Burned Out

*** I've been up for...18ish hours? This probably isn't going to be coherent. At all. ***

I haven't worked on my novel, Prisoners of The Mind, in about a week now? I've never taken such a long break from any project, but in all honesty, I've never worked on a draft of something for 5 months only to be trashing and constantly rewriting whatever I come up with.

My good friend Brett Jonas rekindled my love for the project, but it was only temporary. In all honesty, I'm tired of writing that novel. It's been my hardest project yet. I'm just tired. I never make any progress and everything I write for it is crap.

I know this all sounds incredibly amateurish of me. And it probably is. I think part of the reason I've been struggling is because I have other things stressing me out (my dad's illness, etc) so it's hard to put the appropriate amount of brainpower needed into focusing on my novel.

Or maybe I'm just burned out. Maybe I've focused too long on one project and my brain has decided to throw in the towel. Either way, I need some space on this novel. I love the characters, but when I'm bored with what I'm doing and hating what I come up with and stressed out with it instead of enjoying it, I think that means a break is needed.

Anyways, I'm working on a short story (untitled as of now) and will hopefully finish it *soon*. It's running longer than I expected. But at least I'm writing something.

**Also my brain insists that "burned out" doesn't look right. If I'm wrong, I'm sorry. I haven't had any sleeps yet...

Why I'm a Racist

I live very close to 2 convenience stores, and if you read my Twitter on a regular basis, you see that I'm often at one of these stores for a daily dose of my favorite drink (Coke). Now, being the weirdo I am, I sometimes get my mother to take me up there when it's late at night (because walking late at night is obviously not safe with there being at least 50 registered sexual offenders in this town, etc etc, and I'm a little 5'6" white girl who weighs less than 130 pounds. Sure, to an extent I can kick someone's arse, but I'm no match against a gun.).

I'm always cautious of who I'm around. I do my best to be observant and make sure that I stay away from the creepers (and there's plenty of those around here). If there's a particular super creepy person in the store, I usually wait in the vehicle until they're gone. I've learned that if I'm getting a bad vibe, I should listen to it and follow my instinct.

But with trying to avoid the creepers, I notice that I judge people based on their skin color. More than once I've avoided going into the store when there's a bunch of tall black dudes in there. It's not that I'm particularly "intimidated", but it makes me feel uncomfortable. I feel short and a little overwhelmed.

Okay so maybe I am intimidated. Although if properly enraged, I'll snark and yell and curse someone out. It's happened. (Not so much with the cursing part, because the people I'm yelling at usually happen to be my family. ;) )

I don't always do this with the white guys. Sure I might feel a little uncomfortable if they get in close proximity, but never as uncomfortable as I get around black guys. I hate that I think like this, because I know it's racist and very much wrong. Yet my "instinct" still tells me that a group of black guys wearing baggy pants and chains around their neck is something I need to stay away from.

Which brings me to this question: Even though we know racism is wrong and we do our best to respect/accept people different from ourselves, why are we still inherently racist? And is it really racist of me to do what I do, even though I hate doing it?

Blocked With My Writing and Why

I've always heard that if you're blocked with any writing project that you should write out why you're blocked, and eventually (hopefully) a way past the block will show itself.

Let's hope this works.

For the past 5 months, I've been working on Draft 2 of my horror novel, Prisoners of The Mind. A lot of what I've written has been "trashed" (filed away in a file, probably never to be used again). I struggled with how I wanted the plot to go, etc etc. Only for the past 2 months have I felt like I've really figured out where I wanted to go with this story.

Unfortunately around the beginning of April, my dad fell ill. He does have congestive heart failure and asthma, so it's not unusual for him to lie around for a few days and be a bit unwell. This time things ended up differently. He wasn't getting better. He'd spend a lot of the night coughing and gagging. There was also some pain in his chest and lung areas, causing him to think that he may have a blood clot.

All of April he was like this, in constant pain and having never ending coughing fits. Eventually he went to the doctor and was told he had a blockage in his throat (a surgery on his neck a couple of years ago ended up scorching his throat and the growth is layers of skin attempting to heal it). Then he told us that he'd gotten pneumonia too.

