Ready, Set... Wait What?

....go?

Ready or not, in one hour and ten minutes, that's exactly what we've gotta do.

NaNoWriMo isn't about sophisticated plots, meticulously christened characters or wickedly clever villians (although if you have any of those things, that's fantastic and we're all very jealous).

NaNoWriMo is about writing for the joy of writing.

Even if what you write is never published.
Or finished.
                                                                               Or even opened and read again.
At the end of it all, you will have written fifty-thousand words.

Original words.

Thought-out words.

Words which no one else wrote in those thirty days.

You're on a quest to showcase your originality. Your drive. Your heart. Your spirit. A story needs to be told, and you've been chosen to tell it. Characters are destined to be born by your nimble fingers and imaginative brain. Villians of the most evil category are already plotting to hijack your storyline and take over the world. No one said it would be an easy journey, Wrimos. But it is your journey. It is your story.

THIS IS YOUR TIME.

 Be proud, be bold, and .....

......please don't freak out.

(Come on, you really thought I would end a post on the night before NaNoWriMo seriously?)

Cheers, Wrimos! May your fingers be quick and your nerves like steel!

Running on coffee,

Do you feel it?

It's coming.

October is waning silently away, leaving in its wake a trail of painted leaves and crisp cold mornings. But for us, these last few days are not spent in quiet reflection and appreciation of the beauty of October 2011.

In fact, these last few days are quite possibly going to be the most hectic of the year.

That's right--or should I say "write"? NaNoWriMo is officially six days away. Six days. Five hours. Four minutes. And a handful of seconds.

Are you ready?

If you were to pose that question to me, I'd probably laugh like a maniac for a few minutes before bursting into tears. I want to write this story. It's been gnawing at me for months. But it's hard to make the switch from last year's thirty days of fantasy, of imagination and of other worlds to this year's impending thirty days of a story based on real life, on real emotions and trials and events. I'm scared. And excited at the same time.

Graahh. I need chocolate.

It doesn't help that I have college applications to finish, and scholarships to apply for this week. I have a feeling that I'll be finishing my NaNo this year at the line, just like last year. But it's a feeling like nothing else, and even though I have my doubts, I can't wait.


In the general mood of NaNo, I took a look back at last year's novel (*sniff* That sounds so calloused ;_;) I read a few pages from random places. I laughed out loud a couple of times, sometimes at my brilliant wit, sometimes at the lack of it. I fell back in love with my dear characters and, for a brief moment, almost decided to re-do the novel for this year.

But no. Reapers sits in a little virtual folder, waiting for my brain to switch from writer's to editor's. This year, my story is different.


What about you? Are you taking on NaNo again? What will you write about? And what will you miss from your story last year?


Looking forward to another year of coffee, all-nighters and a lot of jumping around at the end of it all,

*

Fields of Athenry

This song has officially made my day. Dare you to listen ;)

Loving the Irish Tenors,

Elisabeth, who is destitute without her sig :(

I like Owls...

...and so naturally when I saw this template, I couldn't resist :3



Have a happy Tuesday!

I Know I'll Understand Someday

As my life gets busy and my high school days begin to wind to their final round, I find that there are a lot of things I wish I could do.

I wish I could dedicate myself wholly to my writing. I wish that the words would come as easily as they did four years ago, when I finished books in months and could write for hours without stopping. I wish that I could give my characters the time they so desperately need to develop and grow instead of clumsily moving from one to the next and buying them off with memes and quizzes. I wish that I had the time and energy to take every wisp of story in my mind and capture it in words, whether they be part of a poem or a novel. I wish that I could just sit back, breathe, and write. Like I used to.

I wish that I had more time for my art. Painting has become my obsession--the colors are so real and vivid. But I have no time to dip my brush into a spot of paint and run it across a blank canvas. I have no time to sit and think of concepts for paintings that speak to my soul with their colors and textures. I have no time to experiment, to learn by failure, to mix colors to find the perfect shade, to use every brush and notice a difference. I have no time to go to the store anymore and just stand in the aisle and breathe in the subtle smell of paint, or marvel at the canvas that's bigger than me. I wish that I could just slow down, breathe, and create. Like I used to.

I wish that I had more time for my reading. I love to read. I wanted to read every book ever written when I was little. Now I'm working on it, but not in the way I want to. I snap up a chapter here and there, always distracted, never focused on the words, the voice, the author. I try to rush through because "lots of classic books look good on a transcript", not because they develop my mind. I wish I could find a book I love and curl up, just to read. I wish I could enter back into the worlds I once knew, the worlds where I felt everything the author meant for me to feel and not just the superficial emotions I know now. I want that again. But I've forgotten how to find it. Or so it seems.

I guess I want to live again, or live life as I once knew it. I want to have the whole day to myself, to do the things I want to do, without all the confusion of school and responsibility and the pressures that I feel now.

But you know what I'm realizing?

I am living.

