Back in August I announced that I would be revisiting the Harry Potter series since I stopped reading and liking it halfway through the fifth book. Today I have for you my thoughts on the first book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, and I can honestly say I remember why I loved this book so much as a kid.

I was seven when this book came out and I became a die-hard fan instantly. So die hard that my ninth birthday party was Harry Potter themed, and when someone gave me Harry Potter scar tattoos I slapped one on my forehead, put on a black robe and glasses and declared myself Harriet Potter, Harry Potter’s long lost sister. This memory is bittersweet though, because while I was in the process of this transformation, everyone ate my favorite food at dinner and saved none for me.

I think my loathing of the series really came about due to a lot of negative nostalgia, a lot of bad memories associated with the series, mostly about how insane my die-hard fanaticism got. But when I started re-reading the book, it became clear to me that it was time to set aside all the negative nostalgia and give the book itself a chance again. Needless to say, it won me over.

Not to say that there weren’t any problems with it. I have serious issue with Dumbledore’s Put-Outer, which at the very least got renamed by the seventh book to the Deluminator, which makes much more sense and sounds less… stupid. But seriously… put-outer? You couldn’t think of a better name at the time? Fail. And if I really wanted to nitpick the book to death JK Rowling has a sporadic habit of repeating the same word within a sentence or two that makes me twitch when I’m reading, but it only happened about four or five times, so it’s not a big deal.

My biggest problem with the book was the climactic scenes where Harry, Ron, and Hermoine are defeating the enchantments guarding the sorcerer’s stone, and even the peak of the climax where Harry finally meets Voldemort. It seems to be JK Rowling’s style to focus more on action and plot than description, which I appreciate and I think it heavily influenced my own writing style. But there needed to be a lot more description in these scenes, it just didn’t feel very dramatic to me. Die-hard fans will probably hate me for this, but I like the climactic scenes from the movie a lot better in the book. I think they capture the suspense and drama a lot better than the writing did, which is sad because as far as I was concerned it was the only time the sparse description bothered me. I actually prefer to write that way, but for the most dramatic scenes in the book…? I was kind of disappointed.

I have to say though, JK Rowling did a great job creating a very complex fantasy world where more and more of it could be discovered without the concept getting old, and she was exceptional at drawing the reader into this world. Harry is a very relatable character to kids, and the concept of going to a new school is great for bringing us into the world of witchcraft and wizardry *with him*. I like the idea of a magical school being at the center of the story because everyone can relate. Everyone’s been to school, and I think it’s refreshing that Harry isn’t the stereotypical, unpopular loser like so many other books and shows focus on. He’s famous but for something he can’t even remember, so while he feels like he’s just any other kid (making him a character kids can identify with) he has a lot to live up to.

I also like how JK Rowling planted clues along the way. Nicolas Flamel’s name being on Dumbledore’s chocolate frog card, bringing in the Mirror of Erised before we realized it would be important, little lines here and there that left your mind nagging about Professor Quirrel though we you didn’t know why… They were subtle but obvious enough for a young reader to pick up on.

I do just have to say, and once again I hope the die-hard fans won’t kill me… a lot of the names in this book are just downright cheesy. Put-Outer was bad, but Professor *Sprout* being he Herbology teacher, Severus Snape sounds like Severe and Snake, Neville Longbottom Ron Weasley, although Dedalus Diggle almost made me gag in the beginning. Seriously woman, I’m not asking you to be J. R. R Tolkien, though it seems like you’ve kind of already attempted that…  (Dumbledore is based on Gandalf. Admit it. ) But for the love of literacy use seventh sanctum.com or something, some of these names are ridiculous!

Okay, enough ranting.

