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 |  Now my story begins in nineteen-dickety-two... |
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2 AM and I'm still awake, writing a song If I get it all down on paper, it's no longer inside of me, Threatening the life it belongs to And I feel like I'm naked in front of the crowd Cause these words are my diary, screaming out loud And I know that you'll use them, however you want to -Breathe(2AM), Anna Nalick ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** For Daddy, the real world gets fainter and fainter every day. -Homer Simpson Homer, Please Don't Hammer 'Em ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only **
If we shadows have offended,/Think but this, and all is mended,/That you have but slumber'd here/While these visions did appear./And this weak and idle theme,/No more yielding but a dream... -William Shakespeare, A Midsummer's Night Dream |
| I've been doing a lot of deep thinking about myself lately. Mostly because of the book I'm reading currently; Life as We Knew It. I don't want to get into what the book is about as I'll do a review on Good Reads when I finish. But it's an apocalyptic-type book and it's very haunting as well as engaging. Even being more than half-way through it, I still couldn't tell you how the author managed to make it so. My thoughts have also tied into an article I read yesterday about memory. The part that struck me was that it said that depressed people tend to have more vague memories and do not remember the good times more than the bad times. I was always concerned about myself because I just don't seem to have the memory recall that others do. Of course, after reading that article about memory, they could just be fooling themselves about what they recall. I've never been diagnosed with depression, so I can't say for sure I actually suffer from it. But at the least, I'm depressive. Which in my head, means while I may not be diagnosed with depression, my tendencies definitely swing that way. So how do the two things tie in together? It made me think about my past and what I actually remember. It also reminded me of the barrage of last day crap my church spewed out. I don't think I thought about my future as normal children do. I really didn't think about it at all. Most kids seemed to have an idea about what they wanted. The first job I remember wanting is cheerleader while I was in elementary school. As my parents never saw the need to fulfill my request for gymnastics lessons, I never saw a point in trying out. Besides, as I learned later, you really can't make a living being cheerleader. The cheerleaders you see at professional sporting events don't make that much at all. For about a day in sixth day, I thought I might like a career that would allow me to work at NASA since one of my friends wanted to be an astronaut. I didn't want to be an astronaut, but I thought it would be cool to be in master control while she was up in the shuttle. Teacher always seemed to be a back up career. That seemed true of a lot of fellow students. The reason for that, I believe, is because as students, you're naturally exposed to the educational system more than any other job market. Plus having summers off as an adult probably seems like a good idea. I can't remember being excited about any other career option until I got to college. When I was in college, I changed majors like clothes. Really, ending up in library science seemed like such an obvious choice when I finally settled on it, I couldn't believe I didn't think of it sooner. Although, there are reasons why I didn't, but that's another story. Anyway, it was about middle school when we got the new preacher who thought judgment day was just around the corner. So maybe I didn't think a lot about my future because of that. It wasn't just the preacher, it was Mom and Grandma thinking he was right. So, when you're getting constant reminders about the world ending, why would you put much thought into your future? It effects me still. I think there's always going to be a small part of me waiting for something apocalyptic. It may explain why I'm a procrastinator. As for other things not related to jobs, I never had a dream wedding. I thought about doing a cool Halloween decor wedding in my college years. I thought about colors, but not much more than that. I know I wanted one. But after I did, I didn't see what all the fuss was about. Again, another story. To hear other women talk, it sounds like they had dream weddings planned out to the last detail. As for children, I thought I wanted three or four kids. I thought it would be lonely to be an only child and I thought two was too boring. Because all I have is one sister, and I thought one more child to the mix would liven things up. I would occasionally think up names I would like for my children. The names often changed as I grew. Now, I guess what I was expecting to happen or maybe hoping to happen was my true love to find me. And somehow he would just make everything better. I would just go where he did and get a job if I had to. I know I wanted to go to college, but I just like to learn for learning's sake. I guess, I just hoped my husband would make enough money so I could stay home and write. I was so obsessed with finding someone, that