It's not the life a twelve year-old girl with straw-blond hair and braces lived. That life has been lived. It's a memory--sweet, haunting, sometimes even trailing on into the life I'm living now. But I am living. As I sit here, wishing for the things I once knew, the life I have is passing me by. There are new chances out there for me, things I never even knew of when I was twelve. They're not the same as the chances I had back then. But they are once in a lifetime chances, chances I'll never get to chase again.

The old things linger on--I still write when I can, paint when inspiration floods my mind, and read when I have a spare moment. I'll always have my passions. I am a writer, an artist, a reader. I'm a person who loves to draw and sing and walk outside on crisp fall days. I love chocolate and the warmth of a horse's breath on my fingers and taking random pictures and making beautiful memories. Those aren't things that are ever going to pass me by. Those are what make me me. They'll always be there, even if it seems like they're fading away.

All these thoughts that have been spinning around in my mind reminded me of the verses in Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

 A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

 A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

 A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

 A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

 A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

Maybe I'm not "dying" and beginning a new life without the things I've loved ever since I knew they existed. Maybe this is just a time of transition, a time when those things can't play as large a part in my life. Maybe this has been God's plan for my life all along.

 Seasons change. They transition. Trees lose their leaves in the winter, but the leaves always grow back in the spring.

Maybe it's not the time you wish you had, but the time you're given that really matters.

In fact, you know what?

I know it is.

And that's all the writing I've done today.

And for once, it's okay.

Meet Mimi

This is my great-great-grandmother, Mary Ann, and the first picture I've found of her so far :3
 The caption under the picture said, "Mimi." My grandmother said that Mary Ann's very first grandchild used to tug at her dress and cry, "Me! Me! Me!" when he wanted her attentions. The name stuck, resulting in "Mimi" as the grandmother title for Mary Ann.

All this is so cool. I feel like I'm swimming in history.


Cheers to all you NaNo participants this year! 16 more days!

Is it November Yet?

I was babysitting for a friend today. She has a lot of health isssues and just really needs someone to help her out with her rambunctious, adorable 18 month old baby girl. I was sitting with her daughter and she was out in the kitchen getting breakfast.

"So, have you gotten much writing done lately?" she asked.

I tried to force a smile, even though I knew she couldn't see my face. "No. It's hard, with school and all. It's pretty crazy."

"Yeah." She laughed. "Hey, have you ever heard of this thing called NaNoWriMo?"

"YES," I replied, almost before she was done asking the question. "I actually did it last year. It was so fun! I think the most words I wrote at one sitting were about 5000."

"Five thousand?" she exclaimed. "How long did it take you to write that many words?"

I paused, nostalgic. Those were the richest three hours of that November. I sat on the floor at my sister's friend's house while she and my sister talked. They talked. I wrote. I wrote and wrote and wrote until it seemed like my fingers were going to fall off. But when I was finished, I looked up with bloodshot eyes and triumphantly announced, "I'm back on schedule." My sister and her friend gave me the weirdest look and kept on talking. But I was saved. That little blue chart now matched the curve I should be getting for that day. I felt fulfilled. "Three hours," I told my friend as I twisted her daughter's little mop of hair into a curlycue. "It was amazing."

I can't wait until November.

NaNoWriMo emails are flooding my inbox. I'm ecstatic. I can't wait to start. I want to write. I want to write fifty-thousand words. I want to write a hundred thousand words, if I can. These short spurts of creativity each day are driving me insane. I want to tear down the dam and submerge myself in all the pent-up ideas floating around behind the barrier I've put up to keep my life somewhat normal. Even if it's for only a month. Even if it was only for a day.

I can't wait until November.

I think I have the story for this year's NaNo. It's the story of my great-great grandmother, May. It's not fantasy, but it's a GOOD story. And, depending on how much research I get done, most of it will be true. I'm so excited. I want to show it to my grandmother when I'm done, to thank her for sharing those stories with me. But first I have to write it.

I can't wait until November.



Is it November yet?

~God Bless

Elisabeth (who is on a different computer and thus cannot stamp her awesome signature onto this blog post :( )

Elisabeth with an "S"

 It doesn't sound quite the same, but it's true. Elisabeth with an "S" is a much more interesting way to spell the name ^_^ Biased? Nooooo, not I.

Well, this is getting to be a trend, I think. First Little Women ate up gobs of my time while thoroughly delighting me; now Anne Shirley has captured my attention. That's right--I finally made good on my promise to read the books. And now that I've finished the first one, I don't know how I can bear to read the second one. I just know the characters are going to change.

Anne of Green Gables has an intriguing premise. As the sister of two former foster boys, Anne's plight captured my heart. Just thinking about arriving at what you assumed to be your forever home and then be faced with the prospect of being turned away is heartbreaking. And L.M. Montgomery writes with such maturity that she actually makes Anne's plight become real. The result is breathtaking.

Besides the characters, who deserve a blog post all to themselves on account of their incredible awesomeness; and besides the storyline, which is as simple as can be and yet held me captive for about four hours straight; and besides the fact that this book is set in a real place that you can actually visit (you can certainly tell that Montgomery was a Canadian--she describes every detail in Avonlea to perfection!), I loved the fact that after 100 years (YES! 100 years!) Anne's story is still as believable as ever. The writing is not over-wordy and doesn't use terms foreign to a 21st century teenager (namely, me).