My favorite scene, as weird of one as it may be, has always been when Dumbledore meets up with McGonagall at Privet Drive. [PS, did everyone else remember that Hagrid rode Sirius Black’s motorcycle before he was even a character in the series? Am I the only one who just realized that?] I don’t know what it is, but I love how McGonagall and Dumbleore’s personalities work in a scene together. Especially with Dumbledore’s antics like his love for lemon drops, and the classic line, Alas! Earwax! Wait.. that happened at the end…

Overall the book was a very enjoyable read and has regained my respect. So I’ll see you next time with a review of the movie version of the Sorcerer’s Stone and after I read Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

My friend Jarrod made a video where he discussed 7 things you need for college. I thought I’d make my own list, and here it is.

Shelves - You do NOT have enough space in your room, whether its as big as mine or a closet like most dorm rooms. Fix that.

Board Games - Hopefully when you go to college you’ll make lots of friends, and when you’re a freshman I guarantee you will have more free time than any other year, so enjoy it and spend entire weekends with your friends playing Catchphrase, Apples to Apples, Scruples, Scrabble, and Monopoly

Your Favorite Movies/ Books/ Video Games - Just don’t leave home without them. You will find yourself missing them the first day and even if you never watch, read or play them through the semester you’ll be glad to have a little piece of home with you

Flannel Blanket - Sitting on the quad with your friends is amazing, but it’s even more amazing when your jeans don’t get filthy. I have used this for so many things from just doing homework outside to stargazing. It’s useful.

Your Own Printer - Do not trust the printers on campus. The moment you need them, they will break. EVERY SINGLE PRINTER ON CAMPUS WILL BREAK, I PROMISE. Keep yourself stocked with lots of ink and you’ll always be fine. The printers that are also copiers are a must.

Bed Bug Protection - My Dad is an exterminator and he gave me these little cups that you put on the feet of your bed so that bedbugs can’t crawl up into your mattress. Go get some. Seriously.

Something To Sleep With - I even know guys who do this. It doesn’t have to be a stuffed animal, it can be a small pillow, but its nice to have something to hug at night or even just to leave on your bed.

Today I’m here with a review, but not the kind you might expect. It’s not a book or a movie, it’s an improv comedy troupe called SEE Saw Comedy. The group is based in Long Island, New York and if you can get a chance to see them, you should! When I was in high school I was president of my Comedy Club and this show brought back so many memories for me. If you like Who’s Line is it Anyway? you’ll love this. The cast was hilarious and energetic, the games they played were fun and involved constant audience participation, and it was just such a blast. Their website is http://seesawcomedy.com, their facebook page is http://www.facebook.com/seesawcomedy?ref=ts so you can see what events are coming up next, and their youtube page is http://youtube.com/seesawcomedy. I look forward to when the troupe starts up again in September.

When you’re a self-published author there’s no one to guide you through the process of creating and publishing your book. Here are 5 tips that will help you in your self-publishing endeavors.

1) When you’re editing, print it out. It’s a lot cheaper in the long run to pay for the ink and the paper whenever you do a round of edits than ordering new proof copies each time you catch a typo that escaped you. It’s easier to miss something when it’s on a computer screen in a word document. Format it with the template you want to use (createspace provides them for free) and print it out so you have the physical copy in your hands.

2) Have other people read your manuscript. Being the author it’s easy to think you’ve explained everything, but the problem is you may have what I call a Ghost Draft moment. It’s when you’re reading your work and you miss a mistake because in a previous draft either it wasn’t there or it was explained by something you wrote but didn’t include. You don’t even need to give it to a professional! Give it to someone who is a member of your target audience or age group and have them make notes about inconsistencies or questions they have.

3) If you’re making your own cover instead of using one of the premade designs, get yourself a free demo of photoshop and be ready to make adjustments. I went through a lot of versions of my cover until I got one the cover maker would accept because my title was so big it was going to get cut off at the edges. Keep the text on the cover at least half an inch away from the edges! For more about making covers here are two videos I made while creating the cover for Lorcan: Part 1 and Part 2

4) Word of mouth is the best way to get people excited about your book. If you have a YouTube channel, talk about it often! Do readings! Get your audience involved so they get excited to buy it when you publish. Tell your family! Even those uncles and aunts you haven’t seen in years halfway across the country! Tell your teachers, your friends, your classmates, tell EVERYONE. Get people excited. Even if your first book doesn’t sell 150,000 copies on pre-order, you’re priming them for book #2.