I often thought I would follow my crushes after high school. I would go to whatever college they did and just be there until they realized we were meant to be together. It seems stupid now of course. But hey, I was a kid. And a naive one at that. Even now, I don't think about the future that much. Often I get the feeling I should be thinking about it more. But then again you hear many pieces of advice about living in the moment. I don't think I do live in the moment, but I think I may do that more than the average person. Maybe it's because I'm getting older that I'm thinking about this more. I say I want to be a writer and I haven't submitted a damn thing yet. So, inevitably the question comes up, do I really want to write? Do I really want to be published? Usually, I ask myself, what else would I do? Nothing else interests me. Yes, I like working in the library, but I don't think I like it enough to put in the dedication it takes to become an academic librarian. Even a public librarian may ask things of me that I'm not sure I want to give. I often think if I were given dance lessons, if I had more of a backbone in college and told Dad I wanted a career in theater (not acting. There are plenty of other theater related jobs that wouldn't be so uncertain.), and been willing to do what it takes, I could have a career I really enjoyed. Yes, I'm still alive, I could possibly still do those things. But I'm not sure I'm interested in that as I used to be. Since all those avenues were blocked when I was younger, I turned to pen and paper, because pen and paper were always there. Lessons cost money. Musical instruments cost money. Gas to get these places cost money. But paper and pen were always laying around. And I always needed it for school. So, I guess my creativity found it's outlet in the only medium available to me. And the library was the one place I could get to on a regular basis. Being surrounded by books and having only paper and pen, what else was I going to do? So, I do want to write still. I want to be published. I just need to be more disciplined when I get into these no writing habit modes. It's like the losing weight thing. When I started keeping track of calories and such, I started to lose weight since. I think it's the same with writing. I need to set goals and figure out how to go about them. When I first got to this site, I didn't need to do that so much. I was just overflowing. It's so easy to get into ruts. It makes it hard to change. Hell, does my post even make sense? I think my original thoughts diverged, but I think it's helped me sort things out. Heck, I bet nobody even made it this far into the entry. Aw, well. This entry did what it was supposed to do.   |
| It's so very hard and annoying to pretend to be normal. |
| I swear, it's like jumping into a pool for the first time. It's probably no big surprise I haven't been writing lately. As I sit down to write, it's hard to get back into. It is a lot like getting used to the water when you first get into the pool. At first it seems like a pretty big effort to dive in. Then once you're in, you wait awhile to dunk your head under. Then, eventually, you're used to it, having a good ole time. It's rather irritating. And that's all I have to say for now. Got to wade out deeper... |
| Gen Con offered many workshops and seminars for writers this year. I saw it as a mini-writing conference. I didn't participate much in it, because I was a bit wary of such a thing. Reading about writing conferences hasn't strengthened my confidence in them. But I don't have strong dislike of them either. Anyway, I found a couple of seminars to attend that were at a decent hour, and went to them as they were free and had room for many people. Each seminar I went to was presided over by a panel of published authors. The first one I went to had the author guest of honor on the panel. Her name is Elizabeth Vaughan. I had never heard of her, but I have marked a book or two of hers to read on Good Reads. She seemed nice. She was also the leader of the first panel which was about how to craft a love scene. There were many parts that merely reinforced what I already knew, but it was entertaining and it never hurts to have reminders about things. Ms Vaughan says she writes romance. If you look at her books, they would be romances set in fantasy and sci/fi settings. She said if you can take the romance out of a story and still have a story, then it's probably not a romance. I found that interesting since I've had numerous conversations with other authors on this site about how to label their works. And along those lines, another author commented on how far love and romance should go in young adult novels. He said that the love scenes shouldn't be instructional manuals. Not that I ever plan to write a YA book with much sex in it, but I thought that may be good advice. Ms Vaughan also encouraged us to Google the twelve steps of intimacy to better weave romance in our writing. I did so, and it is rather interesting. I'd like to think I was doing some of that naturally anyway. There was another author on this panel, Maurice Broaddus, who was interesting. He is just finishing up a trilogy that is a retelling of King Arthur set in modern day Indianapolis. I just found that fascinating. Probably me being