she who blogs

Is it over yet?

Yes, for me it is over. I am done with NaNoWriMo for this year.  I dragged myself to the finish line. Like those runners where their chest barely touches the ribbon and then they fall down too exhausted to move. Yes, that's what happened. It was my goal to finish on Sunday. I could not bear to continue onto Monday, the last day of NaNoWriMo. So at 51,027 words, I am done. I don't feel satisfied only a bit relief I no longer have to write in order to reach a goal.

There were times, I idly let myself write with direct plainness without thinking of sentence forms or any real attachment to the words.  It would be nice if there was a way to let the words from my brain to get into a computer or spit out from a typewriter without me ever having to actual type in the words. Wouldn't it be nice to to able to release all my words with just a few thoughts? That sounds a bit lazy doesn't it?

This year, I am more organize about the storyline but still a bit messy in terms of actually making sense of them. I dabble in other things (drawing, watching movies, reading, etc) while trying to think of more to add to the story. Occasionally something comes up. Other times, I just had to pause and continue at another day.

I envy those who finished early. I would have like to as well. I think it's very stressful toward the end plus I think one's brain can be too exhausted at that time to even think or write. I hope to do better next year, that is, if I want to do this again.  This was my third time at NaNoWriMo. I do not think it gets easier but it does allow me to form some habits such as writing out story outlines and writing in non-linear form. I would have like to write from beginning to end but sometimes my mind does not allow me to.

The synopsis for my novel which is title, "Collide", is this:
A boy (James) meets a girl (Kasha or K as she is known) in his dreams. Then he meets her in real life. They fall in love. They are separated and then united.  The story takes place during summer and winter because there is no spring or autumn due to some global disaster.  And half of it takes place inside dreams.

And here's the link to this story piece in which the novel is base on - Tangerine Sky. It is part of the story and I did not change anything nor did I include this in the word count. I suppose I would have finish earlier if I did. Anyway, I offer congratulations to those that have reached their goals and for those who are still at it, keep writing even if you don't finish.

 

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Blue Fish

One day, on her way home from school, Bee saw a blue goldfish in a puddle of rain. She muse at the idea of owning a pet and scoop him up and into a sandwich bag. All the way home, she look and look at the fish but his colors never change. Passing by a pet shop, she buys a small glass bowl for the fish to live in. 

At home, after she makes sure there are no holes in the bowl, she pours the fish from the sandwich bag into the bowl and add some water. She then takes the bowl up to her room, careful not to spill as she move up the carpeted stairs. The sun has come out of the clouds and Bee thought perhaps he would like some sun. So she move it here and there and finally settle him in the middle of the desk where the sunlight hits the center of the bowl's edge. She pulls up a chair, sits down and watch him swim.

She thought the fish might loose its blue color if placed in fresh water but the fish stays blue, a turquoise blue with fins of yellow. The fish swims in an errant pattern. One minute his going up, the next he makes a curve and then turns ninety-degrees.  Bee laughs and calls him a silly fish. She decides to call him, Billy, after her older brother who she thought is just as silly. Bee watch Billy until her mother calls her for dinner.

Each day after school, Bee sits and watches Billy and his silly movements while she does her homework. She feeds him pastel-colored flake food from the pet shop. She asked the man with the heavy beard behind the counter if there's such thing as a blue goldfish. The man smile with a surprise and answer yes. "They are very rare," he says. He ask her if she has such fish in her possession. She says, "Maybe" and gives him a small smile.

Soon Bee turns her attention to her new doll, Libby, who has the same green eyes as she does. Occasionally Bee remembers to feed Billy but soon Billy is ignored. After two weeks, the bowl becomes a murky blue and if one does look in, they will not see the fish nor anything else.

One day, Bee's mother goes to put some clean dresses in Bee's room. She saw the bowl sitting on Bee's desk.  She lifts the bowl and looks under and into it but sees nothing. She would have left it there except the stench from the bowl force her move it.

When Bee comes home from school, she does not noticed the bowl. Not when she does her homework at the desk. Not after she eats dinner, takes a bath or even when she crawls into bed.

When Bee wakes up in the morning, she finally noticed the bowl.  Inside are fresh water and a goldfish,  but not her goldfish. This fish is orange with yellow fins. There is no trace of blue anywhere on the fish's body. Bee thought this is not Billy, not her goldfish.

After a few slices of blueberry pancakes, Bee ask her mother about the bowl and her fish.  Her mother replies that she has cleaned the bowl, added fresh water and placed him back in the bowl. "Is he not there?" her mother asks.