Now under normal circumstances, he 'd enter the hospital for a week then come out fine. This time he refused to go, saying he wanted to stay home with his family. But as far as I know, he has received little or no antibiotics. And he's not getting better.

This has placed stress on all of us. I've been babysitting my siblings for a few years while my mom works. Now that Dad is so ill, it's become mostly me in charge. I like to call myself the "surrogate mommy". And honestly, I don't mind doing what I can to make my parents' lives easier. I just find out emotionally taxing at times. My sisters are 4 and 12, then my brother is 9. Obviously there is a bit of rebellion every now and then from the three of them, but my brother is the worse. I'm not saying that to be mean. He is just very argumentative and tests my patience.

Throughout all my emotional struggles with doing what I am doing and experiencing all this stress with my dad's illness, I try to keep writing. It's therapeutic for me. When I can't write because I'm experiencing a block, it's insanely stressful, and unfortunately I sometimes let this show via my emotional state (irrationally angry, etc). Or I just feel lost and spend lots of time whining on Twitter about it.

With writing this, I can already feel a weight being lifted off of me. I hope that with confessing all that I have, I can hopefully get back to writing more tonight or tomorrow.

Believability With Fictional Characters and Depression

My novel (WIP), Prisoners of The Mind, has been an ongoing project all year. I wrote it for NaNoWriMo 2013, and then completely started over at the beginning of this year with it. My NaNo draft of it had no plot and it was an unholy (no pun intended) mess. xD Of course, I'm not on the same draft I started with in January. There have been lots of "false starts" that I've set aside. I can't count how many uncompleted versions I've set aside!

One of my main reasons for having restarted so many times is that I struggle with making the characters' actions believable. My four FMCs are in an alternative mental health institution and suffering from some pretty serious stuff (Abby and Keri are both diagnosed as schizophrenics, yet not the same kind, but that's for another blog post). While I have family members and friends who've suffered (and some who continue to suffer) from various mental illnesses, I still struggle with whether or not I'm portraying these illnesses correctly. I've done research, but I still worry. I don't want to romanticize it or completely misrepresent it (like I've seen done way too many times with dissociative identity disorder).

I myself have struggled with depression. Not just "oh I've had a bad day" kind of depression. I mean full-out, I hate myself and am completely inadequate kind of depression. While I won't go into why I've had these feelings, it's never been an easy thing to deal with. At 14 I wanted to cut myself, and at times I still do. I can't remember what particular thought/feeling triggered that urge. I told my mother that night, and while I completely advocate having a support buddy (because a lot of times it's kept me from taking drastic measures), part of me somewhat regrets telling her it that night. Or rather telling her when I was having an urge. She (unintentionally) made me feel uncomfortable about the whole thing. To this day I don't tell her when I want to cut or am feeling inadequate, etc. I have an online buddy whom I'll talk to, and that has saved me a lot of times from taking drastic measures. I am forever grateful for that friend.

Keri Lanier, one of my FMCs, is diagnosed with schizophrenia before she enters the institution. But she also has depression. A lot of times I find myself venting my feelings (past and present) through her. She is a lot like me, both in personality and what she is suffering from. This is therapeutic for me in so many ways, and I think that maybe since I'm putting so much real life experience into her, that she will be believable. I hope she is. Maybe too with venting through her, I can let go of some of my own angst, and hopefully come to love myself more.

I'm hoping to have this draft finished by December 31st. If I can get better with character believability (I have a beta reader and then another person who edits my chapters. They both give me excellent feedback on my story.), hopefully I can keep moving forward and meet my goal of having a completed second draft by December 31st!

Encore DCS Dance Competition-March 15th

I can't believe it's nearly been two weeks since I competed. Wow.

It was a crazy Saturday. I think the most stressful part (as always) was getting my hair done. This year our studio is getting into wearing sock buns for all performances, and yes while it is pretty and professional, it is a pain. I have long hair and it is difficult to get it up and make it so that it's not lopsided.

Of course, I get my wonderful mother to do that sock bun because my arms are pathetic and get tired easily trying to do my hair. The first time we put it up, it was lopsided. It wasn't a problem really because we could fix it, but we had already put all the bobby pins in and I already had hairspray in.