5) Don’t let anyone tell you your work is worthless because it’s self-published. You get to call all the shots, you get to make all the creative decisions, and you put in all the work that an entire team of people usually does for a publishing house. Think about it. John Green has said that there are covers of his books that he hates because he can’t pick them. As a self-published author you don’t have to give up any of your creative freedom. Take pride in that.

Thank you so much Amanda for the amazing review! :D

So you want to be a video blogger. I assume that means you want your videos to be good and not put people to sleep. I am here to tell you that this is not a skill that is acquired overnight. It actually requires some trial and error, but there are some fundamental things that make YouTube videos better. For some quick and easy tips, Hank Green made a video on this subject back in May. Here it is.

Now I’m not saying that I know anything about acquiring thousands of subscribers overnight or making a video go viral, but I do know that popularity depends on whether or not an audience enjoys your videos. Being that I am an audience member of many youtube channels I know what makes me want to watch a video and what makes me click away from the channel within the first ten seconds.

1) If your video is so dark that I can barely see your face, I won’t want to watch it. You don’t need lighting equipment, you just need to film during the day with your blinds open. When I film a quick webcam upload just to update you guys on something it usually looks horrible if I’m doing it at night, but sometimes I don’t get a chance to film during the day. As long as the majority of your videos don’t look like that then you’re good, but I’m not going to watch a channel where every single video is dark.

2) Hank Green mentions this and I started to pay attention to this is my videos too: silence is dangerous. Don’t use it unless it has a purpose. Find your favorite youtube video. How much silence is in it? Usually there is one of two things: music in the background or very quick if not overlapping jump cuts. You actually don’t need even a full second of silence after you finish a thought because we can probably guess from context what you’re saying, so it’s okay to cut a little bit of it off with your next bit of footage.

3) If you’re talking to the camera during your vlogs, the only thing we’re most likely interested in is your face. So if you’re too far away or too close up it’s not aesthetically pleasing at all. Now this is something I’m still working on in my videos because when I film I’m by myself and I don’t always double check to see just how close to the camera I really am. Sometimes I end up filming the whole video before I realize I’m too far away. It happens to the best of us, just keep it in mind while you’re filming.

4) If a video is more than five and a half minutes long of someone just talking to a camera in one take with no script, I probably won’t watch it. Even I don’t have the attention span for that. I try to keep my videos no longer than 4 minutes unless I have absolutely no time to edit.

5) My fifth and most important piece of advice to you, fellow or future vlogger, is to enjoy what you’re doing. If you’re excited about what you’re doing in your video you audience will be excited. If you’re doing this for the subscribers then please don’t bother. Do it because you enjoy it, do it because you have a talent to show or a skill to teach or whatever, and definitely do it for YOU.

Write. Vlog. Viola.

The contest is now over and here are the answers to the clues:

1) Where did I take the picture for the cover of Lorcan?

My church (How to make your own cover art)

BONUS POINTS I altered the hat by removing the feather when I took pictures of it. Where did I put the feather when I removed it? (I put it in my mouth)

2) What was the name of the book I said I was going to edit before I changed my mind and decided to focus on Lorcan?

The Other Side of the Mirror

BONUS POINTS if you can find the first video where I mention it, because I have no idea which one it is.  (Thanksgiving Day episode during NaNoWriMo 2010)

3) What was the date when I was informed Lorcan won the Bards and Sages 2010 writing contest?

December 21st

BONUS POINTS In which video do I first mention the announcement but don’t reveal it? (Channel update sick as a dog)

4) In one of my videos, Hush Puppy references a vlogbrothers video. Which vlogbrothers video was it?

Space pasta from November 26

BONUS POINTS: What did nerdfighters conclude about the reference hush puppy made? (That moon pasta in not more efficient than earth beef)

5) What two novels have I named that have had specific influences on Lorcan?

