Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Candy!

GOODBYE, JANUARY!

Don't get me wrong, I like January and all, but February is just so much better!!! Alright, so I guess you could say my opinion is slightly a little bit biased. (My birthday is in February. Haha.) But it's still one of my favorite months, regardless. I love PINK! And February is all about pink and red and purple. Valentine's Day and all, you know.



No, sadly yet again this year I will be celebrating "Singles Day" rather than Valentine's Day. But that's alright with me. My sister and brother and I will have fun anyway!

Today I did my first bit of decorating for February. I went to Target to look around at the seasonal stuff. Especially the things in their little $1 aisle. I LOVE that section!!!! I actually found some pretty cute cards and a grocery list (both are things I had been planning on buying anyway, so getting them for a dollar was a total stroke of luck!). I also found some really pretty plates shaped like hearts I loved them so much, so decided to pass on the place mats I'd been looking for and get the plates instead. Once I get home, I gathered up all the leftover candy canes from Christmas. Most of them were peppermint, so obviously, red and pink and white! Then I found my white table cloth. Put them all together and PRESTO! a beautiful, cheap February table setting. =)

[Forgive the wrinkles. I didn't have time to iron this morning. =) ]

So that's what I've done today. Not much for writing. Just about a sentence, which really isn't anything to tell about. But I thought I might as well share this. Since this is what I've been doing too!

My romance has hit a bit of a snag. I just can't make the two characters click the way they are supposed to. So I'm really hoping that the SEASON OF LOVE this February will help to re-spark my inspirations so I can put that fire back into my couple!

Wave goodbye to January and I'll see you Next Month!!!

Monday, January 30, 2012

Rainy Mondays.

Okay, okay! Hands up! You got me... I took the weekend off. I know, I know. That's a bad thing to do. Writing once a day. All that. But I was tired and it was Saturday! Haha. Anyway, I'm back now so that counts for something right?

This morning I woke up to my Monday song. "Monday, oh Monday, I really can't describe... Monday, Oh Monday, how you make me feel inside. If I ever have a good one, I know it'd be a first. If there's one thing I know, as far as days go, Monday, you're the worst!" Haha I love that song. well, my Monday hasn't been too bad. It's been raining all day though. Doing errands in the rain is interesting, but not too bad.



I got flipped off today by another driver for the first time! It was great. I know that sounds horrible, but I just love road rage people. They act so ridiculous I have to laugh. What happened was completely her fault too, so it made it all the better. She was even more mad though that I couldn't stop laughing... Sorry, lady! Haha. 

Oh! And this afternoon I got asked to be someone's bridesmaid! I've never been asked to be someone's bridesmaid before, so of course I've never been one before. I'm excited and nervous at the same time, but it's a good feeling! The bride is super nice and really fun and we get to go SHOPPING for a dress on Friday! Can't WAIT!

As far as writing goes, which is what I'm really supposed to be telling you about, I haven't done much today. Wrote a couple paragraphs for Who Likes Who that I sent to Kiki just....now. Haha. Other than that today has been pretty low on the writing scale. I've been doing a lot of cleaning and errand running. The writing job kind of fell behind. But don't worry. Monday is always a hard day to get back into the swing of things after taking off the weekend. I'll be back on the ball by Tuesday. I promise!

So then, we shall see each other again soon. Farewell, my lovely readers. Farewell!

Friday, January 27, 2012

Depressing Depression

Becca's real name is Kiki! At least, that's what I started calling her a few years back and then everyone else copied me. Isn't is strange, how sometimes a nickname will just...stick? Anyway...just throwing that out there.

Today I'm supposed to talk to you about Fabulous Franny, but my mood is nothing short of gray. I tried, but can think of nothing funny to give to you today. Sorry to disappoint. 

Yesterday I didn't write anything. I couldn't. The mood I've been dropped in since then is a mixture of guilt and failure. It's frustrating to be caught in that. My sister even took notice of the "emo corner" I'd stuck myself in. She asked what was wrong, but I just couldn't tell her. Several hours later she saw me again. 

"Still depressed?" she asked. I had to let out a dramatic sigh (because it makes me feel better) as I responded.  

"I hate being depressed! It makes me depressed!!!" I hadn't realize what I'd said until after she broke out into laughter. Admittedly, I smiled too. I guess you could say that was the start of my getting better. But waking up this morning, everything that made me depressed yesterday came rushing back and now I feel horrible again. How do you feel better when you've admitted your guilt and been forgiven? What else is left to do? Maybe I did something else wrong...

I hope today I can figure out how to take my focus off this depressing situation and put it back on writing... 

Wish me Luck! -waves-

Thursday, January 26, 2012

All Aboard!

