campnano – Lena Corazon

Tag: campnano

ROW80: Oh, How Time Flies!

I know, I know, I’ve been all sorts of absent over the last month or so. Where have I been? for starters, there was the family spring break trip to Anaheim, where all of this awesomeness occurred:

The valiant knights of Medieval Times in Buena Park, CA.

Disneyland!

Yo ho ho!

The great Captain Jack Sparrow, for my #teamsprinty loves

Family time at Disneyland.

…and then after I got back from vacation, there was just a lot of “Oh, I’ll write a check-in post on Sunday. Wait, Sunday has passed? Then I’ll check in on Wednesday…” And so on, and so forth.

Then April rolled around (no, I don’t know where the time has gone. I am convinced that some evil genius somewhere flipped a switch and stole at least 3 weeks from me), and I had all this life stuff come up. Nothing serious, mind you, just the life stuff that involves dealing with routine doctors’ appointments, and running all those errands that have been piling up for months, and paying attention to things like the mountain of paper and mail and books that are overflowing from the various corners in which they were stashed.

I was reminded that I had planned to paint my room waaaaay back in July, when I first moved back home, so I took the last week to finally get that done. I think the results are well worth the effort. 😛

Napoleon is wondering, as always, what the heck I’m up to this time.

A before-and-after shot of my desk, for comparison’s sake.

With all this massive spring cleaning and redecorating finished, I’m hoping I’ll have all sorts of renewed energy for creativity and productivity. With that in mind, here are my Round 2 goals. For April, I plan to do the following:

DAY JOB: Finish the first full draft of my dissertation proposal.

WRITING: Write 30k towards TELL ME NO LIES for CampNaNoWriMo.

That’s it. Simple, straight-forward, and to the point… though still a little scarily ambitious. But after almost 2 years of participating in ROW80, I’ve come to accept the fact that I don’t quite know how to do anything less.

So, yay! I’m late to the party, but I’m thrilled, as always, to be here. How’s Round 2 treating everyone else?

ROW80: In Which Lena Vanquishes Her To-Do List

September 12, 2012 / Lena Corazon / 23 Comments

Yup, you read that right. My massive summer to-do list has been conquered. Given that it’s been almost a month since my last check-in, it’s really exciting to have good news to report. Here’s the Awesome List of Success:

This is what happens when I am stressed and trying to procrastinate, and the cat decides he wants to distract me.

Day Job: I wrote my Very Big Paper, which ended up being 45 pages on the history of Catholic sisters in the United States during the nineteenth century. Next, I finished the Paper From Hell, a 16 page paper on conduct literature that included lots of social theory and more big words than you can shake a stick at. And Tuesday night I hammered out a 3.5 page dissertation mini-proposal, complete with some preliminary research questions and a tentative chapter outline. Add in the 6 hours of archival research I’ve been doing each week, and you have one very, very vanquished to-do list.

Now that all the hard work is out of the way, I can head back to Santa Barbara and meet with my dissertation committee next week for my “little conversation,” the final requirement that I need to advance to doctoral candidacy. Accomplishing that means that I’ve jumped all the institutional loopholes — coursework, papers, and all that jazz. In other words, the only thing standing between me and my PhD is the dissertation.

Writing: I didn’t get a chance to talk about this, since I’ve been stuck in the writing cave for the last few weeks, but I did end up winning Camp NaNoWriMo. STRANGE BEDFELLOWS is the poster child for the zero draft, with plotholes wider than the Grand Canyon, inconsistent characterization, and a million other problems, but I think there’s a fairly strong skeletal structure underneath it all. And, you know, it’s like 66k long, and I can’t complain about that.

For fun, and to keep up my writing momentum, I thought I’d try out my first round of Fast Drafting with a nugget of an idea that’s been nagging at me for a few months. (Yes, I am an overachiever. And yes, I am quite clearly a glutton for punishment.) I’ve fallen off the Fast Draft train over the last couple of days, derailed by migraines, the Paper From Hell, and my dissertation mini-proposal, but I am going to try to get back on track over the next day or two. Right now this little project (tentatively titled SOMEWHERE IN THE WEST) has a little over 17k — nowhere near my original goal, but still pretty awesome.

Exercise: I really fell off the wagon in terms of eating well and exercising, but my mom and I have a new plan that we have been implementing for the last couple of weeks. We are now walking 5 days a week, a minimum of 2 miles each day, and we’ve eliminated all the sweet, sugary things from the grocery list. I’m seeing a tiny difference, which will hopefully become a much larger difference in the weeks to come.

Social Media: My blog reading and commenting has been sporadic, I’ve been pretty quiet on Twitter, but I’ve been hanging out on Facebook a little more often. I’ve got a few blog posts drafted, so I might be able to start blogging again in October. This, of course, depends on whether or not I can have some time to unwind and chill out.

-oOo-

At the moment, my most immediate goal is to deal with my “little conversation” next week, and then to spend the rest of September doing nothing but gorging myself on novels, naps, and video games. I will also be carving out time to blog-hop and respond to comments, something that has been next to impossible with my brain all messy and overwhelmed, and my internal settings set to so-anxious-can’t-even-breathe.

Once again, Napoleon is my mentor in the art of leisure.

So yay! How is everyone doing? I’ve missed you all a ton! This ROWnd is winding down, but I’m hoping to wave at all my fellow ROWers in the days to come.

