The Open Journal

Stream of Consciousness Writer's Warm-up

I find this kind of writing insightful and cathartic.

Start:
My hens Rusty and Six are walking on the porch railing again. Rusty is an Americauna with mostly rust colored feathers with a black tail and black accents on her wing.  Six is a speckled hen called a Barred Rock. I can't believe how big they are now.  They should be laying eggs soon. Now the other barred Rock Mary has jumped up to join them.  Her whole name is Bloody Mary because when she was a chick she got in with the older hens and they about pecked her to death. She seems fine now though.

I stayed up until 2 AM listening to Amy Winehouse and Joan Baez on Youtube. I love both of their styles but they are so different. I can sing like Joan Baez sort of but I'd really like to learn how to sing like Amy Winehouse.  It is a strange twist of fate that Joan is older than me, yet still alive and Amy died in her early 30's.

It is hard to concentrate with chickens bopping around the porch.
I have nagging guilt that I'm not working out. I never meant to stop being a dancer. I regret that it somehow all slipped away from me.

I am not being productive. I feel like I can't get off top dead center with getting my life organized. It depresses me. I went to what I like to call the Fire Hazard Thrift Store. It is run by a little ole lady and is so bursting at the seams that most of the house is full of boxes so she'll never sell those things because no one can get anywhere near them.  If she wants to sell things on the covered patio, she should have that portion be her store and shut the rest off from the public because it is a disaster. And then I thought that my house is the same way; an embarrassment.  My boyfriend had magical thinking when it came to buying this place.  I can't fit everything in it. Things are getting ruined. I don't know what to do.

Apple Valley's rain on Thursday never made it to Lucerne Valley, CA.

I am glad the heat of summer is tapering off. It is not as brutal as a week ago. I'm sure we'll get plenty of hotter days but they will be broken up by some rain or some clouds or some wind.

I want to sew. I bought a ton of patterns.  But it is too hot to sew in my container and too crowded in the house. But perhaps if I devote the next hour to it I can do some hand sewing before my boyfriend comes home. Then again if I'm sewing, I'm not writing now am I?

I'm trying to do 10 things at once. I have never figured out how to be myself when my boyfriend is around, so if I want to do any singing or music stuff I need to do that before he gets home too. I'm not blaming him. I'm just self conscious.

And I'm tempted to just go into the hypnosis chat room, but if I do that the day will disappear before I think to look around me again. Plus I'm trying to save bandwidth. Sigh. If it is not one thing, it is another.

I'd like to organize my room too and make it calm and appealing.

I went to a yard sale and scored an unwrapped DVD of the Black Swan.  So excited that I'll get to see it again. I saw it at the theater but I'm sure I missed some plot details.

That's it for today. Leave comments below.

Nanowrimo Wrap Up

Me in November

With less than a week to go with Nanowrimo it doesn't look like I'm going to finish. If I combine the total words for both Nanos its about 35,000 right now. I'm still going to keep trying.. Thanksgiving is actually working in my favor though. Both knitting and pottery are cancelled this week.
And because of my boyfriend's work schedule, we are not having Thanksgiving until the 29 or 30 or 1st. He'll be working all day Friday and Sat. so I should be able to write as much as I want to.

And So It Begins: Nanowrimo All Over Again

Mixed media art by Fayme Harper.

I have many ways of expressing myself. Sometimes I write a lot and sometimes I don't. This year I wasn't going to participate in the National Novel Writers Month. I felt like I had too many irons in the fire. But then I met the woman in charge of the local meetings for Nanowrimo and she introduced me to the California Writers Club and suddenly all I want to do is write. So as you can see, I've added the Nano badge to my sidebar. I'm writing a Steampunk Novel called Portal Motel. And now it's midnight, so that's all I have to say about that.

Some of My Favorite Words

I'm making a word list for a banner and so far here is what is on it. It's frustrating because some of them aren't in my online dictionary. I'll have to go look them up one by one.

Curvilinear

Vespertine

Lenticular

Funicular

Apatite

Eviscerated

Peperomia

Hypotenuse

Spectrolite

Kerfuffle

Ensorcelled

Molybdenum

Beguiling

Vortex

Crux

Prestidigitation

Periphery

Osculate

Epidermis

Calliope

Mentalist

Sox

Pendulum

Bibliomancy

Cephlapod

Abreaction

Clandestine

Paramecium

Slipshod

Apostate

Dodecahedron

Millipede

Wherry

plumbago

Malleable

Quirt

Triskaidekaphobia

Flavenoids
Petrichor

Starting Nanowrimo Today

I was intrigued about a book review for the New Gypsies, so I decided to make that the theme of my Nanowrimo novel. Currently the working title is Neogypsies and it starts out in 1978 in Laguna Beach Ca. I have 758 words so far, but it is time to break for dinner.

If I did the math right I need to write 1667 words a day to make 50,000 words in 30 days. I'm off to a good start today.

If you have no idea why I'm starting now, see my previous post.

I'm on the right. Taken in 1976.

Nanowrimo On My Own Terms

Like a true renegade, I just decided to do Nanowrimo, only on my own terms. Every year I fall afoul of Thanksgiving, and then I fall behind, and don't finish before Nano ends. It's so frustrating that I was going to opt out this year. But then in a stroke of genius I realized I could keep with the spirit of Nanowrimo, by writing 50,000 words in 30 days, only it would be my choice of 30 days, not theirs. So I'm going to start on Oct. 10 or 11, and go to Nov. 10 or 11, 2013. So it will still be 30 days, and after Nov. 1, I can still track my progress on Nanowrimo's graphs. I'm sure other people have thought of this. It will be obeying the spirit of the quest if not the letter of the law. And it will be a lot more fun this way.

It will also create less stress in my home during the holidays. I won't lose days worth of writing time because of traveling to see family for the holidays.

Last Of The Breed

My boyfriend recently decided to part with a collection of Louis L'amour books.  Until they sell, I thought I'd read as many as I could. So I randomly grabbed one on top of the pile.  It's Last of the Breed. So if you don't want spoilers, fair warning. This one is ©1986. I've read a few of his books but that was years ago.