Inspiration

Fall Semester is finally over, and I’m already starting to dread the Spring Semester, but let’s not think about that. Now that I have the time to write, and I mean truly sit down and just do it and not thinking about anything else, or rushing so that I can get it over with and move on to some sort of assignment, self assigned or otherwise.

The subject according to the subject heading I picked is inspiration. So, I’ll start there, the inspiration for this post is that I just visited my Aunt Christine in the hospital today. Well, she’s not really my aunt, but I’ve adopted her. She's just had brain surgery to have a tumor removed. I watched her going through the past year as she prepared herself physically, mentally and spiritually for this surgery and I think I will take away from this time watching and being with her as a really inspirational rather than a scary experience (though it certainly was). After all of the stress and worry it was good to see her picking at her indigestible hospital food and great us with a tired but sweet smile.

I met my aunt not long after my family moved to California and my Mama and I were looking for a place to grow as writers. We found the Coffee House Writers Group and I was very pleased to join it. Christine was both the leader and organizer of the group and now she has definitely earned the title Fearless leader. She's officially one of the bravest people I've ever met. Forget my veteran Grandfather, cousins and Great Uncle, anyone can get drafted.

So, after I wrote my title (yes, sometimes I write a title before writing a post) I asked myself after I chose my title, (or my title chose me) what inspires me? Who inspires me? But most importantly: what does it or they inspire me to do or be?

 I thought of Christine and her poor head looking like something from a horror or graphic civil war film (which are pretty much the same thing) and Christine’s playful comment that she was going to be trying out for Frankenstein’s Monster’s Wife; although now that I think of it, one would be hard pressed to find someone casting for such a roll during Yuletide…

  She inspires me to be happy, to be brave, to write, to smile, to live, to love and above all to be me, especially during hard times.

Well, It's Friday...

I have nothing to write about really, I haven’t had much time to do much in the writing world this week. In fact it’s been all that I can do just to blog. I’ve been busy trying to get my Avon business going and tie the last few things with 4-H (God am I glad that this is my last year dealing with that crap. Don’t get me wrong, 4-H is a great concept, but there are some things about my group and county that need of some serious overhauling. It makes it difficult to be active, but I try anyway, ‘cause that’s who I am. So, next year, I won’t have to think about it anymore, because I’m done, that’s it, finito! Au revoir! Adieu! Their incompetence has finally driven me out. It’s over.) Wow, I guess my feelings are still potent when it comes to that particular issue. Anyways, I spent some time with that this week instead of writing. Yesterday I did go to a writer group meeting. I need to find a new one; this one just isn’t helpful anymore.

  Lots of love to all of you who read through this, I realize it resembles more of a temper tantrum than an end of the week report.

So here’s a music video called “Stranger than Fiction” by Five Finger Death Punch, I hope you enjoy it.

Weekly Report

Well, this week has been pretty good in my writing world. I got back into the swing of things despite my little break to go up to Sacramento. I tried to look up some agents who are known for dealing specifically with collections of short stories for the purpose of sending out query letters for my “A Slice of Life Death” and found that there really isn’t anyone like that out there, the collections that generally get published are by authors who have already been established in the writing world, in other words, my chances of my first published book being either one of my short story collections are slim to none. However, that is still good to know, even if it’s not good news.
This week I decided to enter a short story into the Orange County Fair, so I put my short story “Fairy Gardens” through a fine-toothed comb, and I am now satisfied that it is as perfect as it can possible be, and it’s all printed out, all nice and pretty and ready to go. For safeties sake, I’m going to be bringing it to The Coffee House Writer’s Group, and see if they have any helpful suggestions.
I’m still editing away at my novel “Survival” and have boosted up the number of chapters. I haven’t been adding information; I’ve just been splitting up the longer chapters up. The last time I blogged, for those of you out there who are keeping track (yea, I should be so lucky to have people that interested in my writing passion) I last said that I had about forty-one chapters, well, now I have forty-six. This might not sound like much of a change, but I’m happy. For some reason, even though I know nothing about the story has actually changed, just the bigger number makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something. Call me silly. I know I am!

