My Year {In Pictures}

Hey everyone. The year is almost at its end, and I was just looking through some pictures from 2011. It was a good year, to be sure; a lot of good things happened and my family has been blessed beyond measure. I decided to make a couple of picture mosaics, just to show you what the year has been like. The first one (right down there) is just a sort of summary of 2011 for me. It includes my trip to Louisiana for a wedding, most of my amazing summer (including my very first piece of corn on the cob in 2011!) and snippets of our trip to Maine.

Then I went a little further and made a picture mosaic of "36 Things I Loved This Year". That one needs a little explaining, so there's a list under it. If you dare to move forward, I commend you.

My Year {In Pictures}

36 Things I Loved This Year

       
Oh boy. Here we go: (from left-right)

1. I loved Maine. I loved the weather, the landscape, the fact that no one else was there AND sitting on top of a rock in the middle of the woods. Yes. Don't judge.

2. I loved East of Eden by John Steinbeck. It was a confusing but captivating story, skillfully written and masterfully handled. And I also loved the miniseries, which I watched before I read the book. Shaaame.

3. I LOVE HAVING A BLOG! It's such a privilege to be able to read all of your blogs and post little things for you to read.

4. I love that as of March 2011, I have two new little brothers. It's amazing how much they have changed since they first came as foster boys. They're so special, though sometimes difficult to love, and I'm so blessed to have them in my family.

5. I love that I got accepted into college! I don't know if I'll be going to Covenant next fall, but it was such a relief to get that letter in the mail and know that if God leads me there, the door's already open.

6. I loved seeing Les Miserables almost a year ago in January. The performance was just amazing, and it was so special for me to be there with my best friends to see the 25th Anniversary show!

7. I love the Irish Tenors. Yes. I know you knew that, but I thought you might want to hear it again.

8. I LOVED this year's GPCWC. It was just fantastic. I'm still sifting through all the stuff I learned and trying to apply it to my stories. I can't wait for next year! (See, they already changed the banner! August 2012, here I come).

9. I love learning about my great-great grandmother, Mae. I love her story, her spunk, and I love my grandmother for telling me all about it. It's so cool to be able to write her story over one hundred years later.

10. I loved seeing Schindler's List for the first time this year. It was such a great film, so well done and so haunting. It's currently one of my favorite films.

11. I loved going to Louisiana in May! The wedding there was beautiful; I was so happy to be able to be there. New Orleans was such a fascinating place to visit, even though it was SO HOT every day.

12. I LOVED being able to go to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum with my German 2 class. I will never forget what I saw there, or how it felt to stand in that cattle car, or how emotionally drained I felt on the car ride home. It was a powerful experience and I would go back again in a hearbeat.

13. I love the books I've written in this past year. I know I'm still not even close to being done, but I got words down on paper and even had several new ideas pop up! I love writing, and I'm so thankful that I had another year to do it!

14. I love skiing! All the adventures my friends and I had are too many to post here now. I'm so excited to be going again this January!

15. I LOVE THAT THE HOBBIT IS COMING OUT NEXT YEAR. I just saw the trailer and, as a rabid fan of both the books and the first three films, I went a little berserk. I don't know if I can wait a whole year.

16. I love that I'm falling back in love with wolves. I started quite a few stories about them over the years, and I think another one's on the way. They're such fascinating creatures to write about.

17. I love pasta. Any pasta. ANY. I could eat it for the rest of my life. I ate quite a lot of pasta in this past year.

18. I love my Avaria books. I know I've been neglecting them, and not working as hard as I could to fix those plot holes, but I still think about them all the time and I can't wait until I start writing in them again!

19. I love Christmas. 'Nuff said.

20. I love latex gloves. Granted, they're really hard to get on, especially if your hands are wet. And it's really awkward when you're standing there fixing ever finger while people are waiting to start a procedure. But in a dentist's office, latex gloves are crucial. Since I work in a dentist's office, and I know more than I ever wanted to know about what kinds of nasty things live in your mouth, I really REALLY love latex gloves.

21. I love coffee. I love the effect coffee has on me (I think the coffee itself tastes pretty nasty). I usually only drink it on Sunday mornings, and I try to avoid it otherwise because it really does stain your teeth, but let's face it--I'm becoming an addict pretty fast.

22. I love painting. Over this past year, I've done a lot of painting and I'm starting to like it more than simple pencil or pen & ink art.