Bee shakes her head. As much as Bee loves Billy, he is just a fish, just a fish she named after her only brother. She stops eating and starts to cry.  Her mother, upon looking at her daughter, has a hanker to cry as well. She wrap her arms around her daughter. Together they went to Bee's room to take a look at the fish.

"He's the same fish that was in the bowl. I did not change him," her mother insist. She look rather confused at Bee.

"But he's not blue," Bee replies. Her lips turns upside down.

"Blue? He was orange when I scoop him out into a glass. Could he have changed colors?" Her mother turn her head sideways to look at the fish which is now swimming in an errant pattern.

Bee wonders if that's true. She knows nothing about fishes after all. Can this be her fish? Can he have change colors? He does moves in the same odd way.

Then her brother, Billy, pops his head into the room. "What's going on?" he says, looking around. They both turn to him in surprise. Billy's once blue hair is now a bright shade of orange with yellow highlights. They both laugh while Billy looks confused.

 

Visit Lissa at scenes from a slow-moving life

 

NaNo Updates and Other Nonsense on Writing

 

I quit for a day and restart the next day. I suppose that's understandable. I have many of these instants last year as well and it always passes. I am writing on my computer and on a paper. I think it's not such a good plan. I am not very good at typing them in because my mind refuse to type what I have written and instead change things. Not always a bad thing but occasionally confusing when I don't know exactly where that piece of writing goes. I do keep a outline of the story but it changes.

I think I am at 20, 000 words or else my text software is wrong. In any case, it does not bother me much. What's word count anyway? I think it would be wiser not to bother with word count until the very end.

One tip or good advice that I have learned from last year or maybe this year, I can't remember, but one thing that I think works for me is whenever I started to complicate the story or if I add unnecessary storylines, I would remember this one thing - keep it simple.  It really works. Occasionally. I do trend to overcomplicate things. I don't recall where those words comes from but it is often helpful to me. It could be from those writing books that I've read and mostly forgotten.

The title of my novel, at least for now is call "Collide." It used to be called, "Only in my dreams" but that sounds sort of cheesy to me.  The original idea comes form this story.  Here's a short synopsis:

A boy (James) meets a girl (Kasha or K as she is known) in his dreams. Then he meets her in real life. They fall in love. They are separated and then united.  The story takes place during summer and winter because there is no spring or autumn due to some global disaster which I have not figure it out yet.  And some of it takes place inside dreams.

So what did I do instead of writing? I created a soundtrack for the novel, of cause. Why? Because I write with the music playing in the background sometimes. Here's a track listing so far:

Side A
01. Still dreaming  - Joe Yamada (instrumental)
02. I'll miss you till I meet you - Dar Williams
03. Put your arms around me - Texas
04. Something so right - Annie Lennox
05. Let me in - Save Ferris
06. Make you feel my love - Adele
07. Cold Enough to snow - Jennifer Warnes
08. Fall apart today - Schuyler Fisk
09. Never is a long time - Roxette
10. The last snowfall - Vienna Teng

Side B
01. Frozen summer - Remedios (instrumental)
02. If I'm saying nothing - Landon Pigg
03. Stay with me (guitar mix) - Erasure
04. Different seasons - Johnny Hates Jazz
05. I just don't think I'll ever get over you - Colin Hay
06. Before the evening steals the afternoon - Del Amitri
07. Collide - Howie Day
08. Only you - Joshua Radin
09. Blue skies - Landon Pigg
10. Small Happiness - Remedios (instrumental)

I hope those who are participating in NaNo are doing well. Best of luck to you!

 

Visit Lissa at scenes from a slow-moving life

 

Another Opportunity For Folks With Big Hearts

Holidays are around the corner, and I’ve noticed that people open their hearts to others this time of year. Especially I see that knitters and crocheters all over the internet keep their hands busy creating items to give away. But, you don’t have to be crafty to give … just creative. You can purchase handmade items from someone on Etsy, or talk a friend into making a handmade gift and you pay the shipping!

That’s what I’m told at Sharing Our Gifts. They have a special program going on right now, and the deadline is almost upon us, to make hats and mittens for women and children at the Lee Shore Center in Kenai, Alaska, which provides a safe haven for women and children escaping from domestic abuse and sexual assault. That sounds like a place that could use the warmth of our love.

The project in Alaska is the second project in an ambitious goal of 50 projects for 50 states. My friend Barbara, who was one of the main participants in Share A Square two years ago, is collecting these and needs them by November 25th.

No, I didn’t give you a lot of time on this one, but if you are crafty I bet you make the time. Or, you can buy a handmade gift from a crafter … you know they would be happy to make a sale. That’s my “good” for this Only The Good Friday.

What’s yours?