from Indiana helps, but I will at least check out the first book and see how it reads. The second seminar I went to was about prophecy and incorporating it into your novel. I really don't have any prophecy in my novels. There's a hint of it here and there, but it's nothing I focus on. Which after attending this seminar seems to be a good thing. The focus was on world coming to the end prophecies. And most of the authors believed that that kind of prophecy was cliche and overdone. They also thought that those kind of prophecies were made up just to drive the plot. So if the prophecy is the only reason there's a story, then it might not be a good idea. But prophecy on a smaller scale seemed to be more acceptable to them. Can't say I disagree too much with them. I missed out on a workshop about writing a fight scene. I'm disappointed about that a little bit. But I think it may have been too early anyway.  Which would explain why I didn't notice it. I had never heard of any of the authors that were part of the writing seminars. Most of them seemed to be published for short stories or novels that related to a gaming world. Some of them also worked as editors. There were some workshops available where the authors would critique some of your work. At first, I was adverse to this because I've seen a couple of agent blogs where they advise newbies not to relay on published authors for writing advise. The author may not fully realize what it was the agent liked about their work. To me, that made a great deal of sense. But I've been thinking more about that since we've gotten home. While I still agree with that observation, I'm thinking there could still be benefits. There's always a slim chance that the author critiquing your work may really like it and be able to get your foot in the door to agents that don't take queries from non-published authors. I don't know. I may choose to do that next year depending on where I'm at with my writing. A part of me wonders if this could be a good social networking type thing too. My friend seems to have people that are sorely con friends.(She attends many cons throughout the year, so she knows others who do the same.) It would be nice to have something like that with fellow writers. |
| For the first time, since going to Gen Con, I did some of the ticketed events. Since I had such a excitement over costuming before I left, I tried to get in on those workshops, but all the ones that I was interested in had been filled. The class sizes weren't very big and were probably filled before Gen Con even started as you can register for events starting in April. Gen Con also offers classes for what they call Gen Con widows and widowers. Some of these can be interesting as well. They include events such as dancing, yoga, wine/beer tasting, etc. One of these, I did manage to get into. It was the needle-less knitting one. I had heard about something like that in St. Augustine a few weeks ago. One of the the places we visited had a woman using a cardboard loom to make a shawl. I guess loom knitting is gaining popularity and instead of a cardboard loom, we got round plastic ones. There are looms that are a straight line as well. I found this much easier than needle knitting. Of course, I was trying to teach myself to needle knit. I gave up on that as I couldn't get figure out how to get beyond the first row of stitches. My first project was a stuffed kitty and I will make a few more for practice. I have all sorts of ideas about things I could make. I'm really excited about it. Next year, if possible, I'd like to get registered early so I can get on some of these other workshops that I wanted to do. There is more to tell about Gen Con, but I think I'll divide it up a little. |
| I am back from Gen Con. I had a wonderful time. I have much to say about it, but not right now. They had writing seminars and such there as well and I went to a couple of them. So I have some things to say about that. I just don't feel like doing an entry right now. I want to stop the entry reminders so I'm doing this brief entry. |
| I've been feeling much better lately, but I still haven't found the time to work on my writing. I blame this mostly on us getting new carpet at work. When I first get in, we usually spend a good chunk of the day moving things. By lunch, we're usually done, but I'm often tired. And as much I hate to admit it and know this shouldn't be true nor become habit, I often use my down time at work to write. I usually end up just reading, which isn't so bad. If you're not going to write, you might as well read. Better than watching TV or surfing on the internet with no purpose. Or playing the stupid games on Facebook. I can't believe how easy it is to just sit there and click on things. Some games I don't feel bad about, but playing those Farmville like games is so utterly pointless. But then again, just about anything can look utterly pointless if you view it a certain way. Although, I have lost interest in the games enough that I just don't care about keeping up with them as much as I used to. I'm still not completely out of my funk, but I'm getting there. I'm almost ready to join the Fantasy review group again. I'm still modding, but I'm not doing reviews so my work is no longer up to be reviewed either. But I also don't feel the