slantedwindow's perspective in writing

I seem to be in this increasingly depressing funk as of lately. You think I would be riding high off of the inauguration of President Obama. But I'm not. I am still trying to navigate around the economies pressing reins of debt and more debt. Leaving me feeling stressed out and depleted of all creative energy.

I really have been focusing on the wrong things in my life. All the negative things are prominently front and center in my mind. I began to think about the bills that continue to pile up and the unfinished writing projects on my desk and I get overwhelmed thinking of it all. Being a mom, a wife and having two boys who all need me and then I need to write and fulfill my own personal goals can be very nerve racking and utterly hopeless.

I assume that I am not alone in my pessimistic outlook on my life. Since most people are feeing the crunch with the economic climate. I need to just focus on the good things and let the pressure of everything fall to the side. I was reading someones blog today and it really inspired me. He was saying that he decided to stop being stressed about things that happen in his life and instead he would just be present. Being present in the moments that are good and bad. And the outcome of his positive outlook and just being present in situations. He found that he noticed his mood changing and he was happy and content.

I want to be happy and content no matter what happens in or around my life.(because you know other people's attitudes and opinions can affect you indirectly)

I want to be free of all of that. Free of being concerned about what people think. Free to be me no matter what anyone says. Free to write and to write what I want and to finish projects. Free to grow and change without questions. Now that is what I call growth. I'm ready to be present and to be overcome with happiness...

Ready to fly away...I want to be free!

So I begin this post unneccessarily disgusted and aggravated, because I have no job! Yes, I decided to stay home and do my motherly duties that never end. I also expected once I decide to get back into the swing of things...when I started my job search it would be easy.
I thought to myself all I need to do is to go on these particular websites put my resume on their and other info and VOILA a job will mysteriously appear, paying the perfect amount and giving me purpose, because it will be the job I so desperately want. I was so wrong. Looking for a job in this economic climate is like looking for Prada pumps at payless. Horrible insane.
I have been searching for a job for so long that I am an expert at it. However, I can count on both hands how many interviews I've had, but I consistently look everyday.
I have been looking for a job for so long that I have forgotten what websites that I am on. I was on a site yesterday and I saw a promising job and I started to enter my info, thinking it was my first time and they told me it was a duplicate login and password on the site. I laughed outloud, because I did not remember that I had already registered for that site.
I am very discouraged about not being able to find a job, since I have a degree. You would think that I could find a job easily. Not true...not true at all. It's very hard. I am in Michigan where the unemployment rate is pretty high. I am competing against people with Master's degrees and all kinds of on job experience and its very disheartening. When bills pile up and these companies do not care if u can't pay. It can get downright depressing!
As a writer, it's even more depressing with newspapers closing down publishing companies downsizing. I don't know why I am having the worst time trying to freelance for actual cash. I have gotten plenty of jobs that are FREE, but I think my words and my work is worth pay...don't you think??!!
It's pretty dismal right now, but I'm sure things will turn around soon. It has to turn around. There is a job out there for me somewhere. That pays good and will allow me to do what I love to do...write.

Writing

Ok so I have neglected this site for a while, that's what happens when you decide you want your child to experience organized sports, and have him begin to play football. So that was my summer and ultimately garnered my hiatus from blogging on a regular bases(also being a HUGE procrastinator doesn't help either). So football season is finally over..GO BRONCOS and they had a great season.  A winning season. But on to the real drama of my life National Novel Writing Month.

I have known about this website http://www.nanowrimo.org since it first began in 2000. I have made a few attempts to even try to try and write 50k words in no less than 30 days. But alas to my disgrace I became one of their many writing victims andgracefully bowed out before even starting. So this year I planned ahead. I had a brilliant idea for a plot and a main character and I started outlining and writing out scenes. Since that is within the parameter of the rules for the nanowrimo. So I was ready and gunning to go. I told the people that I speak to on a regular basis and told the I would be MIA for the month of November. I informed my husband that the he would need to help wrangling the boys and the dreaded laundry(I HATE WASHING CLOTHES..ok I admitted it. I feel better now) So I was on my way.

So when Novemeber 1 at midnight came I was on the computer typing away. I was so excited and enthralled by the fact that I was going to complete this goal of writing this great story. I was in heaven. I am pretty much behind by like 12k words but hey I'm doing it and I can only be proud off myself that I stuck with this story and made it this far.

