Weekend with Your Novel

http://continuingstudies.wisc.edu/conferences/weekendwithyournovel/workshops.html

As I was searching the net for workshops around and in Madison, this is what I came across. Considering that this will be my first workshop to attend, it feels reasonable and is on the cheaper side. So, why not do something like this?

It seems like a great opportunity and voice is something a writer reaches after a lot of struggle.

Halloween Cards

I bought the most awesome Halloween Cards today at Target.They come as a pack of 8 and along side with that I bought stickers. I plan to give them out to the family I nanny for, our physicians and our property managers, along with some friends and people we use their services often.

It's a nice gesture and even more so, a wonderful way to celebrate Halloween :)

Now, to write them all!

Blogging

I've been blogging certainly quite a bit with my new critique group. I am happy to see it some what established with one member and me doing a lot of writing. I feel this is good ground work that will allow all writers to have general increasing interest in the group and to be able to learn from the group.

Writing Update

I don't exactly know what kind of Mini Courses U.W. will be offering for fall. I am assuming there will be several related to Fiction, which I am resolved to register and take all of them.

Besides that, it turns out I have to take a Compass Test in order for me to start my Journalism Certificate classes. That's okay, I am not particularly worried about doing well enough in the English part that I will pass out of English 101. After all, that is required in order for me to take the classes that I need. It is a bit bummer, but there is very little to do about that. My courses usually are full length and therefore are more expensive. I was hoping that this wouldn't be the case. Finding the money is going to be difficult, though I am hoping new opportunities will rise for then, by then. MATC is on hold until the Compass Test and money. Though there is one course that is only $99, not related to Journalism, but instead directly to writing titled "Publishing A Novel" which I will be taking, as soon as I gather the money for it.

Besides that, I've been doing some research and have been researching fiction contests, literary magazines and writing workshops, conferences in and around Madison. I am so happy to have found so many great ones. Since I do not have a story yet, there is very little I can do about submitting my work. But knowing my avenues is a great comfort and a sigh of relief to my mind. This way, I have tangible goals that can be reached and checked off my list.

I am not sure about a Creative Writing Degree, but I am beginning to consider it as a viable option in some sorts.

Now, if I could be factually, orderly and in a disciplined matter be writing those great stories that used to clutter my mind continually and made me a lunatic.

Print books vs.e-book

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2013/07/29/130729ta_talk_surowiecki

For those of you who are interested in the future of print books (such as I am), here's one that will make you feel better about the continuing existence of available print books.

One for Books in a long time.

Writing Again

To be writing again is strange. The only thing that comes to mind is of two subjects and two subjects alone. It either has to be about that time in June, or the past several months in the Winter that I was severely depressed.

I choose to write about the latter for my own sanity. The wounds are far too fresh for me to coherently write something and not be effected by it under any circumstance. The other is more manageable, controllable and I believe I will even benefit if I were to analyze and write a story about this. I am not sure what I will do with the story eventually, however, it is better than not writing at all.

I live to write and writing is as essential as eating, sleeping, excreting waste and taking care of other bodily needs. It is also one of the most dangerous things I can do to myself. It is lethal where it can either make or break me. I tie my misfortunes, mistakes and inability to grasp ideas, life, people with if I am writing, or writing enough or not. Crazy, huh?

After a long pause though, it's great to be writing fiction again.

Coming to a close

Today is the last day of my Fiction Writing class. It's bitter because, well, I am a pout and like to rain on everybody's parade. Simply, if I wanted to pay for having the time to write, I could have done so. I would have created a writer's group where we could pay to read our writings.

But then again, I am glad having gotten the ability to go back to writing, without strings attached and having to worry about turning my unpolished work for a grade. Besides, we've been so busy with so much that, I barely got the time to hand in several pages of a story and two character sketches. Though, on a personal level it has done me a great deal of therapy.

But I was hoping for a far more structured, informative, planned ahead, with serious homework load, class time preserved for instruction and different writing exercises that would kick start any levels motivation and also imagination. I also work better with unmovable due dates, grave attitude and serious atmosphere where consequences are made real and heavy with a structured, organized lesson plans. I learn the best that day.

I am glad I began and finished this class even though it felt a bit of a waste of my time. I was able to recognize several things about myself, personality and mind working ways, as well as about myself as a writer and had a lens poking through about me, my work in depth. I am glad to see all my work of the previous years has had a cumulative effect on my writing. The level of my writing has seriously been upgraded. The stories I am able to imagine and capable of sketching out, flushing out, characterizing has also become somewhat more sophisticated.

Even these things are worthy enough to recognize, though I did not need to pay 70 dollars to see it.

