The Mystery of the Missing Czech

For the last month, I've been dealing with this insane issue of a certified cheque that bounced... A certified cheque is guaranteed funds and so it's impossible for it to bounce. I called the banks over and over, who kept blaming each other, no one knew what happened, why it "bounced" or where it was. After a month of calling almost every day and even threatening to go to the police, my bank finally decided to refund me the amount, even if there is no proof that the problem was on their end, as we both believe it is the other bank who caused the problem.
Anyway, it's been a stressful adventure, and I've written a open for the occasion.

The Mystery of the Missing Czech

There once was a Czech,

A brave young man.

He soon became a soldier.

He wanted to serve his country,

He wanted to defend his land.

He grew impatient.

Tired of washing dishes,

Czech wanted to be a leader.

One day, he received an audience.

With the General, he spoke.

"I would like to be a leader,

I want to be a sergeant, sir."

He said, and the General laughed.

"A cocky young lad, you are!

First, a corporal you must be."

Czech, more impatient than ever,

Worked harder than the toughest,

Bravest and biggest sergeant.

He moved up quick,

Becoming the leader he knew he could be.

He was not satisfied.

Again, Czech spoke with the General.

"I need my certification,"

He proclaimed. The General nodded.

"So be it. Come see me at dawn."

Czech passed with flying colours.

He was now certified for war.

He packe his bags,

All his earthly possessions.

He left his country to defend it.

But Czech never returned.

No one knew what happened.

He made it to the battle front,

He came came to the base camp.

After that, he disappeared.

Stricken with grief,

The General searched far and wide,

On the battlefield, in the camp,

He searched the towns,

But Czech could not be found.

The enemy had not seen him,

The basecamp did not remember

No one seemed to know.

Czech disappeared into thin air,

Like a bird, he flew away.

That was the only explanation.

The General never saw him again,

His proud protégé, like a son he was.

"Come back to me," he cried.

But never again, was Czech seen.

The General, on the other hand,

Never ceased to search

For his missing Czech.

Fishing Poem

I wrote another poem for my creative writing class and I thought I would share it with you. The writing prompt was a photograph of a man, alone on a big rock that overlooked a large body of water that I thought looked like the ocean.

This is obviously not the picture that inspired the poem, but close enough, right?

A swing of the arm,

The flick of a wrist.

The hushed “whoosh” of the rod,

As it cuts through the air.

I'm getting better at this.

Slowly but surely, I'm learning.

I haven't caught anything yet,

So I wait patiently as he always did.

The waves are crashing against the shore,

Along the rocky pedestal on which I stand.

My feet are wet, my hands tired.

I'm getting weary of waiting.

The moment I give up,

The second I start reeling in,

Something tugs violently at the end

Of my line, something hidden.

Whip the rod upwards,

Just like he taught me;

Secure the hook, he'd say.

And I start a battle of tug-o-war.

This is when it gets exciting,

Playing tug-o-war with an invisible force,

Not knowing what's on the other end.

It's what he loved about it.

Finally, I see something.

A flash of a golden fin.

A smile tugs at my lips;

I did it.

Why he always loved to fish

Remains a mystery to me.

My dad never taught me,

I never taught my son.

He loved it so much.

And so here I am,

Catching my first fish at 62,

Just the way he taught me.

Ode to a Sugar Cube

I am taking a creative writing class this year and the other day my prof gave us random objects with the instruction to write an ode to this object, the way Pablo Neruda does with tomatoes, clothes and ironing.
I was given a sugar cube, and in about 10 minutes, I wrote this little ode:

Ode to a Sugar Cube

They say that great things come in small packages,
You make my days brighter, 
My fondest memories of you come from my childhood;
You spice up my life in every way imaginable,

And my dear Sugar Cube, this is true for you.
You have been my companion for many years,
Always loyal and never changing.
As you add a bit of "oomph" to my otherwise mundane life.
Every morning, you greet me with a coffee,
Starting my day with joy at the sight of you and your sweet smile.
You, my best friend, my fellow adventurer,
You would bathe in juice, and I watched as you turned red or orange or purple,
And I giggled as you melted into my hands.
And Sugar Cube, my dear,
I would be nowhere without you.

