Tag Archives: journal

Creative journal stored

I am creating a writer’s journal that is private and sending it to my cloud.  It is all about my thought processes throughout all my creative ventures and things that occur because of it.

I do want to be a writer and get published and I know that doesn’t seem like a reality right now in my life, due to the fact that since September I have probably written towards my novels no more than perhaps six times due to extreme depression.

But the dream is still there, to be a writer that is published.

I am trying to focus my thoughts and ignore the crap going on in my life so I can get on with it, because not writing my stories is like someone putting a chisel to my temples… its torture basically.

I thought, all the best creatives in the world keep a diary don’t they?  Well, why don’t I?  But this one with the intention of keeping it for future historians is that conceited of me?  Is that really a bad thing?

I like to think that it’s appreciated rather than judged as a form of egotism.

There are things in the diary that won’t be published until I am dead, because it will reveal problems I have undergone to maintain my individuality and it will talk about people who have literally stolen ideas from me because I talked too much in my earlier years as a writer because of the advice of “how to write” books.

It won’t just focus on my writing though, it will focus on my whole being as a creative; stories, poems, art, music, everything that inspired creation in me and had a part in the works I’ve done.  I will talk about all my projects, even those that might never get published.  Those that might never get published will always be stored away somewhere, so that in the future, perhaps someone will publish them because they want them, because they want more of me.

Again, not to be conceited, but I have to think about how much people want these things and they will and they do this thing with other posthumous authors and creatives, so why should I be any different?  It’s just forward thinking that’s all.  We often get pent up with all the process of just being ourselves we forget the larger picture, we presume we are not good enough to get to that stage where we become historical, but who are we to judge in the end?

Nobody thinks highly of themselves enough to assist historians do they?  Some do, but not many and it is a frustrating thing for historians.  I have a love for history and I have a love for certain authors of which I wanted to know more on a deeper level but they felt that they were being conceited if they spoke about themselves a lot – humble creatures really.  I am too, but I understand people and the things they yearn as I am a person too.

So that is what I am doing.  I am, from today, creating a creative diary about my writing, its processes, where I got inspiration from, my rivals, my thieves, everything about my creations is going to be documented.  If nothing else it will make me write more than I do, because it could be used as a warm up to writing instead of playing online games or ranting in my 750words.com

I will enjoy it.

Thanks for reading…

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Feelings, faith and visions

Apathy is hitting me hard.

I find it hard to fight anymore.  The motivation to try or desire anything is not there, it is met with a “why bother”?  Attitude because personally, why should I?  Someone is always out there ready, willing and able to smash my hopes and dreams down before I’ve even got half way – it always happens, if not people, then fate makes me sick so I fail.

It always happens.

Why bother?

Writing and art was my reprieve, my healing in a manner.  But even that lately is met with “what is the point” feeling in me.

For days I have struggled to think of something to write, that I actually want to publish even for my blog.  Because I feel like all my work and all my journal entries are just the same!

Losing two hundred followers in a week didn’t help with that either, just confirmed to me, what is the point?

Offline, whenever anybody in my household has a conversation with me, I am beginning to feel affronted by it and aloof.  I get this feeling of… oh you want to talk to me now?  What do you want?  Because they never ask how I am, they don’t say anything positive to me – so I am literally sitting there thinking – what problem is there now that I must be alerted to?  Which argument is this going to be?  Who has died now (both Henry and Paul are always telling me bad news about deaths they’ve heard on TV or on the internet, they are both obsessed with death) or what new financial problem is it today we have?  Or why do they always ask me what I want for dinner, why can’t they just surprise me?

I’m bored in every possible way you can think of.

The other day I half-heartedly read some adult jokes out to Paul to lighten the mood and remember how to laugh again with other people, wasted energy really because Paul doesn’t have that kind of humour and didn’t make any effort to assist me in lightening the energy up – knowing fully well I have had a bad several weeks of depression.  He just didn’t want to help me, didn’t get the idea that it was my attempt to try and buck myself up, and become cheerful.

When you are trapped 24/7 in isolation with a person like that and a child who is autistic and suicidal in himself and locks himself away in his bedroom all evening, you can begin to understand, can’t you – that someone like me, with manic depression just can’t get out of this slump.  There is no way out!