If you've read Anne of Green Gables, I hope you share in my joy. If you haven't, I hope you pick it up and read it sometime. Even if you don't particularly like it, it's a great story and Montgomery was quite accomplished in her craft. I found it almost too easy to read Anne of Green Gables in under four hours, and I definitely plan to read it again in the future. The sequels? I'm not too eager to read them yet. I still have a perfect picture of Anne's life after Green Gables in my mind, and I don't really want her to grow up just yet :]


Besides my latest literary raptures, I've written a bit in the past couple days. College website surfing and college applications have been eating up my time and my insanity. It's hard to believe that I could be in COLLEGE this time next year o_o Scary is a better word, actually.
I wrote a poem, and a muse, and some random outbursts of frustration at my inability to express my joy at being able to write again. None of them passed the "blogworthy" test, however, and thus I have nothing to show to you. Lord-willing, I will. Soon. VERY SOON.

Alas, it's time to say goodbye. Take a look at my new siggie as you leave. I made it HERE. You should all grab one, too!

God Bless!

(GRAHH. It has a white background DX Oh, well. Another thing to tinker with ;D)

I Said I Would, and So I Shall

"I shall conquer the beast that hath overtaken me and destroyed the happiness I once enjoyed. Though mine helmet be a thimble and mine sword a pin, I shall bravely ride forth and pop this bubble of drudgery. TIME, THOU SHALT NOT HAVE ME.
And I shall rescue the fair damsel of writing from Time's loathsome jaws."

~ Yours Truly, about two minutes ago


What can I say? I was in a knight-ish mood.

Anywho, I've decided to get back into my old habit of going to good old 750words.com and writing those words each day. I keep getting their emails and it's really prompted me to get back on the horse and ride into the sunset (even if they sunset's really fake). Did I mention it's eleven o'clock? Writing, tomorrow I come for thee.

~Elisabeth

Pumpkins, Hemingway and Questions

What can all these things have in common, you ask?

Nothing much. They just happen to be the things which have consumed my brain over the last few days.
First up: pumpkins. I love pumpkins. They're round and huge and orange and such fun to paint. We don't celebrate Halloween (in fact, we take great cares to be out of the house and enjoying a meal at the nearest Cracker Barrel when the Trick-or-Treaters start coming around). But we buy pumpkins every year for our front steps, and this year my siblings and I decided to have a pumpkin-carving party. In the dark. With sharp knives. And an eerie pumpkin-candle glow.
I had so much fun.
First, I tried to pose as the headless horsewoman, but my pumpkin was pretty heavy, and I could only hold it up for so long (thus the fuzzy picture up top there). Gutting the pumpkin was the hardest part--it was sticky and slippery and gross inside, but the seeds made excellent missiles. In total, I carved three pumpkins--mine, my youngest brother Jude's, and my brother Issac's, who succeeded in slicing his finger before he'd carved out his pumpkin's leering mouth (don't worry, he's fine. But he did convince my dad that he needed bedrest and extra ice cream that evening).

When we were finished, we took a little candle and lit up our pumpkins. The result was pretty cool. That's my pumpkin--with the huge, hollow eyes and only one tooth. Our back porch is covered with seeds that stick to your feet, but it was a fun night. Maybe we can do it again next year.

I recently started reading For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway. My mom's book club read it, and she gave it to me. I have seen the old Gary Cooper movie, and the story intruiged me, so I started to read it. It's funny how different literature was written sixty years ago. The writing is immaculate, but very hard to read. I don't know exactly why. Hemingway is brilliant in his use of dialogue--he has the characters speaking Spanish, but their lines are written in English. The result is a strange word order, a lot of thees and thys, and a very respectful feel to the conversations. I'm enjoying the book so far, and I plan to finish it (even though I already know how it ends).
The hard part is finding time to read. I'm basically on my own school-wise this year--all of my homework is from classes and it's on me to get it done in time. I actually have a lot more time, and I've started setting aside an hour (or however much time I can find) a day to read. Some days, it will be impossible to find an hour, but on other days, I might be able to read for two or three. I really want to read more--there are so many books I want to get through. Hopefully this new pattern will help me do it.

Questions have been consuming me for the last few days. Unfortunately, they're not the deep, life-changing questions that I should be pondering. They're all from memes. That's right. I'm in meme mode and I can't get out (I need a Life Alert button).
Memes are great. But after a little while, they all sound the same. And then you're sitting there asking your poor characters the same questions over and over and over again. And they don't like that, no sir. Several have committed mutiny and refused to appear in any more memes X3 So I'm going to write--I'm going to write scenes in my book until my fingers fall off or until my laptop dies. A meme or two will find its way in, as will some poems. But I want to write stories again. I want to write my characters, not just interrogate them. So that's my resolution for the next however-many-days-I-can-keep-this-up. I'm thinking two. But two days of nonstop writing will be better than twenty of nothing at all.

By the way, how did you like that meme I left you last time? It's my favorite so far :3

Signing off,

Elisabeth