Every November aspiring writers gear up to attempt to write their novel in the full 31 days! I have done this myself–or at least tried to–I made it through three weeks with no stopping but back then I would lose my spunk right in the middle of every month. It was annoying as hell! One thing that I can be proud of is that I lasted a lot longer than I thought I would, so that was a plus for me!
After that, I have wanted to try it out again, but for some reason I always realize this like at the end of October, so I always feel rushed to get things done to be able to figure out my plot and material I want to bring into it. By the time the month actually comes along, I have absolutely nothing and I basically say “fuck it”. This year was similar to the previous ones, I tell my fellow writers that I’m going to do it, when in reality I know better. There is one difference and that is for the story I wanted to write, I have actually figured out how I wanted to start it, which is something I didn’t have the first time around!
I hope everyone who are doing NaNoWriMo good luck on their stories! For me though, I think I am just going to focus my attention on my blog and reading books. My mom and I have caught the bug again, so we’re both trying to get through Demi Moore’s memoir Inside Out so as she flies through it, I’ll be trying to finish The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood and Home Work by Julie Andrews. So, wish me luck too!
Are you doing NaNoWriMo this year? Why or why not?
This is last blog post of 2019! I cannot believe we are now embarking on a new journey. I know everybody (or most likely) will have different resolutions for the new year. I think with every passing year, people will make these lists and have good intentions but as time goes on, we seem to forget everything we wanted to accomplish in the beginning! I was like that for most of the year. I published a blog post at the start of 2018 talking about some of the goals I wanted to do, and only managed to do two on the actual list. However, I think this is a win because I completed two specific plans during the whole year!
The goals I was able to do this past year were:
Make time for other stuff
Write Out Ideas
Everytime I tried to plan out my blogging schedule or anything something would happen. There were a lot of different obstacles in the way and it wasn’t until the end of summer that I just gave up with planning and just let everything slide!
At the start of the year I got sick for the first time since probably 2012 and I wasn’t allowed to do anything but tightly wrap up in my fleece blankets to sleep and sweat it off. I was basically scrambling to get material written and scheduled on here and my social media accounts for you guys, but somehow in the mist of it all I just decided that I needed to stop stressing myself out so much that could wait until I was healthy enough to officially be ready to come back, thus I made time to recover and enjoyed being lazy and watched television for hours on end!
As you might remember, my sister was originally due to give birth to my nephew on the 4th of July weekend. Well, I had some ideas on what kind of content I wanted to release during the month of June and parts of July too. The only one that never changed of the first plan were the baby shower and nursery tour. Well, since little man was born kind of early, my whole schedule was basically put on hiatus; and I relished on the fact that I was now an auntie to this little human but after I took some time off to love on him, I wrote the only post that went up after his birth in the summer before my mental health took a downhill and where instead of being awake at night because of my drippy nose and uncontrollable coughs, I was in the middle of a depression spell one week after being put on antidepressants.
As I suffered every hour of those 31 days, Netflix and I began fast friends in that time period as I binge watched The Flash, Arrow, Supergirl and every nature documentaries I could find that was hosted by David Attenborough. After two months went by, I suddenly had my energy back and was able to write blog posts again. I even started to read again, and I was really enjoying reading “To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before” by Jenny Han. I really wanted to get it done before the movie premiered but I still haven’t finished it or “Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children” by Ransom Riggs, but I’ll get to it and they can be something I can do this year!
After September, I was just me again. I had no issues, other than the increasing back and knee pains but mentally I was doing better and that was okay with me! I have had slower weeks and whenever that happens I just let myself give in and take some time off of everything and when I feel good enough, I jump back in again but now I’m at the point that I don’t try to fight it. I need to make time to create better ideas and ultimately material for you all and I like being able to scoot away from everything every once in a while. I’m never totally offline during the break, but I am out for three hours at a time so that’s a big thing for me!
Would you like for me to do a separate post of my favorite blog posts of 2018?
For 2019, I have a few things I’d like to do but I have a new project for GMB!
