JustaLittleBitRandom

Well, it's certainly been awhile since I posted anything for  Adventures in Screenwriting. I guess the only update I really have for you all is that since the last time I posted, I have started my feature screenplay and have begun the early planning stages on a second, this time with a friend. To be completely honest however, my screenwriting has taken a momentary backseat as I'm primarily focusing on uni and my novel at the moment, but I'm still determined to have that first draft finished by the end of the year! Of the feature I am currently working on I have approximately 25 pages, all of which my mother has read and none of which she understood. Something about 'not being able to read script formatting'. I understand that of course. Reading a script is nothing like reading a novel. It's very different and definitely takes a bit of getting used to. I suppose I'm just lucky I'm used to it, or else this could make for a very interesting adventure. A...

*Spoiler Free Review* Title:  Eleanor & Park Author: Rainbow Rowell Year Published: 2013 Genre: Young Adult Contemporary Rating: 4/5 Stars Blurb: Eleanor  is the new girl in town, and with her chaotic family life, her mismatched clothes and unruly red hair, she could stick out more if she tried. Park   is the boy at the back of the bus. Black T-shirts, headphones, head in a book - he thinks he's made himself invisible. But not to Eleanor... never to Eleanor. Slowly, steadily, through late-night conversations and an ever-growing stack of mix tapes, Eleanor and Park fall for each other. They fall in love the way you do the first time, when you're young, and you feel as if you have nothing and everything to lose. For today's blog post I'm going to be reviewing Eleanor & Park  by Rainbow Rowell. This is a contemporary novel and the first Rainbow Rowell book I've ever read so I was very excited going into it as I've heard such...

Hola everyone! Wow it's been awhile since I've posted on here. There isn't one particular reason that I can give as to why I haven't been posting, but there is about a thousand excuses I could give. One is that university keeps getting in the way, another is I'm lazy, a third is I'm really focusing on my novel, a fourth is my youtube channel is now my primary focus... and the list goes on. HOWEVER It has recently come to my attention that I don't post my book reviews on my youtube channel and that is because I simply don't have the time to do so. I only get to film videos every now and then because of university (and the fact that the sun goes down waaaayy too early in Australia right now), which means that I'm not churning out content as fast or as much as I wish I was. So I thought to myself the other day, hmm how can I keep posting book reviews (and the occasional movie review) without having to rush to film and edit something that isn't...

I've been at uni for almost three weeks now (four if you include O'Week!), and I'm already in a bit of a love-hate relationship with it. Well, not a bit of one, that's exactly how I feel about uni right now. Let me paint you a picture. I only have to go into uni, two and a half days a week. Love. But, in order to do so I have to get up at 6am and catch a bus for just over an hour to be there for a 9am lecture. Hate. Classes are a lot better this time around though. Some of you may or may not know that I have actually attended uni before. I entered my first university degree fresh out of high school. It didn't take me long to realise that I was burnt out from school and needed a break. After failing a few subjects, having a complete mental breakdown and realising that I was in the wrong course, I opted to drop out one year shy of finishing my degree and take a gap year instead. Best decision I ever made. Now, I'm currently at a different university, doing a d...

A lot has happened since my last Confessions Of An Aspiring Author  post. I started Uni (which though is only in its first week is already a nightmare), I furthered my supervisor training at work and oh, what was the other thing I did? Oh yeah, I STARTED WRITING MY FIRST EVER NOVEL! WOOHOO!! Okay okay, perhaps I shouldn't get too excited. I started writing a little over three weeks ago and I only have 7,831 words to show for it. I mean I haven't even finished the third chapter yet! But the reason I'm so excited is because I've never written this many words for a novel before. Every year I participate in the National November Writing Month, and in Camp NaNoWriMo, and every year I fail to get past about 4,000 words. So 7,831 words may not seem like a lot, but for me it's a great start. The problem now of course is trying to juggle writing the novel with studying, working two jobs and attempting to maintain at least a hint of a social life. I asked one of my fav...

If I don't turn over my calendar or post this blog entry then it can't already be March right? Who else is freaking out a little by how quickly this year has gone! I mean it feels like just last week my parents were in India and uni was a distant dream (nightmare?). Now my parents have been home for over a month and today is my first year of uni. Crazy right? To add to the craziness, here is the March entry for What's In My Bookcase? ! Today's Book: I Was Here by Gayle Forman 1. How did you come to own this book? Short answer? I bought it. Long answer? I remember reading (and loving!) If I Stay and Where She Went , and when I saw this book in the bookstore I knew I simply had to have it so I bought it right there on the spot. 2. Have you read this book? I have. I read it last year as part of my Goodreads reading challenge. 3. What did you like about this book? I remember being very impressed with this novel. I'd only read one book about suicide befo...

