“There will always be hope, wherever you are, until you yourself abandon it.” Lost Odyssey
“What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?” Unknown
Category Archives: writing
Smash Journal
Hannah got an e-mail from Michael’s last week. They were talking about these things. Smash Journals. Basically they’re like a a scrapbook, but more active. To me it’s about logging memories as they happen, like writing in a journal at the end of the day. Scrapbooks are where you store memories from big events. I feel like they’re a ginormous project. These Smash Journals feel much more approachable. It could just be that I LOVE journals.
Anyway, Hannah went to the store, but they were all sold out. The guy behind the counter said they’d have more tomorrow. When Hannah wants something bad enough, it gets done. So she went with mom while I was at work and picked a couple up.
These things are amazing. In their YouTube Video they show a couple of the myriad ways these journals can be used. People track their school progress, their pregnancy progress, showcase their doodles. You could use it to make a timeline of all the movie stub you’ve collected over the years. Your imagination and supplies are the limit. I’m creating a book of things that inspire me, or have inspired me, to feel special. Things that made me feel more than a cog in someone’s engine. Or things that have made me feel in general, good and bad.
Maybe I’ll try to post some pictures of it, haha. But you special people will probably just have to ask me to see it 
Ta~
And the Time Flies By
I know it’s a long time after November. You can be sure if I’d won, that my silent audience would have known about it. Real life rose up and bit me in two. When it comes down to working to survive and writing to life, I had to forgo having a life for a while.
On a brighter note, the team at Yarny.me has made a great product! It’s an in-browser writing software. Even free it’s fantastic. They’re just out of beta and working on getting some neat features for paid users. Eventually they will be an offline version of the product that syncs up with the cloud when you get back in contact with the internet. I can’t say enough happy things about it.
It’s almost Christmas, work is finally letting me get a handle on it and I have more books to read than the garden has extension cords. For those unfamiliar, it’s an awful lot. Sometimes I miss those time when we were younger, elementary school/junior high, when Christmas Break actually meant being able to rest and have vacation. Now it rolls around and all I think is, ‘Oh good! I can catch up on work’ or ‘Thank God, now I’ll have a couple hours to take for my mental health’. I miss the lack of responsibility we had when we were younger. But that’s what ‘growing up’ is all about, isn’t it?
Bye all~ Happy Holidays!
NaNo 2011
Whelp, here we are. I’ve decided to go with Issachar, Greta and Moak as characters. Yes, it’s the ‘doll story’. I know. I said I would never go there, but here I am. In my defense, they were characters before they were dolls. Not that there’s anything wrong with writing the doll story! I just wanted to keep it as a photo-story, was all. Oh well.
I’m a little busy on one of my other blogs right now and don’t get me started on work, but I’ll try to update throughout the month. Wish me luck!
NaNoWriMo 2011
It’s finally time to start planning~ My course of attack this year will start with reading the ‘No Plot? No Problem!’ book by Chris Baty and watching Whisper of the Heart. After that, I’ll start working on some basic character stuff. I’m trying to be as loose and free as I was that first year. I had the most fun then. And isn’t that the purpose of this? To have fun? It is for me and that’s what I’m going to do.
I’ve decided to go with Issachar and Co. this time around. They were characters before they were dolls. I only have short story snippets and such for them, so it’ll be perfect. I’ve found that if I have established characters, I can get a lot more done than if I actually used an outline. Too much planning when I write bogs me down. I would imagine that makes most professional writers cringe, haha. There’s probably some kind of balance between the perfect amount of research and writing, but I haven’t found it yet. Writing this way is what works for me, it’s what gives me a rough draft to go back and edit. So this is the way I’ll do it.
I’ll probably put some of my planning ideas up here once I get them done, but I’m also on a blog with my friends, so we’ll see what happens XD
Bye all~
August Writing Project
Well, I’m off again. I wrote about 1,400-odd words today. That’s a victory! And Priest made me so angry I had to go clean something. I suppose that’s a good thing, isn’t it? I know he’s actually not a bad guy, but writing this last scene I hated him, haha. My nickname for him is the ‘Snarky Bastard’ and I say it with affection. He’s a good antagonist for Zero, throwing down road blocks and generally keeping the poor elf from accomplishing his goals.
