Writing Exercise Gone Wild

I have been reading Gotham Writers Workshop: Writing Fiction: The Practical Guide From New York's Acclaimed Writing School and working through the exercises along the way. It seems to be a great book thus far. I have had far too much fun with it leading me to believe it will be years before I finish reading it.

One of the writing exercises asked me to list some ordinary things that happened to me this week and then choose one to write about. My mind works in mysterious ways and I ended up starting with one and ending with another.

Walking my dog turned into a story of adventure in the melting snow and ice from Asuka's point of view. There are two things she loves snow and water and I thought I could make a fun lighthearted story from that. I found thinking like a dog to be challenging and let my mind wonder. I picked another item from my list and couldn't type the story that came to mind fast enough. I don't know exactly how my mind went from two conversations with people who had been unjustly fired to a hold up in a gas station but it did. I had the ending in mind when the rest of the story just started to flow.

I had to force myself to stop or I would have had hours tied up in this simple exercise. The story was about a young woman who worked at a gas station and walked in for her shift to a man holding up the store. She is the narrator as she tells you about her day from hell.

All I can say is it was a lot of fun. I don't know if I will ever be a professional writer but I am having fun learning how to write. If I work hard and fail at least I can say I gave it my best shot. If I never try I will regret it.

I plan to revisit the first book in the Kate Daniels series and analyze each chapter in the months ahead. I want to know what it is that makes me love these books more than most. I will keep you updated!

P.S.
I couldn't find a movie picture of someone holding up a store and it was frustrating me. With all the robberies on television shows and in movies I thought for sure it would be easy. I changed my mind and went with the big guns of Victoria and Alucard from Hellsing.

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Writing Is My Dream

I always wanted to see what Castle was about but I don't have cable or some fancy dish so I never tuned in. I do have Netflix and finally remembered to put it on my list.  Most nights my hubby and I watch an episode of something we get from Netflix before he goes to work and I go to bed. I know it is kind of a lame date but we enjoy it and we get to cuddle up next to each other most every night watching some exciting show.

I really enjoyed the show and so did my hubby who watched another episode with me this morning before he went to bed and I started my day. The thing is it really got to me because I have always wanted to be a writer. I went to school to be a social worker. Why? Because I chose a profession from the list of needed professionals for the area I got help paying for some of my college education. Once I started the program there were many things I liked and I stuck with it until graduation. I still want to work in the field I am going to a grant writing seminar this month to expand my writing and social work knowledge base.

I also want to start working on a short story or maybe get so crazy as to try my hand at novel writing. I am not looking to have a novel out next year but I am looking to set up small goals and keep them. I am going to have to spend some time at the library and work on learning how to write fiction. I have had a few college courses but I could use a lot more instruction. If I want to write I need to learn more and write more. I am always very critical of the fiction I write so I never get very far. So for this month I am going to set some times for just writing. I am going to type as many ideas as I can think of into one chaotic document and then review it in April. Then I can see if i have anything I feel like I can work with.

Lessons learned from Castle this week are everything is a story.  My first writing exercise will be to create a fictional story based on something I picked up with my interactions with people or my lack of interaction as I am home most of the time.

Writing goals for March

• Find a story in my daily life
• Write any and all ideas with no editing
• Schedule time for writing
• Go to the library and get books about fiction, grant, and article writing
• Go to grant workshop
• Brush up on punctuation and other grammar basics

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Dark Days

It is a gloomy day today. Oddly enough I really love this type of day but I have been afraid to say so for years. The sun is behind the clouds and I don't have a headache for once. I also love those clear fall evening when you can see the moon through the leafless trees. I while I love spring too with all its life I still prefer the beauty of the colder months while life is hibernating. Most things don't really die, the leaves come back the grass turns green again and all is well.

I have been thinking a lot about this lately, I have been rather irritated by fellow Christians lately. Not my close friends just some people out there who think you need to be all "happy" all the time to be a good Christian. Not so much content, but like visibly joy filled even when life sucks. Some people act like I can't have faith because of the books I read. They believe they are satanic because vampires and werewolves are satanic. Now if you want to attack these books there are plenty of other things to attack but I really don't think satanists invented vampires and werewolves. I also don't think they are realistic (they are fiction) and I am not going to turn into a satanist because i have read them.

