started to make sense. If you have any time at all, sit down and read I’m Thinking of Ending Things – not only is Reid an incredible author and story teller, but he creates a haunting double storyline that a read cannot get enough of. I rated it 4/5 stars.

Farewell, Earth’s Bliss was fine – I don’t have any strong opinions in favor of this story. It was published in 1966, which makes sense to the crude and honestly upsetting language that is used through the book. Personally, I feel that the character of Jacob was used strictly as the butt of a joke as well referred to in derogatory terms by Simon, who I will call a bully. I didn’t feel attached to any of the characters or even to the plot itself (did it have a plot? I’m not sure, still), so I rated it 2.5/5 stars – my lowest rating of the year so far. Maybe if I read this in 1966 I would’ve enjoyed it more, but the language has not aged well into modern times, and ultimately I was left blindsided by the racist and sexist remarks made throughout the book.

One of the best things about my capstone is that I am assigned not only books to read, but TV shows and movies to watch as well. Recently, besides finishing the first season of Twin Peaks, I have been watching The Twilight Zone and working my way through the 27 episodes that my professor picked out. I had never watched this show before, and I was pleasantly surprised by how much I actually enjoyed watching it. There were some episodes that I couldn’t fully watch – one of them being “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” because of my fear of airplanes. However, even with that being said, it is facinating to see how they filmed the episodes back then. My favorite episodes so far have been:

• Third from the Sun
• The Obsolete Man
• The Eye of the Beholder
• The After Hours
• People are Alike all Over

Next up on my list of things to watch is the Netflix movie adaptation of I’m Thinking of Ending Things which I’m excited to see. Other than that, I have to catch up/finish watching The Mandalorian season 2 as I haven’t had time to watch any episodes since my semester got so busy.

It is strange to have so much time now. I only just found out that tutoring was over for the semester yesterday, so besides my RA obligations I have no plans as to how I will spend the rest of my time at school. I don’t move out until Saturday afternoon, which means I guess I have more time than ever to catch up on whatever work I need to do.

I’ll be back later in the week with more content!

Much love,

C.E. Egan

Hello everyone! I hope you’ve all had a fabulous week, and are ready for some recovery time. What is something that went really well this week? What is something that you’re grateful for? I’d love to know in the comments below.

Next week is my last week of classes before finals – woohoo! This semester has felt like that longest one so far, so I’m eternally grateful that it is almost over. However, I know this next week will be the most stressful for me. I am challenging myself to complete all of my finals and coursework by December 11th. I am doing this because the last week of school, finals week, I have to stay on campus since I work as a Resident Assistant. This is the time where I want to focus on my writing, as well as get some reading done. My professor is having me read and watch I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Ian Reid, so I know that I will need to have the time to do so. The 12th-18th will be my week of editing and working on new pieces.

I submitted “4:30AM” to my capstone professor, and I got some great feedback on it. I’m going to edit it, as well as expand, and this introspective piece is going to be going into my final portfolio for my senior capstone. I didn’t know how I felt about the piece as I wrote it, so it was wonderful to get to talk through it with someone else! I’ve found writing to be a lonely process for me lately, and this class has allowed me to talk about my work and revise it.

Writing is lonely for me because I don’t often talk about my work with others. In the past, I have received constructive criticism that was not spoken of as such, but was phrased more that my writing was not good, and this has kept me from sharing a lot of my work. I can take this feedback, but more often than not it has come off as a critique of not my writing, but me. I had vivid memories of professors telling me that my work ‘doesn’t make sense’ and that I would need to change a majority of what I’ve already done. Or, in some cases, I’ve had peers read my work and tell me that I should give up. This process has been lonely because I don’t share much with anyone.

However, I finally have two people in my life that love listening to me talk about my work. Just yesterday, I was out with one of these friends and we ended up talking about fanfiction and what we thought made it good. I told my friend about one I wrote/have been writing, and to my surprise she absoluely loved it. Little moments like that remind me that I can write great things, and that the people who want to see me succeed in writing will give me critiques directed at my work, not at me.

That’s all I have for my newsletter of the week. Thank you again for supporting me, and I’ll be posting another short story again soon.

Much love,

C.E. Egan

Hello again, friends! Its been a hot minute since the last time I posted on here! I’m here to catch up with you all, and update everyone on what’s going on with me – my writing life and my academic life (I’m a college student, after all).

A mental health check in – Covid19 has been on everyone’s minds for months and I want to give you all a space to relax. Take a moment here to do the following:

1. Take a deep breath.
2. Relax your jaw.
3. Relax your eyebrows.
4. Take another deep breath.
5. Look around you. Name 3 things that you can see.
6. Name 2 things you can hear.
7. Name 1 thing you can touch.
8. Take another deep breath.

If you haven’t yet, get up and stretch your legs. Drink some water and eat something healthy. Or, eat something your brain needs. Whether that be an apple or chocolate – eat it. You deserve it.

With that relaxation in mind, I hope you’re all doing well and that everything is going as good as it can. Though things are repetitive and lonely right now – you deserve a pat on a back for how far you’ve come and how hard you’ve worked. I’m proud of you.

I haven’t been doing the best at taking care of my mental health, so even typing these reminders has been helpful for me. I hope they were helpful for you too.

As some of you may know, I am a junior in college currently. My life has been swamped with school work, reading, tutoring, and trying my best to have fun with friends. I’m working on my senior capstone currently (yes, a year early – it’s so I can do my internship next year) which entails a lot of reading. The professor I’m working with has given me some awesome recommendations though. I wouldn’t of been able to read the following without his input: The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K Le Guin, Ubik by Philip K Dick, The Tombs of Autuan by Ursula K Le Guin, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, Rocannon’s World by Ursula K Le Guin, and other titles that I have not even begun to read. If you can’t tell, I love Le Guin and her work – she writes the genres that I’ve always been interested in and she has written one of my favorite short stories to date: “The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas.”

My goal for this capstone, which is a year long, is to create a portfolio of different kinds of pieces so that I can apply to grad school or even a PHD program after I graduate from my undergrad program. Lots of things are happening – grad school panic is real.

Classes are heavy reading based as well, though I’m only taking one English class. I have lots of history reading that I have to do as well as ethics work – philosophy has been a challenge, but I’m learning and have done pretty well in the class. I work as a writing tutor at my school and everyday I’m booked with other peers to help them with their papers. That is exceptionally draining at times – but I am also a Resident Assistant on campus and thus have the stress of that on my shoulders.

However, on top of all these things, I have been able to read what I want and I’ve been able to write more. I will be talking about all of this in a later post, but as it is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) – I set out on the challenge to write 50,000 words in 30 days. I am proud to say that I hit my goal on November 14th! Thus came my next challenge – finishing the entire novel by the end of the month. And, on November 24th, I finished the first draft – clocking in a total of 70,500 words.

The Astrologist officially has a first draft! As crappy as it may be, it is a draft, and I couldn’t be more proud of myself. This is one of the first times I’ve completed a first draft of anything I’ve written, and I have been relatively emotional about it.

As I said, I’m going to talk more about NaNoWriMo and my process and struggles with working on the project as a full time college student and employee of the college. But, I haven’t given up writing at all: sometimes, I have to push off writing to focus on the more important things in life. I’m working to have a schedule of writing something every single day.

In closing, thank you all for the support that you’ve given me in my absence. I’m going to post more on here as I am coming down to the last 3 weeks of school and so I will have much more time to read and write. Is there anything you want for content in particular? I’m going to write some book reviews for the works that I read for my capstone (as listed above) as well as books I’ve read for pleasure. Is there anything else you’d like to see? Let me know in the comments!

Much love,

C. E. Egan