My Affair With Apostraphes and Commas

Why do I write?

I write because I dream in vivid colors, swimming in the new, the odd, and the real. I write because I can feel and see things through my artist eyes that cannot be expressed in any other way than the power of feelings conveyed by words.

There is an essential part of me that longs for communication and understanding on a deep level. I want to be understood. I want to share my hopes, my visions of the beauty, the strange, and the twistedly weird.

Before my mental illness, I wrote for entertainment and for the experience of living in another world, time, and space for a few hours at a time. I wrote because I loved reading it over and over, caught up in stories and ideas that compelled and pulled at me, begging to be set down.

Now I write to purge the thoughts that plague me. The thoughts come in endless streams, disjointed yet related. I write in long run-on sentences, using too many commas because it's where I stop to breathe, but not where the thought ends. I write in incomplete sentences. Because impact.

I write because I enjoy finding connections and seeing where they lead, so the words 'and', 'but' and 'therefore' find their way into my typing more often than they should.

As I type there is a freedom, an escape from the cage that is now my head. Feelings escape and there is a lightness, a movement that I cannot find in the daily activities that I now have to force myself to do.

There is much lost in the translation from mind to fingers. My pinky is in love with that apostraphe and will possessify or contract anything that ends in S unless I enforce extreme discipline or go back and proof read. Not once, not twice, but sometimes ten times over. Its turns to it's whether I want it to or not. That finger demands to be used. That finger has a mind of it's own and I lack in catching all the errors.

But it is sometimes the errors that make writing what it is. Error is as much a part of me as is the blood flowing through my veins. It may not stain the page rust colored when 'there' comes out instead of 'their' or 'they're' - even though I *do* know the difference.  But the flaw is stil there, innate, beautiful in its own way. Annoying in its constancy.

Unfinished thoughts and words leak in as well. Words that have no meaning. The word Bear appears on the screen when I meant Table because the logic and intellect that once managed such things is damaged.

I write because imperfections must come out, whether in poetry or discourse. Thoughts rot and canker, spoiling everything around them when left to simmer in a rage unexpressed.

Words are cathartic, powerful emotions that I cannot deal with when bouncing inside my head from ear to ear, thought to thought, playing on the tides of my chemical imbalances like dolphins on the wake of a speedboat. Words keep me awake at night until I let them out.

I write because I want to be heard.


Thank you, Chuck Wendig, for this week's writing prompt. :)

Writing Prompt Wednesdays: Haiku

My mistake, it's Feb 1, 2013. Ooops.

Writing Prompt Wednesday. This week the prompt is from Chuck Wendig's Feb 3, 2013 blog challenge. There are a lot of great submissions there, I recommend checking it out.

I'm just doing my thing to the beat of my own erratic drummer, so I wrote mine today.

For a list of the writing prompts I share, please see my Writing Prompt page :) 

A story in three Haiku:

Conversations lost.
Phasing in and phasing out:
Confusing.

To have some control:
The one goal of my lifetime.
Yet I phase.

To shift time and life,
My lonely gift of travel.
I am nine.


Background: My daughter cannot follow conversations. A typical conversation with her is something like: 
12yo: "Hey, I think you'd really love this book."
9yo: "Why? Because you're allergic to cotton?"
12yo: "Why do I even talk to you?"

I decided she must shift through dimensions. So these haiku were about trying to see it through her eyes. I think it'd make a fabulous story if I can figure out some great powers and things going on that cause it to happen. 

Edit: Wow, boy did I do this wrong. Not only can I not read dates properly, I got the haiku syllable count wrong, too. It was supposed to be 5/7/5. Well. I'm leaving it as is for now, but doing a might powerful /facepalm.

Writing Prompt Wenesday: Breaking the Rules

The rules I chose to break:
* unattributed dialogue is BAD
* looking in the mirror to describe a character is soooo overused and dumb.
* using cliches is a no-no. Can't you think of anything original?
* white-room syndrome. K, pick between this one and cliche for which one I broke well, and which one not so much.

This is 350 words that could be an interesting story seed, I think.

For a list of the writing prompts I share, please see my Writing Prompt page :)


Fishing for Souls

“Will she manage?”

“She may not think so, but I have no doubt.”

“I do not share your faith. She is mortal.”

“For the moment, yes. Do you plan to actively oppose her?”

“I am tempted, just to prove you wrong.”

“Ah, then this will be interesting.”

***

Mirelle opened her eyes and looked around, feeling out of place and time. Her heart was pounding and her fists were clenched around the downy pillow. Pricks of feathers poked through the material and scratched against the callused palms of her hands.

Taking a deep breath, she sat up. Waking into the dimly lit room was little relief from the skittery shadows that had been chasing her through her dreams. Light peeked through the bent metal blinds, afraid of entering her room fully.