How does this tie into my outlook on life, well I like dark things and always have. I love the whole Gothic look and I tend to like the way my dark red roses look in more in the fall when they turn black than I do mid summer when they are a crimson color. I have often been told that the color I like is evil. The parts of life that I enjoy are of the Devil. I just don't buy it; the Bible I read must be missing some parts or I'm interpreting it wrong. Maybe I am, if that is the case then there is no place for me in the Heaven these people believe in and I really don't want a space there. I am going to go on believing that God just created me a little different. God also created the seasons as well as life and death and black and white. If I don't make it to Heaven because my faith is flawed then I suppose that is what was meant to be. Maybe I should write something creative about this stuff.


I do not have any classes until Monday and that is my only day of classes next week.
I am looking forward to getting a lot of reading done after I finish classes. For the next three weeks I will be working my but off to get all the projects I have to do finished. I started the Curse the Dawn but I think I will have to start that over. I am going to work on one of the Audio books this weekend as I clean and drive around to run errands. I think I will start with Tempted the latest House of Night novel by P.C. and Kristin Cast.

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Second Assignment for Creative Writing

The professor wanted us to have the character for our short short or flash fiction piece developed. He gave us a prompt for our first piece and I din't want use Lucy so I had to start making a new character. Hopefully this works I am sick and I have been trying to get the text to copy and paste but the paragraphs end up mixed up.


Emily Alone With Her Thoughts

Today my therapist said I need to self reflect, I need to get to know myself. Since the day my mother was murdered I have hidden my true self. I have tried to live a normal life with limited emotions. All the hurt and anger that I have hidden for years is like a monster waiting to be unleashed. I told my therapist about my past but not about the things I do to keep from looking insane. I started seeing her because I do love my husband and I don’t want him to see the ugly side of me. When I let the feelings I have for him out and the feelings he has for me in I somehow feel like I am loosing control. I don’t want this to hit him like a ton of bricks. I can feel happy sometimes when I am with him and that is the best gift anyone could give me.

When I was 12 my mother was killed by a man she brought home with her. She was not a great mother but I didn’t know that then. She did what she could and that included supplementing her meager income by bringing men home. She drank a lot too but she was never abusive or mean to me and she kept the men away from me. I didn’t have a lot of rules so I was out late one of many nights and I when I came home there was a man in my home. He ran when he saw me. The newspaper said that my mother was strangled to death by a thief, but I knew better he had been there before.

I hate thinking about the past, it feels like I died that day. That man haunts my dreams, maybe if they had caught him I wouldn’t feel this way. I feel the need to control my every thought and the fear of letting go of this control is eating away at me. Mrs. Brown my therapist told me that I will have to face the past to move on to a meaningful future but I don’t know if I can do that. I have made it to 30 years of age without facing my demons, how in the world am I going to do it now.

I started out telling my self that worst things have happened at least he didn’t hurt me. As I started to understand more about what my mother was doing I was surprised nothing happened to me with her clients in the home most evenings. After my mother was killed I got to live my teen years with my very loving grandparents. They tried very hard to help me grieve for my mother and to embrace my feelings but I tried to run away from all feelings then. I loved them from a distance and they always worried about me. They did their best and I would do anything for them except give into the evil growing inside me.

The evil is not some sort of separate entity it is just sheer anger and rage that builds up inside me. I have no where to put it anymore it has out grown the box I put it in. I blow up for now reason or for something as stupid as Eric putting the dishes in the dishwasher wrong. I can’t loose the only man who has ever made me feel happy because I am loosing control of my anger.

The really evil part is that I hope to meet this man again someday I want to kill him. In my dreams I kill him or get killed by him. I don’t want to kill anyone else I am not completely evil but that thought is in my mind every time I go to the past, every time I wake up form a nightmare. I want him dead if I ever find him I am going to kill him slowly, I am going to make him suffer.

I know it is wrong and I hate myself for thinking this way. After 18 years I should be able to let go of this but I just can’t. When I was young I would imagine that I found this man and blew him away with my grandfathers’ shotgun. I didn’t know how to use it the gun let alone get it but the thought of the murderer dead somehow comforted me.

How do I face this side of me without letting the world see, without letting Eric see. I don’t want him to know this about me. I want him to see a sweet caring woman who loves him. I don’t think I do a good job at that image but I have been trying since we married about a year ago. I will do anything not to loose his love not to loose that look in his eyes that speaks loud and clear that he loves me.

That is where the problem starts, he still gives me that look but now he has a look of fear. Fear that he might say the wrong thing to upset me. Fear that he might do the wrong thing or even the right thing but in the wrong way. My issues have started to affect him and the way he sees me. When I realized what was happening I began to see this therapist who wants me to get to know myself. The dishwasher incident was bad I had a huge, screaming fit because he put the glasses on the bottom rack but I couldn’t explain why they went there just that they did. His face was so shocked at my outburst and quickly turned to sheer hurt at my insensitivity. He would never tell me how much I hurt him nor would he cry in front of me. After I calmed down I went to him and told him I was going to find a therapist in the morning to help me deal with my anger issues. I told him that he was not to blame and that the dishwasher thing was not a big deal at all. I think that helped but I still don’t think it will ever be like it was. Maybe if I work hard enough at this he can trust me again but for now I will have to work on building the trust back.