YA Workshop

Source

Emilie shuddered from the cold as she made her way to school. Going to school on a Saturday was strange, like a bad dream. She didn't care that it was Saturday. She had been looking forward to this day for three months, ever since she'd heard of the workshop being offered. It was a writing workshop in the Young Adult genre - her favourite books were all YA, and it was also in this same genre that she wrote her first book, and the one she was working on.
She walked into the class, early, as she always was and watched the other students taking their places, wondering who they were, what they had written, and how much better their writing was compared to hers.
Then, the class finally started. The teacher, Anita Daher, was a successful writer, whose books had been published internationally. She started by talking about the genre, its definition and history, then they moved on to plot: the difference between a plot-driven story and a character-driven story. They asked a lot of questions, and got very good answers in return.
They talked about characters, settings and clichés, and the day went by incredibly fast! Emilie felt utterly inspired by being surrounded with people who loved writing, and speaking to someone who succeeded and could give her great advice, and help her succeed as well.
She went home smiling and full of energy. She couldn't wait to write endlessly and edit and finish her stories!

In two weeks, the workshop continues, and Emilie couldn't be more excited: they will be discussing how to edit and send out manuscripts to publishers!

30 Days of Writing

On November 1st, I started a very special challenge. NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. The challenge is to write 50,000 words in 30 days. Originally, I thought I would never be able to do that! With school, work and my home life, November was hectic to say the least. Instead of doing a full marathon, I opted for a half, which I completed with great success!
I did it!!

In 30 days, I wrote 26,201 words, which equals to 42 pages, single-spaced on Word!
I've been working on a book since August and I managed to add 26,201 words to the project, bringing me to a total of 44,449 words!

I managed to write every day, whether it was 3,000 words or 100, and I plan on continuing throughout December to finish it! It was incredibly amazing to write and get sucked into this project. You open the word file and next thing you know, it's 3 hours later and you didn't notice time going by! It was so great to be creative like that! I would definitely recommend NaNoWriMo to everyone next year!

NaNo-nighter!

Last night at midnight was the start of NaNoWriMo. I decided to try and write as much as I could during the night to kickstart this month of insanity! I wrote until 3:45 am. I didn't write as much as I thought I would have because I was just so tired, but I was also keeping myself distracted by talking to various friends on Facebook, and dancing around to my music. By the end of the night, I managed to write 2,513 words! That is just over 3 days' worth of writing!

Me, 2 minutes to midnight!

It may not seem like much, but I'm really excited about this! I just finished a chapter I'd been dreading to write. It took me forever to write this thing and now it's out of my way! I made myself a calendar with a daily word count goal, which I can't wait to cross out, day by day!

Good luck to all the other Wrimos out there! Happy writing!

NaNoWriMo

Nano-whaaaat?  What kind of gibberish is that? Well, it's the National Novel Writing Month. Since when? Well, officially, November is just another month. What makes it different is this organization (NaNoWriMo), who gives you a challenge: write a novel in 30 days. Sounds crazy right?

The idea is that a lot of people have "write a novel" on their bucket list, but never actually do it. What NaNo does it give you that extra push to actually do it! The goal is to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. There isn't really a prize, since there are thousands of winners every year, but you get this amazing feeling of accomplishment, and that is the point of NaNo.

Source

I participated two years ago and won, though I wasn't quite following the rules, and haven't had any time since. This year, I'm going to try and do a half-NaNo: 25,000 words in 30 days. What with university, work, and relationships, I'm really super busy, and a half-NaNo will keep me from having ANY spare time. I can't even imagine doing a full 50,000 words this year!

Normally, the rules (guidelines) for NaNo are to write fiction, and something completely new, that you haven't written or started writing yet (outlines and prep is allowed). The thing is, I'm already in the middle of a project and I don't wanna to discard it, so I will be using NaNo as a booster for this story.

Tonight, I will try to pull an all-nighter (I'll start writing at midnight) and pound out a couple thousand words to get a head start (I need to write 833 words a day to reach my goal in 30 days). You'll get a full report of my crazy night tomorrow!
(Don't worry! I'll still blog every day! I'm sure my posts will be much shorter and maybe a little crazy sometimes, but I'll be here!)

