five state tango

This is a travel blog, or was, and I don't seem to travel much anymore, but here's a little tidbit for you anyway!

Two months ago, almost three now, I moved down to Texas. Don't ask me why because I really don't know still. I needed a change. I had to get out of where I was. There are jobs here. Anyway.

I packed up almost everything I owned into my (very small) car and drove down through five states in about five or six days. I used the trip as an excuse to visit my friends that I hadn't seen since I came back from China. That was two years ago.

First stop was Los Angeles. I crashed at my friend's house for the night. We spent it watching A Very Potter Musical and then the next morning we made crepes with nutella and strawberries! It was delicious and reminded me of my senior year of college when I would make crepes all the time with my friend Nicole. Which was perfect timing given that the next night was spent in Phoenix with Nicole.

It's nice coming back to familiar places. I always thought that I would hate Phoenix for the rest of my life after going to high school there. But there's something nice about knowing where you're going, how to get places, which roads lead to what. It was pleasant to be back in Phoenix, even if I was in Glendale, an area I'm not terribly familiar with.

We hung out in the pool and then went to see the Hunger Games (my third time, Nicole's first). The next morning, I packed up and headed out, straight to...

Albuquerque to visit my friend Caty and her husband Adam. I still find it weird that so many of my friends are getting married. We mostly just hung out and I broke out the colossal Europe photo album (It is twice the size of China's despite the fact that I was in China for a longer amount of time). I also introduced her to Starkid and the genius that is Holy Musical B@man.

But alas the fun couldn't last and it was off to Texas for me.

So here I am three months later. I have a new pet! It's a rabbit, an American Fuzzy Lop which I mentioned a few entries ago. I bet you guys didn't think I'd actually get one, did you? I actually have 3, but only one is here with me in my apartment.

And I've been here 3 months and I'm already bored. I'm thinking about my next move... which I'm fairly sure has to do with writing. If I can double my monthly freelancing income, I could make it my full time job. I suppose that is my goal for the end of the year. Until then, I will go to work every day and figure out a way to make it happen. Until the next trip!

blogs

I'm not really a blogging person most of the time. And I obviously don't use this one much, but if you're interested, I have another blog that's 1) easier to comment on, and 2) that I like better. It's mainly for my writer-y stuff, but mayhaps you're interested in that?

If you want to visit/follow, check out my other blog: http://elyceg.wordpress.com

Just FYI-ing.

I Don't Know What I'm Doing

I don't know if anyone even reads this blog anymore and I never update, but that's mostly because I also have a facebook, tumblr, livejournal, wordpress, etc etc and the list goes on. Granted, I have cut down on the number of accounts I have in the past few years, but new ones always seem to sneak up.

Anyway, what I'm here to talk about now is writing. Yes, most of you know that I like to write in my spare time. I've been writing pretty constantly for the past seven years now. I've published (self-published, whatever) one novel and written over 300 other short stories. I've written six novels, and this year, 2012, is the year I'm finally going to Make. Stuff. Happen. Seriously.

As of Monday, I will be throwing caution to the wind and entering one of my novels in ABNA, the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. Now, I don't expect to get much further than maybe the second round, third if I'm lucky, but of course there's a tiny part of me that's hoping against hope I'll make it to the top three and even win. I'm trying to be realistic, though. My poor little novel. I'm gonna be spreading its wings and pushing it off a cliff! It's a little scary.

In the meantime, though, while that will be going on and I'll be sitting on my hands in antici.... pation, I've also jumped off the deep end into freelance writing. I started about two months ago and I've gotten six jobs so far. In a way, it's awesome because it's getting paid to write, which is one of the things I would love to do full time, but on the other hand, it takes away time from actually writing my own things. I have a list of writing things to do this year, most of which involves editing and rewriting and submitting. But to do that, I have to actually have time to do it.