Hello all, sorry for the late upload. I wish I had a better excuse than I'm lazy... but anyone who knows me should know that the fact I've managed to upload so consistently this year is an achievement. Either way, let's make this post Flashback Sunday? I have recently been binging watching very old videos of my favourite booktuber Sasha on the channel abookutopia . If you're a fan of books and love reading then definitely go and check out her channel. The reason I'm telling you all of this is because most of Sasha's old videos centre on The Mortal Instruments , and in particular the 2013 City of Bones  movie that was not at all what fans of the book were hoping for. I actually remember going to see this film in the cinema. I saw it with a friend in a cinema with two muppets staring at us the entire time. A bit freaky not going to lie but at least it meant I concentrated on the movie rather than looking around the cinema when the film got boring. Which it ...

Hola everyone! I wish I could come straight out and say to you that I've made a lot of progress on my feature length screenplay and that I'm totally on track with my chosen career. Unfortunately I can't say that since I haven't made any progress on my screenplay since the last time I posted an Adventures in Screenwriting  entry. Time management is a very important part of everyday life. It's something some people excel at and something some people fail at miserably. I like to think that I fall somewhere in the middle of that scale. Sometimes I feel as though I just have too much to do and more often than not it's my writing that falls through the cracks. In an average week I work approximately 20hrs a week, study for university, work on my novel, update my blog, film, edit and update my youtube channel, play netball and attempt to maintain some sort of social life. Those are just the things I have to do. Then I have the things I want to do like work on my sc...

Hey hey hey... is an expression I used quite a lot in high school without knowing where it came from until I realised I had accidentally stolen it from Shake It Up . Not exactly what I wanted to share with you all today but I needed a clever (and possibly funny?) way to start this post. Needless to say humour isn't really my strong suit. So we are currently half way through February 2016 and I'm currently freaking out. In just over two weeks I will once again be attending university, though this time I will be doing a Bachelor of Education/Bachelor of Arts. Currently I am experiencing some very mixed feelings about uni. I'm excited to be going back since I'm keen to get my life back on track, but I'm also very nervous seeing as I haven't been to uni in a year and I don't know how I'm going to go. I suppose all we can really do is wait and see. Life hasn't been all bad though. In the past couple of weeks I turned 21, had an incredible birthday par...

Hello world, it's me. I know that's a quote from a movie or a song or something but what it's a quote from is and probably always will be a mystery to me. On the topic of songs though, welcome to today's Flashback Friday post. Today I'll be doing a track by track of one of the hottest albums to drop in 2015, Selena Gomez's Revival . When I found out Selena was dropping a new album I literally freaked out. I love her music and was very excited to see what she would come up with since leaving Hollywood Records and signing with her new label. I knew this music would be more grown up than her previous albums but I wasn't sure by how much.  Check out my track by track down below and see what I thought of Selena's newest album. Revival  consists of 11 tracks, as well as three bonus tracks and another two if you were lucky enough to get the international deluxe edition (like I was!) 1. Revival When I first heard the opening to this song I was won...

Not going to lie to you, sitting down to write this blog was a real challenge. I returned home from Melbourne yesterday evening to find my room looking like a bomb site so naturally when I got up this morning I had to clean it immediately. Add that to my long list of shows to watch ( The 100, Legends of Tomorrow, Grease: Live! ) and I find myself finally sitting down to write this entry at 9:50pm. Still, at least it's still Friday right? Once I sat down to write I found myself facing another dilemma. What exactly was I going to make the second entry of Confessions Of An Aspiring Author all about? A few different things ran through my mind such as making visual diagrams of your fantasy world, lots of planning vs. not a lot of planning and the importance of writing constantly, but ultimately I've decided to go with something else entirely. As I said earlier, yesterday I returned home from Melbourne (I swear I don't live there) and as a result I found myself with quite a l...

Here we are, already at the start of February in 2016. I'm sorry but where exactly did January go? All of a sudden I'm now 21 and a month closer to the start of university. Basically I have very mixed feelings right now. So, in order to cope with them here is the next instalment of my  What's In My Bookcase?  series! Today's Book:  Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince  by J.K. Rowling 1. How did you come to own this book? Okay so, I remember the day this book came out because I made my mum drive me to the bookstore in order to buy a copy. She did, and when  The Deathly Hallows  came out I made her do the exact same thing. 2. Have you read this book? Is this even a real question? YES OF COURSE I HAVE READ THIS BOOK AND ALL OF THE OTHER AMAZING BOOKS IN THIS SERIES! 3. What did you like about this book? The way I remember reading this book my mum, dad and I all read it at the same time so we had three bookmarks going which made it a little con...

