Flash Nano/Nanowrimo 2021 Final Update

November is over. I certainly didn’t write every day, nor did I ‘win’ Nanowrimo. However, I wrote twenty-four stories in thirty days. So I definitely did well. My final word count was 10213. I accomplished my goal, which was to write as many pieces of flash fiction as possible, on as many days as I could.

At first, I didn’t see myself getting anywhere close to a story a day. Honestly, I would have been happy with 5 or 6. You can imagine how thrilled I am to end up with as many as I did.

Some days I wrote more than one story and other days I didn’t even look at my pencil. There were plenty of times I didn’t think I had a story in me at 11 pm but decided to try anyway and got great stuff out of it. The main thing is I didn’t let myself stand in my own way, though I tried a few times.

I hope to keep up this momentum and keep cranking out fiction but not every day. I don’t want to burn myself out again after finally waking up my muse again.

I’ll probably keep the same schedule of writing as I did all month: writing late. During the day I work on making plushies and bags so there isn’t time to write then. In the mornings I suffer through allergy hell, which delays the start of my workday. It’s not smart to work with needles and machinery when you can’t see through tears. I bought some eye drops that might help but nothing else has so I don’t have a lot of confidence there.

My allergy crying normally stops around lunchtime so I think I’ll try writing in the mornings again as well as late at night. I could type with my eye closed so difficulty seeing the keyboard or monitor isn’t an issue. If I want to write manually I can keep using a pencil. Tears can only do so much damage and my handwriting is horrendous so not much change there.

Now that I have a little confidence back I need to work on motivation and discipline.

So, for me, Nanowrimo and Flash Nano 2021 were both successes. I got what I wanted out of it and I’m happy. Hopefully next year there will be in-person events and even more stories. Until then I’ll keep writing and updating.

Nanowrimo/Flash Nano 2021

It’s been a while, but I’ve decided to participate in Nanowrimo this year. I almost didn’t because I simply didn’t have any ideas, and I haven’t written regularly in a long time. It’s difficult for me to believe I could actually succeed, so I had a why bother attitude.

Then a friend in my writing group told me about Flash Nano. The intent is to write a piece of flash fiction every day in November. My interest was peaked. I’m still nervous because this slump has had its claws in me for so long, but it’s not as scary as trying to write a 50,000-word novel at this point.

Flash fiction stories appeal more right now. Let’s examine the benefits for someone in my position.

• Writing 1000 words or less in a day is less terrifying
• Finishing a short work gives a sense of accomplishment which raises my confidence level
• Flash fiction ideas come from all over so there are more chances I’ll find something to write about
• I already know how to write flash fiction which leads to…
• Once upon a time I wrote flash all the time and I was good at it, which goes back to confidence
• Assuming I only worry about one story at a time I won’t get overwhelmed
• There are many more bullets I could add but I’ll end with writing flash (for me specifically) is the most likely way I’ll get back to writing regularly

My writing funk/slump/block/whatever the hell you want to call it started with a medication making me cloudy and forgetful. I got off that medication, but my current one has a similar if lesser effect on me. This I can probably work through, but there are other issues. I also can’t seem to read. I was always a reader and I adore books. Stories are magic for me. When the concentration issues began, I had trouble getting through a book. Eventually, it became a chapter, working its way to a time thing. I can’t focus on reading for longer than about 10 minutes.

If you don’t read, you can’t write. Not well. In my case, I think it became more literal. Man, did that suck! Then there is the mental toll a problem like this exacts. The horrid cycle seemed never-ending.

Things are slowly changing. Recently I read 40% of a book in a couple of hours. Not long after, I wrote a few flash fiction pieces. I finished that book a couple of nights ago. Then, last night starting at midnight at the Nanowrimo kickoff event, I wrote a 718-word story. There has to be a correlation for me.

I didn’t know what I was going to write about when I started. Nothing was mapped out or even thought about beforehand.

