Really Bad Poetry

I've recently posted some of my poetry on Deviantart.com. (Yes, there goes my dream of actually getting paid to write drivel.) I claim to be a poet, but I never said that I was a good one.

Enjoy.

For the Hell of It

Lately, I've found myself writing for just the hell of it. Or, to put it more nicely: Just writing to write, to have fun, create, explore, etc.

It's been a long time since I've done that.

It's been a long time since I've written something that was just for my own pleasure. A long time since I've wrote something without worrying how my critique partners would react to such-and-such.

It's nice.

It's freeing.

It makes me wonder why I ever stopped.

Oh, I've been writing. I've been revising, too. But a lot of the time I've felt stifled or constrained. I've always had to abide by rules and suggestions and the worry if the story I was writing was publishable or not.

It's wonderful to not care sometimes.

And maybe MY story is complete crap. Maybe it is unpublishable junk rife with cliches and filler words and too many adjectives. BUT IT IS SO LOVELY. It makes my heart sing. It reminds me that THIS--the process of just putting raw words on paper--is why I write. THIS is what I've been struggling these past months to regain. To write just to write. To write just because. To write, write, write and no longer CARE that so-and-so editor/agent/critique partner might not like it.

You should try it sometime.

Because . . .

Sometimes we need that reminder that we're not alone in this. That we need to keep trying.

A truly inspiring tale about rejection.

Monday Madness: One More Time!

You know how to tell when a writer is lying?

When they say, "Oh, yes, I'm on my final revision."

Or maybe it's just me.

I SWEAR that it's not just the perfectionist in me changing my mind halfway through said revision. Sometimes, it's not until you fix the little things, that you see that something bigger might need a polish. Or a rewrite. Love the rewrite. Embrace it. Buy it flowers.

I seriously did think that DRAGON QUEEN was almost ready; that I had finally reached the "final revision stage". And then in the process of changing one thing, I toppled the dominoes and got myself into a huge MESS of rewrites.

I'm at the dizzy, passionate phase of revising right now (as in, it's actually been gratifying and fun and exciting to see how much stronger my story is getting), but I know soon that I will tire out and be whimpering for mercy. But for now, it's great. Flowers everywhere!

For those of you who are rolling your eyes and muttering, "She's never going to be done with this story!" let me assure you that I'm doing the revisions correctly this time. I am not making significant plot or character changes, I am just amplifying what was already there, but was perhaps glossed over in an attempt to get the story out the first time (or second time, or third time) through. Relationships and characters are being fleshed out. Foreshadowing is being utilized. It's, really, just awesome how much these "little" things are making such a big difference.

And MAYBE after this, I will honestly be able to say that I'm on my final revision. And that makes me all tingly inside.

Monday Madness: Ode to Movies

I tend to like my movies like I like my novels: full of fluff and good feeling. I gobble up romantic comedies and Disney movies like dark chocolate and have gotten to the point where I don't even try to hide it anymore. But thanks to Netflix and Red Box (and weather that has you spontaneously bursting into flames when you dare to venture outside) I've been catching up on some "less fluffy" movies. Much to my amazement, I'm actually enjoying them.

Here is a list of movies that I've watched that I didn't think I would like, but actually did:

Winter's Bone — This movie made me so uncomfortable. First, it was made in my backyard (not literally), and the familiar setting, along with the rough and scary characters (who could be related to me) really set me on edge. This movie haunted me. Freaked me out. And while I resented being reminded of the people that I come from (yes, I have relatives a lot like the people in this movie), it was definitely worth watching.

Million Dollar Baby — I kept putting off watching this one because someone had told me the gist of it once, and that it wasn't a happy movie. They were right; it's not a happy movie. But it's not really a sad or depressing movie either. There's a lot of hope in this film. And I know that I'm not a movie critic by any means, but I thought this was an excellent movie because of just how emotive it was. Again, some of Maggie's family reminded me of people I know, and so it might have hit closer to home for me than someone else, but if you do not feel some little ping in your heart at the end of this movie,  then you are dead inside. Seriously.

Love & Other Drugs — I didn't want to watch this movie because I thought it was about DOING drugs. And not the prescription kind. My husband finally convinced me to watch it, and it rocked my world (and not just because of the many, many, many sex scenes). It was such a gritty take on love—no romantic comedy here. I cried and laughed many times during this movie, and it led to a serious discussion about what love is between me and my husband. (Good news: We think we have it figured out. Our version, anyway.)

The Prestige — A whole different can of worms here, but I found myself engrossed in this movie. This movie is a prime example of love-to-hate characters. Throughout the movie, I did not like either one of the main characters. Neither Angier or Borden were "good". What they were, instead, were very mortal. Prone to mistakes and jealousy and stupidity and vanity. And the end . . .man, the end. So twisted. I loved it.

Next on the list: The Black Swan and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

But first, Suckerpunch. :)

Liking these movies was a good reminder to me that there are great things outside our comfort zone, if we just give them a chance. Now that I've branched out my movies, I think the next step is my literature (and not just because I'm being forced to, like in school.)

What about you? See any movies you thought you wouldn't like, but ended up loving? What about books?

Monday Madness: Toning Your Core

I really like to exercise and I find it funny that a lot of exercise vernacular can be applied to editing a manuscript. I find it so amusing, in fact, that I thought about paralleling my exercise routine with my current editing process. However, if that were the case, I would have been toning my core for, like, three months straight.

That's right, I'm in the process of trying to get a sexier middle (in my manuscript rather than my actual abs). Thanks to some very helpful critiques, I realized that two of my middle chapters included a lot of summary rather than action (i.e. flab instead of muscle). So I went to work.

First there was the light stretching. I tried tweaking a word there, a sentence here.

Then the warmup: replacing telling with showing.

The actual exercise: scrapping entire paragraphs and scenes for others.

Then the cool down: fine tuning the scene.

Finally, the last stretching: tweaking of words and sentences.

By the time it was over with, I was mentally exhausted, but at least now I have a stronger core.

Drawing vs. Writing

It's been a horrid week and while I'll try not to bore you with the details, let's just say that it involved me threatening to kick a relative's rear end to next Tuesday and the newest addition to my furry family, Papi, a white chihuahua, being hit and killed by a car. So, yes. Awfulness abounds.

Some people might harvest this turmoil and use it to write something really dark and angry. Something that leaves tear stains on their keyboard. Not me. Despite my tendency to have a dark vibe in a lot of my writings, I'm usually NOT in that sort of mood when I write them. I'm usually in a pretty good mood, or at least a neutral mood. Writing in a bad mood leads to, well, a lot of unintelligible, melodramatic scribbling. Instead, I draw.

Drawing is therapeutic for me. My mind goes blank. The only thing that exists is the paper and whatever medium I'm working in (lately, it's been cheap ball point pen). My mind narrows in on the line, the expression, the shading. Nothing else matters.  And yet, it still becomes an outlet for my emotion. After I complete a drawing, I feel like some of the festering has gone away. I feel emptied. Scraped clean. Sometimes this feeling will last the rest of the day. Other times, it's only a moment. If it's the latter, I'll usually start working on another drawing.

I've been drawing a lot this week. It's probably a good thing. It's certainly allowed me to contribute once again to my Deviant Art page (which remained un-updated for, like, 6 months). I don't really draw to impress people and I'm certainly not the most talented artist out there, but I still like to share my works with others because every now and then, someone else will be like "I totally understand what this means" and it will make me feel not so alone.

This drawing is one that I finished this week. It's called "Sorrow" and I drew it the day Papi died, but before it actually happened. A premonition? I'm not sure.