Today is evaluate your life day. This day could be scary for some, but how else can you make sure that you are on the right track. My life right now boils down to several things: friends/family, writing/editing, school, training, and work (changing in order from day to day and hour to hour).
First of all, my family and friends are important to me. Once a week I like to drop my Oma an email telling her about anything exciting that happened or just how my week was. I grew up living next to my Oma and Opa and as a kid would always run next door after school and these little emails are still my way of running next door to them after school. Another one is my best friend, Laura. Although we haven't lived close to each other for several years, we still text and email about problems and our days and happy moments and have the occasional phone call that lasts at least an hour.
Second thing in my life is my writing and editing. I'm currently editing another book to be published with the help of friends and family, after having read it over several times myself. I'm also working on and planning another book that I'm going to write for this years NaNoWriMo. I love writing. It gives me a chance to be different people and to not be interrupted.
School is of course a big part of my life right now as I'm in grad school. To those that are currently in grad school or have been in grad school, you know what I'm talking about. Also with school I'm the Criminal Justice Student Association President where I get to talk to federal agents (yes, I have some awesome contacts in federal agencies) and arrange speakers and tours for the members.
Training is another big part of my life. I would say working out, but training sounds better for one, and training means that there is a goal that you want to accomplish at the end. For me, I'm training for my third Tough Mudder in 323 days.
Finally work. Last week I was promoted of sorts to House Management Supervisor. Basically meaning I get to do a little more work.
All in all, I love my life even with all of my weird medical stuff that has been going on this year. Yes, sometimes it's a bit stressful and challenging, but if it's not challenging, is it really worth it?
So, evaluate your life today. If you find that you don't like a specific thing, then ask yourself why and don't be afraid to make some changes for the better.
Showing posts with label book. Show all posts
Showing posts with label book. Show all posts
Saturday, October 19, 2013
Friday, August 9, 2013
This Day Was Made For Me!
How I had not known about this day before truly puzzles me. Today is Book Lovers Day.
Have you ever became so engrossed with a book that you lie in your bed at night, the light on, and reading. Your hands and arms slowly falling asleep, forcing you to alternate hands that hold it up. You finish a chapter and look ahead, seeing that there are only 15 pages in the next chapter and think to yourself, "sure, I can read just one more chapter before falling asleep." Suddenly, you wake up with the book lying on your face, your nose acting as the book mark. The light shinning as your eyes suddenly dilate, trying to adjust. You fell asleep with your book again. Hopefully that doesn't happen too often to that many of you, but it has happened more times than I am willing to admit to myself.
You can learn so much through reading (probably why my professors always assign us so much reading homework).
Reading can transfer you anywhere. To another time, another place, or another land that has never been visited before.
Reading brings people together. Sharing a common interest or reading a the same book that a stranger read is a great way to relate to someone. You can relate books to anything. In fact, while typing this, my sister, Christina, sat beside me reading a paper I wrote for school in which I mention Edgar Allen Poe's Murder at the Rue Morgue. We talked about our favorite Poe books and poem.
So what do I want you to do? Go and grab the book your reading or pick up a new one, make yourself a drink, find a cozy chair, the shade under a tree or along the pool and read.
If you fall asleep while reading, don't worry about it...it happens to the best of us.
Have you ever became so engrossed with a book that you lie in your bed at night, the light on, and reading. Your hands and arms slowly falling asleep, forcing you to alternate hands that hold it up. You finish a chapter and look ahead, seeing that there are only 15 pages in the next chapter and think to yourself, "sure, I can read just one more chapter before falling asleep." Suddenly, you wake up with the book lying on your face, your nose acting as the book mark. The light shinning as your eyes suddenly dilate, trying to adjust. You fell asleep with your book again. Hopefully that doesn't happen too often to that many of you, but it has happened more times than I am willing to admit to myself.
You can learn so much through reading (probably why my professors always assign us so much reading homework).
