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 |  A new year, a new blog, same mess of a writer. |
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It's been a while, but since the world is a mess, I might as well take a crack at this writing thing again.  I Write in 2019 ▼ 12 Stories in 12 Months ▼  |
| Date: 01.14.17 -- Day Four Music: "Strange" / Charlotte OC Some say procrastination is a result of high anxiety, perfectionism, and a fear of rejection. If this could be a dictionary entry, my face would be plastered right next to it because this is me in a nutshell. I'm often have low-key anxiety with a perfectionist streak that goes for miles with no right to actually demand perfection. Like, none at all, but alas. It's a weird kind of perfection where it's small, inconsequential things that are amiss that bother me more than huge holes of mess. You'd think the huge holes of mess would be more of an issue. For example, in the movie Ninja Assassin (a guilty pleasure) there's a scene where the protagonist is sent on his first mission to assassinate. He stabs his target in four of his major arteries, but this guy fights tooth and nail before his head is finally smashed into a toilet and dies of the hit. Here's the thing: the first cut through the first artery should have been the fatal cut. Each cut after that was definitely the fatal cut. With adrenaline and the thrill of the fight in his vein, he heart was pumping pretty fast, so the blood loss would be extensive and lethal within a matter of seconds, dead in under a minute. But nope, because that's not Hollywood cool. That bothers me, sure. It would definitely bother all the doctors and nurses in my family. But that wasn't the killjoy moment. That moment came later, as the ninja clan was running on roofs across the city of Berlin. Their outfits are black. Ninjas don't actually wear black. They wear dark blue because black doesn't really mask them during night raids, but provide noticeable voids that people detect. This principle is also why camouflage is designed the way it is instead of in one solid color. Thus, my perfectionism went off by this little mistake and I had to take five from the movie to get over it. Yep, I'm that person. This mistake is also why this film will never be perfect in my eyes, thus a guilty pleasure. So I brushed over lightly about my anxiety, highlighted my weird perfectionism, so let me dive deep into my fear of rejection. This particular fear is probably the reason why I haven't finished a problem in ages, if ever. I have this dream in my head that I would like to be a cottage witch somewhere, where the ocean meets the mountain and a thicket of ancient trees. But along with spells and quilts, I would be give people their personalized book. Essentially making me a book writer and book dealer. People would come to me with their novel needs, and I could always find what they where looking for, and if I couldn't find their need, I would write it for them. That's one of my favorite dreams about potential me. But that me doesn't exist at the moment. What resides there instead is the fear that everyone will hate what I'm writing. That the thing I wrote will not be understood. Or that I have offended someone in particular with my writing. This fear of rejection has stifled me for years, possibly my entire life. It might be the thing that causes me to stop writing altogether. So I dedicate to myself that I will not be chained by my own demons out of fear and self-loathing. This year I'm going to finish writing a novel. I'll have some time in spring to work on a story. I mean realistically I could start now, and I might, but I want to keep planning and outlining as it has helped me in the past. Maybe, you, presumed viewer, might have thoughts on what I should writing. Any help to finish writing a thing would be greatly appreciated. So drop me a line. Should I run with an idea I've vaguely plotted out or start absolutely from scratch? |
Date: early 01.12.17 -- Day Three Music of the Day: "Happen" / Emeli Sandé I'm going to first start off by saying, sometime last week I fell in love with an album, just a little bit. It was a slow romance between the two of us, that continues to bloom and show facets of itself with each new listening. Long Live the Angels by Emeli Sandé is absolutely amazing, and if you haven't listened to her before, you're in for a treat. She's a little R&B, a little Neo-Soul, and beyond wonderful. I can't hype her enough. You're probably wondering what that has to do with writing, and hoy boy does it have a strong connection to the words I create. I write with a plethora of music guiding me from scene to scene. I create soundtracks and scores for the stories I write even if it's a short story or even just writing bursts. Music helps me frame my scene beats, my action points, the tones and thematic roots I've striving to achieve as well as the bones that the story will be structured around. Music is such an important step in my writing, I include the song that helped me write a blog entry in my blog. Much of this has to do with the way I envision what I'm creating. While it can be any little thing that I witness or hear or a moment I come across that sparks a story, the unfolding is like a television or film scene in my head. It's always a ride, because when a new idea hits, I see the scene and wonder what that has to do with anything. So when I'm juggling multiple storyverses, which is every damn day, it can be hilarious as I switching from a highly dramatic action sequence to a fluffy family scene in a completely different world. In order to get some organization from the fray of ideas and worlds and such, I'm thinking about dedicating a blog spot or two to introducing my original characters. Why keep them trapped in my head or on an outline when I can share their quirks and their goals and the challenges that they must face along the way. Obviously a soundtrack will happen. A little music, a little character development, a happy writer. |
Date: 01.11.17 -- Day Two Music of the Day: "Mercury" / Kathleen Edwards Second entries are always the hardest. Maybe not the hardest, but definitely something pretty high up on the list of difficult things to write. The sequel usually doesn't match the success of the original even if the material of one outpaces the other. There so much emotional attachment and ambiguity in the first go-around that we fill in any missing gaps ourselves, unwittingly making it our own until the second item comes along and clarifies, which in a weird way destroys what we've built for ourselves. Or maybe that's just me. All of this is a drawn out way of saying I have so much to say and still have no idea what to write about. When I was trying to craft this in my head yesterday, I had this idea about splitting apart the theme of a bitter harvest. For instance, yesterday was my first time back on campus after winter break, and let me tell you that it was a doozy. The winds here in the Pacific Northwest have been howling for days, kicking around leaves and people alike. My face was frozen nearly half the day. I mentioned this to someone in passing and they suggested a face mask, which nearly made me laugh out loud. Politically