Where I Write

I write in a little nook. My desk is pushed up on one side, tight, to the wall. On the other side it meets my bed. My bed is yellow, green, and brown. The earth tone colors go well with the wood paneling I have grown accustomed to on my basement bedroom walls. I have a chair for my desk, that I hardly ever sit in. Though not for lack of comfort. 

My bed is where I write. Lazily propped up on pillows. My beautiful tabby cat curled up in a place that forces me to lay uncomfortably, but I don't have the heart to make her move just so I can stretch my legs. I turn my desktop to face me and pull my keyboard and mouse as far as their little cords will let me. I turn on an endless cycle of abeyant noise. Movies, music, YouTube videos. All things I have heard so many times that they are nothing more then a hum.

When the hum turns to screaming and the words are gone from me. Like a disconnect from my brain and my figures. I move.

I then write on country roads. Back roads. I drive and write my novel in my head. I get a medium French vanilla iced coffee, regular with liquid sugar, and get behind the wheel of my car and hit the open road. 

I drive endlessly. Finding new beautiful roads with rolling landscapes doted with cows and sheep and evergreens that give way to granite sloping forms that burst up to meet the sky. And sometimes I drive on roads I have taken a thousand times. Perhaps the one that always has horses nibbling grass feet away from the dusty road. Or perhaps the one that will wind me through the neighborhoods with the houses that make me gush over how many rooms are hiding behind the brick exterior. And make me dream of the day, when the novel is finished, published, and sold, that I could live in something half that grand.   

I take in the passing leaves and yellow painted houses as I go.

I drive and think. Mostly I talk. I openly admit to talking to myself. Interview style. Like my windshield is the audience and they are live or die by my answers to the questions I am making up on the fly. 

I will also admit that I am horribly embarrassed when someone drives past me and catches the crazy girl getting really into a conversation all by her lonesome. Thank goodness for the 'I'm on my Bluetooth' fake-out. 

I ask myself about the book, about the characters. About things I know. About things I haven't figured out yet, but then try to describe to my captivated, bug splattered audience. I talk until I have run out of things to say and I can hardly string words together. And that's tough to do, talk myself out. I have been described, many more times than once, as 'someone who likes to hear their own voice'. So when I have talked everything out and my tongue is soar from flapping, I drive. 

The car is silent. My head is silent. No radio. No more thoughts.

And out of the silence. On the dirt roads narrowed by overgrown trees. Among the horse farms with droopy eyed ponies. They come to me. That thing. That string of words shakes loose. And then I come barreling out of the deep woods, GPS guiding me home, praying the thoughts don't leave me as quickly as they came.

Punishment vs. Reward

I work on a reward and punishment system. That's how I tackle my writers I-Don't-Want-To-Do-This, much worse than writers block. The punishment is cleaning. The reward is yummy, really bad for you food. It may seem like an old system, but it works.

For example, I didn't write a single word so my car was cleaned top to bottom.

If I make my word goal, I have a big box of Snickers that I can graze on. If I do really well and blow my word count out of the water, I pick up some artery clogging fast food.

I suppose it's good, that every now and then, I have the bad days. The keep me in a healthy shape, my room clean, and my brain refreshed for the next day.

Spring Cleanings Bring Winter Readings

I am sitting here, before noon, gorging on Doritos and reading through some old writings.

I am in the midst of a massive cleaning. Just about every time the seasons change my mother get's furious with the clutter in our home and throws out the old. She will of course bring in the new. But for now until next weekend we are having an 'EVERYTHING MUST GO' sale.

Between handing off old clothes to my thinner friends and throwing my back out moving furniture, my family is sifting through the things we have collected. My mother has endless cuts of fabric, my father has shelves nearly buckling with war memorabilia, and I have stuff.

I have nail polishes, costume jewelry, model horses, half finished canvases, dented books, and papers. Lots and lots of papers.

In the boxes marked with my name I have found stacks upon stacks of short stories, novel ideas, and plays that are sure to never debut on Broadway. I do not think I am alone when I say how entertaining it is to find these clippings. As vain as it may sound, I have spent a few hours now pouring over my works. It isn't vain because I spent most of that time laughing.

I found diary entries where I wrote my woes of being oh-so-in-love with this boy and how his girlfriend must only be dating him to make me mad. I found dialog so bad that even I couldn't get through it, and I wrote it.

As laughable as pieces of this new found collection may be, there are a few diamonds in the rough. I see characters in this stack that have made it into my current projects. Stories that I wrote before I could drive, are stories that I am rewriting now.

Writing is a talent that must be learned, with years of reading and writing as practice. But that initial spark has to be there. You have to want it. And, with literal pounds of failed attempts, I am reassured that I was born to tell stories. No matter how many bad drafts, I will eventually get it right because of how badly I want it.

Photo Credit To: http://www.flickr.com/photos/striatic/

I Tip My Hat To You

Hello! Hi! Hey! Welcome!

My name is Rachel and I am a would be, wanna be, wish I was writer. That's not entirely true. I do write, and there for in some ways I am a writer. However. I am unpublished, and there for in many more ways I am still an aspiring writer. But that is alright with me, since I am still young and look forward to suffering my 20's away trying to perfect my craft.

I began writing as a child. It all started with the alphabet on that horribly over sized lined paper.

In the first grade we were given an assignment to write a work of fiction. Now, looking back she, Mrs. WhateverMyFirstGradeTeachersNameWas, could have asked us to write a work of non-fiction. But her words were lost to me as I began to write the story of my mother and our eight cats. My mother and the eighth cat, Shadow, were based on my Mother and our cat shadow. It was the seven other cats, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, that were fully fictional.

Looking back I had not yet grasped the idea of the importance of names.

Never the less I began the adventures of my mother, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Shadow.

I brought my life changing novel to Mrs. WhateverMyFirstGradeTeachersNameWas, beaming at my own technical ability to so elegantly craft the English language together. I was then forced to watch as Mrs.  WhateverMyFirstGradeTeachersNameWas cut up my work of art into a story about my mother and our cat Shadow and what they did on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. My epic about these eight cats and my mother became my mothers weekly to do list that she brought Shadow along for.

Needless to say I was heart broken. Mrs. WhateverMyFirstGradeTeachersNameWas killed seven of my fictional cats and destroyed the beautiful creativity that I had put into my novel.

It was alright. I would later take this as a lesson of rejection. It was also decided in that moment that Mrs. WhateverMyFirstGradeTeachersNameWas would not be invited to my release party for any of my novels.

Since then, I was deemed dyslexic. Rather, I was deemed stupid and lazy until my parents heard of dyslexia. Then writing was a nice way to work on my learning disability and a good way for my loner self to create friends.

I spend much of my time in these worlds still. I have found a very nice place in the world of realistic fiction, YA. I have developed social skills, am a self declared student for life with a 20 year plan to gain a BA, and a little niche in the Makeup Artist world.

I hope you enjoy this ride with me. I hope I actually remember to post on the occasion.