It’s nice to be writing again. During the good times I wonder why I ever thought I couldn’t do this, why I was afraid to put a sentence to a Word document or even long hand it. The secret is copious amounts of caffeine. I’ve had two pots of tea and four or five cups of soda. When you’re that caffeinated it’s easy to have hope for betterment!
And that’s it for now! Nothing is edited, so I’ll not torture the eyes of you imaginary readers.
See ya~
Another Interesting Writing Prompt
Procrastinating today, I found this little segment tucked into my notebook:
‘They thought I charged ahead without caution and waited for the day I would fall. I knew it. I saw it in their eyes. Do the aristocracy not know their people? I knew mine. I knew they wanted what I had.’
And just below that:
‘I felt like I could lie down and sleep forever. Each step down the marble hall reverberated in my bones. Every sound– if there were any in that silent place aside from my own slippered steps– came from a distance, like hearing the ocean’s waves through ears filled with cotton. It felt like a dream.
A dream wouldn’t have hurt.’
Just thought I would share ^^
In other news, Thomas Bergersen released a CD titled ‘Illusions’. Everyone should go give it a listen. The man does amazing stuff. I recommend ‘Promise’ and ‘Soulseeker’.
And I added 650 words to Old Dominion today. Yay~
-Laylian
Ema Eggs
On a gem hunting foray with my mom, we ended up in Black Market Minerals. I found something there called Ema Eggs. From the card that comes with the stone Ema eggs “are quartz stones that are naturally tumbled in the Ema River in Brazil. A flat polished surface has been cut to see the inside. Some call this the original crystal ball. The fortune teller would tell a person’s future by looking into the ‘window’ of the quartz stone”.
The moment I saw them, a scene for Priest and Zero formed in my head. I even found the perfect stone for poor Zero. I’m excited to try and write it. Maybe it’ll end up being a submission for class next semester. If I can, I’ll put up pictures of the stones that Zero uses in the novel.
That’s all for now~
Summer Writing
Well, I’m stalled. Not in a ‘hit a wall’ kind of way, but more of a ‘I lost all confidence in myself’ sort of way. I feel like I’ve let a lot of people– including myself– down recently and it’s sapped my will to do anything clean away. Whether I have or not is up for debate. But this is a writing journal, not a place for my melancholy postings.
I did come to a realization about my novel in this time though! I’ve been poking at it, studying it (yes, studying it is the antithesis to getting a first draft done) and I think I’ve made real progress. Since no one else ever reads this anyway, I feel I can post it here and not let the sand out of the proverbial bag.
I’ve been rereading Les Edgerton’s ‘Hooked” book. He talks in there about the Inciting Incident, or the place where all trouble starts, the Initial Surface Problem, the thing they’re trying to solve, and the Story Worthy Problem, something I’ve been struggling to understand for a year and a half now. It’s easy, you might say. Well, sometimes people forget how to spell the word ‘the’. Things come quicker to some people than others. Anyway, I’ve never been able to figure out what exactly the SWP was for Old Dominion. I think I have an inkling now.
Zero’s buried problem, the one that’s going to take him all novel to realize he needs to overcome, is his decision to make bad choices. Looking at what I have for the book now, it makes perfect sense. Because he blames himself for what happened the second time he touched the Cursed Prince’s Stone, he unconsciously makes himself suffer by making decisions that hurt him. He’s punishing himself for something that wasn’t his fault. Only he doesn’t know that. He has no idea. The SWP is the “driving force behind the initial surface problem as it’s ultimately what the protagonist must reconcile at the end of the story” (Edgerton, ‘Hooked’ 26). It’s never overtly stated in the novel. I feel like I understand things a little better now. Yay!
And that’s my update for now. Jya~
Word Count
I’m finishing the night with 1,821 words. I still need 2,170 until I’m caught up for today, but I think I’ll get some sleep.
I’m making progress on the part that’s giving me trouble. It seems Priest is going to be getting his own little sections in the book. The trick will be to not give too much away. Before, I was going to have Zero (and consequently the reader) find out that Priest knows everything after the events in the book’s middle. I’m going to aim to only give hints that Priest knows what’s going on and is manipulating everything. Be all cryptic like. We’ll see how that goes, haha.
Ta~ Sleep now.