23. I love being part of the Class of 2012 (squee!)

24. I love how much reading I've done this past year. Goodreads, you are my friend forever.

25. I love the film Judgment at Nuremberg. Despite the fact that it's very long and pretty detailed, it's a captivating story and has unforgettable characters.

26. I love music from movies! I'm finding out that I really like movie themes--there's just something about them that clicks with me, I guess. I'll sit at the piano for a good hour trying to play my favorite themes by ear. Don't worry--you'll never need to hear the results ;)

27. I love Hershey's Cookies n' Creme candy bar. In fact, I love just about every white chocolate candy bar I've ever come across.

28. I love Ocean City, NJ!

29. But I also love Ocean City, MD! If ever I chose one over the other, my grandmother would disown me =)

30. I love owls. But you already knew that.

31. I loved that I saw my very first sunrise! It was spectacular.

32. I loved this year's NaNoWriMo. Even though I didn't finish quite on time, I have an incredible story started and I can't wait to keep writing it.

33. I love having a cell phone! Okay, so my phone is only a Tracfone, but as my dad says, phones are for making and recieving calls. No more, no less. Annnnd that's exactly what I do. Okay. Sometimes I text a little.

34. I love driving. I'm pretty bad at it still--I have horrible judgment and I've made blind turns more times than I'd like to admit, but I do love it. And I LOOOOVE my little red Honda.

35. I love that I've grown in Christ this past year. I've been lazy and forgetful; I've skipped out on my devotions and prayer time, but He has continued His work in me despite... well, me. I've learned a lot this past year; it's come with hard lessons and many blessings. I can't wait to see what next year has in store.

36. And, in closing, may I just say: I really love my life. It might sound a bit cheesy, but it's true.

 Anyway. I'll probably post once more before Christmas, Lord-willing, although my life is starting to get really busy as the big day approaches. If I don't write to you again soon, I hope you and your families have a blessed Christmas and a happy New Year!

God Bless~

Halfway There

[Via]

 So, that's where I am. Thirty-thousand words. I honestly can't remember being at this point last year. I must have been in a sugar-induced coma. And okay, so the picture I used to illustrate the saying "Halfway there" is actually a picture of just "There". But "There" is where we want to be on the 30th, right? So it's all good.

I'm in part Two of the three parts I've envisioned for my book. This is where the story that I know really well, the story I've been wanting to write from the beginning, starts. I'm so excited, and a little scared, too. I'm still five thousand words behind, and I have a lot of things to do tomorrow. And of course, Thanksgiving Day is pretty much a dud as far as writing goes. Oh, well. God, you know what You're doing, and if I don't find enough time to catch up, I'll just do the all-nighter like I did last year. Yeah. That was fun :]

Here's my current favorite picture of Mae and her two children: Mary (the girl with the ridiculously huge bow and the ridiculously adorable smile) and Joseph, the dashingly handsome young man in the sailor suit who happens to be my great-grandfather. This was probably taken around the time that I'm writing about them right this very minute. Looking at this picture is so cool, and scary at the same time. This is where I came from, people. I'm so thankful to have such an amazing history!

Keep on writing, Wrimos! We're almost there.

More Than Words

I can't believe that 9/11 is almost ten years behind us. Today, two magazines came in the mail. Both of them were special memorial issues. I sat down and just looked through the pictures, not even reading the articles. The emotion, the bare, raw emotion on the faces of the people in those pictures can't be recreated by anything I write. They're surreal, those emotions. They were singular and unique to every person who felt them, and they will never be felt by anyone else. It's very hard for me, as a writer, to see those deep emotions. They're things that I can't touch, that I have never experienced. Researching and practicing and imagining don't help. There's a time when I need to simply say, "I can't imagine." And it's so true.

There is something about pictures that fascinates me. I feel that as writers, one of our hardest jobs is to actually create a picture with words. It's certainly something I've struggled with ever since I first put down "Once upon a time..." on a piece of notebook paper. Those awful, heartbreaking pictures speak more than words.

I don't want to make the tenth anniversary of 9/11 a writing exercise. It's so much more than that.

I'm Baaaack... (Poems, Pictures, and Stressing Out)

Hi everyone! Here I am, back from a week of dirt, daddy longlegs, really cold feet, and blisters. It. Was. Awesome =D I love the opportunity to just escape from my life every now and then--I find that my writing flourishes when I step back and take a deep (really, really deep) breath. And now that I'm back, life goes on. And it goes on oh so quickly.