I hope y’all have a wonderful weekend. Please join these other fine folks who occasionally post their “good.”
RV Poetry; Candid Karina; All My Great, or Not So Great Adventures; Inside Mo’s Mind; Thorne’s World; Down River Drivel; Duward Discussion; Ramblings of an Unstable Mind; Insightful Nana; Newbie Lifeline; Everyday Tarot; West of Mars; Life’s Journey; Round Circle; Barbara’s Travels; Blog of Revelation; Desert Diva; Blogjem My Life As It Is

Related posts:

1. Only The Good Friday # 9: HAP
2. My Optimism is Challenged
3. In Emergencies, The Red Cross AND Facebook Are Good
4. I Knew That People Had Big Hearts
5. Helping Others To Dress For Success

Visit Shelly at This Eclectic Life

 

November is NaNoWriMo

Well, I kinda fell down on the job for NaBloPoMo, but I’m rockin’ n rollin’ with my annual noveling efforts for NaNoWriMo during the month of November.

After an agonizing month of worrying about the fact that I wasn’t excited about it this year, and that despite NaNo founding father’s advice to “not worry if you don’t have an idea; just write”, I was devastated by the wasteland of my personal creative landscape. It appeared barren beyond any desert and as far as the eye could see. The closer November first came, the more worried I got. My thoughts continually returned to last year’s NaNo Novel… 51K words of a projected 150K word novel that I hadn’t touched all year. Every character, scenario, story line or idea I had seemed to circle back and be a part of the unfinished ‘08 Novel.

I came to a decision. Despite the suggestion to start and complete a 50K novel with a complete story arc for NaNoWriMo, this is my time to write! This month and the daily word count goals and the permission I give myself to be self absorbed and totally immersed in writing seem to be the only way for me to maintain the self discipline to actually pound out a story.

Imagine my surprise when I dropped in to the NaNoWriMo site forums to discover that I was in good company with other rule breakers. I am an official Nano Rebel, (as attetested to by the badge). Hee hee!

When I wrote last year I was only about 20k in when I realized that it would be impossible to complete my story arc in 50k words at the rate I was going. My story was going to need a lot more words than that. So I began summarizing the story here and there, and writing scenes as they sort of needed to be written. I’d find myself slipping from summary to dialogue and prose and then back to summary. Writing this way got me to 51K, a NaNoWriMo “winner” by Nov. 31. I had a complete story arc, albeit one with a lot of HUGE holes!
This year it’s all about filling in those holes to the tune of the monthly goal of 50 thousand words, which breaks down to 1667 words per day. I started writing a bit late, between my cleavered typing finger (a story for another day- and no; you don’t want pictures!!) and the necessity of going through the manuscript and identifying the holes. I went to sleep this morning sometime after 3 AM having knocked out 3,048 brand new words, which is about 5k short of being on schedule, but I’m back to it today and tonight, and hoping to catch up in the next couple of days.

If any of you lovely bloggy peeps write novels or screenplays, you absolutely must get Scrivener, by Literature and Latte. It is the most phenominal writing program I have ever used, and it’s making it soooo simple for me to keep a word count of this year’s writing separate from the entire manuscript form last year. It has super cool meta data, you can make notes and links and stick index cards on a corkboard on a spilt screen, color coded labels and, and, and… it just rawks! Check it out!!

Okay. I gotta go. I’ve just spent over 500 words, and I don’t know if there exists a finite amount of them in me each day or not. Lawl! Wooo hooo!

Peace, out!

 

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Hope To Dream

 
Hello and welcome to Hope To Dream!

I am honored that you have taken the time to stop at such an important place for myself, and soon for others alike, as well as supporters of a very important topic.

I hope and pray that this blog will bring hope, encouragement, comfort, support and a reason to live to all of those who have suffered (and still might be) from abuse. NO ONE deserves such things to happen to them.

I will be adding my full story of child abuse and domestic violence in phases. Please check the sidebar link often for those updates.

Other plans for this blog are to include available resources for help, statistics, other survivor stories, as well as news events on child abuse and domestic violence.

If you have any thoughts and/or ideas for posts for this blog, please feel free to leave me a comment with the information. (ALL comments will be moderated on this blog.)

Thank you. And again...WELCOME to Hope to Dream!

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Voice for the Victims: LOVE is not abuse...

Did you know that October is National Domestic Violence Awareness month? Every year, men and women are recognized for their survival or remembered for losing their life to domestic violence. I AM one of those individuals.

For almost 4 years as an adult I was abused both physically and verbally. I was punched, kicked, choked, slapped, thrown across furniture and into walls…all resulting in not just bruises, but a broken foot, fractured right skull, and a crushed ear. And although I am now away from my abuser, I still suffer physically from old wounds.