Reading can transfer you anywhere. To another time, another place, or another land that has never been visited before.
Reading brings people together. Sharing a common interest or reading a the same book that a stranger read is a great way to relate to someone. You can relate books to anything. In fact, while typing this, my sister, Christina, sat beside me reading a paper I wrote for school in which I mention Edgar Allen Poe's Murder at the Rue Morgue. We talked about our favorite Poe books and poem.
So what do I want you to do? Go and grab the book your reading or pick up a new one, make yourself a drink, find a cozy chair, the shade under a tree or along the pool and read.
If you fall asleep while reading, don't worry about it...it happens to the best of us.
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
30 Days
30 days. 30 days left until November. 30 days left to get ahead on school work. 30 days left to do those big projects due in November and early December. 30 days. 30 days left until National Novel Writing Month. 30 days until all hell breaks loose and once again the participants go crazy. That's not long.
Friday, May 25, 2012
Books
It is probably no surprise to any of you (especially when you notice the background I have picked out) that I like books. Actually, that's a lie. I LOVE books. It wasn't always this way though. When I was in elementary school and even middle school I hated to read. I had a speech problem and reading in class was a pain. In high school one of our assignments was a book report on any book in the library. I like horror and mystery so I thought I'd give Stephen King a try as I heard he wrote some dark stuff. The book was The Eyes of the Dragon.
It was brilliant. I couldn't put it down. It was the first book that I actually enjoyed reading. I started reading other works by him, such as Cell, Christine, Under the Dome and (my personal favorite so far) IT. While I love how he develops his characters and their interactions between them and throws them into the action then explains it, I knew that he will only write a limited number of books. So last year I started branching out. I've read The Woman in Black by Susan Hill, The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson and some various short stories by the one and only H.P. Lovecraft. I now have over 70 books (still need to read quite a few actually) but I can't wait to get to them all. To step inside the world. To meet the characters, some of which will become my friends and a little piece of me.
With all of these books on my shelf waiting to be read, you would think that I would not go out to buy more books. Well that is where you are wrong. Yesterday I went to a store called Half Price Books where you can buy a book for roughly half of what it would be new. I told my boyfriend (Mason) that I was going and that I was going to limit myself to 6 books (I tend to get carried away at times ~ I'm the one typically sitting on the floor in the middle of an isle with a stack of books by my side as I forgot to get a basket reading random pages from the book currently in my hand). Well 6 books was too many for him so he made me a deal. If I only bought 4 books, then next time we were together he would buy me one.
At the store, I instantly went to the horror section and found Stephen King's On Writing which I grabbed off the shelf as I was looking for that one for a while. Then I found his Danse Macabre. I read the back cover and it sounded like a good gross-out book. That made two so far. Now going back to the above, I am trying to branch out on who I read, so I found Glen Duncan's Death of an Ordinary Man (the author of I, Lucifer which I am currently reading and is hilarious) and Pete Hamill's Forever.
So I stuck to my promise and only bought those 4 books (for $20 ~ AWESOME!) then made plans to go over to Mason's house last night where I met his parents and sister. After slight awkward hellos, and nice to meet yous, we escaped and took a walk to a Half Price Books about 2 miles from his house (that would be very dangerous for me because I would visit weekly). We made our way to the horror section and was looking at books when one called to me, The Incredible Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson which is now all mine (Thanks Mason!).
With all of these books on my shelf waiting to be read, you would think that I would not go out to buy more books. Well that is where you are wrong. Yesterday I went to a store called Half Price Books where you can buy a book for roughly half of what it would be new. I told my boyfriend (Mason) that I was going and that I was going to limit myself to 6 books (I tend to get carried away at times ~ I'm the one typically sitting on the floor in the middle of an isle with a stack of books by my side as I forgot to get a basket reading random pages from the book currently in my hand). Well 6 books was too many for him so he made me a deal. If I only bought 4 books, then next time we were together he would buy me one.
