Hope For Courage and Try For Honor

Last night, after resting up from a long weekend with my family, I sat down and watched The Blind Side with Sandra Bullock and Quinton Aaron.  The Blind Side is a great movie based on a true story about Michael Ohar, who is taken in by a "well to do white family" in Tennessee.  During this time, he joins the school football team and later goes on to play for the Baltimore Ravens.  

I have seen this movie two times before, but still find myself cheering for Aaron's character and laughing at how protective Bullock's character, Leigh Anne Tuohy, gets when someone threatens her "son".  Every time I've seen this movie, I couldn't quite pinpoint why I thought this movie was so great.  Maybe its the fact that its a true story or that it shows that despite the fact that we live in a world that are so focused on themselves, there are still people who are willing to make a difference in the life of another individual without asking for some kind of recognition or repayment. 

About three quarters of the way through the movie, there is a line that we should all live by.  Michael is writing a paper on the poem, The Charge of the Light Brigade, and he says that "We should all hope for courage and try for honor".  Being insanely curious person that I am, I had to read this poem and was blown away.  The soldiers that the author was describing in the poem were extremely courageous and despite the fact that they knew that their leader had made a mistake, they went into battle anyway.  This made the army of 600 worthy of honor.  So powerful!

There were several times in the movie where Bullock's character asks her husband, Sean, (Tim McGraw) if they were doing the right thing.  Yes, she faced ridicule from her friends and family, but by the end, she knew that she had changed Michael's life as well as her own, her family's and others around them.  This story isn't saying that everyone should take in someone, but to reach out and help the people around you.  Whether its by making sure that needy person has a hot meal or donate to the charity campaigns around the world. 

Everyone has courage, so let us all follow Michael Ohars words and try for honor.

Smile!

I saw this and couldn't resist!

It's the little things in life that really count!

The Man in the Picture

• Totally sounds like a title for an episode of Bones!
  

Don't even act surprised!

• Last week, I mentioned going through a bunch of stuff that I had written for the fun of it.  Here is one that I really liked.

The room was dark and gloomy with squeaky floorboards.  The curtains were black and looked heavier than the tall, skeleton-like man in the shadows.  If it had been bright and sunny outside, no one would have known because the curtains blocked out all possible light.  After a while, we noticed the man in the far corner.  He wore a black suit with a matching black tie.  His shoes looked as if they had just been polished.  His face was set in a frown and looked as though he had never set foot outside a day in his life.  We stared at him, while he stared back at us for a full minute, but man never moved, for he was only a picture!

• Seems so much shorter when it's been typed. 

Terrible Thursday...at least it was

• Woke up this morning hating everything with the exception of my bed and teddy bear. (don't judge!)
  

   

We all have these days!  

• Good thing my alarm clock is in the living room because it would have been thrown across the room!
  
• Not even the fact that Bones comes on tonight helped!
• A Beaners (yeah, I know the name was changed to Bigby, but it will always be known as Beaners to me!) run was extremely necessary!

Harmless right?!

• Thankfully it woke me up, but a co-worker was bouncing off the walls for a good while!
• Maybe no large coffees anymore!
• Bones comes on tonight! 

A Year Ago Today....

• We celebrated the inauguration of the 44th president, Barack H. Obama and some would say that he broke a few barriers.  Maybe I would agree to some extent, but not completely.  Some would say that this was a step in the right direction for African Americans.  

•  In the 1960's, (some sites say 1961 and others 1968) Robert Kennedy predicted that "There is no question about it. In the next 40 years, a Negro can achieve the same position that my brother has."  
  

• To me, how amazing is that?  I still wish my grandmother, who grew up during a time that blacks didn't have the same rights as their white counterparts, had seen this day.  She would have been so proud.  I know my other grandmother was! :o)
  

• It was said that people came out of the wood works to vote last year and to me, that shows how ready for some sort of change this country was.  
  