I really want to challenge myself to come up with as many disability themed pieces as I could for my blog. So, I have created an A to Z Disability Challenge to get me through half of the year. I don’t know what really inspired it, I just felt like I needed to talk about these themes on here a little bit more. A lot of the articles will be things that I’ve personally went through in my life. I think it’ll give people, of various ages a totally different outlook on how one disabled person’s life should be, and it also shows the parents, grandparents, etc ideas on how they can give their disabled child or young adult a chance to be proven wrong.
I am very excited about this project. I’ve actually been thinking about it since the end of July, which is a little odd considering I did not want to think of anything blog related, but managed to come up with this anyways. I asked my Facebook friends of ideas on letter suggestions, so every letter is represented by a certain disability theme, like B is “building trust” so I’ll be discussing how a person with or without a disability should develop trust with people. Another example is the letter H and the theme is “Asking For Help” and we’ll be talking about why you should ask help and most importantly teaching others how it’s better to ask a disabled person if they need help with anything, before you go ahead and do it for them.
I’m hoping that these posts will be starting next week, but it would all depend on anything big happening in the meantime. My family is in the process of moving into our new house, and it’ll whether or not we have internet when those pieces will be published, but they will go up on a start of a new week, so hopefully everything will work out well enough (but so far nothing’s been on time) but who really knows!
Are you making any resolutions or goals for 2019? What are you most looking forward to?
It’s been a while since I’ve done a Free Write Friday prompt. I’ve been looking forward to it all day long and when today’s prompt I actually squealed! This is a time and scenario prompt so I hope you enjoy it!
We Heart It
“Late summer, You’re wondering, lost in the woods. You come across a gypsy wagon, and you call out, “hello?”
Alex was loving her time out with her best friends Chloe and Sophia. It was so nice of her dad to have kept their old camping gear in the garage as she didn’t want to buy all new stuff for only three nights out, especially when she knew that it would be the only outdoor experience that her friends would want to do. Chloe and Sophia were NOT the type of girls to do anything that has to deal with camping in general. They were too high-maintenance for all that, which meant that Alex would be the one to put the tent, make the fire, and find hiking a pleasure instead of a pain in the ass like they would. Alex was surprised to hear that Chloe was willing to learn though, as long as she break her nails. Alex’s reaction to Sophia’s text message if she should pack her black high heels instead of her new red flats made her worry about what the hell she was doing. It might end up being the biggest regret she’s ever made in her life.
When Alex and her father packed everything up into her small car, she headed out to Chloe and Sophia’s apartment. Alex walked up the stairs and knocked on the door, when Chloe opened the door, she was dressed all in white and said, “I’m all ready!” Alex couldn’t help but giggle. “Um, Chloe. You may not want to wear all white.” Alex said, trying to contain herself. “Why? You don’t think it’s cute?” Chloe said in her high-pitched voice that she always pulls out when she’s worried. “Well, no, it’s adorable, but you are going out in the woods. There’s mud, grass, and well, animal poop.” Alex said as she broke the news to her friend, who was now in disgust and looked like she was on the edge of tears. “I’ll go change…” Chloe said as she sprinted out of the room. “Help yourself to anything you want in the kitchen, I’ll be back. Sophia should be out of the shower soon. Should I tell her not to wear white too?” Again, Alex tried to hold on as best as she could, she hollered out to her friend, “yes, that might be a good idea.” “Okay, I’ll do that.” Chloe said, within two minutes later all you could hear next was Sophia saying out loud, “WHAT?! Don‘t people clean that shit up?” Alex was basically at this point dying of laughter. Sophia walked in, wrapped into her towel, hair going crazy, “well, it’s not the zoo.” Alex said as she wiped away her tears. “Oh my god, I’m going to die.” Sophia said as she stomped out of the room.