I have had some many manuscripts that I have started and havd left incomplete and I am overly excited that I am going to actually strive to do more than 50k. I want to do at least 150k and I am on the road to do that.

I guess my secret in keeping up with the word count is wiritng by hand and then typing, because I seem to add more when I am not just looking at a blank computer screen. It is actually fun, but I feel a little stressed about it all. I am way to hard on myself about where I am as a writer and I think this is helping a long with my many goals that I need to achieve to rech my own personal success. 

So good luck to all my fellow nanowrimoers out there in cyberspace....keep writing!! 

New Kids on the Block on the Today Show

I think I was a little more excited about seeing them perform this morning than I thought i would be. One of my girls in High School was IN LOVE with NKOTB! It was so hilarious. I think they just bring back good memories of days without children, no bills, no worries about bills, gas or credit...LOL! Go ahead reminisce with me. However...in no way do they replace my boys....

Just beautiful N.E. Heartbreak ya know!! Minus that crazy Bobby Borown, all the talent in the world just no sense.

I have been having success with the diet. It takes alot more time eating healthier, than I thought. I think its more time consuming for me, because I have to plan what I am going to cook for the week and look up healthy recipes. Grocery shop and do the prep work so that it wont be an all consuming process during the week. But the diet actually works. I have lost 18 pounds in 31 days. We start Phase 3 of the diet tomorrow. So I am very happy with my progress.

However, my writing and blogging has suffered so much. I have the great article ideas, but by the time I get the time to write. It's clock 30 and I am dog tired. I have lost my momentum that I had in the beginning of the year. Waking up at 4:30 AM and getting 2 full hours of writing down before its time to take care of the fam. Now I have to fit in writing and working out at the same time. Stressful indeed. And inspiration for me lately has been out the window. No imagination whatsoever. Like my brain is in a stalemate. I have to fight for great ideas, their not coming to me as freely as before.

So instead of fighting I have been reading alot lately and watching movies. I have  to a script idea someone inside of me, it just needs to come out...soon I hope!  I actually have had some good ideas, but they don't pane out the way that I want them to or I chuck them before I even get them

I have a good idea

 down in outline form. I need some original stuff. Some fire. Something that will get me excited to write it and finish it. So while I am in this state of turmoil with my writing. I read and journal...maybe I will get something out of my journaling after this period ends. Hopefully it ends soon. Let's keep our fingers crossed!

Jogger

So I am done with Day 2. It went pretty well. Although I am craving these Brach's cinnamon starlight mints. They are the best. I would eat a couple of them, so I wouldn't eat cookies, candy, or ice cream. I ate them while I was on Weight Watchers. I added the candy to my daily point value...how healthy is that...lol But I miss eating them, but I know this is for the best and that craving is fleeting so instead I grapped a piece of fruit, like frozen grapes and the cravings go away. Simple you think? It's all a mind game. I am psyching myself out. I am determined to lose the weight, so I am not tempted.

It is so funny, it seems like everybody around me has been eating all kinds of junk food, fried foods, chocolate, breads. Everything that I am not eating right now. At first I was a little upset. Thinking that that they were not being supportive, but you know whatever. It's  making me realize just how much temptaion I can handle.

I have also been feeling as if I am eating soooooooo much food. Eating 4-5 small meals a day is wild. The concept of eating more to lose weight is so foreign. I have definitely heard of it before, but actually utilizing it for myself was out of the question. My concept was always starve yourself and work out a little. Or work out and eat whatever you want. Neither of those worked, because by the time I was finishing starving myself for the day, that night I was in the fridge grapping anything and everything, because I was just that hungry. Horrible I know, but that's how it was. And working out everyday and eating what you wanted did not help me lose anything. Although I really didn't gain that much either. I really only maintained the weight that I wanted to lose. So that didn't work either.

So I defintely have to change my mindset. Especially since I am eating smaller portions, and eating until I am comfortably full and not stuffed. Which means that I don't eat everything on my plate. Yes...I said it leave food on my plate. Right, if you were raised like myself. You were taught to eat everything on your plate, because kids in Africa were starving. So that made me feel guilty. So now it's difficult, but I'm getting the hang of it. I hate wasting food, but I hate being fat even more...so being fat wins that fight.

So everything is going good. I am working out an hour or more EVERYDAY...yes riding my bike everyday. So we are on a roll. Let's see how Day 3 ends...