PS: Did you know Water for Elephants was written for NaNoWriMo? :)

Voices in my Head

You know when an author says their characters are living in their head, talking to them? They're not crazy. It really is what happens to us when we write. ...Most of us anyway. Some writers really are crazy.
When you're writing a story, especially a lengthy one, you spend so much time ruminating and thinking about the characters that eventually, their a constant in the back of your mind. When you do mindless tasks, you can almost hear them talk. When you dream, sometimes you dream of them, of a scene you're about to write. Maybe at times, you almost catch yourself saying something one of your characters would say.

This is just like any good movie or book, when the story and characters stay with you and days later, you are still thinking about it, maybe even quoting dialogue (Star Wars geeks, you know what I mean with this).

Today at work, I found myself imagining my characters Kylie and Bret talking to each other and bickering. I was coming up with dialogue I couldn't wait to write down. Even when I was busy doing stuff I should be paying attention to (making food.....), I could still hear them in the back of my mind.

So yes, we may be a tad schizophrenic, what with hearing the voices of fictional characters in our heads and all, but how else are we supposed to write and develop great characters? It's not exactly safe to type on a computer when you're driving, or practical in a shower.... It's all in your head!

Ideas: Flowers of the Mind

An idea, when it pops in your head is very fragile. Much like the seeds of a flower. The seeds need nurturing and soil to grow into beautiful flowers, and so do ideas. At first, you need to plant your idea, and give it water and sunlight. You have to give it time to grow into a small sprout, then slowly it will become a flower. It takes time though.
When you have an idea, you need to ruminate over it. Don't go straight to your computer and write, just like you can't photograph a planted seed. There's no point. First, you have to think about it. Then, you start to build a library of images, sounds, words, smells and feelings around the idea. This feeds the idea, like water feeds your soon-to-be flower.
You find images and sounds or music that make you think of your idea, a possible story. You find quotes or poems that relate to your idea, and maybe even smells and textiles that suck you in to this growing idea. You may start to see the sprout, and feel the itch to write the whole story, watch it bloom, but not yet. Be patient.
Now that your sprout is getting stronger, you can start to put together small fragments. One sentence here and there, maybe a few words exchange by your characters. No more than a sentence. Anything that comes to mind, write it. Don't be afraid of the crazy ideas, the nonsensical things that your brain will make up; be open to all possibilities. Maybe your blue flower will turn out to be white, or green.
Then, you start to build the puzzle. Put those phrases in the order you like, that makes sense to you. At this point, your flower's bud is becoming visible, but still delicate. You must tread carefully. You can't let yourself go too fast, or you'll lose your flower. Once you have some sort of order to your story, you create an outline, whether detailed or not. By then, you are just dying to see this flower bloom. You feel like if you don't write it all down, you will explode.
Go ahead. Write. Let it bleed out from your fingertips, flood through the white pages until you have no more words to write. Until your flower is beautiful and strong. It may not be perfect, the way you imagined it, it never is, but at least now you have it, it's there. What you do with it after is another story.

Writing & Determination

A couple of years ago, I started writing a book. I wrote the story of a broken hearted girl whose friends try to set her up with this super hot guy, who doesn't end up being who she thinks he is. I know it sounds like the typical teenage paranormal romance, but I love that stuff. I just started writing and writing and writing, and before I knew it, I had written a novel. Well, sort of. It wasn't anywhere close to being "ready" or anything, but it was still an accomplishment. The whole thing is 72 pages (on Microsoft Word), 50,405 words and 19 chapters.

I've had a writer's block for almost 3 years now. I just got sick of writing that story, so I left it alone. For a long time, I've been meaning to go over it, to adjust and rewrite, but I never got around to it. I wanted to restart from scratch, to rewrite the entire thing.

Last night, I was so wired after seeing City of Bones, that I started thinking about writing. And I kept thinking. Until 3 am. By then, I had a new plot, semi-new characters (I only rewrote some of them) and a brand new determination to write this story. This time, I'm not giving up.