Things I overheard while talking to myself

Just realized that in Project Samurai (as it will hence be known until I come up with a better name) I made an anachronistic error in having someone refer to being "red as a beet" in 15th century Japan. That doesn't work, since they didn't have beets -- they're native to Europe. I changed the offending vegetable to "radish", since I know they had those and they can be red.

That character may all but break the fourth wall, but not that much. For the most part try to avoid using modern slang when that guy's talking, which is difficult when the character is supposed to sound totally irreverent and speak in the equivalent of 15th century Japanese slang. And that's not even touching on the Kansai cousin who'll show up later. Oh boy... He'll be even harder.

I do make an honest effort to stay as true to history as I can, but that's a little difficult when most readily available firsthand accounts from that time period are about the battles and military when I'm more focused on day to day life. So I intentionally fudge it in a few places but generally do all I can to stay true to the reality.

But hey, whoever said this was easy is a liar.

I've been keeping a checklist of the UNC Scholarship stuff as I finish them, and it's slowly getting closer to 100%. It helps that they relaxed the deadline until mid November so I have a little more breathing room.

I was just playing email tag with an aide from our senator friend Stan's office, as she's going to write a letter "from" him. I actually wrote a tribute to him as a school assignment a few years ago, so I attached that to give her a better idea. Apparently it's fairly common to do that when you're in a position like he is, plus he's out of town. The aide just sent back "THANKS WILL WORK ON IT" (the caps were hers) and I already have Alison's and the GCC English professor's letters in varying stages of completion.

I've also decided to switch around which parts of my as-of-yet-untitled opus to send in and focus more on showing my abilities than telling a complete story, which is impossible anyway since the thing's not even done yet! In the synopsis I'll explain that they're just excerpts from the first part that I feel are the most complete and demonstrative of my writing ability.

I've also decided to spin my application in such a way as to say that my goal is to learn how to better tell these stories through continued study. The last thing I want to do is act like I already know everything (I don't) and as I was compiling the chapters I realized this. So instead I'm going to frame it in the context of "here's what I can do, but I want to do more/be better at it." That's one problem with working on one thing for a long time - you have to keep going to back to make it consistent with the new parts. But hey, as I've said before, a learning experience.