Because of my abuser's continual threats to harm my life as well as my family, I have had to literally change my entire identity and relocate for protection. Life has not been easy, but I do my best to move forward and press on. Time does heal, but the memories will forever be there. It is what I do with those memories and experiences that help continually to heal my heart and my life.

I have taken extreme risks to share my own personal story by speaking out at live press conferences, participating in radio interviews, and even sharing my story with local and national newspapers and magazines (e.g. Washington Post, executive magazines, etc). Why? Because if my survival story can save the life of one man or woman, then it was well worth it.

It only took one person to stand up and say something to me, and that was a manager where I worked. He literally stepped in and saved my life. Since then, I have dedicated a large portion of my time speaking out against violence in hopes to help save lives of other men, women, and children who have suffered or are still going through, domestic violence.



Below is information and statistics on domestic violence. Current statistics show that domestic violence is not only continually on the rise every year, but violence against men (from women) is on the rise as well.

If you or someone you know is suffering from domestic violence, there is hope! People do care! (Not everyone will continually turn a blind eye for their own sake and reasons.)

STATISTICS:

• Men AND women are victims of domestic violence.
• Every year, domestic violence shelters turn away thousands of individuals and parents with children, because there is no capacity to house them.
• Almost 5.3 million intimate partner victimizations occur every year.
• Almost 2 million of those result in injuries and nearly 1300 deaths.
• Domestic violence is verbal and/or physical.

SIGNS OF ABUSE:

• Criticize or put down
• Ignore or put down your opinions and/or accomplishments
• Controlling
• Blames you and everyone else for their abusive behavior
• Accepts no fault
• Has unrealistic expectations
• Physically harms you and/or your children (hit, punch, kick, slap, etc)
• Calls you names and/or curses you and/or your children
• Extremely moody - Dr. Jekyl/Mr. Hyde

National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-SAFE
National Teen Dating Abuse Hotline: 1-866-331-9474

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Attention Writers for Young Adults

Get in Front of Top YA Editors and Agents with ONLY the First 250 Words of Your YA Novel!

Have a young adult novel—or a YA novel idea—tucked away for a rainy day? Are you putting off pitching your idea simply because you’re not sure how to pitch an agent? No problem! All you have to do is submit the first 250 words of your novel and you can win both exposure to editors, and a one-on-one chat with one of New York’s TOP literary agents Regina Brooks.

Regina Brooks is the founder of Serendipity Literary Agency and the author of Writing Great Books for Young Adults. Brooks has been instrumental at establishing and building the careers of many YA writers, including three-time National Book Award Honoree and Michael Printz Honoree Marilyn Nelson, as well as Sundee Frazier—a Coretta Scott King Award winner, an Oprah Book Pick and an Al Roker book club selection. As an agent, she is known for her ability to turn raw talent into successful authors.

ADDITIONALLY: The top 20 submissions will all be read by a panel of five judges comprised of top YA editors at Random House, HarperCollins, Harlequin, Sourcebooks and Penguin. All 20 will receive free autographed copies of Writing Great Books for Young Adults by Regina Brooks. Of the 20, they will pick the top five submissions and provide each author with commentary and a one year subscription to The Writer magazine. ONE Grand Prize Winner will have the opportunity to get feedback on a full YA manuscript and win a free 10-week writing course courtesy of the Gotham Writer’s Workshop.

Please submit all entries via the contest website at http://www.writingclasses.com/ContestPages/YAPitch.php. One entry per person; anyone age 13+ can apply. Open to the U.S. & Canada (void where prohibited). Entries for the YA Novel Discovery Contest will be accepted from 12:01am (ET) November 1 until 11:59pm (ET),

NOVEMBER IS NaNoWriMo In honor of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo.org)—an international event where aspiring novelists are encouraged to write an entire novel in 30 days—this contest is meant to encourage the aspiring YA author to get started on that novel by offering an incentive for completing the first 250 words.

So apply now! http://bit.ly/1PYGaN

JUDGING

YA literary agent Regina Brooks, along with editors at Sourcebooks, will read all of the entries and determine the top 20 submissions. These submissions will then be read by Dan Ehrenhaft, head Acquisitions Editor at Soucebooks Fire; Alisha Niehaus, Editor at Dial Books for Young Readers (Penguin); David Linker, Executive Editor at HarperCollins Children’s Books; Michele Burke, Editor at Knopf Books for Young Readers (Random House); and Evette Porter, Editor at Harlequin. These judges will whittle the top 20 down to four winners and a grand prize winner—all five will be provided commentary on their submissions.

Contributed by Callista at Callista's Ramblings