The Fat Smash Diet: The Last Diet You'll Ever Need

Ian K. Smith

I am on a quest to lose weight. Not just to lose weight, but to change my lifestyle. After having children, my body has changed drastically. As a former athlete and all around active person, I have gained a considerable amount of weight, in my opinion.

I want to lose weight for many reasons, but the main reason is for my overall health. Also to look like I used to look BC (before children)...lol..the main reason!! Having two boys I believe I need to be more active for them, and I am not as active as I want to be. Now I do walk…I am a walker. I walked throughout my whole second pregnancy that helped so much with the weight gain and with the delivery. So I am still trying to lose weight from the first pregnancy.

It has been 7 years that I have been this size. I am not as big as I was when I first had my oldest child, but nevertheless I am still big for my 5’7” frame.

So I have decided to start changing the way that I eat. My husband is a vegetarian, but he still doesn’t eat as healthy as he should. So we have started this lifestyle change together. I used to think why do I have to change the way I eat? I ate whatever I wanted in High School and College and didn’t gain weight. But with age and children the body definitely changes. I have to change with it.

My husband and I, both have family members with heart disease, diabetes, and other ailments attributed to eating habits and living a sedentary lifestyle. I’ve seen people as young as 31 years of age, having heart attacks and strokes, because of the way they eat.

I think it’s time for a change. We want to live a long time and to age gracefully, still remaining active in our later years.  We also have a responsibility to our children to take care of ourselves, which makes us much better parents and better equipped to take care of them. So we have started on our trek to a healthy, more physically active lifestyle. Where we eat to live and not live to eat.

I have been researching different types of diets and programs, which we could ultimately incorporate into our new and improved way of life. I found many that were popular of course, weight watchers (I did that right after having the baby….and lost some weight), South Beach Diet, and some other ones. I'm sure these diets helped a lot of people, but I didn’t want to do those diets.  I wanted something that was going to make me eat exactly the way that I need to eat.

I found this diet called the Fat Smash Diet by Dr. Ian Smith. I first heard about this diet on the Celeb reality show VH1’s Celebrity Fit Club. I didn’t think anything of it, when I saw the show. When I started researching diets, I went to his website. And I read all of the testimonials and everybody was getting results from this diet (I hate calling it a diet!) So I decided to buy the book. I'm not the one to buy diet books, I will borrow them from someone, but not buy them. So I knew it sparked my interest, if I had to buy it.

So I bought it and read in within an hour and I knew this was it. So my husband and I started day 1 of the Fat Smash diet yesterday. The first phase of the diet is a “detox” phase and you only eat certain foods. So it is working well, I am not as tempted to eat bread or sweets as I thought I would be. You can eat as many fruits and vegetables as you want. So whenever I feel like I need to eat something sweet I grab some fruit.

Plus I just bought (or my husband just bought me a stationary bike) a month ago. I have been riding it everyday for an hour or more before I even started this new way of eating. So I am ready for the change. I just want to see the difference. I already have people telling me I lost weight since I got the bike, but I want to see it for myself.

So we took pics of ourselves so we can see the changes in our bodies for each phase of the diet. So we will see. I think that we are off to a good start. I am going to use this blog as a way of venting when I need to and to track my progress during this change in my life.

*Day 1 complete

On Writing

Stephen King

People create stories create people; or rather stories create people create stories.

Chinua Achebe

 I've been trying to write something in my blogs for weeks now. But because I have a bad habit of procrastinating on blogging and other writing projects, I just haven't found the time to blog as frequently as I would like.

I have come to the realization that I am a really big procrastinator, when it comes to writing.  I don't know if it is just me,but procrastinating goes hand in hand with my writing process. I get the best idea and then I write it down. Write notes on it, character sketches. You know great, brilliant, Pulitzer Prize idea's. By this time I am so excited about the idea that I have to sit it down and let it rest. Well that's what I tell myself. I need to let the idea rest.

But I really think that my procrastinating nature as a lot to do with this behavior of letting an idea rest. Of course, once I finish writing an article or a story I will let it sit for a day or two and then go back with fresh eyes to proof it, but letting an idea rest when it's in the beggining stages is just procrastination at it's best. But everybody has their process. I had this same process in college. I would read the book for my English class in two days then start thinking about an idea for the next couple of days and then I would start writing or brainstorming on my thesis statement and it would be sooooooo brilliant. I mean the best idea ever, and then I would stop and the next thing I know I am in class and the prof is telling me that the paper is due in two days. WHAT!! And then I get down on myself because I would only have two days to write a 10 page paper complete with quotes and notes. Ridicoulous huh? Yes but that is my process.