At the store, I instantly went to the horror section and found Stephen King's On Writing which I grabbed off the shelf as I was looking for that one for a while. Then I found his Danse Macabre. I read the back cover and it sounded like a good gross-out book. That made two so far. Now going back to the above, I am trying to branch out on who I read, so I found Glen Duncan's Death of an Ordinary Man (the author of I, Lucifer which I am currently reading and is hilarious) and Pete Hamill's Forever.
So I stuck to my promise and only bought those 4 books (for $20 ~ AWESOME!) then made plans to go over to Mason's house last night where I met his parents and sister. After slight awkward hellos, and nice to meet yous, we escaped and took a walk to a Half Price Books about 2 miles from his house (that would be very dangerous for me because I would visit weekly). We made our way to the horror section and was looking at books when one called to me, The Incredible Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson which is now all mine (Thanks Mason!).
Long story short, I love books and love this new deal.
Monday, January 9, 2012
Scared
Back in November I wrote a novel. The even is called NaNoWriMo or National Novel Writing Month where participants compete against themselves and the clock to write a 50,000 word novel. I finished my 50,000 words with a day to spare, and the ending to still be finalized. I have been doing NaNoWriMo for the last three years. I started because my sister heard about it from some friend and I thought, '50,000 words, that's nothing!' Well that year I managed to finish it with literally moments to spare. In the twenty-third hour of the night, I had finished and was so excited. That novel though was a piece of crap. I wasn't prepared. I had a story inside of my head but misjudged the length with the original story. The original part was a mere 10,000 words. I had to think quick as the second hand changed minutes and hours soon went by. I ended up doing an epilogue to that story to fill up the remaining 40,000 words where my characters jumped 10 years into the future. Once that last word was typed, the words entered onto the official website which counts the words, I never looked back at it.
The next novel I wrote I was better prepared. I had more ideas flowing in my head. I described my characters better and made them have their own flaws. I made them human. Thing was, it was still crap. I didn't know what I was talking about. I related on others to help me too often. It is a fine thing to have others help you, don't get me wrong, but there's something different about hearing about the experience or event verses actually going through it. When you actually experience the event, you remember certain things. The way the light was shinning. The smells. The background noises. How you felt. Why you felt that way. These things are typically lost in day to day communication where the go to response is always 'I guess you had to be there.' With writing, if you write well, you should never have to say that. The words on the page should draw such an emotional response that it is like you were actually there. The characters and readers should see how the light shines. Taste the smells. Hear the background noises. Feel like they are currently experience it. Understand why they feel the emotions that they do. As my characters lacked most of these things, it was still a piece of crap and once again, I have never looked back at a single word I wrote, yet still remember the basic plot.
The third novel I wrote was different. I dove right in. I started with action. I describe somethings with such great detail that the picture in my head was exactly like the one drawn with words. My characters have feelings. They cried. They laughed. They loved. My characters have jobs. They stress about certain things and they each have their own quirk that makes them who they are. Several of my characters died. Some as heroes. Some by accident. They experience things that they never tried before. They helped others with their problems while setting their problems on the back burner. They traveled. They weren't always happy but they lived, they really lived. Because I liked the way I was writing this novel so much while writing (not wanting to stop just because I was on such a roll) I decided to edit it. After the first two chapters of editing, I decided to let me sister read it and edit for grammar mistakes as I was sure I missed my fair share. This was the part I was scared of. I was finally letting someone else into my brain. Into how I think. If you have ever written three books, the first two being complete duds and a waste of time and finally feeling so passionate about the third that you are actually proud of it (wanting to hang it up on the fridge with a gold star) then you understand what I was going through. If not, let me explain. This was the moment when I would find out if someone else liked my work. Liked my work so much that they could not put it down. This was also the moment when I would find out if I should stick to my day job and not write another novel again. I was terrified of this moment. This moment would defy me for the rest of my living days. I clicked the send button on my email and she received it seconds later. It was there. In her hands now to judge. To judge my work. To judge my mind. To ultimately judge me.