First things first: Writer's Conference. I know you're getting totally sick of hearing about it (I sort of am, too) but it must be heard. It is now officially one week away. If you want to laugh, go back and glance my rather sporadic post posted quite a few weeks ago and entitled "Three Weeks?!" I always knew I couldn't count, but I didn't know that I couldn't even guesstimate accurately. This time, I'm pretty sure I'm right.

So, I submitted the dialogue that I was telling you about a couple of posts ago. It's a scene that I've always liked, and right now I'm trying not to think about it because that will only lead to tears, sweat, and a few "WHAT WAS I THINKING WHEN I SUBMITTED THAT?!" moments (I think I've had one or two already). I'm pretty nervous about it, but the teacher who's going to be using it promised absolute anonymity and was quite nice. I still think I'm going to hide when he reads it. Would you like to read it?! I won't let you answer that question. Here. *hides*

Nightstrider reached the knoll and scented Skarzen; he turned his sharp eyes on him. “Do you come to mock me, Barsz?” Nightstrider’s low, guttural voice was clogged with blood. “Do you come to lead me back to Vanisa in humiliation?”

            Skarzen prodded his horse forward. The animal approached Nightstrider reluctantly; once it shied away from the hulking, bleeding monster. When Skarzen was close enough, he spoke. “You have humiliated me, Nightstrider. What good would it do me to return it on you?”

            Nightstrider coughed loudly, foam fringing his lips. “Stop the riddles, Barsz.”

            “There are no more riddles.” Skarzen drew his sword, watching as the faint hiss of steel against leather ignited a spark of horror in Nightstrider’s eyes. “You offered me power, once, if I would help you overthrow Vanisa Sorian, and I turned you down. But only because I don’t need you. Power was not meant to be shared.”

            Nightstrider began to back away, tripping constantly over his mutilated leg. “Barsz, have you lost your mind? What are you doing?”

            Skarzen spurred his horse forward, raising his blade.

            “Vanisa will know!” Nightstrider fell to his knees, floundered to rise. Blood rushed from his mouth with his frantic words. “She will find out!”

            “By then, it will be too late.” Skarzen looked down on the Nargal with a mixture of satisfaction and disgust. “It is too late.” Two quick, solid strikes, and Nightstrider’s body crumpled. Skarzen paused, observing the fallen leader. Then he wiped the dark blood on the Nargal’s tangled mane and sheathed his sword.

That was painful =P The saddest thing is that Skarzen isn't even my original villian--he's Fozzymillow's, but he appears in my book. How wrong is that.

Now, to a happier note. I got an email today from the leader of the conference calling for teens to schedule appointments with the publisher of a fairly new Christian teens magazine who will only be at the conference for one day. The magazine is named Aletheia Writing Magazine and their website is here:
http://www.aletheiawritingmagazine.com/. I strongly encourage you to look at it and even consider submitting something, since I know all of you are crazy artistic people. I also found the blog of one of the teen authors who's been published by aletheia here: http://www.katieoostman.blogspot.com/. If you read about her experience with Aletheia, I think you'll be very encouraged. I still haven't found the story she published, but she seems like a very good author.

All that said, I scheduled an appointment with the magazine owner and I'm practically dying of happiness since they accept submissions of everything from short stories to poems to artwork to photographs to book reviews and I plan to show him just about everything I have that falls into those categories. I shall keep you updated.

And finally, here's some stuff (a poem and pictures) I came up with while on my camping trip =) Enjoy!

On My Encounter with a Good Friend, the Red Squirrel, Who Was Quite Incensed When I Startled Him

A squirrel, he stopped and looked at me

As if I had surprised him

And as we sat a'staring there

As calmly I surmised him

He crept along his gnarly bough

With squirrel toes all a twitter

And only when he'd made his leap

Did he scold and sorely chitter.

The sky on the day we arrived.

My VERY FIRST roasted hotdog. In my own personal and completely unbiased opinion, I think it is roasted to perfection.

The falls which we hike down to see every year. Very inspiring place, that =)

An oddly shaped tree I found while hiking.

LAKE. Favorite. Place. EVER.

Indian Pipes

This huge boulder field. I mean, it was literally ALL boulders. I walked across half of it and almost killed myself because I was wearing flip-flops. That's me--always prepared XD

A NEWT. So cute. I rhyme without even trying ^_^

A rental car we got after ours decided to tour the local shop. I want it now, and have decided that this will be my first car. My dad is not convinced, since I can't even drive yet =)

The lake on the day we left =(

The TINIEST frog I've ever seen. It could literally fit on my fingernail. What a grand creation!

Signing out!

Elisabeth