My only prep was while the Zoom call was going and others were talking about what they would write, I looked through some writing prompts. If they interested me, I wrote them on the first line of a new page in a spiral and went to the next page. I ended up with eight prompts but most didn’t spur any ideas beyond the obvious images the prompt seemed meant to invoke. However, there were a couple I almost believed could work.

I say almost because I had no faith in my ability to ‘make shit up’ at this point. Nevertheless, I was determined to try.

So I picked the one my must kept tossing at me. Honestly, of the ones I thought I could write about, this one seemed the least promising.

Rae sat atop the piano waiting for the music to start

When I first read it, I felt a glimmer of a spark, which I quickly dismissed. I kept making my way through my list, but I kept thinking about that stupid piano. I did NOT want to write about a lounge singer. I would not. I had a different prompt all picked out, and at 11:58, I turned back to Rae and stared at my page in disgust. I can only hope I didn’t make the face that matched my feelings because Zoom picks up everything.

Midnight hit and the ML said to start, and I did precisely that. I didn’t know what was going to come out of me, but if it had to be about a singer in a red dress in a smoke-filled room getting ready to sing to a gangster or some shit, I would write it. I was desperate to get any amount of words on the paper.

I’m pretty sure I held my breath as I wrote my first sentence following the prompt. To my surprise, more sentences followed. They kept coming. The story grew and changed and exploded out of me. I wrote with a pen because I thought I might write out the bones of a story, and I like to do that freehand.

My ballpoint pen annoyed me, so I switched to a gel pen. I found myself making a mess on my page, so I grabbed a pencil. What a strange sensation it was using a writing utensil I never use!

The smoke-filled room I dreaded never made an appearance. No singing was heard by my characters. Red dress? I have no clue; I didn’t have time for much description. I was too busy writing what happened as opposed to how it looked. I couldn’t get the words out fast enough. My story centered around ghostly music and a woman trying to solve the mystery of what she heard. There is nothing ‘expected’ about it, which suits my style.

I won’t claim it is the best story I ever wrote, but it is undoubtedly the most satisfying piece I’ve done in a long time. Because I wrote it. I wrote something, anything. More importantly, I wrote a complete story with potential. I find it intriguing, and it will be fun to expand on eventually. I’m sure I’ll pick it apart and destroy it later because I’m a writer. It’s my job to over criticize everything I do. For now, I’ll be happy.

Words are in me, trying to get out. Look at this post, with three times as many words than necessary! I need to keep finding ways to access them. I’m hoping Nanowrimo and Flash Nano will help me.

If I can work up the nerve, I’ll post my story sometime this week but don’t hold your breath. Breaking through shaken confidence is hard! To anyone out there doing Nanowrimo, good luck! Don’t stress, just write.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Everything Update

Writing: I’m getting there. Slowly. For over a year, I haven’t written much due to some awful side effects of a medication I kicked to the curb. We’re talking depression, mental fog, irritability (no, not all of that can be blamed on gabapentin), next to no ability to concentrate, and straight-up memory loss. There were more issues, but I only listed the most troublesome.

Sounds like a medical update, right?  The point is, now I’m on a new medication (since August), and all of the bad side-effects are gone. I hoped I would jump back into writing right away, but it was not to be. Turns out, I didn’t instantly get back my hard-earned discipline and great writing habits!

I will. Writing every day isn’t an option for me anymore, but I’m working on writing every day I can. It comes in spurts. I do writing exercises as often as my muse shows up though the real issue is a ‘butt in chair’ issue. Technically I’m in the chair, but getting started is difficult. Part of it is the bad habit of not writing. However, I know myself well enough to know the true problem is fear.

What if I can’t do it anymore? What if the meds stole my muse like they did my memory? What if I Can do it again but I suck? Blah, blah, typical writer self-abuse. Yet, this time it’s scarier. There is a sprinkling of reality in my fears. For a year, I really couldn’t do it anymore. My muse was non-existent, and the few times I got words on paper, THEY SUCKED! I know things are different now, but until I write something good, I’ll worry. Then I’ll worry some more.