speaking, there's no way in my semi-little college town that I could wear a face mask or shield and not get stopped by the police for I am far too brown for that sort of thing to not end on a poor note. Hence my massive collection of thick scarves that cover me up to my chin. But besides the winds causing a massive fuss, it's been an unusually cold winter in my neck of the woods, something I don't think anyone was truly prepared for. Plus, I'm from California; most of us Californians don't do this, and when we have to, do not do this well. Even though I've been in Washington for nearly six years years, there are moments like yesterday when my sun and drought disposition exposed itself -- bouncing on the tips of my toes, rubbing my hands together constantly as I tried to focus on the seeing things in front of me instead of worrying about my eyes potentially freezing in my skull. So the biting winds and mocking winter sun that gives no warmth covers the bitter. What covers the harvest? Weirdly enough, that would be my beginning throwing class. At least twice a week I will be attempting to make things out of clay and wheel, which, I gotta say, is a bunch harder than I remember it being a few years ago. My arms and hands are sore as all hell. Maybe it's my condition as it is a literal widespread pain everyday. But beyond my out-of-shape ceramic skills, I made a little dinky pot. While I can't seem to center clay worth a damn, my hands are wonky at best when it comes to shaping, and I have a lead foot when it comes to wheel speed, I somehow fumbled my way through making a little pot that might possibly turn into a weird little thing that holds my loose change one day. That's something. Clumsy creation perhaps, but it's something. In combing through these ideas, possibly gathering something from a horrible situation or receiving something that is less than pleasant from begotten seeds, there's always that period of processing. Processing is such an odd experience, especially when it is not the intended outcome. Granted, I do not process well these days, my brain constantly shrouded in a thousand explosions under dense fog. Yet so many things were lost along the way when trying to figure out how translate this all, much to the detriment of this entry. There were so many places I wanted to go with this, especially in these current climate. Is this not a time of bitter harvest? And my new way of life with my illnesses, constantly adapting and rearranging to suit the changes of my body, my brain. For every thing I do, there is a physical cost, often painful, turning ordinary things into laborious tasks. However, I just keep wandering off topic to the next project that needs to be tackled or the fact that I must hurry off into the bracing cold to complete errands. Ultimately, I am left with more questions than answers, more tattered beginnings than finished threads. Can one harvest without processing the outcomes? Can one process without harvesting that particular crop of ideas or philosophies or conclusions? Are we in a season of bitter harvest or potentially a generation? Can we turn it into something more, something not so foul-tasting and hard-hitting? Can we aim for bittersweet? |
Date: 01.08.17 Music of the Day: "I Want To Break Free" / Queen It began, like many things in my life, with insomnia. No major decision in my life happens without some kind of sleep deprivation. So, really, the decision shouldn't have been shocking when I decided to resurrect my writing account at 3 o'clock in the morning. In the early dawn hour, I pulled out my credit card, wished myself a happy belated Epiphany, and renewed my subscription to something I thought I had put behind me. There's this feeling in the pit of my stomach that says this is going to be a trend for 2017, randomly going back to things that should probably be left alone. Interestingly enough, underneath all the churning anxiety and fear within me there seems to be a tiny bit of risk I did not know I possessed. That being said, hiya friends, I'm kind of back! Am I back though? I don't know. I honestly can't give you a definitive answer to that except to say that I want to be. Some part of me says I need to be. But I'm not sure I have the strength to even halfway do this justice. It's been two to three years of chaotic mess since I left the first time. Triumphantly gut-wrenching chaos of a beautifully hideous mess with so many high-highs and low-lows I'm surprised I'm not still dizzy from every twist and turn. All I can say is that I am not the person I was when I first started my account many moons ago. Not too long ago that girl hitched a ride with a group of Franciscan nuns and their pet llama, Kiddo, driving a teal and rust VW bus; they were last seen heading northeast of I-5 in search of the aurora borealis. I, however, am just a burned out, disabled student and caregiver who can no longer drink more than one cup of coffee a day or trust her hands to actually do what they are designed to do. The everlasting insomnia is the same though, so that's nice. In the end, here I am, a woman almost always trying desperately just to keep her head above water, taking on another thing. But this thing might actually be a good thing, like it once was before I lost my mind a little and slowly ghosted away for several years. I cannot say I've been writing since I left either. I mean, I have been writing, but it's not coherent writing or anything truly extensive. Mostly I've written stacks of notes and outlines of world-building for about a couple dozen storyverses. I've also dabbled in a little fan-fiction, something I once said I would never do. Hey kids, take a note from Auntie Nix, and try not to do the "never say never" thing as it only comes back to bite you in the behind later on. The major thing through the ups and downs is being unable to finish my writing. I stopped finishing projects. When I die, all that'll be left are mountains of scarves and half empty notebooks filled with nearly there stories and false starts to wondrous novel journeys. This is an affliction I hope to heal myself of, if possible. There are so many things that are falling apart or leaking out of my foggy brain that I want to be able to finish one thing, one project, anything at this point to try and prove to myself that I still can actually do it. So I'm going to start small, and start here with the blog. The goal is to try and write here five days a week about whatever is on my mind at the time, mostly unfiltered. This task is going to be tricky with class and working two jobs and being stabbed with tiny needles for PT and the shadows of upcoming surgeries (not for myself this time, thank hell, although I kind of wish it could be me so I wouldn't worry so much, especially since I'm so far away and cannot help my father as he rehabilitates his hips, but that's another entry for another time). However, since I cannot journal as much anymore because of my judas hands, blogging seems like the best alternative to working out some of my woes. Here goes nothing -- Day 1. Sigh. Where do I even begin? |
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Week 1: December 31st - January 6th:
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