At the end of each chapter, she said she was caught. She wanted to find out what would happen next. Why the characters were the way they were. She was reading the fourth chapter (of eight total) yesterday and tweeted a great complement. She said "Man, my sister's writing is so good that one part made the Life and Death theme from LOST play in my head while reading." As we were both LOST lovers when it was on, it was one of the nicest things she has ever said.
I am still scared to let others read my work as I know that every book isn't for everybody and that I certainly have a fair share of books that I tried reading which brought me to not look at it again. I am proud of myself. Not for writing my third novel and actually liking it myself, but for growing and letting another person read what I imagined and go on the same dream that I had. Hopefully this next November my novel will be one that I love just as much as this one. Hopefully I will not be scared to show it to others. Only time will tell.
The next novel I wrote I was better prepared. I had more ideas flowing in my head. I described my characters better and made them have their own flaws. I made them human. Thing was, it was still crap. I didn't know what I was talking about. I related on others to help me too often. It is a fine thing to have others help you, don't get me wrong, but there's something different about hearing about the experience or event verses actually going through it. When you actually experience the event, you remember certain things. The way the light was shinning. The smells. The background noises. How you felt. Why you felt that way. These things are typically lost in day to day communication where the go to response is always 'I guess you had to be there.' With writing, if you write well, you should never have to say that. The words on the page should draw such an emotional response that it is like you were actually there. The characters and readers should see how the light shines. Taste the smells. Hear the background noises. Feel like they are currently experience it. Understand why they feel the emotions that they do. As my characters lacked most of these things, it was still a piece of crap and once again, I have never looked back at a single word I wrote, yet still remember the basic plot.
The third novel I wrote was different. I dove right in. I started with action. I describe somethings with such great detail that the picture in my head was exactly like the one drawn with words. My characters have feelings. They cried. They laughed. They loved. My characters have jobs. They stress about certain things and they each have their own quirk that makes them who they are. Several of my characters died. Some as heroes. Some by accident. They experience things that they never tried before. They helped others with their problems while setting their problems on the back burner. They traveled. They weren't always happy but they lived, they really lived. Because I liked the way I was writing this novel so much while writing (not wanting to stop just because I was on such a roll) I decided to edit it. After the first two chapters of editing, I decided to let me sister read it and edit for grammar mistakes as I was sure I missed my fair share. This was the part I was scared of. I was finally letting someone else into my brain. Into how I think. If you have ever written three books, the first two being complete duds and a waste of time and finally feeling so passionate about the third that you are actually proud of it (wanting to hang it up on the fridge with a gold star) then you understand what I was going through. If not, let me explain. This was the moment when I would find out if someone else liked my work. Liked my work so much that they could not put it down. This was also the moment when I would find out if I should stick to my day job and not write another novel again. I was terrified of this moment. This moment would defy me for the rest of my living days. I clicked the send button on my email and she received it seconds later. It was there. In her hands now to judge. To judge my work. To judge my mind. To ultimately judge me.
At the end of each chapter, she said she was caught. She wanted to find out what would happen next. Why the characters were the way they were. She was reading the fourth chapter (of eight total) yesterday and tweeted a great complement. She said "Man, my sister's writing is so good that one part made the Life and Death theme from LOST play in my head while reading." As we were both LOST lovers when it was on, it was one of the nicest things she has ever said.
I am still scared to let others read my work as I know that every book isn't for everybody and that I certainly have a fair share of books that I tried reading which brought me to not look at it again. I am proud of myself. Not for writing my third novel and actually liking it myself, but for growing and letting another person read what I imagined and go on the same dream that I had. Hopefully this next November my novel will be one that I love just as much as this one. Hopefully I will not be scared to show it to others. Only time will tell.
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