• One person that didn't vote said to me and a group of friends after the election that she didn't know why "white people were so excited about Obama.  It's not like it was a victory for them."  I couldn't believe they could even say this.  I had to remind them that his victory was one for all, no matter their race.  This was a victory for anyone who was ready for change.  
  

• More was said, but I'm pretty sure I had gotten my point across.  
  

• This was also the night that my B'dubs group retired blue kamikazes in honor of the Democratic Party.  Thank goodness!  They didn't taste as good as the ones that my table ordered election night.
  

• Michelle Obama was the talk of the nation with her awesome dress (and her arms are pretty much amazing, by the way!)

• George Washington said these words:
  

"Let it be told to the future world…that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive…that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it]."

•  These word were repeated a year ago today and couldn't have been more perfect.
  

Pure Randomness

• Finished reading The Lost Symbol and if you haven't read it, you should.  It's simply amazing!  A real page turner...Any aspiring writer, like me, could only hope that their writing could be even a quarter as good as Dan Browns.
  

• Maybe reading a great book is what I needed to break out of my funk and stop banging my head on my desk when I should be writing. (I'm really just kidding about that last part.)
  

• Was almost done reading The Last Symbol, when I took a break to stretch....went back to some of my old writing.  

• I had forgotten how much I used to write. 

• Great trip down memory lane...not sure where some of it came from.  There were a few things that I was blown away by.
  

• I need to think like this about writing:
• There's nothing to writing.  All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein. ~Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith
  

•  Time to get back to writing!  Off to the Library tomorrow after work. :o)
  

•  I heard this yesterday in church and who am I to call one of the NBA greats a liar?
• 
  
  "I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."
  
  ~ Michael Jordan  
  
  
  

Writer's block ... is simply a failure of ego

• Norman Mailer said this

• Believe me, it is real!  

• I was asked a couple times this week how my book was going and I was able to say that I went through and cleaned up small chunks, but its not complete.  In my mind, I know that there are parts that don't make sense, but every time that I try to figure out how best to "write" the wrong, I hit the rhetorical brick wall.

• Can I just say that it sucks?!  The "I was just too lazy today to get any writing done" excuse only works for so long.  Especially when one of my goals this year is to self publish this book!

HAPPY NEW YEARS!!!

Wishing you and yours a happy new years!! 

Shared a bottle with the 'rents!

The Reason for the Season

We are less than a week away from Christmas and there are two types of people floating around: those who ready and excited for Christmas and those who just aren't.  For some reason, I am in the second group.  Does that make me a Grinch?

Maybe or could it be that this beautiful holiday has become so commercial and that people have forgotten the real reason why we celebrate this day?  I think with all the pressure of making sure we get the right gifts for everyone and avoiding going into debt doing so, we have forgotten to remember how this all started.  I know that I am the worst person to be writing to this, but like I said before, maybe I am one of the ones who have forgotten as well.  This holiday has been all about the material gifts, Santa Claus, Frosty and other children stories.

Not that this is all bad....

But does it have to be this way?  This time of year should be a time that everyone should look forward to.  Family, friends, love, food and all the rest of it.  Some people would say that we just need to go back to the basics and for once I would have to agree.  Instead of focusing on what we don't have this season, let focus on what we do have.  Yes, maybe your family drives you to the brink of insanity, but even if they won't admit it, they love you and vice versa.  Yes, your job may be frustrating and even unbearable at times, but there are those days that make it all worth it.  In this economy, you should be grateful.  If you have a roof over your head, clothes on your back and three meals a day, then you should be grateful because not everyone is this world, or country for that matter, has that.

So to shake this "Grinchy" feeling, maybe I should take the first step by taking a step back and remember why we celebrate this day.  Although, I will say this: despite the crazed people that you see in those stores and all, people are a touch nicer this time of year than any other time.  Coincidence?  Maybe.  Maybe not.

For now, I say Merry Christmas!