This is going to be a long hard road for me. All I can do is try. I need to find my writing discipline/motivation/inspiration again. Perhaps writing blog posts again will help. When I post here, I don’t really worry if it is well written or follows elements of style or reads like a term paper with proper paragraph usage. I simply think with my fingers and the mess you’re reading flows out.

Take this post, for example. I knew I was going to write an update, but I didn’t have any particular plan. I didn’t even know where to start. It took me ten minutes to type the first sentence, but once I did, 400 words came out (and counting).

Which leads me to the next update:

Blog: I plan to write more blog posts. As of now, I don’t know what they will be about. I do want to work on my compound sentence issue. Grammarly lets me know it hates me every time I use one. It also tells me this post sounds disapproving.

One of my goals is to write and post at least one piece of flash fiction or a short story every month. At one point, I was writing and posting close to a hundred. I won’t pressure myself to get back to that level. Not yet, anyway. I do hope to get into some kind of regular rhythm though. I have a huge list of ideas to work with so I’m not as nervous as I could be.

Expect a lot of opinions because I still have those and I’m sure my husband and my best friend are tired of being my only outlet for them.

Perhaps a rant of two? Definitely some ramblings about writing, life, people, etc.

Medical: Life sucks, whatever. I’m tired of bitching about it.

Everything else: 1. My husband and I are binging Grimm. This is pertinent because it involves a lot of fairy tale creatures. Two of my biggest projects involve mythical beasties. One for adults and one for children. Every time we watch an episode (or four in a row), I feel inspired. So far, this has manifested in notes and ideas for my stories but no serious writing yet.

2. There is a comic convention coming to my city at the end of February, and I always get enthusiastic about those. Enthusiasm equals happy muse.

3. I got a new desk. A huge executive desk. The kind I’ve wanted for years (ever since I had to give up my last big desk). It takes up most of the space in my office because I placed it squarely in the center! Every time I manage to get any writing done, it’s while sitting at my perfect desk. Did I mention I love my desk?

That’s all for now. Hopefully, my next update will be more writerly!

Flash Fiction – Boots

“No, thank you,” the scullery maid said in frustration.

“Come on,” the fairy godmother wheedled. “You need me!”

“I have everything I need here. Now leave me be.”

“I can’t do that. You’re my charge, and it’s my duty to do whatever will make you happier.”

“You want me to be happy? Then go away!”

“Nope, not an option. I have to give you things and find a way to change your life for the better. I’m not leaving until I figure out what it will take to do just that.” The fairy crossed her arms and stared down the girl.

“Hmm, well I could use a sturdy pair of boots that actually don’t pinch.”

The godmother’s mouth dropped open. “Boots,” she said in a dead voice.

“Yes, preferably brown so they go with more outfits.”

“Boots. You have access to nearly unlimited power, and you ask for boots.”

Cindy nodded. “That’s all I need.”

“Wouldn’t you like a pretty dress and an invitation to the ball?

“I already have those things.”

“How about some friendly animal friends?”

“I’m allergic to pet dander.”

“Glass slippers?”

“I’d only break them or lose one. Besides, those are not as useful as boots.”

“Magic apple?”

“I’m don’t like fruit.”

“What? What kind of person doesn’t like fruit?”

“This kind obviously.”

“I could make you a beautiful carriage, complete with driver and footmen.”

“I have no use for things that disappear at midnight, fairy!”

“I could make something permanent. Want a magic horse?”

“Can you make it not have dander?”

“Well, no.”

“Then no thank you.”

“What do you want then? I can’t leave until I do something that will improve your life.”

“I really could use those boots.”

“Ugh, fine. I’ll make your stupid footwear. But, they are going to be magic boots!”

“I don’t need…”

“Shut it! This is what we call compromise.”

Cindy closed her mouth and sat down in her dressing chair. The fairy concentrated a moment, then waved her wand, perhaps a little harder than necessary, and the air around the woman’s feet shimmered.

“Take off your shoes.”