After an hour of explaining and coaxing Chloe and Sophia to go with her even though they had the wrong idea about everything. Poor Alex had the job of going through their bags beforehand and checking out their clothes, between both bags they had about 40% of what they really needed. An additional thirty minutes later, she finally got their things figured out and all three girls were on their way out into the outdoors. While riding in Alex’s car that was literally packed with all of their stuff and needed camping gear too. The girls spent the whole two hours of driving soaking up as much internet as possible before pulling into the dirt road to the deep woods. The car tumbled all around on the road and as they went deeper and deeper in the woods, the sisters noticed that their signals in their phones was getting lower to the point were nothing worked on them. “Oh my god! My signal’s gone! What the hell? I just charged you up!” Sophia screamed out from the backseat. “Alex, you didn’t say our signals would go out.” Sophia said as she leaned up to Alex’s seat. Alex kept her eyes on the narrow road, while Sophia’s younger sister had her face pressed up against the window in awe of the trees, bright green leaves, and dead little critters along the side of the road. What little happy moment she was having, it was quickly ruined and she started bawling! “Aw, a little squished possum! Poor baby!” Chloe said as she leaned back on her seat.
“We’re here!” Alex said as they pulled into the end of the road and turned off the car. She was all smiles, but when she looked over at her friends they were both in tears. Scared shitless. Alex was already rethinking everything she wanted for the next three days. “Come on!” Alex waved to the girls to come outside of the car. As soon as she unbuckled her seatbelt and opened the door, she took a deep breath of the fresh air. This was pure heaven. Something you just can’t get in a Glade freshener. After a few seconds walking away from her car and closing her eyes to hear all of the sounds of the trees, animal noises and birds singing. She turned around to see both Chloe and Sophia were still inside the car, probably locked themselves in there. She put her hands at her waist. “Get your asses out of there!” Alex voiced to the windshield. Apparently the girls read her request because all she got back were four middle fingers. She was less than pleased, but then again she didn’t except anything better than that. Alex started walking back to the car and unlocked the car with her keys, and grabbed everything out of the car. “If you don’t get out of this car right now, I’ll roll down all the windows and have you suffer your first night fending for yourselves.” Five seconds later Chloe and Sophia bravely climb out of the car.
Chloe and Sophia were more scared of Alex then they were the whole camping thing. Because they knew Alex was a hard ass. She meant well though. Once the girls were out of the car, they started looking around, looking for a soft and even ground to set up their tent. They watched Alex feel the ground with her feet to see if it was all the same level or not. She grabbed the bag that had their tent supplies. “I’ll set up the tent and you guys find sticks and medium size logs for the fire. Think you can manage that?” Alex said in a harsh voice, both girls nodded swiftly before heading out onto the walking trail. They looked around and were both in awe of nature. They spent too much time on their phones, to realize the Earth’s true beauty. Chloe was generally welcoming to the whole camping thing, she started collecting random sticks in her hands while Sophia watched her closely, she followed what she saw her sister do, picking up the smaller sticks. Before you knew it, Chloe had probably 25-30 good sizes of sticks and Sophia had about five tiny sticks. When they arrived back to camp, Alex had managed to get the whole tent up and was unloading the air mattress from the car, she saw that they actually brought something back. She was impressed with Chloe, but seeing Sophia’s offering was reassuring that should could be taught as long as her sister was around.
That night, they got the fire going and all three girls sat on the ground next to their bright and warm fire. Chloe and Sophia had their arms around their legs as the sun faded the temperature dropped, even though Alex swore she packed a couple of sweatpants for them in their bags they were too in love with looking at the dimly lit sky above them. Alex sat by herself in silence and had her mind on other things like childhood memories of she and her family sitting by the fire eating dad’s fresh catch out of the lake. Alex and her older sister and younger brothers all cheered and laughed at the random jokes and stories their father told on their trips. She started to get kind of sad until they heard a faint sound of a guitar. All three girls wondered what the noise was, they looked at each other in horror before screaming and heading into their nice tent, but not before Alex grabbed a water bottle and poured it on their fire. “ALEX! Why did you do that for?” Sophia said, as she sat in the very back of the tent. “Do you really think it would be the best idea for somebody to find us if they saw our fire’s smoke?” Alex said before tossing the water bottle and hightailing it into the tent, zipping it up and locking her car. A little bit after hearing the strange noise, it was gone but the girls were exhausted. If they were going to go hiking tomorrow, they’d need all the energy they could get so they headed for bed.
