That’s right! After what seems like far more work than it should have been, I have finished my senior thesis and turned it in!
What is it? It’s a fantasy novel that I started writing in September, finished mid-March, and have finally finalized (although without anywhere near as much revision as I wanted to give it; it’s pretty first-draft stuff). Because the library is an asshat, the printed copy for them was a whopping 400 sheets of paper (plus the second copy, of course, for an even 800). Probably about 390 of that was solid type (the rest being table of contents, references, titles, etc.). Yowza! How the hell did I write this much?
When I delivered it, the librarian said that she thinks it’s the largest she’s seen yet in her career. I don’t doubt it. I beat out the last thesis-cum-novel by at least 100 pages, if memory serves. Good luck binding it, suckas.
Entitled Tantalus Chine, the novel takes place in the fantasy land of Lakuna where humans are rebelling against their slavemasters, the elves. This is not standard fantasy. The elves are neither nice, nor do they live forever. They do, however, have pointy ears, so thank goodness for that. If anyone is interested in reading the novel, you are welcome to, but I warn you that it isn’t worth it. It’s first draft quality, and not a particularly good first draft at that. Should I try to publish it (as if any publishing house would want it; it wouldn’t sell well given how many molds it intentionally sets out to break), I would first want to do some pretty serious revisions.
In any case, I am really, really happy to finally be done with it. I still have to do the oral defense, but I’m not too worried. I think it might actually end up being fun; I have a great thesis committee, and as long as I get enough sleep before-hand and do a little reviewing of my past three years of Soc, I should be able to show off my ability to pull crap out of my ass quite nicely.
Now on to other projects! I can’t decide what to do first. I’m definitely going to start trying to get some web work with One Crayon, but beyond that I’m not sure. I’ve been wanting to try and get into Cocoa programming for a while (the native Mac OS X stuff), and I’ve got an idea for a program that would be 1) relatively simple and 2) something that I would find useful that nothing else can do, so maybe I’ll try that. Then again, getting a little more into Flash is always good, and I’ve got a couple ideas for browser-based games that could be really sweet. And there’s always the novel that might actually have a chance of getting published that I need to write, now that I know that I can write a novel.
It is still kind of crazy to think that my big project is over. All I have left now is Creative Writing and a paper for my independent study (which will hopefully be low stress). And dance and percussion ensemble, of course, but whatever. I’m still reveling in the sense of freedom before reality asserts itself and I realize that I’m way too good at keeping myself busy.
And in my final exciting news, I have decided to order Adobe CS3, web edition (Photoshop, Flash, Illustrator, and some other stuff). I have the credit available, and I discovered something amazing: student versions of Adobe software can be used for commercial work during and after school, and can be upgraded as if they were the full price commercial version! That means that I can buy a suite of software that will be central to web work at $1100 less than the standard price, but I have to do it within the next month and a half. Legitimate version of Photoshop, here I come! I’m really excited; I hope that it ships before I head to France.
And now, I should probably go to bed. It doesn’t look like I’m going to get through the story for Creative Writing that I need read by tomorrow, so perhaps I should plan on waking up during the morning sometime.