The girl complied. The shimmering changed to a glow. It grew slowly brighter until both women had to look away. When the light finally faded the scullery maid wore a beautiful pair of brown boots, well cut and perfectly fitted.

“You are the bane of my existence, and I’m glad my obligation to you is fulfilled. I think I’ll let you figure out the magic of these damn boots. I will NEVER see you again; you ungrateful wretch.”

With that, the fairy vanished. The girl immediately took off the boots. She pulled up several floorboards, revealing a large stash full of strange, glowing objects. Digging around a moment, she found a shining cloth and quickly used it to wrap the boots tightly before putting both into the hole. She secured the boards in place again and pulled a rug over them.

 

“You can come in now,” she called.

Her husband peeked into the room. “Is she gone?”

“Yes, it was a close one this time.”

“What did you ask for?”

“Boots.”

The man stared a moment, then started laughing. “I bet she didn’t like that.”

“Not at all. Maybe I made her mad enough to remove me from her list. She said she was never coming back.”

“I doubt it.”

“Me too. It sucks having a forgetful fairy godmother.”

“It goes beyond forgetful. She is very old, poor thing. It’s very kind of you to keep this room and wear those old clothes for her.”

“I don’t like tricking her, but she gets so upset when I wear my nice dresses. Making her happy is the least I can do after all she’s done for us.”

“I’m sorry, my love. Shall I send for your chambermaid? The ball starts in an hour.”

“Yes please.”

 

He crossed to the door and called to the servant.

“Are you curious about what the boots can do?”

“No! If her gifts weren’t meant to change my life, I would use them. Remember that time I took the magic sword and ran off for a month chasing dragons?”

They shared a laugh at the memory.

“No, I’m never using anything she gives me again. I like my life just the way it is.”

The door opened. “I have your gown ready, your Majesty,” the chambermaid announced.

Cindy’s husband, the king, kissed her hand and turned to leave. “See you at the ball. You should wear the glass slippers for old times sake.” He ducked to avoid her thrown hairbrush. “Happy fiftieth anniversary,” he said, quickly closing the door behind him.

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Sometimes I like to write stories that are almost entirely dialog, that can be read without being confused by who is talking. I didn’t quite succeed, but I’m happy with the result, though it’s a rough draft.

This piece was written in Firehouse Subs one Sunday as I ate lunch before heading to my writing group. The place was packed and loud, but somehow I had a random Cinderella idea pop into my head, and I grabbed my spiral and started writing.

It originated with watching an elderly woman and thinking about dementia. It’s a serious subject, but what-if questions started popping up. What if the fairy godmother became forgetful? So a story was born. I hope it doesn’t offend anyone dealing with a friend or family member with dementia.

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Photo by Oziel Gómez on Unsplash

Word Count 774 words

Sidenote: Pardon the terrible formatting. Between this theme hating tab and copy and pasting from Word, well, you see the result.

Nanowrimo Update

Three thousand, six hundred fifty-two words. Sound low? It is if your goal is to win Nanowrimo. For me, this is a great number. It means I’m writing. I’ve put some words on paper almost every day since the beginning of the month.

Plus, I started out handwriting everything. I only switched to typing last night at my region’s first write-in. So I’m not doing so bad.

Winning would be great but that’s not my goal. My goal is to get back into a regular writing routine. Ideally, I would write at least four days a week. I don’t want to work on my husband’s days off because he has a weird work schedule and we get little time together except those two days a week.

On Saturday my muse thinks it’s time to crawl under a mental rock and hide. It frustrated me at first but now I enjoy having time to myself with no expectations. However, for the rest of this month, I plan to try to write every day, if only for thirty minutes to an hour. Chronic back pain will make it hard, but I if I don’t attempt it, I’ll be disappointed in myself.

I’m trying not to have a word count goal but my brain is stuck on half. If I can reach 25,000 words I’d probably be satisfied.  If I write about 900 words a day I’ll get there.

I’ll post another update on my progress soon.

