This site is a place where I discuss my writing journey, my books and stories.
Don’t believe what they say, Rocket science is easy, it’s rocket math that is hard! My posts this week are gonna be short. I am preoccupied with work stuff. National Aerospace, and defense accreditation program audit for me all week. Feel free to scroll through my previous posts, you might find one you missed or one that you can connect with, I hope you do!
They say “write what you know.” Whoever they are, I get what they mean, but there is so much that I don’t know. I am just winging it. One of my challenges in writing is trying to pretend that I have had the normal everyday experiences that my audience had. I spent the majority of my formative years living in rural Alaska, isolated from the social experiences that “City kids” usually get. My school was somewhat small, comparatively and after school social engagements were difficult to do, due to geography. People tended to live pretty far away and there is no transit system in the bush. Moving to “the lower 48’s” was a culture shock and since I had gotten used to isolation, it pretty much cemented my brain in a state of permanent introversion. High did not spend much time attending high school, and when I did my scope of friends was very small, so I missed out (Thank god) on the usual high school drama and typical situations that most people did. I dropped out and began entering the workforce early. No High school diploma so no college.
How do I write about the high school and college experiences that I have never shared? Most of my “research” has been watching TV about it, but I am not entirely convinced that those are typical or genuine. “write what you know.”…. Hmm.. I guess I will continue to fake it, and hope no one notices. Honestly there are a lot of situations like this, mostly social, that I am guessing about. Maybe, that I don’t have some of those experiences, that my pretending can actually end up being a fresh take on it, and maybe those situation are more likely to be more genuine than the entertainment industry tropes.
Shoshin is a word from Zen Buddhism meaning “beginners mind”. I have always loved the concept. Looking at the world from the innocence of a child’s point of view, I think, is one of the best ways to approach it. I don’t mean the naivety, but the wonder and openness that comes with that. Anything is possible. I like to think that I have a beginners mind when it comes to writing. I have mentioned before about “My process” (more of “do I have a process?”), But I strive to write to be genuine and original. When I buckle down and write, I tend to avoid reading/listening to other people’s fiction to not be influenced unless it is researching genre, not content or style. Keeping my mind free from influence is a conscious decision, challenging to be sure, but it’s on purpose.
Lucky for me, I didn’t have many preconceptions of what it is to tell a good story or, literally, how to write. Why lucky? Because I don’t have bad habits yet (or that I am aware of), and I am constantly learning and honing my craft.
I have a story to tell. Actually, I have many stories in my head just aching to get out. I have the idea, think of how and who, and where. The story is just the beginning of the journey. Characters are the meat of it, but one has to have a split personality as an author. I have to be a ten-year-old girl who is into anime or an old battle-hardened war veteran. Sometimes in the same paragraph. Where does this shit come from? The setting can also be a character; how does one pretend to be scenery?
Every character has a piece of me in them. Part of my split personality. I draw from past experiences and interactions I have had or just witnessed. When writing an evil character, where in me is that? Am I that kind of person just under the surface? (I hope not, but it has to come from somewhere.) One of the hard parts of writing in my experience is to make all the characters uniquely different and consistent in their personalities. I think I do a pretty good job of it, but it is a challenge. After all they are all me. And I may be uniquely different (a politically correct term for weird?) but maintaining that is my biggest challenge.
I think of actors and how they have to be different people all the time. I think that there is a kind of freedom in that we can not be ourselves for a time. Halloween for example. Think back to the last time you were in full costume. The protection of identity that you get are you acting the same “normal,” or are you letting go and getting into the character, saying and doing things that you would not normally do? That’s the freedom I feel when writing. I get to express all those slices of my personality in the characters I write.
Thick sticky gray gelatin oozed out of his ears and nose with a wisp of steam like smoke. The texture of the brain tissue had been slowly liquifying over the week as more and more information was funneled into the skull, like ten pounds of crap in a five-pound bag.
I am back at home and trying to normalize and get back into routine comfort. There is something sad about the idea that I couldn’t wait to get back to work just so I could have a mental break. My training is done, and now I can get back to focusing on my writing and posting on the blog.
Today marks the second month of the blog. I hope that you are enjoying it as much as I am writing it. A big thank you to those that are following me! It does make a difference, knowing that I am not just shouting in an empty room. If you are new to this blog, I started it to promote my book “Emergence Collective” and other writings. It also is a platform to show off some of the other creative stuff. If you want a signed paperback copy, you can get that from my Etsy page. There are also some of the stuff that I make with my laser there, such as custom ouija boards, Crystal pendulum boards, and crystal grids, just to name a few. If you have a custom project in mind let me know and we can see what I can do for you. There are a few ways to contact me on my about me page.
Thanks for checking out the blog!
So its not writing, but I feel it necessary to exercise my other creative inclinations. I think that creativity no matter what the medium feeds the soul. For me, If I am dabbling in visual art forms, my mind is lost in a zen like state, allowing ideas to flow unrestricted. When I am writing, My thoughts and ideas tend to be visualised as little sceens or movie clips. I just decsribe in words what my minds eye captures.
This is my first serious attempt at painting in acrylic. Im pretty happy with it and I learned alot while working on this painting. Hope you enjoy. Now to my writing! gonna hit at LEAST 2000 words today!
Hand-prints of Darkness 