Why do I do this?

I did not finish my novel during November, and, in fact, I still have not finished it. I want to, but every time I open it to write, I just start to feel sick to my stomach and ashamed I let myself down.

The reason I didn't finish? Because I'm a coward with low self-esteem. I post tons of things on Facebook, from song lyrics to rants to pictures of puppies, you name it. So I thought, hey, I'll post a tiny piece of my story, what could go wrong? The best thing that could have happened would have been to get a like from all of my friends, and have it shared around, and boom. Motivation to finish. What happened, you ask? Nothing. Nobody liked it, my aunt posted a comment and so did my mom. I didn't come out and say that it was something I wrote, so I'm probably just being super paranoid and imagining no one likes my writing, but then no one will probably even read this so I don't even know what to think.

The place I work at just wears on my soul and makes me depressed and angry and self-conscious, and did I mention angry? If you want a job that makes you feel completely inferior and makes you believe yourself a fuck-up, I highly suggest working in a corporately owned print and retail shop. (And I am, of course, being sarcastic. If you value your soul, stay away from retail.)

I don't care about fame or fortune, really, I just want to be able to make a living doing something I'm passionate about. They say "Find a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life." Well, someone make theatre something more than a hobby for people here in St Louis, and I'll never have to work a day in my life again. Or, someone help give me the courage to leave this place and take a chance for once in my life.

Bad timing.

Second week of NaNoWriMo, and I've got writer's block. Or, did, until about 3 am, when I had to go to sleep. Luckily, my moment of clarity has given me motivation, now all I need is the time to write. This is when I'd love to use all of my 48 sick hours to finish this novel. Also, a two week vacation from work would not be a bad thing, either.

Wish I could write more, but I've spent my lunch distracted by pictures of adorable animals (Go ahead, waste your life away) Off to work I go. *insert 7 Dwarves theme here*

This is it!

NaNoWriMo is here.

....

......

.......

.....

....

AAAAAAAUGHHHHHHHHHHHH!

I spent the last month preparing myself for this, working on extending a script for a fifteen minute long movie into a full-fledged novel and getting up the guts to just write and get out 50,000 words in a month.

So it's November 1st, I have almost enough written to be on schedule for today and maaybbeee tomorrow, and guess what happens to me? I get all hyped up on Halloween candy, giggly at work, and now I have all these new ideas that are making me completely re-think my original plan...Augh, so frustrating!

I'm not backing out of NaNoWriMo, but my new challenge, on top of writing 50,000 words in a month's time, is to write 50,000 words that go together in a structured plot with fully developed characters and ideas and settings and, just fucking...AAUUGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

.....This is when I need a coffee mug or something that says "Keep Calm and Write On!" Perhaps I'll invest in one today.....

....This might help. Or might cause me to freak out even more. Who knows?

Found it!

So my last post was about motivation, and the other day I found it. 

Boyfriend and I decided to go to our favorite Chinese place for dinner and then to watch some our shows so we would't be way behind.

I was telling Boyfriend about my lack of motivation, and how I only feel like writing when I'm at work and it's busy. And he was telling me he hopes I find it before the week is up, and then we continued watching our shows.

I didn't open either of the fortune cookies that night, but the next night
I was over at his house and I saw one of them laying on the table in front of me, and I was curious to see how weird or unimaginative the fortune would be.

So I opened it and this is what I read:

.....And I was speechless. I must have made some sort of weird guttural sound or something  because Boyfriend looked over and I showed him what it said.
His response was to open his eyes super wide, while saying "It knoooows!"

So, the moral of the story is, when you lack motivation, don't give up, but don't do too much, because it seems that when you stop looking and act normal, what you're looking for finds you.

Where is my motivation?

I have all of these ideas for the novel. I write them down in brief notes for myself, usually because I'm working and I cannot elaborate on them at the particular moment when the idea hits.

...So my issue is that, when I get off work I have every intention of elaborating on the ideas I had throughout the day, but somewhere between getting in my car and arriving at home, I lose the motivation to write. It's strange, because I thought I'd be so much more inspired to write when I'm at home, on my own computer and in my own room. As it turns out, the majority of my ideas and motivation have come when I'm working. It's a bit ironic that the one place and time I cannot sit down and write anything for longer than a half an hour is the place and time when I want to do all my writing.

Fooooor example, I'm working right now, and I have nothing to do because it is very slow in the store right now. Here I am, writing about writing, but I know as soon as I get a decent idea for the story and begin to type it up in great detail, it will get busy. Then, by the time it slows down it'll be time for me to leave and I'll go home, open up my Google Drive and sit there staring at the screen until I go to a different website and play games or watch something on Netflix.