Nanowrimo Prep and Story Update

For the first time in a while, I’m excited about Nanowrimo. October is prep month. Most years I prep about a week or two before November 1. This time it’s different. As mentioned in my last post, I am working on a writing class from Holly Lisle. My new idea for a story fits in nicely with the course. Even better, is the timing.

The class starts with coming up with an idea, which I already had, then slowly expanding on it. Characters first, then conflict. There are seeds of setting as well but I’m not focusing on that yet.

Where the timing is great is the lesson I’m on, and the next, is I’m starting to write scenes. I don’t know how many I’ll have by the time Nano starts but it will be a great launching point. This class is a long, slow one but it’s perfect for me while doing the crazy competition with myself in November!

At this point, I still don’t think I’ll win Nanowrimo but I know I’ll write more than I have in quite some time. Who knows, I may blow it out of the water.

What I have story wise right now is:

• An interesting protagonist named Reagan
• An antagonist (I’m deciding if he’s interesting)
• An overall villain for the series
• A best friend with a friendship ending secret
• A coworker with an even bigger secret that affects the lives of entire races of supernatural beings
• A father who is not a father
• Ken the Wizard who is not what he seems
• A child in danger
• A bound ghost (which doesn’t look like it fits but does, unless I change my mind)

At least three of those people have memory issues, which is a theme across several stories. Even the ghost might not know who she is, but I have until book three to decide. Sounds excessive right? It is, but there is a good reason for it and it all goes back to one big gem. It’s not precisely a McGuffin. What a lie! In the first book, it kind of is, but only one person is actively trying the get it. No one else knows they need it.

None of the mentioned secrets are revealed in the first book. Right now, I have three strong story ideas so the series will be at least a trilogy. The first book is all about Reagan figuring out what she is and how to master her magic. Also, it’s about her dying her hair a lot. And fruit trees.

The second book is about the aftermath of the person from book one getting that gem. Secrets start coming out and relationships change. There is a lot of anger, recriminations, and lightning.

Book three starts with the ghost and moves on to Reagan discovering the other two secrets and the losses they cause. Also, she might lose her humanity. And there is a satyr.

I’ll keep you all updated as I progress through the story and Nanowrimo. I may overload this blog with word count updates but it helps me with accountability. To anyone else prepping for November, good luck! I’d love to see your updates as well.

 

 

 

 

Flash Fiction – Untitled (for now)

She slammed the sledgehammer against the giant block again. After a thousand, she stopped counting the blows. Flakes of whatever it was made of littered the ground, but she was no closer to destroying the thing.

Seven days ago she almost managed to start the apocalypse. Everything was going along perfectly until a stray thought about mythical creatures ruined it all. What a terrible idea it was too! Of course, that was the problem. The worst concept in history created the block before her. She attempted everything to break it: a chisel, blowtorch, freeze ray. She even tried with a ball of twine, which didn’t make sense but she couldn’t get it out of her head so she tried it anyway. Only the sledgehammer she held had an effect, but it took too long.

Already she could feel the apocalyptic urges fading. So close! Thoughts of that stupid unicorn were replacing her carefully laid plot to start a war. Her plan to destroy…something important…nope, gone. Instead, she kept seeing a fat old book being used as a grappling hook. What? She couldn’t stop the bizarre, random ideas from coming.

She glanced at the block. Oh crap, it was getting bigger, just like the grappling hook book. Titles of thick novels flashed until she latched onto one. She didn’t want to but she had no choice. Sometimes she hated being a muse.

Cutting off that line of thinking, she tried to concentrate again on her objective. She had to find a way to break through. Maybe a bayonet would work.

—

Sara sat at her computer and tried to will herself to write. Ever since that stupid unicorn story popped into her head she’d been stalled. This was the worst case of writer’s block she’d ever had. A whole week with no writing! It sucked but some part of her felt it was a good thing.

Sometimes she thought her muse must be evil. Too many thoughts of world domination or destruction crossed her mind for her to entirely trust her ‘imagination.’ She knew it was silly to think of her muse as separate from herself, yet, she strongly felt it must be so. Sara believed was a good person and there was no way such immoral thoughts could come from her!