The next day, Chloe woke up to the heat rising underneath her covers, she knew the temperature would be high for the day, so she tossed the covers off and looked over at Sophia still passed out with a blindfold over her eyes and Alex still snoozing over on the far end of the tent. She wanted to go for an early morning run before anybody decided to get up. So she tossed off her blankets gently to not wake anybody up, grabbed her iPod and digital camera from her purse and unzipped the tent and changed into her workout clothes while letting in some of the cool breeze from outside. She sat up and walked out of the tent and found the same walkway she and Sophia took yesterday to find the sticks and went on a run. Chloe stood in the middle of the woods, trying to grasp the beauty of everything she was seeing around her. She was glad that she brought her camera with her and began to take dozen of pictures. She stood in the middle of eight trees that were lined in a perfect circle. She had her earplugs in her ears so she couldn’t hear much of the animal noises as she knew if she did she’d just start freaking out like she did last night.
While she was walking through the deeper part of the woods, she came across a very strange camping ground full of different festive decorations. She started making assumptions that maybe what they heard last night was from a party, but this wasn’t no ordinary party when she continued walking through the grounds, there is a beautiful decorated wagon, that she could only think this is what the professor in The Wizard Of Oz, could’ve looked like in color. She wondered if anybody was still around, so she said, “hello?” Once she said it, a little cat came walking out to her. “Aw, how cute!” Chloe said and bent down to pet it, it leaned in to her hand and purred. “Who is it?” a man’s voice came from inside the wagon. Chloe had the urge to run the hell out of there, but her feet stood in their spot, unmoved. “Um, my name is Chloe. My friends and I heard some noises last night and considering the mess out here, I’m taking it came from here.” Chloe said trying to figure out what to do next. “There was no…” a tall shirtless individual came walking out of the wagon with some navy blue shorts on. “party last night.” They looked up at each other, completely gazed by one another’s beauty. Chloe was glad of the fact she talked Alex into letting her bring her workout clothes but regretted the fact of how sweaty she was too. “Oh, well then where was the music coming from?” She said, casually looking around for some kind of instruments. “Oh, it was me you heard.” The strange man said, “Who is it Nate?” a woman’s voice echoed from inside the wagon. This Nate turned around and then pointed at Chloe with the one second gesture.
As Nate left, Chloe could feel the sweat drip off her body, even though she was no longer running. Which only meant that she was getting hot because of him. When he finally came back, he came back with a woman who was hardly wearing anything but a thin summer dress. “Oh, you were right, she is beautiful. Hi, my name is Orlena.” This strange women looked to be in her mid-20’s and had brown hair, green eyes. She looked very athletic and could probably outrun Chloe in a heartbeat. “Hi, my name is Chloe.” She said, now even more nervous then she was just talking to Nate. “Are you two a couple?” Chloe said, just blasting through the awkwardness. “Well, actually…” Nate began to say, “We’re in an open relationship.” Orlena said to Chloe, which really made her uncomfortable. “We also like to share partners too.” That was a bit more than what Chloe wanted to know, but that’s what she gets after going for it. “Not all the time though.” Nate said lovingly. “Well, isn’t that nice.” Chloe said as the random cat was still rubbing up against her. Apparently the cat didn’t have a preference either. “Oh, that’s Jack. He seems to have fallen in love with you Chloe.” Orlena said as she walked over to the two of them. “We were about to eat some breakfast, would you like to join us?” Orlena said lovingly, and started gently touching Chloe red cheek, slowly drifting down to her neck and then to her left shoulder. Chloe could feel the heat within her heighten but she still couldn’t move. “We have plenty of room. We have strawberries, oranges, and Nate made these amazing pancakes.” Hmmm..pancakes! She didn’t even know what Alex had packed for breakfast, so in a way she wanted to stay but she knew that breakfast could be code for something else for all she knew.