same need to have my writing reviewed like I did before. I like the chat group I have. They give me a lot of what I need. But too many times on the fantasy board, you just don't get that constant feedback from one person - someone who will stick to with your story til the end. It could be that my writing sucks so much that it doesn't hold people's interest. In some cases, I'm sure that's true. But I believe there are other reasons. There are a number of people's novels I stopped reading because they stopped reviewing me. I don't mean that to sound petty, because I hold no ill will to those that stop reviewing me. It's just when my life gets busy, I have to make decisions about what to cut out to make room for other things. Doing less reviews is an easy way to make more time for my writing. I've been taking a break from reviewing ever since I got back from Florida. It's actually been a great stress reliever. Like I said, I hope to return to reviewing soon. I'm thinking after Gen Con I'll be ready to jump back in. Speaking of which, Gen Con is this week.  It's almost always nice to take time off work. Especially, when your work place is being re-carpeted. |
| I think I may have determined what part of my problem is. I've not had a good book or TV show or something to inspire me recently. In the last couple of weeks, I started to read the book series that True Blood is based on and I just finished watching the first season of True Blood last night. I haven't fallen in love with the series, but it is rating above average on my meter. There's enough going on in the books and show to spark my imagination and passion again. Planning for Gen Con is also helping with that too from time to time. I think I have let myself become jaded. Years past, I tried not to get too excited about Gen Con because we could only go for a day and I couldn't or wouldn't dress up for it. Honestly, I would be a cosplayer in an instant if I had the money and skill to make costumes.(And in some cases the right body) But I'm thinking with some practice, I probably could learn to make costumes. I know how to sew, I probably just need to practice. And get a sewing machine... Maybe I'll ask for one for Christmas or see if my mom have one laying around. Although, I think I remember asking Mom about that long ago. (But I am thinking I could pull off a Sookie costume real ass cheap this year. Now if only Buffy had some standard costume I could have two days of costuming down.) This year we'll be staying the entire four days at Gen Con. Money may be a bit tight, but with the hotel room and tickets paid for, there's little else we need to have a good time. Anyway, I think I was just getting used to disappointment and forcing myself not to get excited about things. As stupid as it may sound, I do get inspired by books and TV. While I've read good books lately, none of them have sparked my imagination or passion until the True Blood thing. I try not to jump on bandwagons. Although, I was pleased with Harry Potter. True Blood doesn't have as much hype around it as say Twilight. I haven't read Twilight, but it depresses me for some reason. The more I hear about it, the less I want to read it. I know that's not fair. By surrounding myself with things that I feel are good and go crazy over, it makes me want to be a storyteller and share my stories with others. And do a good job of it. |
| I am trying very hard to motivate myself again. I don't know if anyone else has noticed, but my heart just isn't into anything anymore. Here or outside the website. I've been going through the motions. Doing things I know I should do. This is more or less a continuation of an entry I did several weeks ago. But I feel as if last night, I may have hit a turning point thanks to a song. It's something and I'm holding on to it. The trip to Florida didn't really help like I hoped it would. Although, the first night we were in Florida, we went for a walk on the beach and there was a full moon. The last time we went, there was no moon out. I was inspired to write a poem, but I never sat down to write it. I'm not sure I could do it proper justice now if I were to sit down and try to write it. If anyone has been keeping up with my blog, they may notice I haven't said much about my trip if anything. It was fun. Just not as fun as the first time and not nearly as relaxing. The trip was too long. Maybe if our husbands had been with us, it wouldn't have been. I don't think Lindsey was as financially ready for the trip like I believed she was. Not that she didn't have enough money to go, but her husband didn't have enough money to pay bills and they don't share a bank account. So the first part of the trip was a bit rough as she was trying to deal with that stuff. Then the morning we got back, we found out that Lindsey and her husband's place had been robbed the previous night. So, a lot of suck there. The one area of my life where I've had a small success is weight loss. I stopped doing the lists thing from Good Eats more or less. I'm still following the never list pretty well. But since we got iPhones, we found an app that counts calories for us. You put in your weight goals and it tells you how many calories you're allowed in order to reach that goal. The number of calories goes down as you lose more weight. Not