She took one more look at her screen before giving up on writing for the day. Perhaps now would be a good time to find a show to binge-watch. As she walked away from her desk she wondered if writing down the dumb unicorn story would help beat her writer’s block.

—

(One year later Sunny the Super Unicorn was a best seller with the sequel eagarly awaited by fans. Yet, no one would ever know a mental image of a unicorn rescuing someone with a ball of twine, a bayonet and an old copy of War and Peace potentially saved the world.)

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I wrote a story! I don’t even care about the flaws. It’s been so long since I’ve been able to sit down and write more than a few ideas.  You probably figured out this story was born of my own writer’s block. I actually jotted down the basic idea weeks about, along with the bones of eight or nine other stories. The problem wasn’t my creativity shutting down, it was my motivation turning completely off. So more of a writer’s funk but as bad as being blocked.

There are many potential reasons/excuses but I believe it all comes down to pain. With all the troubles I’ve had with my back it’s no surprise it finally got down. It sucks but there it is. I spent a lot of time being angry, then feeling sorry for myself. Now I’m back to angry, but it’s a will inducing, motivation driving anger.

Instead of being resentful of my situation I’m pissed off at at the pain and myself for letting it stop my forward writing momentum.

My first step in using this anger is this story. The next steps are the other story ideas I have written here and there. As I write I’ll post most of them. One or two I might use to finally enter some contests. I’ll keep everyone updated on that.

I also have several novels plotted out. If inspiration leans that way then I’ll work on one of them as well but I want to concentrate on flash fiction and longer short stories for now.

 

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Rough draft 481 words

Photo by Sunyu on Unsplash

My Writing Journey, Part 2

To read Part 1 click here.

Ah, the teenage years. What a beautiful, crazy, terrible nightmare they were. I could tell a million stories from that time, but I’ll stick to the writing-related stuff for the sake of brevity.

I didn’t often write back then. Like most teens, I was crippled with self-doubt and unexplained fears. How on earth did we all survive blushing almost daily? It was during these formative years that I had a lot of serious upheavals and changes.

When I was thirteen, my parents divorced. This was both painful and welcome. They hadn’t gotten along for years, so we all knew it was necessary. The hard part had to do with being a daddy’s girl. There was a time I would have done anything to please my father, but I was learning that he was human and I didn’t like it.

He was an alcoholic, which I barely understood and probably affected me the least of all of my family since I was the youngest and his favorite. In the days leading up to my mom leaving him, I finally saw some uncomfortable truth. My dad was a high functioning alcoholic, as in he came home, drank a lot of beer and you couldn’t see much change. However, he was an a-hole when he was really drunk, but like most heavy drinkers, it was even worse when he wasn’t drinking.

I need to clarify that I was the one who couldn’t see much change when dad drank. I was young, dumb, and oblivious. My mother and brothers definitely weren’t in the dark. In a way, this lack of knowledge made it harder when I saw the truth.

Anyway, I won’t go into too many details, but the night we left, my dad did the unforgivable. He slapped my mother. I may have been a daddy’s girl, but no one touches my mother. Even worse, in my barely teenaged mind, it was my fault. He was drunk and pissed off because of something I did that my mother punished me for.

I don’t remember what stupid crap I’d pulled, but I do remember I deserved to be in trouble. All she did was ground me, but I was his baby, and I don’t know if he assumed I hadn’t done anything or if he thought she was too harsh. It doesn’t matter, he had no right to do what he did. Hell, he didn’t have the right to be yelling at her for it.

The words and images are fuzzy for me except the look on his face when I screamed at him. The shock and betrayal in his expression are still clear in my mind. Sitting here, writing this I keep thinking ‘he felt betrayed, what about us?’

My mom was smart enough to use the interruption to get the hell out of there. She grabbed me and my older brother and took us to her sister’s house. She filed for divorce soon after.