Feliz Navidad

Joyeux Noel

(For a little trip down memory lane:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kR6lQAFvhq0&feature=related)

Chaos

I've never been a fan of the total chaos of the holidays, but I guess I really have no choice in the matter.  Christmas is a week from tomorrow and I haven't got a lick of shopping done.  That would be completely my fault, but I just haven't been focused on that.  It probably doesn't help that I am not a total fan of shopping either.  My main focus has been on my book when I'm not exhausted from working.  Even that sometimes feels like a chore.  Does that mean that I'm not completely into it?  I wonder if its the fact that I have work and family stuff still on my mind when I'm trying to work on my book.

In the new year (so weird to say already), I would love to take off one weekend, turn off my phones and just write until I can't anymore.  Selfish?  Maybe.  Then again, who said that I shouldn't be allowed to selfish every once and a while.  That's how a person stays sane in the midst of everything going on around them, right?  


Anyway, please know that I have not forgotten about posting chapters.  The next one that I was going to post was way too long and I'm really hating it.  I'm not sure if its the characters in the scene, what is being said or what, but I just don't like it.  As usual, the beginning and the end is fine, but the middle is what's driving me crazy.  *sigh* 

There's a lot to be thankful for...

I was out with my coworkers for breakfast this morning and while they were talking, I got to thinking about how much I have to be thankful for.  When I think about the rough patches that I ran into this year, I know it could have been a lot worse and try not to complain. 

•  I changed jobs (Same office, different division) during a time when thousands upon thousands are out of work.
  
• I went on four trips (twice to Washington DC, Orlando and Miami, Florida and Cedar Point for my birthday) either by myself to visit one of my friends or with my family during a time when people are pinching pennies and saving for next year.
• My family and I are all healthy
• I am in my fifth year of living on my own
  
• Between my family and a great group of friends, I am never without.
• I turned 25 this year...isn't that enough to be thankful for?
• I finished my book in May, which was accepted by a publisher in June.  Although, this is extremely exciting, I turned this company down and would like self publish my book in the next year.  
  

This year has, all in all, been a great year for me and I can honestly say that I have a ton to be thankful for.  Tomorrow, I plan to enjoy my time with my family, especially since we never know how much time we have left with them.

Happy Thanksgiving!

One Step Down....

I finished reading over my book earlier this evening and wow! There is a ton of work that needs to be done.  It seems that when I was rewriting some of the scenes earlier this summer, I wasn't as thorough about it and forgot to take out a few things that weren't needed. Shame on me!  It looks like I have my work cut out for me.  It's not like I don't have any extra time on my hands. ;o)

Good night...or good morning! 

Back To Work

What started out as a month long break from my book turned into nearly four months and running.  Yesterday, I went to church with my family and my dad's older brother asked me how my book was coming along and I was slightly stunned by this.  Partially from the fact that he actually remembered it and that I had not worked on it for so long.  He told me that he had told a few of his friends about it and they would actually buy a copy of it when it was done! Seriously?!

What a great thing to hear when I was already trying to push myself to get back to work.

Anyways, last night after my family went home to work on their new rental house, I sat down and went to work reading over what I had written and rewritten.  Maybe my extended time off was for the best.  I noticed mistakes that I didn't catch over the summer that were kind of embarrassing.  I was only able to finish reading half of it, but its kind of nice to go back and read it with a fresh pair of eyes.  No one said writing a book would be easy.

Back to Work! :o)

Untitled

I have never been really great about sharing my thoughts with those closest to me for fear that it wasn't what was expected of me or perfect.  Instead I locked them up in my head or notebooks that were for only me to see.  I have found that this hasn't been the most effective way of dealing with things.  This blog has become like a very small window, if that's what you would like to call it, to what I'm thinking.  Although it hasn't been the most consistent, its about as consistent that anyone could expect from a consistently inconsistent person like me.  It's more than I would be willing to say to anyone face to face.