Wicked and The Great Gatsby

BONUS POINTS If you can tell me what they specifically influenced (Wicked inspired the title and Great Gatsby inspired how abruptly we are introduced to Scout and Uncle Izzy)

6) What pokemon makes an appearance in the sky in two of my videos?

Gastly

BONUS POINTS. In which two videos does Gastly appear? (Rochester and How to make your own cover art)


7) What novel have I not specifically named that had a direct influence on Lorcan? (Hint, watch the video where I read the beginning of Lorcan)

To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout’s name

TIE BREAKER

8) Lorcan won a contest which was why I started editing it and focusing on it. The organization that hosted the contest was the first to publish Lorcan in its short story form. Find the organization’s description of Lorcan.

A group of professional pickpockets find themselves outmatched by a rumored Leprechaun in Chloe Wendell’s Lorcan.

Want to see the nerdiest outfit I’ve ever worn?

On Wednesday May 18th I went on a class to Governor’s Island. If you’re from New York you might have heard of it, but if you’re not from New York you probably have no idea what I’m talking about.

Governors Island is, as you would expect from the name, an island, just sitting in New York Harbor not doing much. It used to be the location of a fort during the revolutionary war, and then starting in the 1960’s is was run by the coastguard. They left after 1996 and now it is now in the process of becoming a National Park.

We went on this trip to Governors Island because we’re honors college students, and the seminar we were taking this year was called Shaping the Future of New York City. We’re supposed to be brilliant students with amazing ideas that will better mankind, so the question we were posed was, what should the future of Governors Island be?  The best idea I heard all day was to turn the place into Jurassic Park.

There are tons of buildings from when the coastguard officers and personnel lived there, kind of making it a piece of history suspended in time.

We explored the residential houses that were there and all of us were fascinated. We went through them, top to bottom,  some of them old and crumbling, and some of them fairly in tact. It was like a bunch of little kids had been set loose in an amusement park, except it was a group of 20-year-olds in abandoned houses.

 It’s very green and very empty because no one can live there (seeing as there’s no potable water) but it’s free to go on the weekends during the summer and take a visit. But my mind was not on what can we do with this place in the future to better the citizens of new york, my mind was on mutants, aliens, and a government conspiracy. I’m talking about a novel I plan on writing. 

I’ve had the idea for a while to write a story for a character of mine named Yaz. The story centers around a group of people who were born with some crazy defects due to some kind of disaster, maybe, oh I don’t know, an oil spill that contaminates the water we drink? Anyway, something happened which caused many babies born following the disaster to all be kind of mutated in their appearance. The Government wanted to cover it up and so they came up with an initiative that paid families with defected children or who adopted defected children a good sum of money every year. Yaz, however, is not actually a mutated child, but an alien who was sent away from her home planet as a baby to save her from being killed. I won’t give too much back-story, you’ll just have to read the novel.

Anyway, I was struggling with what setting to put this story in. I wanted it to be in the future, but how far into the future? A few years? Maybe more? But when I came to Governors Island, inspiration struck me.


What if in the future Governors Island became the place where they housed all these “mutants” so to speak? I haven’t decided if Yaz’s family lives with her on the island or if she lives in a boarding school, but the more I walked around the more ideas I was getting for this story. Maybe it’s 50 years in the future and the rest of the world is much more technologically advanced, but Governors Island has become a sort of ignored place that still looks and functions as though it is still our present day? I can’t wait for finals to be over so I can take more trips there and get more ideas for this story.

In some of the houses we went in, I even felt like I had found Yaz’s favorite places to go, or even her bedroom. Am I weird for being surrounded by all this nature and history, and instead of appreciating its value and potential for the city I think about worlds and characters that I create in my mind? I don’t know, but I’m convinced everyone sees the world differently, and my world is full of endless possibilities and imagination.

Thoughts (About Novels) From Places, Governors Island

:D :D :D :D

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!! :D

If you buy a copy of my book please leave a review of it on Amazon!

Does anyone remember that musical I wrote for NaNoWriMo? The first 30 of my videos (not counting the couple leading up to NaNoWriMo) are all about it, so skim through them if you’re interested.