It's nice to know when you've helped someone. The encouragement you can give someone is just as beneficial for yourself! Today I woke up and found that my best friend had started her own blog. Grant it, I wasn't the one who originally gave her the idea, but I'd been the messenger, so to speak. It was really encouraging to me to see her doing something about her writing, really working on it like that. I'm so proud of her! Moreover, her taking action has spurred me on to keep writing! With renewed vigor I'm more ready than ever to tackle my own writing! As well as hopefully being able to help her in any way she'll let me. Haha. ^_^ 

I'd really like everyone to give her your support. She's got a long road ahead of her but I just know she'll make it! So I encourage you all to read and subscribe to Random House Express and follow her progress on her writing. Just remember, I'm her biggest fan!! No competing for that spot. It's already taken!! 

Off you go now. Happy reading!

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Cracking the Habit, at least a little.

Once you do something for a while it begins to become routine. A habit, if you will. Every morning my mom stumbles into the kitchen in search of the coffee pot. Every afternoon my brother comes home for school and heads straight for the tv. These are big habits that over time are formed. They pile up to create our daily routine. Trying to change that routine can be tough sometimes - breaking a habit is always hard - but it can be very worth it.

Every morning, I get up at eight, whether my alarm clock has told me to or not. First thing I do? Grab the computer. Check email, instant messages, face book, the blog. It's a whole routine, one website after another. Recently my house lost internet. It's been over three weeks, now, that I haven't been able to go for my computer first thing to check email and face book. But on the other hand, it's given me extra time every morning to focus on what I should be doing! Writing.

Yesterday, I was going through my notebooks. See, like I said before, I'm a really messy person in general (except my work spaces) so as part of a new year's resolution I started a step by step program that creates habits to help a person keep their home clean and organized without stressing. It's been interesting so far. The first thing that is recommended of beginners to the program is to get a notebook, to keep track of your progress and whatnot. So anyway, to do this, I was looking through my notebooks, trying to find once that was at least semi empty. Believe it or not, I have about a hundred notebooks of all sizes and colors, and not a single one of them was less than half filled. It was very frustrating…

Well, while looking through all of that mess, I stumbled (literally) over a notebook that I'd forgotten I still had. It happened to be one I used in college and it held some very detailed outlines of the original plot of Conflict. Everything I could imagine was in that notebook, from shorthand timelines to specific quotes and entire paragraphs of things that were supposed to happen! It was quite the find. I can't begin to describe how helpful it was to have that. And to think, if I'd never been without internet I'd never have been looking through those notebooks in the first place. I would have been on FaceBook!

Not to say that having internet is bad. In fact, I'm thanking the heavens and lucky stars and all that is good since we should be getting our brand new internet up and running this week. Sometimes, though, it's really good to break out of your routine and do something else, at least once. =) If nothing else, you may trip over something you thought you'd lost. Wouldn't that just make your day?

So, until we meet again. Ta-ta!

Monday, January 23, 2012

Project #2?

"Writing a blog should be easy! You're going to be writing novels for a living, right? A few paragraphs a day shouldn't be too hard." Haha! I really had to laugh. This isn't something someone told me. It's what I told somebody else after they quit writing on their own blog. Oh boy. Was I wrong or what? Being consistent is hard! Very hard… I am happy to report, though, that I've been able to keep up with my resolution, writing at least one sentence a day. Turns out, once you get once sentence down, it's easier to write a little more. And then a little more. Pretty soon, you've got the story stuck in your head all day and hey! You just thought of a new idea! Writing is a really good feeling, and writing well is even better!

I've added a project. I know, I know, I said one at a time. -hides behind a rock- Okay, let me explain!!! So, here's how it happened. My writer friend, the one I told you about last time? Let's call her…Becca (since I don't want to go promoting her over my own writing! ;P Haha. Just kidding. Sorry Becks!) So Becca and I started a book back when I was in high school. It was just after we'd met. She and I decided to write a book together with another armature author we'll call Katie (for the sake of protecting the innocent). So Becca and Katie and I started writing this story together. It was fun. We each wrote sections of about three or more paragraphs at a time, writing as our own characters but keeping the whole thing in a third person omniscient tense. It was really cool. Back then I knew virtually nothing about professional writing. All I knew was that I loved it, and I was eager to write something opposite someone who knew a little more about what they were doing. As we grew, the story grew and our writing styles grew. Becca taught me so much and I'm forever grateful! But about a year after the three of us had started the book, things turned sour. Katie went to college, and her enthusiasm for writing all but died. She swore up and down she still loved to write. Every time we talked to her she'd promise over and over that her piece was in the works, but then it'd be months before we ever heard from her again. Becca and I were devastated, worried that the book would completely fall apart. Without Katie to write in her parts of the book we'd never finish! For almost an entire year the book was put on hold. Becca and I would talk about the characters, exchange thoughts on ideas, and even write out dialogue for future pieces of the book. All of this we did to pass the time between Katie's updates. We even created, started, and were in the middle of two sequels! It was getting ridiculous and too much to bare. We didn't work on the book for so long, even I started to forget about it...