Tonight, I was going through a few things that I had written about my book.  (Yes, the same one that I'm pretty sure you all have thought that I have forgotten, but have not.  I promise!  It's still a work in progress.)  I wrote this after I finished my book and although it seems to have a few spoilers, it says a lot about what it took for me to get it on paper to the typed version.

August 21, 2009

Six and half years, a dozen notebooks and 3 written drafts later, I finally finished my book earlier today.  The closer I got to that point, the nervous I became.  I'm not sure if its the fact that this was something that I could always come back to or what, but when I wrote that last sentence that all went out the window.  I was finally done getting my thoughts on paper, slowing bringing each of the characters to life.  When the characters moods changed, so did mine.  I never really understood that until I really got into this.  I was asked how much of me was in the main character and I didn't realize how alike and different we were until I started flipping though the book.  I didn't want her to be too much like me, but I wanted to make her human, someone that anyone could relate to.  It was the same thing with the other characters.  There were times that I hated the two main characters, on separate occasions of course, but at the end, they couldn't have been anymore perfect.  They were both people that if they were real, I would have loved to meet.  In a way, I felt the same way about the villain, William Carson.  As much mayhem he caused, anyone could tell that when he was committed, there was no turning back.  Also, that he loved Devyn with all of his heart.  This was completely evident in the end.  This was one of the harder parts to write because this was the scene where she finally gets her answers before saying good bye to a man who had been such a big part in her life.  A part of me wanted her to walk away during the dinner scene, but it would seem too "big-screenish" and I really didn't want that.  I wanted her to be civil and calm.  She could fall apart at the end.  While I was rewriting this, I realized that a good chunk of what I wrote was unnecessary and could make any reader lose focus, something that I don't want.  The scenes that seemed the shortest in written form were the ones that I expanded on, since these were "more crucial" to the story than the drawn out scenes that were pretty much useless.

Now that I'm finally done, I can now say that I finally finished my book.  Am I proud of my work this far? Of course I am!  That's the only reason why I wrote this in the first place.  So to me, congratulations!

Random Thoughts

I was getting ready to call it a night when it hit me where I got my asshole characters from.  Anyone who really knows anything about me knows that I worked at McDonalds for three years before I came back to Lansing to work for the State of Michigan.  There, I worked with many kinds of people that I sometimes wish that I had never met.... a couple of them are still friends of mine to this day.

During this time, I worked with 2 guys named Steve and Jason (their names have been changed, but you get the idea).  Steve was a true asshole through and through.  He believed that women were less than nothing and were only put on this earth to serve men.  Evidently, he had an issue with the current work situation since most of the managers at the time women, so he didn't last long.  Let's just say that he wasn't fond of me. 

Jason, who I had been on talking terms with for a good portion of the time he worked at McDonalds, was a little different.  He was pretty hostile, while, at various times, was very dependent on others around him.  Getting to the point, he tended to have more of an issue with the women at this place of business.  Me included.  Unfortunately for him, I wasn't afraid of him and didn't back down when we got into heated arguments.  For Jason, it was his stubbornness, inability to admit when he was wrong and disrespectful nature that got him in a great deal of trouble.

What I'm getting at is that Jason is Terry's character in my book and Steve is Brian, the real troublemaker. 

Month and Some Hiatus

Last month, after butchering my last draft of my book, I decided that it was time for a mini break from working on my book.  It was definitely harder than I thought it would be.  There were times that I would be home thinking that I needed to be working on a few chapters while things were quiet or if I was wide awake after taking a very unnecessary long nap after working.  I would even opened it up while I was at work while I was waiting on one document before I could call it a day after everyone else left to avoid being royally pissed off that I was still there.  In the back of my mind, I knew this was going against the promise that I made to myself to take a break, so I quickly closed it.

During this time, I felt like I had abandoned my "child" when it needed me.  Maybe that was the whole point of the break though. 