Maggie Stuart

Maggie’s heart beat faster than the cycles her wheels made on the concrete as she sped through the parking lot of the shopping mall where her mom worked. She zigzagged through cars as an insane speed before she finally reached the front doors. She needed to get there before the bomb went off.
Her friends had told her not to piss off the drug lord, but she hadn’t seen another way to keep her boyfriend alive. Now she wished she hadn’t interfered.
The heads up about the bomb had come fifteen minutes ago from the lord himself. He called it his “final warning” – the “last scare” before he went for everything she has ever cared about until she begged for death, or took her own life, or ran.
Her car wheels screamed as she slammed on the brakes right in front of the mall doors. She’d get away in her mom’s car. They wouldn’t even go home, they’d just run. Grabbing her purse with the plane tickets, Maggie ran into the building.
Her sneakers squeaked on the waxed floor as she brought herself to an abrupt halt to check her watch, five minutes, there was no way she would get to security to warn them in time.
She whipped her head around, trying to find a solution to the problem.
An eternity wrapped up in a moment went by before she spotted it: the little red box. Rushing over she broke the protective covering with her elbow.
Maggie gasped from the pain. That probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do. Everything she did the past week was stupid come to think of it. But she had to do this. Taking one last gap she mumbled an apology and pulled the fire alarm at the shopping mall.

The Lion

Agnes cautiously approached the sleeping lions. The African sun beat down on her as she raised her camera. Others would have used the camera’s zoom from a safe distance, but the picture quality was never very good, and she wasn’t afraid of the lions.
The gathering of beasts were lying beneath the shadows of a small group of trees. They were all aware of Agnes’s presence and they weren’t concerned at all. She was obviously alone, having left her jeep a good fifty feet away and her baggy t-shirt made it more than a little clear that she wouldn’t be any kind of a good meal, humans didn’t taste very good anyways.
Finding the perfect angle she started taking pictures.
One lion yawned.
“Oh perfect,” she whispered snapping away.The true essence of the lion during the day: a sleepy fur ball with a mouthful of teeth.
The sun was beginning to set when she was done, drawing her hand across her sweating forehead she unclasped the water bottle off her leather belt and took a long drink.
Taking one last look at the pride, she raised her bottle in a salute.
“Thanks a lot my friends.” She took another swig.
Slinging her camera over her shoulder she headed back to the jeep, satisfied with her days work.

My Novel

Achievement
Yesterday I finally hit two hundred pages for my novel “Survival”. It was something that I never thought would happen at any point in the process of writing this story.

In the Beginning
It started out as a little imaginary life of four friends knocking around in New York City, which came to me one time as I was day dreaming, as we storytellers are prone to do. It didn’t have a plot, story line or anything else that made it stand out as something worth continuing. A large number of my stories came from daydreaming, and to sort out the good and the bad and the ugly, I tend to stick with the ones that have some sort of direction when I first dream them up, rather than having to start with almost nothing, and having nowhere to go. This daydream however, I remember was a particularly lengthy one, and even though there was no plot or direction, I couldn’t find a good excuse to pass it up, because by the time my daydreaming session was over, I had completely lost my heart and soul to these characters.
I hesitated however, I didn’t rush over to the notepad, or to my laptop as many writers claim to do right after they finish their astounding dream that was the start of a story that earned them $10 million overnight. No, I was nervous, the thought of taking the time to write down something that I the creator, had absolutely no idea, or a whisper of an idea of where this tale would lead, was frightening. I was an idiot. To excuse my imbecility, I had only written two books, and had never had experienced the phenomena of a story taking a life of its own, with little or no encouragement by us supposed “artists”. I should have shown some back bone and gotten started right away, and let it take me where it was going to take me. But I didn’t. Which brings up the question, if I had started right away, would it have turned into the story that it has become now? Would it have been better, or worse? We shall never know, but I can honestly say that I have absolutely no complaints about this manuscript, though it is far from being finished, I have no complaints as of yet. (I’m sure, once I reach the editing stage, my state of mind will be quite different.)
Once I finally wrote down all that my daydream had shown me, and a little bit more, (like I mentioned earlier, manuscripts tend to take on a life of their own once you let them take control.) However, I still had no plot, or direction.