It's scary, because NaNoWriMo starts in eight days. EIGHT DAYS. I have enough written to upload on the first day and still be on schedule but I'd like to be ahead so I can keep motivated.

MOTIVATION,WHERE ARE YOU AND WHY ARE YOU BETRAYING ME?!

Novel Idea!

So I didn't talk about what my novel will be about in the last post. I got bored of typing, and hoped that my night would end up as a social outing, though I always get my hopes up for them to be dashed away.

Anyway, my story is going to be an adaptation from a script for a short film that I wrote for a class a couple of years ago. It follows a girl named Skylar and her little group of friends. She is a 24 year old graphic designer trying to move on with her life after a very difficult breakup. Her close friends are there to help her, specifically Teresa, who is her best friend. I'll elaborate on the breakup, because the relationship preceding it is the backbone of the story. Skylar was with a guy named Riley James (RJ) for nearly four years, and she had known him 3 years before they dated. They were engaged for a short time before he decided to leave. It was a very sudden decision, and when I say sudden, I mean he decided to leave and an hour later, he was gone, no planning, no explanation, just a quick "Don't follow me, don't contact me," to Skylar as he was driving away. For this reason, and even before he left, Teresa hated RJ...I'm going to say the reason is that she was jealous of their relationship.

So the story takes place 2 years after RJ left and Skylar still struggles with him being gone, but she does her best not to show it...Until she starts having nightmares involving RJ and she has random visions of him when she's awake. She tells her friends, but they just think she needs more sleep and less stress, but she's convinced otherwise. She thinks her "visions" of him when she's awake is actually him but she doesn't know why he won't just talk to her and why he just disappears after she looks away, or blinks or anything like that.

So that's the basic outline of the story. There's a twist, but if I gave it away, then it wouldn't be very much fun to read. I'm playing around with some different ideas about how i want to write it. I've started writing it from Skylar's perspective, but I may either add others' perspectives to go along with hers, or just switch to third person omniscient. We shall see.

Trying!

I've been trying to find more inspiration and motivation to really start writing my novel for NaNoWriMo. Slowly, but surely, it's been working.

The novel I'm writing is an adaptation of the first script I ever wrote. The idea for it came to me when I was under pressure to come up with a plot for an assignment to write a script. I seem to work well under pressure, which is good for me. The challenge of NaNoWriMo means that I'll be under pressure and that can be when inspiration strikes.

I'm trying to log everything I do outside of work, and sometimes while at work. This could help me stay motivated and also find inspiration and ideas for the novel.

Since I haven't really started writing, I guess I don't have much to log here. I didn't have any strange dreams or occurrences that would pertain to my story and I don't feel like elaborating on the plot or characters today. Game 7 of the NLCS is on, and I really want the Cardinals to win, so that is taking up most of my attention at the moment.

More about the novel's progress and about writing later. 

Refresh

It has been over a year and a half since I have posted anything on this blog. The last post was at a turning point in my life. I was going through change, slowly settling back into living at home and not going back to school and losing friends and gaining friends, as well as an ever-changing relationship taking over my mind.

Then I met someone else. Someone who lives close to me, who has so many of the same interests, but is different enough that we don't get bored. He inspires me and angers me and makes me happy and gets me so frustrated and keeps me smiling. All of these things is what makes me glad that one night I chose not to be a coward and a shut in.

Anyway, though I have found a love I'd like to keep, I still have been having issues revolving around settling and becoming a more grown up me. I am looking for my own place, which is not easy. When I'm not working or catching up on all the television shows I watch, I'm thinking about how different my life is than what I pictured it'd be. I accomplished quite a bit when I was in school, but for what? I work in a retail setting, printing copies and faxing and producing posters and other print-like stuff. I'd feel better about the job if we were allowed to do the creation part, but my company is backwards and claims to be technologically forward, when we are stuck about 5 years in the past. (We've only just begun to upgrade to Windows 7 and yet people can print documents straight from Google Drive.) I was meant to let out my creativity, to create, to act, to write and read and express myself. My job is a place that corrupts my creativity, suppresses it, even. I love the people I work with, though, that is my dilemma. Making money isn't a bad thing, either.

So here I sit, in a recliner, bored, and at a loss as to where to go with my next project. I decided a couple weeks ago to try my hand at writing a novel in a month...aka participating in NaNoWriMo. Well, November is NaNoWriMo and I'm stuck with my idea. I have no idea where to go with it, or how to put it all together and I'm chickening out. I thought maybe writing a blog about writing might help be stay motivated and courageous in the next few weeks to come, and if I don't finish in a month, then it'll keep me motivated as I try to finish the novel I start.