At least I feel like I've taken the first step towards becoming a professional writer that I have been hesitating, and had no idea where to begin. I feel like, I am one step closer and that I could actually do this. To feel an impossible dream is one step closer to becoming improbable is a lift to my heavy curtained heart.

Commitment to Write

I've decided the best thing to do is to be committed to my writing and seriously try my hand at publishing this time around. Also, I promised myself that I would do anything necessary to make it through. The next four years of my life will be beyond difficult in terms of achieving my goals. It will be, because I am beginning again, from scratch and trying to build my audience from ground up, and get somewhere.

It is true that I have been seeing myself as a writer, a budding one, but nonetheless, a writer, an unpublished one, but a writer. It is true that I have decided this is the true calling of my life and that I will take my time to getting where I need to be in this choice. However, that is no longer an option when I've realized that writing is one piece of my life that I cannot do without. I needed for an ability to survive and to keep everything else in focus. Because I create tremendous efforts to write, I make it my main goal of the day, so I get everything else in order. Other wise, I know I am not going to get to actually writing a single line. To succeed at writing, my persistence needs to win and my resolve needs to be solid. But that alone is not enough. I need to hone my craft very well. To do that, well I need lots of help.

It's true, I have great ideas. I don't doubt that. Many people and aspiring writers do. The highlight of being a story teller isn't your ideas. It's the stories you tell and how you tell those stories. The style, the narrative, the characters, the structure and plot. The insights. And publishing in 21st Century? Everybody needs help with that. Therefore, I am getting my feet wet with joining a U.W. Mini Course called The Art of Fiction Writing, and it is a class I am excited about. I am very excited to see what kind of writers will be taking this class and what kind of a community I can begin.

But other than that, I don't know where to go. It is true, I work and have been working diligently on my vocabulary and grammar. I continually buy books regarding fiction writing and writing in general and go through them at intervals. I take them seriously and read them, sometimes twice and always with note taking habits.But that hasn't left me anywhere in particular. Especially being on and off about it.

Where do I go and where do I begin and what kind of next steps do I take? Where does one go to become an excellent writer?

This here is my commitment, pledge and honor to write, put in my effort, time and money to become the best I possibly can.

Commitment to Moving

We're fully back and immersed in our lives. Madison.

We're nearly packed and there is not much left. About two months until we move. I could not been any more agitated, anxious and ready to get this move done with. I have no more ties with this place. It's an overbearing, stifling place with no sunshine. No sunshine! At all! I have all these memories bottled up in here and everything is a constant reminder to me. I just don't want to come back at the end of the night and my own personal empire is shrinking, pacing back and about to be destroyed.

I'd like to ease and settle in again, and go back to my own daily schedule and fix my focus on myself, my craft and my own future rather than keep swallowing the old tears of the past.

Private Self vs. Public Self

As a writer, I constantly struggle with the private and the public self. Sometimes I forget which influences which, and cannot seem to make a clear distinction between the two. They blend and mesh so well, although entirely different from one another, they're wholly part of me, entirely--becoming maddening, confusing personas and sometimes resulting in huge blunders (though rarely). In essential, it is confusing to realize which is the body and which is the shadow.

However, I would argue that this is really true for many. We all have personality traits that are quirky and tends to be audience specific. The way we are at home, how we voice our thoughts, emotions, opinions to our self, to our significant others, immediate family, close friends and to acquaintances, our co-workers, school environment and eventually to society at large.

Do you sometimes confuse which identity takes over and later perhaps switch for a long time that feels foreign and awkward to you?

Overcoming Fear

This one huge problem is staring at us. How to solve it when you're afraid to move?

I've been beginning to desire writing. There is a tight shackle that bounds me into silence. It's called fear. It's useless sometimes. I wouldn't go so far to say that fear is never a useful emotion. That would be a huge lie standing from a biological evolutionary theory. As humans we developed fear to assess dangerous situations to our survival and extinction. It is often intuitive. There is some sort of an association of dangerous territory, unknown results, information that we're lacking and we have no idea the change it can create in us. This is the latter kind of fear we have developed as we slowly made our way into the modern world as humans. Our collective conscious tells us we no longer to fear for our survival on a daily basis, however there are other things that we fear now for our existence, the psychological, mental balance of our lives.

I am empowering myself with information. It's looking more horrible than before. But now, we are beyond desperate. So, we'll have to overcome it, grit out teeth and finish the last item on our agenda. Here we come.

About That Writing

I keep wanting to get up and write. I want to write badly and at the same time, interestingly enough, writing down a line seems like far too difficult, heart wrenching activity that I just can't seem to be wiling to put myself through it. Blogging is the only thing I can seem to manage through and that's just sad. There are so many writing exercises that awaiting to be done, books to be read and stories inspired by those stories waiting to be just written. The poetry journal is begging me, those egging feelings are just ripe for you to splash them against the white, ruled pages.