She needed to get up, she could feel it. A prickle between her shoulder blades nagged at her as she stood amidst the discarded clothing littering her floor. Something was watching her. Turning, she caught the reflection of her hair in the mirror across the room. It hung above her dresser at the perfect height to mock her attempts to tame the unruly locks. An ugly color, an ugly shape, always ending up in her eyes just when she needed to focus. The reflection smirked.

Setting her mouth, Mirelle picked up a discarded shoe and hurled it at the mirror. The light hiding behind her blinds flared as the mirror cracked. Now there were hundreds of hazel eyes staring back at her. Not all blinking at the same time. Mirelle grabbed the other shoe and crossed the room, slamming it against the glass with as much force as she could muster.

Shards of glass fell like crystal tears onto the top of her dresser and bounced down onto the floor. One caught and held a ray of light, glinting like a star. Mirelle picked it up, the sharp edge biting into the skin of her finger and felt power fill her as her blood covered the edge of the glass.

She had work to do, and the mirror was merely a distraction.

Blog Format

I'm debating whether or not to have a page on this blog for writing prompts.

For now, my solution is to post the flash fiction I've done that I don't mind sharing with the world as their own posts on the main blog. They're interspersed between March and April. The Writing Prompt tab has links to them. I'm going to try this out, I guess, and see how it goes. If it doesn't work, I guess I can always reformat again. I don't even know if there's an audience for this or not, so... I guess you never know until you try, right? So there's a little tab up there in the black bar that says "writing prompts". It's new. Hopefully the links work... I'm testing it to make sure.

On that line of thinking, I could have pages for artwork, caricatures, etc, too. I'm not sure that's appropriate or not. Hmm. I will play around and think on it. If anyone reads this and has an opinion, by all means share.  :)

Writing Prompt Wednesday - The Circle of Life

 

This one was a chance to let my morbid show. So I did. Thought up a plot, a story, some characters that wanted to have an adventure, and killed them off at the very beginning before their story could even get started. Is it really my fault, though? They wandered where they shouldn't, and had been warned of the woods.

For a list of the writing prompts I share, please see my Writing Prompt page :)

Writing Prompt Wednesdays - Lunacy

Belief: Bathing in cold water would make you insane

This episode of Writing Excuses talked about some crazy Victorian ideas - like how women were not allowed to learn knitting because it would cause their brains to overheat. So I looked some real reasons people were put in sanitoriums way back when. Bathing in cold water is one of those ideas I decided to treat as fact for this submission.

For a list of the writing prompts I share, please see my Writing Prompt page :)

Writing Prompt Wednesday - Finishing

The Writing Excuses team is fabulous. I love them oh so very much.

For a list of the writing prompts I share, please see my Writing Prompt page :)

Writing Prompt Wednesday - Random Aspect Generator

Writing Prompts

Due 3/1/13: This week I decided to take the Chuck Wendig writing challenge with a random number generator and a list. My results: erotic fairy tale in a mall with a puzzle-box. 

For the record, I don't usually read or write erotica, so this is waaaaay outside my comfort zone. So I made good use of metaphors.  

For a list of the writing prompts I share, please see my Writing Prompt page :)

LTUE report

Life The Universe & Everything 31 is a writing conference in Provo, Utah. Very affordable for a three-day conference. No, seriously. $30 for a three-day conference is a FARGAIN BARGAIN, people!! Writers such as David Farland/Wolverton, L.E. Modesitt, Howard Taylor, Larry Correia, Megan Whalen Turner, and Rachel Ann Nunes were there on the writing panels.

From 9 a.m. to 7pm for three days I filled my brain to capacity listening to panels and taking notes. My notes look something like this:

My sketchbook filled up on Thursday, so Friday I resorted to an actual notebook.  With lines. (blech.) Then I visited Carter Reid's booth. Not only does he do the funnest zombie web-comic ever, but he sells sketchbooks! Total lifesaver. He autographed and sketched in my brand-spanking-new zombie sketchbook as well as drawing me a little zombie-bust when he autographed "Space Eldritch." Can I geek out about this too much? I think not. (Yup, total fan-girl...)

So after I got a new sketchbook, my notes looked like THIS: (no lines!)

I stayed at the hotel which was very nice on the gas budget, and I was sharing the room with a good friend as well! How awesome is that? My biggest commute consisted of walking a block to find dinner one night :) Yummy little pizza spot in one direction, a Chinese restaurant in the other direction - who fed us so much we had two meals of leftovers - and a little hole-in-the-wall sandwich shop called Sammy's that is to-die-for. Sooooo good.

So I geeked-out first at Carter Reid. And then I geeked out at Howard Tayler - can't be helped, he's awesome - over the calendar. He sketched a mini-Schlock-in-a-mug for me. And oh my goodness, the squeals of joy when my 12 yr old saw it. :) And a surprise gift from a friend? A Tagon's Tough's t-shirt. Can you say comfy? I can. Yep. Good stuff right there. If you don't listen to Writing Excuses and you want to be a writer, get over there and download those podcasts. Right now.