This is just my introductory post to say that the subject of the blog posts of the future will be different. Or they might just be me bitching about my life and how unsettled I am and restless it makes me. Who knows, but I'll try to keep it about writing. 

But for now, I leave you. 

but there's still tomorrow.

LAST TRAIN HOME

by the Lostprophets

One! Two! Three!

To every broken heart in here

Love was once a part, but now it's disappeared

She told me that it's all part of the choices that you make

Even when you think you're right

You have to give to take

But there's still tomorrow

Forget the sorrow

And I can be on the last train home

Watch it pass the day

As it fades away

No more time to care

No more time, today

But we sing

If we're going nowhere

Yeah we sing

If it's not enough

And we sing

Sing without a reason

To ever fall in love

I wonder if you're listening

Picking up on the signals

Sent back from within

Sometimes it feels like 

I don't really know what's going on

Time and time again it seems like 

Everything is wrong in here

But there's still tomorrow

Forget the sorrow

And I can be on the last train home

Watch it pass the day

As it fades away

No more time to care

No more time, today

But we sing

If we're going nowhere

Yeah we sing

If it's not enough

And we sing

Sing without a reason

To ever fall in love

But we sing if we're going nowhere

Yeah we sing if it's not enough

And we sing

Sing without a reason to ever fall in love

But we sing

If we're going nowhere

Yeah we sing

If it's not enough

And we sing

Sing with out a reason to never fall in love

To never fall in love again

i scream profanities sometimes.

Fuckin' what the motherfucking fuck fuckin' fuck fuck?

......I'm not really sure that question, if it even is a question, is relevent or has any sort of meaning, but I just felt like a slew of obscenity was necessary.

I think I'm in love with Jesse Eisenberg. Upside: We'd probably have a lot in common and be at least good friends. Downside: His celebrity status, and the fact that he lives in New York City makes it really fucking difficult to even have hope for even a "celebrity sighting" to happen.

I'm watching the Education of Charlie Banks and it's really good. Never before have I seen Jason Ritter as someone who could be intimidating, but his character and the way he carries him is really effing scary. I hope he doesn't end up beating the shit out of Jesse's character. That would make me sad. The genre of the movie is drama, however, and I feel it might be inevitable. He's already stolen the girl from Charlie.

I'm not entirely sure why I feel crappy right now. I had a great night last night catching up with an old friend. I guess it ended up bringing back memories of how things used to be and now I miss Quincy way more than I already did.

It might also be a feeling of a rift starting again between me and someone very important to me. I'd like to feel free to text him as often as I do some of my other friends, but this case is special and I feel like if I do that, I will be suffocating him. He never talks to me and I don't know if he feels the same way I do and we're both letting fear get the better of us...In some way, I hope that's the case, because if it's frustrating him as much as it's frustrating me, then one of us will break soon and things could get better. Or they could be broken forever.

Or if neither of us breaks and talks, then will we both just sit on the sidelines and let it all fall away again? I'd like to think I would not let that happen again, but I cannot say the same for what he'd do. That singular question is what keeps me up every night: What would he do? What will he do? Does he think about it like I do?

I need to stop worrying about other people's thoughts and whether I cross them. I need to just trust that I do, though, that's difficult when I don't have any proof. Then again, I don't text or call anyone right as they cross my mind or every time they do. If I did, I would be a very suffocating person and they would not want me to have them cross my mind.

Insecurities: BE GONE!

(If only it were that easy.)

Sum 41's new single sounds great. It's like a mix between the Does This Look Infected? and Chuck eras. Chuck is my favorite Sum album. I'm listening to it now, as I cannot watch a movie and type at the same time. (Netflix is awesome, though makes multi-tasking on the computer difficult.)

if only characters were real.

...Why is Alistair just a character in a video game? He should be real.

Love. Love. Love. Love.

I love the game for automatically taking this screenshot.

I want my own Alistair. Right now.

questions.

It's nights like the last two, when my insomnia gets the better of me and I'm left to sit awake and wonder:

Do you think about me as much as I think about you?

Do you miss me like I miss you?

If your answers are yes, why don't you just tell me how you feel?

What are you so afraid of? Can I help?

I'm afraid, too. I thought that much has been obvious. 

...Scared that if I tell you how I feel, you'll run. I lost you once, I found out I can survive without you and your friendship, but then you came back and now I'm not sure I could do it again. 