Well when I brought what I had so far to my playwriting class my professor said it didn’t “sing” (the songs really didn’t add to the plot) and the plot was too complicated. He suggested I leave it and come back to it later.

Now that I know a lot more about playwriting I want to get back into it. I’m meeting with him tomorrow to discuss what to do with my mess of a script, so I decided to figure out some things ahead of time.

During my 9:15-12 class this morning I defined each of my characters and the plot did a 180. It’s now Annah’s play, the premise is fairly different, Vander’s purpose has TOTALLY changed, and tons of characters have been ditched.

But the most important thing is that these are palatable changes for me. I’m not changing the essential elements of each of my characters, and that’s what matters. It’s still MY project.

And now I think it’s on the path to being a lot better.

Write. Vlog. Viola.

effyeahnerdfighters:

A-     Anglerfish

B-      Blenderized Happy Meal

C-      Chester Drawers

D-     DFTBA

E-      Esther Earl

F-      French the Llama

G-     Giant Squid of Anger

H-     Hanko de Mayo

I-        It’s Too Hot

J-       J-Scribble

K-      Katherine

L-       Looking for Alaska

M-    Maureen Johnson

N-     Nerdfighters

O-     Obama Llama Song

P-      Peanut Butter Face

Q-     Question Tuesday

R-      DFTBA Records

S-      Spoon Fingers

T-      Thoughts From Places

U-     Unicorns v. Zombies

V-     VidCon

W-   Willy

X-      X-Scape

Y-      The Yeti

Z-      Zombie Apocalypse Novella

Submitted by natalienk

Hellz yes, I understand almost all of these xD

Well… so long as I’m sitting in the most worthless SEYS 221 class in the world, sounds like a good time to write a blog post.

I’m going to start with a little something I like to call, “I Feel Like An Inferior Writer Now”.

On John Green’s tumblr he answered a question regarding a quote from his novel, An Abundance of Katherines.

“You can love someone so much…But you can never love people as much as you can miss them.”

He goes on to explain how the main character in the book eventually comes to believe in this quote, that you can never experience a feeling more intense when you love someone than the feeling that occurs after they’re gone. In other words, the love you feel in a relationship can’t exceed the emptiness and grief you feel when they’re no longer in your life (i.e, break up, death, etc). I guess it’s sort of like the saying, “You never know what you have until it’s gone,” but John Green explains it more as a commercial lie that you can only be happy if you’re in a romantic/ sexual relationship and when you aren’t then you’re not in the Natural Way Of Things.

John Green also goes on to say that although the character believes this, he doesn’t, and he believes that there ARE relationships out there where you can love the person MORE than you would miss them, and those are the relationships worth having.

Um…. I’m starting to think that in order to be a best selling author you need 3 things:

1) A publisher
2) A deep and/or controversial message about the nature of humanity/ politics of the time
3) To not actually believe the message in the book so your reader’s brains EXPLODE

I mean think about it.

1. You read this book by your favorite author with the one concept, and by the end of the book the character believes in this concept.
2. Because you like the author you nod your head and say, “I never thought of that before. That’s so true.”
3.  The author says, “Well I don’t actually believe that. I believe xyz about the topic.”
4. The reader goes, “”LGHSJHGKERHGLESHGLEUTHRGSLKUHLSHGLKSJDFGHLSDKFJGHSLGHUEIRTHLSUIGHKSLGUUUUUEKIHGK SO WAIT WHICH IS THE THING I’M SUPPOSED TO BELIEVE OH GREAT AND WONDERFUL AUTHOR!??!! AAAAHHH!!!”

Sorry, I’m bitter because recently I’ve come to the conclusion that when you finish something and are proud of it you need someone to tell you, “It would work better this way,” so you do reconstructive surgery on your project to make it even better.

But it isn’t your project anymore. Maybe it will sell better, and maybe it will be met with a more positive reaction from your initial audience…

but it isn’t

YOUR

project anymore.

grumblegrumblegrumble…

Write. Vlog. Viola.