That is my motivation if I have to dig up what has been buried for 18 years I will do it for my marriage. I can’t say I am looking forward to this but next session I am going to the therapist all of this. It is not like she can tell anyone else and if she is good at her job she can help me. I hope I don’t have to tell Eric about what I talk to her about, these are my secrets. He knows the history but he doesn’t know what it has done to me. Now that I am here and have been thinking about this I am wondering if the reason that I am having issues is because I found someone who stirs up emotion in me like now one has since my mother died. That is something I have been thinking that in order to truly love him I have to feel and not feeling much is how I have gotten this far.
I am done rambling I will just have to ask the therapist. I need to read to keep my mind off this until I get to speak to her again. I need to find a way to harness what I have let out until I know how to deal with it.

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I Have a Fun Assignment to Work On.

In my creative writing class he wants us to write the first paragraph to a story in but in three different tones. So I have to write the same story opening three times. I am have been throwing around a lot of ideas. I can also see this class will cause me to loose sleep, I keep thinking about ideas when my mind is supposed to be resting.

I had to listen to my audio book until I was so tired I couldn't stay awake and think last night. Then I had crazy dreams.

I finished The Good the Bad and the Undead by Kim Harrison and should be able to get a review up this weekend. Usually when I say that some sort of family emergency or something big comes up so I am knocking on some wood as I type.

I can say right now I really enjoyed the book, after reading the first book I was not sure this was going to be a series for me. I am now sold on the series, if for nothing else I absolutely love Jenks the pixie.

We have a rainy, dreary day here in Toledo, Ohio a perfect day for writing. I was going to work outside but I don't see that happening. I will work on my writing homework today and my long list of things I put off until today because of school and homework.

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New Poem

I wrote a new poem today and was hoping for some feedback, I don't know if I like the title. I do like to keep my poems short with a lot left to interpret.

Temptation

Darkness and Despair
I crave
Flesh and Flames
I lust
Betrayed and Beaten
I fall
Abandoned and Alone
I cry
Deserted and Desperate
I die

I have been toying with a few more lines but they don't seem to work.

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Should I Go Back To School?

Well this week I have been thinking that I might either go back and get my Masters in English or a second Bachelors degree in English.

I finished my first Bachelors degree in the low paying, no way to work from home field of Social Work. I have found it is not for me and the only way to make decent money in the field is to move, or get a Masters.

I have signed up with a college that offers a few non-credit online classes cheap. This will help me remember what school is like and help me decide what I want to do. Several colleges offer English programs online, but if I want my masters I would go back to the University I graduated from because it would be easier to figure out what courses I needed.

With an English degree I will be able to teach, write for a paper or magazine, or land some freelance jobs. I could actually get a better social work position as well. I just don't know that I want to study again.

Update
I called and then checked the prices for a masters program at the University of Toledo where I graduated. It will be 1500 dollars per class. I can't afford that it is around 1000 per class or less for a 2nd Bachelors degree.

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Reading Too Many Books at Once!

In the last few weeks I have started a book on freelance writing, and one about fiction writing.

I also read all of the first book in the Kitty Norville series.

The other book I am reading is a general book on how to improve writing, I don't like this book and keep putting it down. The book is outdated and talks about typewriters and never mentions Internet based resources. I have to read through a lot of extremely outdated and useless material to get the juicy bits in the midst.

I believe I will give up on that one for now and work on the exercises in the other two books. I like these books because they are laid out well and have work for you to do in each chapter. I particularly like "Writing Fiction" from Gotham Writers' Workshop. It has already sparked my creativity by showing me how to take mundane things and make them into fictional stories. Even my madding visit to the doctor that made me really late for work, could be used in a story.

I think I am going to work on an erotic story for my husband and see if he responds to it better than poetry. I got the idea actually from one of the exercises in the fiction writing book. It challenged me to think of things going on in my life that could make a great story. My husband has been paying more attention to me lately and we have been connecting more lately. I hadn't put much thought into it I was just trying to enjoy it. I realized that many people who have been married for a long time go through dry spells. Spells were you just drone on, existing together and not much more. The story lies in what brings you out of it what creates new passion in your old relationship.

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