But, I just can't get myself to write. It's like I've thrown everything writing related in a black box and have put it away for now. Holding a pen feels so foreign. I think there is officially something wrong with me.

There are so many dangerous emotions and thoughts that I had to silence, I think I am afraid that once I start to pen them down, that will be the end of it and I just won't be able to function as the rest of society.

Writing Space

My little desk, that's always cluttered, with an ever growing list of things to do, things to pay, things to manage and thing's to write. It never seems to lesson, or the space I clean up never seems to stay clean long enough to actually do wondrous writing on it. Or, any writing at all. For the past months, I can't seem to get past, everything I write is crap phase and it's not making my other wise dim any brighter.

One thing I do miss from living on my own is my abundant own space and writing space specifically as everything stood the way I left them, without an extra pair of eyes curious, wondering over my lists, things. I feel so violated sometimes that I just want to hide everything. And the daily needed use of check books, post it, index cards, pens and pencils and being easily accessible in our bedroom sometimes makes me the guilty part.

But, writing for me has always been a solitary act in which I've engaged in extreme privacy.

I continually need a space in which I can call my own, well lit, well organized and cleaned, without the treacherous, dirty hands of others to go through my sacred space. Everyone is different. I am not one of those grand people who can write anywhere, anytime, with anyone around. I need my mind to have been comfortable, my body to be well adjusted and my heart in it, having embraced where I am in order to write.

I like the door to be closed, rain drops hitting against the window and the soft voice of Melody Gardot to write efficiently, wholeheartedly and productively. I dream of the day where we have two bedroom apartment where I can have all of my books, notebooks with me, in the same room, and a door to close and lock from lecherous hands and lustful, dirty gazes.

Libraries

There is something about libraries that always draws me in, comfortably welcoming me into the imaginative worlds of stories where the characters are bright, eccentric and follow their hearts and dreams. Stories of where time has no significance or meaning, whether it be past, present, future, or far far into the future where planets have been found, destroyed and cannibalistic dystopian futures exist. I could do all of this, cozily from the couch I am sitting on as long as I am enveloped by the silence of a library that drowns me in books and writers I've never heard of before. Lost in the collective knowledge, memory and histories of my craft ancestors that I so desperately strive to be like, painstakingly labor to become a better writer and share in their glory.

So imagine my happiness when I was able to access the library in between my rare work shift breaks. I say rare, because they mostly stick me with the all day shifts, which means I get to be on my feet from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. At that point in time, library closes. But to be frank, I wouldn't be able to go even if it did stay later due to my excessive physical exhaustion.

On the days that I can get an hour or two break, away from my sexist co workers, the overwhelming scent of food, my black clothes and being on my feet, the library has become my sanctuary, my hospice, solace and a pair of warm arms to softly embrace me, heal me and coddle me to an imaginary future where I did not have to do any physical, manual labor.

Traveling Conscious

The traveling conscious is a enviable thing, sometimes a gift from the Heavens and sometimes is just the opposite. I guess it would depend on your own personality and what you were hoping to get out of your traveling time.

For me though, over the years I have eventually created and have build something I like to call "The Traveling Conscious/ness". It sound ludicrous to many people around me and they like to just say well, she just possesses over active imagination. It doesn't matter which kind of traveling I am doing. It might be going to see my parents, coming back home to my boyfriend, or to see my boyfriend or romantic partner after a long pause, it might be traveling together, it might be somewhere I am experiencing for the first time, it might be for new beginnings, it might be because I am relocating to somewhere else to live my life, a new job, a job interview...whatever kind of traveling it might be. There are certain consciousness that follows with it, plaguing my mind questions surrounding the said traveling that goes beyond the mechanics of the immediate future and planning.

Every time I am going back to visit my parents my mind is invaded by questions regarding family, family responsibilities, branching out of a family, the natural succession of the order of law, growing healthy little families, the past that seems to indicate the future, and many other things that stems out of that line of thinking. This never fails. I travel with that conscious, experiment in that line of thought, come back home and finish on writing a few things that might eventually become a short-story, or begin the beginnings of a story, definitely several journal and blog entries that eventually seems to sharpen, clear and deepen my previous arguments and allow me to rediscover older aha moments and discover new ones that allows me to reach to the higher, next level.

It's time that allows me to think is probably would have made it simpler to describe. I should work on that some more. It effects the way we experience things, the way we learn things and the way we seem to frame our experiences and tell our narrative story. That I think in itself is legitimate enough to continue it even superficially.