A Direction
I had a friend whom I had known for a few months, and we had discovered the “twilight” books together, and enjoyed the first three and had gone to see the first movie together. We were lounging in my room, and I mentioned that I had just finished writing a book. Before I could say anything more about it, she said, “Let me guess, it’s a vampire book.” Which prompted me to say, it wasn’t, in fact, it was a small collection of animal stories for children. While the pause after that was slightly awkward, the thought came to me: Why not write a vampire story? Before my friend left for the day, I had already made up my mind that I wouldn’t begin a new story; I would just change my unformed story into my own vampire tale.

The Challenge
Then the fourth and final “twilight” book came out, and I was thoroughly disappointed, as I believe a number of people were. “I could have written a much better ending than that.” I thought to myself. It wasn’t so much the ending that bothered me either, it was the fact that the characters that I had grown so fond of in that love tale, changed in the final book. They did things that I felt were seriously out of character, and there were a number of unanswered questions in the story. The “twilight” magic that had entranced me had been brutally murdered, it was sad really. Such a promising story curled up and dried like leaves on a tree. But it taught me a lesson, I needed to ask more questions when I write, make double sure that all the subplots, as well as the main plot, are addressed. It was then that I challenged myself, though it was entirely subconscious at the time, that my vampire tale would be better than all “twilight” series books. Am I crazy? You bet.

The Settling
After my decision, subconscious as it was, I was still without a plot for my lovable characters, though I had forced the metamorphoses of one character from human to vampire (much to her displeasure I might add.) I let the story sit, unable to think past those first two chapters. There were times, after I had let it sit for some time, I considered deleting the darn thing and starting over again, or just deleting it and letting it die into nonexistence. A couple times I even sat down with the intention of just that, but then I would read a bit of it, just to see if there was something worth salvaging for another story, and I would find that it was all worth saving. Everything was good. You could say that each time I considered braking up; I would fall in love all over again.
People have this notion that there is only one type of creative writing process. That you must “strike while the iron is hot” or take the chance of losing that inspirational moment, and sometimes, yes, that is the case. But not in this case, the writing process for this tale started really slowly. The storyteller in me knew instinctually that if I left it alone, my subconscious mind would work on the story and would send my conscious mind a mental telegram when it was ready. But, as I mentioned before, I didn’t leave it alone, I kept going back, hoping that my iron would get hot this time, which probably made the entire process take longer than it probably would have, if my conscious mind had just stopped poking at my subconscious mind at let it work on its own without any interruptions. My excuse for this is, as I mentioned before, my inexperience in writing stories as a whole. I had only ever had the “strike the iron while it’s hot” kind of inspiration at this point in time. But eventually, my conscious mind got the message, and I left my story to settle while I concentrated on other immediate things: like moving across the country….

The Plot
One day it happened, it was after my mom and I had gone to a new writer’s group meeting, called Coffee House Writers Group. The people seemed nice, and I was thinking of maybe joining along with my mom; and if I did join: which story would I bring? At first I thought I’d bring one of my finished tales, and see if I could get any helpful hints to finish it up. Then all of a sudden, I got my telegram from my subconscious mind. It had come up with a plot, but it needed my conscious mind to ask more questions to fill in the little pot holes (or more accurately: “plot” holes), if it was ever going to be a complete story and beat the cause of one of the biggest vampire crazes of all time…