Inspiration

We went to the Dr. John/Neville brothers concert last night. In my former life I had aspired to be a professional musician. Jazz saxophone. This has obviously fallen by the wayside, but that doesn't mean I've lost my love for it. After seeing such an amazing show, it made me want to incorporate music into my story in some way, and maybe voodoo too. And masks. Scary, creepy, spirit-stealing masks...don't ask.

Writing in February Half-Way

This resolution has proven to be easier than meditation for me. I find myself thinking about my characters when I am driving to work, standing in line in the grocery story, the rare quiet moments when most of the rest of the house is asleep. When I start writing I usually also want to keep going, sometimes I lose track of time and before I know it I should have gone to bed 30 minutes ago and one of my characters has done something crazy...I want to see what they do next, but know that I am already going to pay the consequences for this when my alarm goes off at the ungodly hour of 6:30 a.m. Then again, what's another 15 minutes when the morning is already painful. I find that writing my story makes me not want to waste time writing anything else. For example, my blog. I've had to resist writing at work too as I have the most fantastic ideas when I am driving to work. By the time I get home, I only find traces of them left. However, those traces grow and learn how to breathe, learn how to walk, sometimes learn how to punch someone in the face without using their hands, um, yeah. I hope that someday all of this sees the light of day and doesn't stay trapped in my computer forever.

Month Two: Writing Every Day

When I was a kid I really wanted to be a writer, I think that becoming a librarian has allowed me to experience a little piece of that. To me books are as essential as air. They are the doorways to almost everything good. They are beautiful and terrible, thought provoking, some are dangerous some endangered. I love the smell of the pages, how different new books and old books smell. I love the feel of a book in my hands, the weight of it against my palm, my fingers. I love how they can make me laugh or cry at the turn of a page. I love how much they teach me about the inner thoughts of other people, about humanity. I love getting lost in them.

I have been working on writing a book of sorts, I'm not sure what direction it is going. It is either going to be aimed at teens or adults and I don't know which yet. It has a lot of paranormal elements to it...I have always been intrigued by the paranormal and I think I can do it justice. It doesn't have any vampires or werewolves, at least I don't think it does.

I tried to do the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month): http://www.nanowrimo.org/ and I lasted about 4 days.

I also received emails from accomplished writers, some of my personal author heroes, during that month through NaNoWriMo that I found really interesting and they inspired me to keep trying, mostly because it seemed that they wrote like I write, with some idea of where I am going, no outlining and only a vague idea of how it is going to end. They emphasized to just get it down and worry about the rest when it is time to revise.

I also follow Neil Gaiman's blog and I think it was Gaiman who said that when he thinks his character is going to take a right and they take a left instead he knows it is a good character.

I hope that my characters will boss me around in the next month and tell me more about who they are, what they're doing and where they're intending to go.