I met a lot of great people, picked an editor's brain, and probably played fan-girl too much to some of the people I twitter-stalk and admire.

I went to Sandra Tayler's panel on Thursday, which I loved. She has typed up her notes from her presentation. Go read them! This presentation really hit home for me, because I struggle with finding the time - or feeling guilty for taking the time - to be creative. Actually, just read her blog, period. She is inspiring and full of all kinds of wisdom. It was an absolute honor to meet her in person. Her book "Cobble Stones" from her blog is wonderful.

Who Am I?

self-portrait, 2006

Today's Writing Prompt: Who Am I?
(Snippets from an essay I wrote when I wasn't writing my novel.)

From a physical standpoint, I'm not sure I can say there's anything markedly different about myself from anyone else. Not my hair, my eyes, my height, or my somewhat lumpy feminine shape. I am told all the time that people have met my twin somewhere. Not even my name is unique. Christine van Soolen is also my cousin-in-law who lives a few states over, as well as a murder victim in some crime novel. (Although fair warning: If you address me as, “Christine,” I’ll assume that either I'm in trouble or that you're talking to the lurking shadow behind me. Careful there, my shadow is a dragon.)

So who am I? I am dreams, wishes, and stars on a summer night. I am laughter, compassion, games, and wisdom. I am giggles, secrets, whispers, and books stuffed on a shelf. I am busy, bloody, grumpy, overwhelmed, frustrated, and vulnerable. I am an unending desire for chocolate and a need to hit something. I am love, friendship, motherhood, patience, hugs, and kisses on the cheek. I am clutter, spattered paint, and smudged charcoal. I am she who listens to wind, paints the clouds, and converses with trees. I am strange, weird, hard to understand, opinionated, and bossy. I am words overflowing, ideas refusing to be ignored, stories wishing to be told with bright colors.

I am everything and nothing. I am enough.

First Drafts

Oh my goodness, I'm going to do it again. Another post about writing, and writing groups. I couldn't help it, though. Robison Wells (@robisonwells) tweeted this gem this morning: "In the first draft, the ghosts just visit Bob Cratchit; tell him he's had a wonderful life." And all of a sudden I could hear all of the various responses in the voices of people in my writing groups.

Writing Groups

Pretend for a moment that you want to be an author. To do that, you need to have written something. And for that thing you've written to get polished and pretty and understandable, it needs to be seen by someone other than you. That way you can fix the things you don't know are broken. One of the ways to do this is to join a writing group where you chop your newly written precious into chapter sized chunks and then submit them for critiques one week at a time.

Linkfest for Writing Tips

I have been wrapped up in writing a novel. It's not anything that's going to change lives or become a literary classical staple a hundred years from now. Nope, it's a soft sci-fi action/romance because that's what I enjoy reading best of all. And darnit, I got tired of waiting for another author to write it. My ESP wasn't broadcasting well enough, I guess.

Writing Prompt Tuesday

I've been listening to Writing Excuses for a while now. Brandon, Dan, Howard, and Mary may not know it, but they have helped me immensely. That being said, I've taken the last few weeks off from working on my story because I've hit a fear point. And I haven't written anything. I've done a lot of thinking, which I know is still good, but I haven't written. (Do blog posts count?? I'm not sure they do.) But today when I heard the "You're out of excuses, now go write!" I decided to do just that.

Writing Excuses 4.9: Take an absurd 19th century folk belief, treat it as absolute fact, and write a story hinging on that principle. (and I really, really, really hope they don't get mad at me for making a graphic based on their prompts... I should probably ask...)

One Plus One is Three??

Some of you know that I’m writing a novel. The fun thing about writing a novel is the asking of questions and then figuring out the answers. What if hand-guns could shoot pulses of sound? What if a person’s skin and eye color were direct reflections of the exact location in which they were born? Can you imagine what all those babies born in hospitals would look like? That could have an impact on a society that cares about exterior color or maybe they’d just adapt and pregnant women would go on an exodus hoping that the eye color would match this sea or that sky. Except maybe it didn’t always work that way and maybe it was the hair that turned blue. Or the skin. All kinds of things could go crazily wrong with this, which is great!

Writing Prompt Tuesday

Hey, two weeks in a row, I'm doing something right.

Again, I did not come up with these prompts myself, if you want to hear the actual episode, check it out at Writing Excuses.com.

I did however try to write for this prompt, but I don't think I actually followed the instructions. (edit: Removed from LiveJournal, pending update to this blog with spot for Writing Prompts.)

Writing Prompt Wednesday

Sometimes I need a kick in the pants to jump-start my brain. Today I tried this. (Note, I do not come up with these prompts, the guys over at Writing Excuses podcast do. And they are awesome and helpful and funny, and I highly suggest listening to them!

Click the pic to go to Writing Excuses website for this episode :)

(edit: removed from LiveJournal pending update to this blog.)

I suppose to be fair, I should use prompts from other podcasts, but I really love the Writing Excuses team.