Once again it is a Friday and once again it is time for another entry in the Flashback Friday series! Today, I'm going to be reviewing one of my favourite movies of 2015 (and possibly of all-time) Disney's  Descendants . For those of you who haven't heard of this (amazing) movie, Descendant's  is a Disney Channel Original Movie that aired in July last year. In the film the son of King "Beast" and Queen Belle is about to ascend the throne and offers the children of villains the chance to attend Auradon prep. Jay, Carlos, Evie and Mal, children of Jafar, Cruella de Vil, Evil Queen and Maleficent head to Auradon with a mission - steal Fairy Godmother's magic wand and beak the villains off the Isle of the Lost where they had been exiled.  Okay, so from the moment I found out this was a movie I was completely onboard. Then I found out Dove Cameron was starring as Mal and Kristen Chenoweth was starring as Maleficent. I knew then and there that I sim...

Okay yes I know that today is not the third Tuesday of the month and believe me when I say I wanted to upload on time, however when I attempted to log into my account Google had a massive freak out because I was trying to log in from a different location. Basically you have Google to blame for the late upload. Damn it Google. Anyway, the reason I was attempting to log in from a different location is because my sister and I spent the past two days in Melbourne! Now let me paint you guys a picture. I have been working basically everyday since Christmas and I was beginning to go a little crazy. Knowing this trip was coming is the only reason I didn't go completely over the edge. I've never been a huge fan of Melbourne for some reason, but this simple overnighter in the city was a great and much needed getaway. Despite the fact we had to get up at 4.30am in order to catch a flight we still had an amazing time. Tuesday was spent shopping and then we navigated our way through Mel...

Hey guys! I hope you've been having better luck with your internet connection than I have. Seriously, this is my third time attempting this blog post. Still you know what they say right? Third time's the charm! Today's blog post is the first entry in my Adventures in Screenwriting  series. Before we get into the bulk of the post I first wanted to tell you guys about my screenwriting challenge for 2016. The challenge is called #oneyearscreenplay  and is fairly straight forward. By December 31st I want to be typing 'The End' at the conclusion of my first feature length screenplay. Well, the first draft anyway. Could be kind of difficult what with uni and my novel writing but I reckon I can make it work. Whew, now that's over we can get started on the fun stuff. Screenwriting. I'm not going to sit here and pretend I know everything there is to know about screenwriting. In fact it's just the opposite. I know barely anything about it. That doesn't mea...

For today’s Flashback Friday I’m giving you a track by track of Taylor Swift’s fifth studio album, 1989 . If you haven’t yet heard Taylor’s new album I’m telling you right now to make a point to do so. The album sees Taylor depart from her country roots and debut a new pop sound which sounds amazing. The new more electrified sound suits Taylor’s voice just as much as country and there isn’t one song on the album I haven’t listened to about a million times since buying it. Still, for those of you who haven’t yet listened to the album (or those of you who have) I’m going to be breaking down the 13 main tracks you get on the album. Of course if you purchased the deluxe edition you would have received three bonus tracks as well as three voice memos of Taylor’s song writing process. 1.      Welcome to New York Not only are we being welcomed to New York in the album’s opening track, we are also being welcomed to Taylor’s new sound. With its catchy tune the song ...

Well, it's only the second post of the year and I've already fallen behind. You can blame it on a great day spent picking strawberries, eating a chocolate fondue and getting my butt kicked at the family feud board game. But that's not what this post is all about, so let's get straight into it! A very warm welcome to everyone out there who has stumbled across my humble blog and is now reading it with surprised curiosity and a hint of hesitation (come on you know it's true). Today's blog post is Volume I of a little series I like to call Confessions Of An Aspiring Author . As the title may suggest I am an aspiring author and these are my recounts of what it's really like to be a struggling writer. Before we get into it too much, I'd first like to tell you about a little challenge I've set myself for 2016. The challenge is called #oneyearnovel , and basically it means by the end of this year I'd like to have a completed first draft of my first e...

Can you believe that it’s already time for my first blog post of 2016? So much has changed for me since I created this blog back in 2014. Instead of attending university to study as journalism, I’m about to begin a course studying to become a High School Drama Teacher, I’m focused on my novel writing and screenwriting and I’ve formed my own youtube channel. That doesn’t stop me from wanting this year to be the best year for this blog. So, without further ado let me welcome you to the second entry in the What’s In My Bookcase? series. Today’s Book: City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare 1.      How did you come to own this book? Truth be told I can’t 100% remember how I came to own this book. I remember seeing that the sixth and final book in the series would be released and I realised that I hadn’t read anything past book three. There started a re-read of the first three books before I read this one and the two to follow. 2.  ...