I need to backtrack a moment. My dad was a good man, once. He treated me like a princess and loved me with everything he had. He treated my mother well too, in the beginning. He didn’t treat my brothers the same, but I don’t know if that was the beer or just how he was.

Alcoholism messes people up, and he’d been that way for most of his adult life. Part of me believes if he’d ever completely given up beer, he might have become the man he should have been. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.

Once they split up, I picked up a pen again. I wrote about my feelings and then tore up the paper into confetti, every time. It helped. Life settled into a routine for a while. Then my mom started dating someone.

I was happy for her until I met him. His name was David, and I hated him, instantly. This was no teenager issue, though my mom thought it was. No, I got a bad feeling from him. I’d only gotten this feeling with one other person, and it turned out my gut was right that time. So, in all my experience and wisdom I told my mom how uncomfortable he made me. She produced the knowing smile adolescents everywhere hate and kept doing what she was doing.

Everyone assumed I would hate the first guy she dated because he wasn’t my dad. HA! Little did they know my ‘bad feeling’ was never wrong. The guy turned out to be a pig, which is the nicest thing I can say about the man. As a side note, years later, I ran into this man at the local mall, where I worked (I was 18 or 19). He told me how much I looked like my mother, how he missed her, and then hit on me! GROSS!

I occasionally pick on my mother for not listening to me, but my choice in men was much worse for a few years so I keep it to a minimum.

Not long after dumping the jerk, she met my future step-dad. I liked him right away. He was weird as hell, had a dry sense of humor, and he adored mom. No bad feelings cropped up, so I was happy for her. They got married in October 1988, and we moved from our tiny little town to the bigger city ten miles away.

It might as well have been a hundred miles. I wasn’t sad to move, but I was sad to leave my friends. I figured we still see each other often, but it didn’t take long for everyone to move on. I loved and hated my new school. There were so many people! Unfortunately, some were little assholes. Some were amazing. I found the weird tribe and joined. I settled in and decided it could have been worse, then it was.

At the end of December, fifteen days after I turned 15, my dad died in a car accident. He was driving through New Mexico, on he way to El Paso to visit his parents. My brother and I were supposed to be with him, but we didn’t go. He was mad at both my brothers for something stupid and I was mad at him. On Christmas Eve, he yelled at me and told me I ruined Christmas because I defended my siblings. It was all so unimportant and silly, but we didn’t want to be around him when he was a jerk.

As you can imagine, I was a wreck. Grief and guilt consumed me. My relationship with my middle brother fell apart. He already resented me because I was dad’s favorite and was treated differently. Now that our father was gone, there was only me left to take the blame. My mother hardly knew what to do with me.

The years that followed are particularly painful for me, and I don’t want to rehash everything. I didn’t get arrested or do a bunch of drugs or anything like that, but there are some things I’ll never talk about again. I will say that I wrote more during this time than I ever had. I got angry at my mother often back then. She was very non-confrontational, and I am the opposite. It made me so mad when she wouldn’t fight! So I wrote her letters. I wasn’t capable calmly telling her how I felt and she wouldn’t let me yell it, so it was my only option.

Those letters, which she still has, changed my world. You wouldn’t believe how many drafts of each one I wrote. I cared about how well they were written. It bothered me to misspell something or if my grammar was off. I realized how much words mattered. I also learned that I could truly express myself with a pen.

Fear still ruled, but I’d taken steps in the right direction. Years later my mother told me she thought I should write after reading those letters because they were well written.

Remember when I used the word brevity at the beginning of this post? If you know me, I figured there would be some eye-rolls, well deserved.

Certainly, I wrote more than intended but sometimes the words have to come out. Thank you for sticking with me. In part 3, I’ll cover my failed marriages and bad choice in men. Those were the years that almost broke me and nearly killed my love of writing.

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Photo by Apollo Reyes on Unsplash

 

 

Yearly Goal Post

Every year I write a post about my goals. I don’t like to make resolutions because those fail. I can say I want to eat better, and I might for a short time, but it won’t last. There will always be chicken strips in the world!