In an effort to revitalize my own inspiration for this original co-written story, I went back to page one and started reading. What I read shocked me. Of course, I expected the writing to be lacking. I'd always expected to go back and reedit everything. After all, back then I hadn't known anything about anything. The precious little more I know now is a HUGE improvement on the horrific writing I used to think passed for "good" four years ago. What I didn't expect to see was how, frankly, terrible Katie's writing actually was. Now, the writing itself was...alright. It's not one of my favorite styles, but as far as grammar and sentence structure and flow and all of that good stuff goes it was okay. But Oh my word! You would not believe how awful some of it was. Her male characters were mushy and overly sensitive and quite frankly acted a lot like girls. Her leading ladies were weepy and helpless and absolutely annoying. Her dialogue was ridiculous and her character interactions were unrealistic in some of the most unbelievable ways! She actually had written an entire scene where two guys sat over cocktails and shared their feelings!!! And these were two macho guys. An army soldier and a retired football payer. Not exactly the touchy feely cocktail type. It was sad. I literally felt like crying.

I found out, in about August of 2010 that Becca had been experiencing the same thing. She'd had a problem with Katie's writing for a while and had hinted at things here and there but had never come right out and said anything. I took the initiative and said it. It was bad. We talked things over for several months. Between ourselves and with Katie. By the end of October we told her the relationship was over. We couldn't write the story anymore with how poorly and rarely she was writing her pieces. After that mess was done and over with, we started clean up on the story, but there was so much to do, and with how busy our lives became the project went on hold yet again. Becca and I were working on other projects both separately and together, on top of our own lives at school and home and work. We had no time for the original story and all the renovating it needed. That brings us to about now. Last week, Becca and I were talking. I asked her, if she could change one major thing about that original story, what would it be? "The entire beginning" is the shortened version of the very long list she gave me. I agreed, of course. Katie's parts were impossible to keep in the book if we ever wanted it to do a good job and be proud of the story. Plus with her no longer a part of it, keeping her parts wouldn't be fair to her. So over the weekend we gathered up all the old stuff and pitched it. Back to square one!! We rewrote character profiles, reinvented characters that had been spoiled by Katie's lack of writing skill, and restarted the story itself! It's a big project, but a good one. It gives me a warm, happy feeling inside to know that we can go back and reinvent and re-enjoy the story that brought us together as friends. And even more than that, we've given ourselves a chance to take the story and really write it well. Hopefully, well enough to make some money! Yay!!! But most importantly, we can make it something to be proud of.

So all of that has been going on between Thursday and now. Just today we started writing the new beginning and so far it's going great! We've called it "Who Likes Who" as a working title. We'll see about actually naming it when the time comes to send it off to publishers. I expect to keep you updated on that as well as Conflict, which has been going slowly. But Surely. Definitely moving on that one, so that's exciting.

So many great things going on, it's hard not to put them all in one post! But I've got to save something to write about tomorrow, right? Haha.

So Until Then! -waves- Bye Bye!

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Late Resolutions.

A good friend of mine once told me, some of the truest things we write come when we sit down, turn our brains off, and let the words flow. She also happens to be one of my favorite authors so I take her advice very seriously! Haha. She gave me this one little nugget of wisdom just recently, when I was stuck in a serious case of writer's block (evident by the obvious lack of blog updates). She's an amazing writer and one of my greatest mentors as well as one of my best muses. She always knows just what to say and when to say it! It's great to have a friend like that and I love her to death!!!

Another thing she shared with me that I hold myself to even to this day: She told me the worst thing a writer can do is stop writing. Even in the worst slump, when everything feels horrible and every word you write sounds bad, you can't stop. She challenged me to work on my book a little every day. Even when all I can manage is one poorly written sentence, write it. Don't give up. Don't quit, not even for a day. Because once you stop, it is so hard to start back up again. So many good ideas get thrown in the bin because the writer gave up. So never stop writing. Never stop writing!

My mom, this week, read a one page intro to a story I never planned to continue. I thought it was horrible, a piece of junk I'd written out of boredom. She was so impressed by it that everyday since she's been asking me for more pages! It was while trying to write more pages for her that I realized the truth in my friend's words. "You think too much," she always tells me. And I finally realized I do. I think way too much about what I'm trying to write. A little thought is good, of course, but there is a point where anything can be over thought. That's exactly what I do. Over think. Everything. From friendships to compliments at work to movies and the meaning of life!!! And now even this...

The revelation is both enlightening and discouraging. I'm hoping to focus on the former rather than the latter. I also hope I can focus more on writing and less on thinking about what I should write. Let's call this...a late New Year's resolution. Haha.

Until next time!