The novel I'm submitting for ABNA, I wrote it in November. That sounds ridiculously fast considering here we are two months later. In the first two weeks of January, I took hours every day and tore the thing apart and then built it back up piece by piece. I have never been good at editing, mostly because I was always afraid of the delete button, but I bit the bullet and deleted entire sections that had nothing to do with the plot or the characters. I took a chopping ax to the chapters, and managed to fall completely in love with a single chapter (I don't know why I love this chapter so much but I do. It's perfect). I want to get this novel out there, to prove that I'm not just fiddling around aimlessly on my computer. Also, I want to get the eff out of this town and selling a book would get me enough money to do that.

I guess I should go work on my pitch instead of sitting here talking about it, to make sure I do actually get to round two. Adios.

until the sea drowned the sun

November is probably too far off for most people to be thinking about yet, but for me, this is prime time to think of November.

If you recall, November is National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo or just NaNo) in which doomed souls partake in the challenge to write a 50k word novel in 30 days or less. Until last week, I had no plots or even ideas, that is until I stole one... But don't worry! I stole it from my best friend with her permission. Originally, the idea had been for a fake movie meme that filtered through tumblr a few months ago in which you take a few celebrities, a song from shuffle, and make up a plot with these. It's quite fun.

So I stole it and am in the process of plotting out the novel. So far I've got about seven pages of character development but no plot... haha. Typical. Quelle surprise. But here, have the (newly redesigned) fake movie poster!

The coloring in the title got a little screwed up on here, but that's okay. So... when my novel is made into a movie guess who should play the title roles? Haha.

Alas! Earwax.

The last post was about Harry Potter and being unemployed. This one is about writing and being unemployed. Two things that you'd think would go hand in hand, but alas do not.

This month is something new: Camp NaNoWriMo.

You may remember last November when I attempted to write a 50k word novel. Well, what happened was I got to 50k words and then stopped. Just plain stopped writing despite the fact that the plot was only a third of the way in. I don't know why I stopped exactly. I reached the dreaded "middle section" in which things have to actually get done. Plots have to advance, you can no longer describe characters in long-winded details, there have to be hopes and dreams and regrets. My characters seem to have those, but they're having problems actually making them into something.

So what is Camp NaNo? It's a spin-off of the original in November, this time set in the balmy summer months of July and August (if you should so choose) in which you attempt another 50k word noveling experience. I had the brilliant thought that I should use whatever motivation this would give me to actually finish last year's novel (which hasn't been looked at since December. I am ashamed).

Well, it's day three of July and for the first time in seven months, I actually typed something into that document. It's difficult getting back into the story and the characters after so long, not to mention I've been working on a screenplay for the last two weeks, and getting out of screenwriter mode is extremely difficult.

I suppose what I'm getting at here is that I'm procrastinating writing... by writing this blog. Seriously. Worst writer ever.

In other news, yesterday I dreamt about French cheeses. I am going crazy.

filtered particles

I have a thing for "squares of sunlight" in stories. The squares of sunlight that fall in through windows onto beige carpets where cats crawl into them and bask for hours as if there's nothing they'd rather be doing than lying there. I always write them in, the squares, not necessarily the cats, and I stopped to wonder why today.

When I was growing up, I lived on the Oregon coast, which anyone can tell you, does not get a lot of sun. It's known for being rainy and dark, cloudy and windy and cold. Our house faced north-south so on those rare occasions when it was sunny, it always started in my parent's bedroom on the east side of the house. As a child, I was convinced that Sunday was the day of sun because I can't remember a single rainy Sunday. I'm sure there were, there had to be given the location, but I can't recall a single one.

On those days, especially in the summer, sometimes my mom would be in her room sewing something (and uselessly trying to encourage me to be crafty in my own sense). Their room had this light yellow curtain on the east-facing window and the sun would always stream in in big, bright patches on the carpet (it was grey not beige, but who's counting. The beige comes from living in Arizona where sun was all too plentiful). All those mornings were lovely and have apparently ingrained themselves in my memory.

So when I write them into stories, I'm writing in a moment of happiness. It might be obvious, what with the sun being metaphorical for happiness, but it's really more than that. We haven't had many sunny days lately and I should add that I've never been a huge fan but I like the rare bursts of happiness it always seemed to bring.

I think I'll go write one into the story I'm working on, as this post was all just a huge procrastination on my part.