But we fixed it. I left the house later than I wanted to, but I got it done.

This year, the dance competition was held at the GSU Performing Arts Center in Statesboro, GA (where our studio usually holds our recital). And let me say, it was insane. There were so many dancers and people everywhere, but it was the kind of madness I thrive on. Running to backstage and being around all those dancers and the general excitement of competing gives me an amazing adrenaline high and I love it.

Overall, our studio did amazing. I was in 5 numbers (three group routines and two productions) and they scored as followed:

Take A Ride (group tap): Platinum (!!!!! :D :D :D :D)

This is Me (group lyrical): High Gold

Ooh La La (group jazz): High Gold

Bad Breakup (jazz production): Platinum

Forever Love (lyrical production): Platinum

I am SO FREAKING PROUD OF US because I was hoping to get Platinum on at least one of our numbers, and the fact that we got that one of my group routines is amazing. (Platinum is the second best technical scoring you can get!!)

All in all, it was an amazing weekend for my studio and I. I competed Saturday then went to watch some of the other girls perform on Sunday. One of our senior dancers got the overall high score in her category for her solo (she is a really amazing person too, both in the studio and out. I'm sad that it's her last year with this studio!).

To anyone's who is interested in knowing more about Encore (or their scoring system, etc), here's their website: http://www.encoredcs.com/ If you're a dancer and looking for a place to compete, I'd definitely recommend going here. Everyone is really great and the judges are awesome and supportive people. I hope to compete at another one of their competitions in the future. :)

A Short February Recap

This month has flown by!

A lot has been going on. From writing (obviously ;) ) and preparing for the dance performances I have next month (a showcase/recital and a competition), I've been kept busy. But the good kind of busy.

This month one of my goals was to edit/revise a poem and submit it somewhere. But after spending some time on my pieces, I've decided that my poetry just isn't ready. I'm still struggling with it and I'm not 100 percent confident that they're ready to be out there just yet. Heck, I'm not sure they'll ever be. I've been writing poetry for over a year now and 99.999999999% of the time, I suck at it. It's awful. :P So for now, I'll just keep working at it.

On the subject of my novel, Prisoners of The Mind, I'm finally getting somewhere with it. After ditching two false starts to this second draft, I know where I want to go with this. I have two lovely CPs who are helping me along the way and keeping me on track. Right now I'm currently on Chapter 5 and loving the scene I'm working on. I hope that, with the necessary edits and rewrites, it'll be something awesome that future readers will enjoy.

Progress is happening. Slowly but surely, it's happening (and yes I know I say that a lot). :)

SUPER AWESOME BLOG POST OF WRITERLY THINGS

I'm out of caffeine. Have been all day. I don't count the tea I've had as caffeine, because it's not strong enough to actually have an affect on me since I drink Coke all the time. So if this post is a little bit scatter-brained and ALL! OVER! THE! PLACE!, you know why.

Since January 1st, I've been working on revising my NaNo novel. And long story short, I've had two false starts on it. Now I'm on my third try of it and hoping to God I don't have to start back at Chapter 3 AGAIN.

I am, nonetheless, making a good amount of progress. While actually getting some words out, I've also got someone from the NaNo forums who has offered to edit my entire novel and give their critique on it. Holy moly, this person has got a LOT of work ahead of them, but I'm lucky to have this person nonetheless. They've caught so many errors that I couldn't have ever caught on my own.

While that person is my main CP, I've also got a second one who I send random paragraphs of my novel to so that she can give her advice on it. She's my full-blown beta reader, offering the occasional edit or advice on word choice, etc. I'm very lucky to have her too. :3

My original goal for this month was to have 15 completed chapters by the 28th. With my trashing six chapters and my only having saved 2, I don't know if I can get to there in the next 17 days. Right now I'm preparing for some dance performances in March (a showcase here in the town then a regional competition in another town), and there is a lot to be done. Besides cleaning all the numbers, I have to make sure that I have all of my costumes and their accessories together in the bags, my jazz shoes need to be cleaned, and yeah. Lots and lots of fun stuff. xD

Nonetheless, progress is progress. I WILL have this second draft finished by the end of this year. :)