ROW80: Embracing New Beginnings, and Banishing the Doubt Monster

July 31, 2012 / Lena Corazon / 17 Comments

If I had a brain scan taken right now, I think it would resemble one of those houses on an episode of Hoarders: piled high with junk, all discombobulated, disorganized, and frightening. July has sped past me with all the zipping and zooming of a bullet train, and I’m not quite sure when I have to show for it.

A photo from one of my fun day trips: The Golden Gate Bridge as seen from Marin. (Photo taken by the author)

One of the causes of this mental disorganization of course stems from the craziness of moving and settling back in. I’ve adjusted to being home with family fairly easily — maybe a little too easily. There have been all sorts of lunches and dinners out, day trips to fun places, and other activities and outings going on. All this social time has been wonderful, but it’s been eating away at my quiet time. As many of you introverts will know, that quiet time is darned essential, and so I need to do a better job at setting boundaries for myself.

To make things even better, the Doubt Monster has been lurking around for the last few weeks, accompanied by his cronies Irrational Fear and Angst. This means that writing, both creative and academic, has been an agonizing process. Words are wrangled onto the page with back-breaking effort, most of them get deleted, then replaced with approximately the same level of pain. My rapidly approaching (and expiring) deadlines have done little to kick my butt into gear, which in turn brings back the Doubt Monster in all his wonderfully doubting glory, and the cycle begins again.

But it is August 1st! This means that it is time for renewed energy and new beginnings. Better yet, I have decided that it is time to banish the Doubt Monster and his posse into some galaxy far, far away so that I can clean up my mental house and get things in order.

August 1st is also the start of CampNaNoWriMo, which I (of course) decided to tackle in a moment of wild idiocy (supreme overconfidence?). I toyed with the idea of pulling out, but part of me thinks that the forced focus might actually be good for me. To make my life a little easier, I’ll be working on STRANGE BEDFELLOWS, my somewhat-erotic romance that is already 15k long. An outline sort of dropped into my lap, fully-formed and shiny, a couple of months ago, so I’ll be using that as my guide.

My itemized list of things accomplished/not accomplished will be posted on Sunday, but until then I leave you with this picture of my cat, Napoleon. I like to think of him as my mascot in all things associated with lazy, and a welcome reminder that a little rest and relaxation in the midst of all our busy time.

Napoleon, the Little Corporal of All Things Lazy

ROW80: A Rose by Any Other Name…

August 28, 2011 / Lena Corazon / 33 Comments

It’s been a jam-packed few days, dominated by helping my sister move in to her new apartment in time for the school year to begin. I spent most of Thursday and Friday either packing, driving, or unpacking, but in the midst of everything, I snagged a few spare moments to work on my NaNo tale.

I’m happy to report that I have less than 6.5K to write before CampNaNo ends on the 31st. While the story is in no means complete, I have an amazing foundation in place. I’m looking forward to crafting a world around my characters, beefing up my use of steampunk technology, tightening the mystery/thriller elements of the plot, and weaving in bits of backstory and alternative history. Editing, I think, might end up being more fun than writing the first draft.

The other thing that has been on my mind is the question of choosing a pseudonym. I’ve been pretty lax about keeping my writing and non-writing lives separate. With the school year looming before me, however, the urge to protect my writing activities from Google-obsessed colleagues and students has become much stronger.

Adopting a penname is a difficult decision to make because I like my name. Granted, it’s a name that is often butchered and mispronounced, so I’ve learned to respond to countless variations (“Jamz” is the most recent, bestowed upon me by my grad school colleagues), but all the same, it represents who I am.

Most importantly, my name feels like an almost-tangible link to a rich tapestry of family history, one that is made all the more complex by my multiracial heritage. Jamison, my mother’s maiden name, connects me with a family tree that has been traced back to the Civil War, when the Emancipation Proclamation freed my many-times removed great-grandmother from slavery. Sinlao, my father’s last name, connects me to the Philippines, where my dad lived until he was 15. I feel strongly about being both black and Filipina, and the thought of discarding name and identity is troubling.

Still, a pseudonym is necessary. I want to write, I want to publish, and I want to build a presence on social media that won’t infringe upon my professional career. The only way I can do this without stressing out is to just pick a darn penname and move on.

To stem the inevitable existential crisis, I’ve crafted a name that hearkens back to my roots. I’m adopting “Lena Corazon” as my writing name, “Lena” after my maternal great-great grandmother, and “Corazon” as my private homage to Corazon Aquino, the first female president of the Philippines.

I’ve spent the past couple of days trying it out. Slowly but surely, I’m making it my own, scribbling it in my writing notebook, setting up Gmail and G+ accounts, and, er, dropping it in conversation whenever I can (I think my mom is getting sick of hearing about it. :p). Once I can set up WordPress’ site redirection service, I’ll switch over my blog address and Twitter account name as well. The thought is a little scary and rather bizarre, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it. 😀

So that’s me for the week! I will be traveling most of Sunday, heading back to SF, which means that comments and whatnot may be sparse from me over the next day or two. In the meantime, I wave my pom-poms of encouragement for all of my ROW80 compatriots as we near the end of Round 3. Keep up all the wonderful work, friends!

Lena Corazon

Flights of Fancy

Tag: campnano

ROW80: Oh, How Time Flies!

ROW80: Embracing New Beginnings, and Banishing the Doubt Monster

ROW80: A Rose by Any Other Name…

Lena Corazon

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