I could state I will work out more. I probably will do this, but it won’t be because I claimed I would on January 1st. I’ll do it for my health and because it helps me deal with back pain.

What I will say is I want to write more this year. I intend to; it is my primary goal. This is not a resolution; it’s what I’ll do.

Generally, in one of these posts, I make a long list of writerly goals. Not this year. There are too many roadblocks in my life to plan for anything too specific. So I’m sticking with writing more than I did last year.

I don’t want to be disappointed by too many bullet points like I was last year. However, if I’m lucky, motivated, dedicated, and able, then I will write many short stories, a novel or two and a lot of blog posts.

I’m not against other people making resolutions, but they don’t work for me. If you’re making some, I hope they work for you.

Sidenote: I’m working on a suspense novel! I started it years ago but put it aside to work on fantasy. It’s time for a change, so I picked it back up. I replotted it, with very few changes. Now I’m trying to fill in holes in the middle before I sit down and write the thing. Wish me motivation!

 

My Writing Journey, Part 1

One doesn’t choose to be a writer, it’s in you, but you do have to decide to write. Being a writer is part of me, it always was, but I didn’t always choose to do anything active about it. The road to writing regularly was bumpy, often blocked, detoured, sabotaged, scary, and sometimes impossible.

Even now, as in the last few months, there are times when I write next to nothing. I aim to change that, starting with this post. There are many reasons why I’ve been in what I call a ‘writer’s funk,’ but I’ll get into that in a later post.

For now, I’m going to share with you all how I got to where I am today. I called this post Part 1 because it will take several to get it all out. I don’t know how many but I would rather do this in sections than give you with a ten thousand word post.

It all began when I was a child. I’d like to say I always wrote. I wish I had hundreds of journals worth of childish thoughts and stories, but I didn’t write back then. I was capable of it, but things more powerful than the urge to write ruled my life. Fear and shame. Not fear of life or a person, just fear of baring my soul and shame when I did and was rejected. I tried several times, with diaries. After writing a few lines, I would seize up and put them away.

Opening up still fills me with dread. There was no significant event that started it. It was a mix of small childhood traumas that stifled me so much.

I was one of those kids who liked to make crazy things up. Fantastical stories with me as the star. A few times I tried to share these with friends and family.  My parents didn’t actively discourage me, but with three kids and jobs, they didn’t have time to ‘indulge’ me.

My friends were tolerant but more heavily grounded than me, so not particularly interested. All the girls my age were more interested in love stories, and the boys just wanted to watch cartoons and ride bikes. While I was imagining having a superpower or flying on a dragon, the other kids were busy being normal.

One of my brothers, who shall stay unnamed, but it’s the one I don’t get along with, had a different reaction. He made fun of me. Then his friends joined in. I won’t go into details except to say he liked upsetting me and succeed often. I valued his opinion above all others and he used that mercilessly. It wasn’t too long before I started keeping my stories to myself, even from the people who didn’t mock me.

I didn’t even want to write them down. Hence the started yet never finished diaries. What if someone read them? I would have died before letting anything see how weird I was. Now, all these years later, I don’t know what it was those boys said that made me feel so much shame, I only know the result.

Watching other girls writing their secret thoughts made me so jealous I could hardly stand it. I didn’t care what they wrote, but I wished to be like them. I wanted to be as brave as I thought they were.

I still made stuff up regularly, anytime I had a quiet moment. I kept it all to myself, for years. It took my mom pissing me off when I was a teenager so bad that I wrote her a letter to express my feelings before anything changed. That’s a story for next time.

As I stated above, I don’t know how many posts it will take me to tell my writing journey. I’m winging this one. Some posts may be short, others longer. There is also no schedule for when I’ll write them. I’m in the process of getting back to writing regularly so I hope to be very busy soon.

In my next post I’ll tell you all about how I started to embrace my weird and took a step closer, and many steps back from active writing.

Did any of you guys have problems with other people judging your creativity as a child? Feel free to share your experiences in the comments.

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Photo by Jelleke Vanooteghem on Unsplash