There is a site that helps writer's who procrastinate..funny but I never would have guessed that there are more writer's out there, that have the same problem. We writer's are alike in alot of ways. We aspire to be successful in our craft and we scare ourselves into thinking our ideas are crap(maybe that one was just me..) and we procrastinate. Let's all unite in soldarity and start to work on this problem of procrastination.....uhhh...uhmmm...yeah well let's do that tommorrow..uniting and all that. I have to go and write down that brilliant idea that I just got...LOL!!

 Until next time...Keep writing..and procrastinating!! 

The Renegade Writer: A Totally Unconventional Guide to Freelance Writing Success (The Renegade Write

Linda Formichelli

"I write for the same reason I breathe - 
   because if I didn't, I would die."

 ~ Isaac Asimov

This is a quote that I like. Simple because it conveys exactly how I feel about writing. I love to write. I mean write whatever I feel like writing. A poem, a short story, a personal essay, even writing in my journal. I have always wanted to become a writer. I think that when I went to college, I thought that becoming an English major, would actually teach me everything there is to know about writing. Alas, I was sadly mistaken. However, I learned just what I needed to know. The basic mechanics of writing is essential.

 Whenever I would tell someone that I  my major was English. I would get this look from them and then the most obvious profession from them. "What you want to be a teacher or something?" I would politely shake my hand and tilt it to the side and say, "No, I want to either be a lawyer or writer." I would always get the responds, "Ohhhhhhhhh, well you should be a lawyer, you will make whole bunch of money."

Well I'm sure you can guess by now. I am not an attorney nor am I a teacher. I tried the dealing with the kids and the administration thing for a couple of years and that was not fun for me. So here I am a writer.  A person that churns out words, so that the whole world can see and wonder, where did she get that idea from. How does she write so eloquently. Or I guess that's what I imagine people say about my writings. I think I want what most people want. I want to fulfill my purpose. I want to write. I want to write words that jump up and bite you on the butt. I want to write words that make you think about a different point of view. I want my words to live and breathe.

I want my words to be like Micheal Jordan, original. I want my words to be like Lena Horne, legendary. I want my words to be like Opray Winfrey, "rich" with meaning. I want my words to be like Sydney Poitier, extraordinary. I want my words to be just like my sons, imaginative. I just want my words to be...this is why I write, to express myself with 26 letters that can be moved and interchanged in any way that I want. Its my life and this is what I do...I write.

Why do you write?

What do you want to leave in writing for the next generation?

...Keep writing! 

Writer's desk

"Joy is but the sign that creative emotion is fulfilling its purpose

 - Charles Du Bos, "What Is Literature?"

Who actual decides to take on this monstrosity called "writing " anyway.( I sheepishly raise my hand) I thought to myself as an English major in college that to write was going to be a piece of cake. That my professor would love my use of language. The metaphors, the soliloquies that I so eloquently lay effortlessly on paper. How about I learned the hard way that a red pen, although I LOVE pens was not my friend. I think I cried once I walked out of the class and into the nearest bathroom, after I glanced at the words that were blood red all over my English mid term paper. I was devastated. That professor was not kind at all. I remember her name like it was yesterday, although we will call her Professor Mistaken, because thats what I thought of her. This had to be a mistake.

She was so mistaken( can u say that??!!) to say that my paper based on books that we read, didn't have a strong enough theis statement to support my arguments. How could she tell me that my whole paper was a load of crap, in so many words. I disliked this teacher very much.  However, I learned a very hard lesson from her class. Crtitques of your writing is a way of life. So as a writer I have had to develop a iron resolve to not take literary critique of my work as a bad thing, but as a good thing.

So I have written down my writing goals for 2008. Resonable and feasable goals, goals that I will help me to overcome the fear of putting pen to paper and hoping not to relive the horrible experience of Professor Mistaken. I know that the plans that I make this me(although I have never written down goals for writing before....so this is a first)  very productive and profitable this year. I know that I will be stretched out of my comfort zone, but I am willing to make this happen. Success is calling. So I will be putting stories that I am working on, of course, poetry and other written works on here. I hope this forum will be kind and supporting of my work.(hopefully there is an audience reading this..another one of those fears..no one wants to read what I have to say) So here we go...jumping in with both feet....

...Writing is fundamental.(at least thats what I think!!)