So, now that my mini hiatus is over, the plan is to read through it before I do any cutting and rewriting.  It's good to be back though.

Is all this worth it?!

A friend of mine and I went to see the Julia Childs movie tonight and without realizing it, the movie gave my some hope and the courage to keep working on my book and even this blog. It was kinda nice to know that she had some of the same frustrations of wanting to make her book perfect and finding a publisher who would publish her cookbook. The young woman in the movie, Julie, taught me another lesson, despite her ridiculous melt downs and the fact that she was an alcoholic in the making. Some thought she wouldn't cook her way through Childs' book since she never finished anything that she started and had other responsibilities. Boy, did she shock them all in the end. What kept her going the whole time were the people around her telling her that she could do it and a blog that she wrote. For a while, she thought no one was reading her blog, except her closest friends and family. Also, I should mention that they both worked for government agencies. Kinda sounds a little familiar, doesn't it?

When I started my book over five years ago, I was told that I shouldn't waste my time on something that may not be worth reading or that I wasn't even going to finish it, much less let anyone of significance read it. To keep me focused once the book was originally finished, I thought a blog would help as I journey through the world of edits and the search for a publishing company that will publish my work, but have gotten to the point where I don't think people even want to read what I have to say. Enough to the point that I have asked myself if this damn thing is even worth my time.

After seeing this movie, I almost felt relieved to know that the thoughts that I go through on a daily basis is what everyone who wants something so badly feels. So maybe I'm not doing so bad and an 11:55pm movie was needed to remind me to keep the faith and keep on going against all odds. That this road will get a little rocky and when I fall, get back up and keep on keeping on.

Thinking Out Loud...

After my last post, I was searching for a quote and found a few that I thought was totally appropriate for anyone who writes fiction.

Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia. ~E.L. Doctorow

Being an author is like being in charge of your own personal insane asylum. ~Graycie Harmon

The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis, and we'd have a mighty dull literature if all the writers that came along were a bunch of happy chuckleheads. ~William Styron, interview, Writers at Work, 1958

There is so much truth in this since there were so many characters floating around in my head when I was writing and their personalities may not be anything close to yours. Sometimes even their language became mine. There were times when I would take a break from writing and wonder where the hell all of that came from! Two male chauvinists, a character who has lost both of her parents to violent deaths to a serial killer (enough said!)....where did they come from?

Now I can tell my mother that I'm not really crazy and here is the proof!

Fresh Perspective

After more than five years of working on this project, changing who tells the story and just tearing it apart before rewriting it completely, I am finally satisfied with my work. Shocking, I know. So, for now, I am taking a month long break from it and in that time, I am letting a couple people read it that I hope will be honest and give constructive criticism, even if it REALLY sucks. Although I won't be working on it, I will still be posting chapters and as always, I would love to hear what anyone who still reads this thinks about it. :o)

Who would play them in real life?

So, I'm sure that you all know by now that I am a nerd and have been reading about writing a book. I mean, there are a lot of benefits to this. One of the things that caught my eye was one of the activities at the end of a chapter. It asked if someone were to turn your book into a movie, what actors and actresses would play the characters?

For the past couple weeks, I have really thought about this and have to say that this was one of the hardest activities yet. There are four characters who more or less run the story and five more who are considered "supporting cast" and are necessary to keep the story on track. There are a few more that fill in the holes and are almost as important as the "supporting cast". Of all these, I have only been able to identify four people that I could see (and hear) playing my characters and let me tell you, it's very frustrating and cool at the same time.

I think William Carson may have been the easiest person. Again, I'm not sure why that is, but I am not complaining. The hardest person to "cast" is Devyn Williams, the main character. In my head, she is the one who, on the outside, can hold her own because she feels that she has to, but has a past that she needs answers for. I wonder if it's because when I created her character, I may have given her too much of my stubborn personality or a tough side that I wish I had. Not quite sure though.

Thoughts? Leave 'em in the comments!