“Oh come on, Ori, you’re making her blush!” Nate said as walked away for a second as his girlfriend was starting to get a little too friendly with her, and had a plate full of strawberries in his hands. He walked towards them and Jack began to beg for droppings. Orlena grabbed one of the strawberries and put it just above Nate’s lushest lips and as she began to hold it up higher, he stood up on his tippy toes and bit into the strawberries, juices dripped down his mouth and Orlena couldn’t help herself and began to give him kisses. Chloe was in a little bit of shock, but she couldn’t say anything. She was speechless. Nate and Orlena gave each other a look before Nate grabbed one of the strawberries and put it over Chloe’s mouth, he didn’t tease her unlike Orlena would have done. The juice dropped down from her lips, she tried to catch it all with her fingers but Nate’s mouth beat it to her. She groaned from the sensation. “Chloe! Chloe! CHLOE NICOLE THOMPSON, ANSWER ME NOW!” Alex and Sophia shouted into the woods. Their hollers took her out of the fantasy of her dreams, “I’m coming! I’m coming!” Thanks for ruining a perfect moment ladies! “I’m sorry I can’t stay I have to get back but thank you for the strawberry though.” That’s all Chloe uttered out, and she was lucky that’s all she could say! “Have a great day Chloe!” Orlena said as she came over to her and gave her a hug and gently kissed her on the lips. Chloe was feeling all sorts of emotions, but once Orlena let go, Nate came over and also kissed on the lips, his kiss was more aggressive. Once he left go of her, he lifted Orlena up in the air and carried her back into the wagon. Chloe stood there in a trance until she heard noises of passion and began to walk back along the trail. She was greeted to both Alex and Sophia. who were more than pissed off at her for leaving. “Where did you go?” Sophia said as she hugged her sister. “I’ve been out of the city too long.” Chloe said as she released Sophia and hugged Alex, they all walked back to camp together and Chloe grew to love being out of the woods a little more.
What it’s all about: Five Sentence Fiction is about packing a powerful punch in a tiny fist. Each week I will post a one word inspiration, then anyone wishing to participate will write a five sentence story based on the prompt word. The word does not have to appear in your five sentences, just use it for direction.
This week: FEARLESS
The cold air hit her sweaty back as she fell onto her back on the bed, still trying to catch her breath she looked at the wonderful man who gave her so much happiness and awakening pleasure.
They laid on the wrinkled sheets and blankets looking for excuses not to continue, there was no alarm on her phone waiting to get her up for work and the dog was already outside unaware of his owner’s little escape.
The man had barely slept he couldn’t stop watching his lover sleep half covered by her clothes and the blanket, her skin glistened in the light sunlight that hovered over the curtains, she slept there innocently until he went to touch her skin.
She slowly gained conscious of her surroundings and felt his touch of his fingertips on her ankles going in circles, she didn’t move from her position until she started to give her sweet kisses on her legs and outer thighs, this man was able to make her feel beautiful and more alive while they were together.
Once she knew what his intentions where she grew some strength and flipped around to make his nice and slow kisses move forward towards her upper body, the sensation was unbearable to her tender skin that she was wanting him to stop, but he was too fearless of a man to not stop just before he get to their favorite spots.
What it’s all about: Five Sentence Fiction is about packing a powerful punch in a tiny fist. Each week I will post a one word inspiration, then anyone wishing to participate will write a five sentence story based on the prompt word. The word does not have to appear in your five sentences, just use it for direction.
This week: PAGES
That last step, hearing the creaking of the wood stopping as her foot lifted up and down onto the stone stairs, that were only silent as she continued to walk across them.
She had her suitcase in one hand and her backpack on her back, both heavy and full to the top.
She was looking for that new start and she knew she’d never find it there, where she had created her standards and made mistakes, she needed to move on.
The past was gone, the present was leading her onto the longing future she only saw in her dreams at night.
As she threw her suitcase and backpack inside her itty bitty car, she slammed the door and walked around to the driver’s seat; as she climbed in, she took a deep breath and turned the engine, she ignored her feelings to look at that stained house and decided to turn a new leaf.
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