...If I ran or forced myself to move on (like last time) would you chase? Would you do everything in your power to get me back? 

I don't know the answers to these questions and that's what bothers me. Though they may seem like a way of rushing things, I'm not asking for much, really.

Think about it...

Friends let each other know when one is missed.

Friends tell each other how they feel about just about anything.

Friends tell each other when they cross the other's mind.

True friends to everything in their power not to lose what they have.

...I'm not asking to rush to any decisions about "us" or whatever, just to have my friend back. Like how it used to be, only even better. 

Anything deeper than that can wait, I just want a more consistent friendship. Don't be afraid to talk to me.

...Most important question: Why don't you talk to me when I'm not in town? Why do you only respond to a select few things I send you?

...Makes me feel rejected and forgotten. You mean a lot to me, and if I mean nothing I need to know so I can attempt to salvage what's left of me and move on.

what do your elf eyes see?

Insomnia strikes again. I'm in a Lord of the Rings sort of mood right now, so I've been looking up random LotR stuff and decided I quite enjoyed this progression of photos:

I think Boromir's facpalm is one of the most epic one's I've seen.

And now...LotR picture spam, huzzah!

 Love. Farimir. Love.

 My Lovies, Merry and Pippin.

One ring to rule them all....

Hobbitses!

This picture is bad ass.

I *heart* Legolas.

Eowyn is amazing.

Tee hee!

Oh, memes.

They turned northeast in order to do so. 

Chill out, dude.

ode to old school avril.

I'm With You by Avril Lavigne

Im standing on the bridge

Im waiting on the dark

I thought that you'd be here

by now

Ther's nothing but the rain

no foot steps on the ground

Im listening but ther's 

no sound

Isn't anyone trying to find me

Won't somebody come take me home

it's a damn cold night

Trying to figure out this life

Won't you take me by the hand

Take me somewhere new

I don't know who you are but I

Im with you

Im with you

Im looking for a place

Im sarching for a face

Is anybody here 

I know

Cause nothing's going right

And everything's a mess

And no one likes to be

alone

Isn't anyone trying to find me

Won't somebody come take me home

It's a damn cold night

Trying to figure out this life

Won't you take me by the hand

Take me somewhere new

I don't know who you are

But I 

Im with you 

Im with you

Oh

Why is every thing so confusing?

Maybe Im just out of my mind

Yeah yeah yeah...

It's a damn cold night

Trying to figure out this life

Won't you take me by the hand 

Take me somewhere new

I don't Know Who You are

But I 

Im with you

Im with you

Take me by the hand 

Take me somewhere new

I don't Know Who You are

But I 

Im with you

Im with you

Take me by the hand 

Take me somewhere new

I don't Know Who You are

But I 

Im with you

Im with you

Avril is perfect for my angsty moods. didn't realize that until last weekend. Girl power, I suppose. Not in a sharing sort of mood, save for posting these lyrics and this video. I used to be totally obsessed with this song. It is probably my favorite from Let Go, with the exception of Losing Grip...which, oddly enough, also matches my mood at the moment. Lyrics will be posted, though I don't think she made a video for that song...Or did she? 

Losing Grip by Avril Lavigne

Are you aware of what you make me feel, baby?

Right now I feel invisible to you, like I'm not real..

Didn't you feel me lock my arms around you?

Why'd you turn away?

Here's what I have to say...

I was left to cry there, waiting outside there

Grinnin' with a lost stare,

That's when I decided...

Why should I care?

'Cause you weren't there when I was scared

I was so alone...

You, you need to listen!

I'm startin' to trip,

I'm losin' my grip

And I'm in this thing alone...

Am I just some chick you placed beside you,

To take somebody's place?

When you turn around can you recognize my face..?

You used to love me, you used to hug me

But that wasn't the case,

Everything wasn't okay..

I was left to cry there

Waiting outside there

Grinnin' with a lost stare,

thats when i decided...

Why should I care?

'Cause you weren't there when I was scared,

I was so alone

You, you need to listen

I'm startin' to trip

I'm losin' my grip

And I'm in this thing alone

Cryin' out loud 

I'm cryin' out loud

Cryin' out loud 

I'm cryin' out loud

Open your eyes 

Open up wide

Why should I care

'Cause you weren't there when I was scared, 

I was so alone 

Why should I care

'Cause you weren't there when I was scared, 

I was so alone 

Why should I care?

If you don't care, then I don't care 

We're not going anywhere

Why should I care? 

'Cause you weren't there when I was scared 

I was so alone

Why should I care?

If you don't care, then I don't care 

We're not goin anywhere

Boosh. Found it.