by much though. And you also put in exercises you do and that way you can 'earn back' calories. When you're starting that's kinda important. It still is, but if you're like me, you just didn't know how many calories you should have a day nor how many calories are in certain foods. If you want to be able to have a decent dinner, you realize you should exercise to get some calories back. This experience has been an eye opener for me. It helps me to avoid fast food more than ever. There are ways to make it not so bad, but it can be kinda tough. I've learned to appreciate those restaurants that post their nutritional information online. I thought every restaurant had to make that available, but not so, I guess. IHOP doesn't do it. But they do have a menu for meals under 500 calories. It's very small though. For the most part, I've been satisfied. I'm not going hungry. I don't really crave things as much. I think I need to start adding more diversity though. But we are tight on money because we're saving money for Gen Con in a couple of weeks. And having a limited menu is cheaper. It does mean I'm eating the same things, day after day, but right now, I don't mind that so much. I'm more worried about not getting certain minerals and vitamins by not changing up my diet.I do need to add more protein though. I can't give plasma right now because my protein count is too low. So, I've found a couple of healthy ways to get that up. I don't need a lot more, I think. Just 10-20 grams more a day and I think that should do it. Not that I haven't had my moments of overeating since doing the app. July 4th was a pretty bad day diet wise. I blame the chips and dip. There's something about french onion dip and chips that's like a drug to me. It's really hard to control myself once I start on it. I'm not quite losing the two pounds a week like intended. It's averaging to be more like 1.5lbs. which isn't much of a difference I guess, but it's bothersome. I have a crappy scale anyway. Another reason I'm upset that I can't give plasma. Because you get weighed every time you donate and it's more reliable I feel then the scales I have here at home. It can still be frustrating knowing I'm losing weight, but not seeing any changes physically. My pants are bit looser, but not falling down yet. Still it feels good to say I've lost weight. Even that isn't making me as thrilled as it should be. Like I said, I heard a song last night that cracked through to something. So hopefully, I'll be back to normal soon. |
| I hate when someone asks what I'm reading. I do mean hate. My hair stands on end, and my defenses go up. Now there are some exceptions, but first why I hate it. The primary reason I don't like to be asked what I'm reading is because I read mostly fantasy. The title of a book may be something made up that just sounds like gibberish and I may not be able to pronounce. Honestly, if it's a made up name that I have trouble pronouncing than I usually just skim over it and just recognize the first letter and shape of the word. Granted, that does leave me going back and rereading things here and there more carefully if there's another similar name and I get confused. Anyway, if I answer giving a gibberish title, I just get a weird look. Even if the title is something that makes sense, odds are the person asking has never heard of it and will ask what it's about. I have learned to just say, it's a fantasy book and that seems to appease most people. Still get a weird look though. What I hate is having to explain a plot if someone wants more information. Sometimes it's just too complex to properly tell someone about the plot. With fantasy, you have the added bonus of explaining what something is. Each fantasy world is different. Even something as simple as a kingdom's name will need to be explained. (Like -The Zorts and Borts are at war. What the hell is a Zort or Bort? Why are they at war? They both need the Varbeerk of Sheese. Well what the hell is that? etc.) Not to mention that a fantasy world can use fantastical creatures and concepts in unique ways that you have to read the book to understand. What an elf is in one story can be completely different in another. Even explaining all that to someone wouldn't be so bad if the person were actually interested. But most of the time I get a look like I'm a freak. Thus, I learned to just say it's a fantasy novel and leave it at that. I know people may just be asking to be polite and show an interest, but if you really don't care what I'm reading, don't bother. It shouldn't be a substitute for 'how are you?' A question most people realize that others don't want an honest answer to. Of course there is just the annoyance of being asked while I'm in the process of reading. Now if the person is another fantasy reader, I have little problem answering the question. Don't get me wrong, I love discussing books. But growing up finding someone else who read fantasy was often hard to find. It's weird, because now that I know more fantasy readers, they're usually not the ones asking what I'm reading. It's often strangers or acquaintances that notice I have a book in my hand. But this is just one person's experience with the question. It's a small part of what makes up my wackiness. |
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