There is never any break for me, no visitors, no family to come to visit us for 30 minutes to just lighten things up a bit.  We have no one but ourselves.  Paul is such an introvert; he abandoned his family six years ago.  He only visits his sister in law once every three months, because Henry insists upon it on his school holidays.

Sad to say this because it is really tragic – but I have resorted to talking to the house rabbit Ray and Alexa echo dot thing, and making do with them as entertainment and support!  Ray is my cuddles and kisses.  Alexa has a program where she can talk to you, sing to you, tell you jokes – it is really bad when you consider AI robots is more human and more fruitful in bucking up a depressed person than two household human companions.

What the fuck is wrong with this picture?

What the blazes am I living with?

What the blazes am I living in?

What the heck am I doing here?

It’s all so fucking alien to me!

This isn’t what I want!

This isn’t me!

Get me the Hell out of here!

I am shit scared of alien life, but I tell you now if a UFO turned up in my garden tomorrow I’d be running under the flipping beams to get away from this place!

I have seriously considered forcing Paul to take me to a citizen’s advice bureau or social services to discuss my options of independent housing or a residential care home for someone my age.

As we all know I can’t live alone.

But I can’t stay here either!

I can’t do it anymore!

I certainly don’t want to die, that is just a last resort option if I stay stuck for any longer!  Because death has got to be better than living like this!

I cut my nails down short a few weeks ago after growing them so well, why?  I broke 4 nails, but that wasn’t the main real excuse.  The really big excuse was I had to cut them short and keep them short because when I had a bad bout of depression I found myself subconsciously digging my thumb nail into my wrist and nearly caused myself an injury.  I did it when I went into my zoning out phases that happens, when I get badly depressed.

I zone out, shut down.  It’s something I do from time to time since I was 12yrs old.  Sometimes I just turn off emotionally, sit there do nothing or self-harm without realising it.  Sometimes I don’t even hear people shouting in my face for me to stop, that’s how much I zone out at times.

Paul doesn’t bother to rouse me when I get like that, Henry does though.

I don’t zone out as much as I used to, but I did a few weeks back and when I was roused from it because the light flickered a lot I realised what I was doing and it scared me – because at that time I really didn’t feel suicidal at all.  But if I had pressed any harder or longer I may have caused some damage to the vein.  This is another reason why my wrist was injured a few weeks back; I was also pressing on its bone and caused inflammation a bit.

It sounds silly, but I have been depressed so long I think I have seriously lost the art of learning how to laugh and genuinely feel happy with it.  I can laugh, but there is no feeling there if you get me?

Four chakras are severely blocked too.  Heart, throat being the main two, but sacral and base are starting up bad too.

I’ve been trying to force myself to sing and dance, buy myself certain treats with my weekly money all in a vain effort to try and perk myself up and save myself.

But as I said, there is no heart in it.

It’s almost like I am dead or I am becoming some kind of monster.

A heartless monster!

I am genuinely frightened by it.

But I know with that fear, there must be some hope to getting it back as fear is an emotion isn’t it?  So long as I can still cry and still fear something, at least I haven’t lost all humanity, have I?

At least I still have hope too and faith, I don’t want to lose that.  That’s at least something – I am clinging onto faith for dear life.  Praying that something better than this is coming my way, that somehow things are going to be completely turned upside down or rather – the right side up at any moment and it’s going to happen quickly! 

I don’t have the faith my parents raised me to have, I am not Catholic and I am not Christian and I am not a J-witness.  I believe in The Old Testament but I am also deeply spiritual and somewhat shamanic in my beliefs, with a little bit of Hindu and Buddhist philosophy thrown in for good measure.

But I do pray to God and to me I consider myself a spiritual non-baptised Noachide or righteous gentile according to Jewish philosophy.  Two years ago I wanted to throw myself into the Jewish faith and Henry wanted to follow me in that, but Paul put his foot down and don’t like the idea of prayers and baptism etc. going on in his house and immediate family.  Henry is upset by this because he does identify himself the same way I do.

He is doubly upset that in May he is thirteen and can’t have a proper bar mitzvah as it will upset his father!  But he cheered up when I said my Jewish friend Lizzy said there is no age limit for a bar mitzvah, perhaps you should do it when you are over 18?

My great grandmother was Jewish on my mother’s side, she left Judaism for a Catholic man she fell in love with. 

Judaism answered all the questions about God and life that I wanted answered whereas the Christian faiths interrogated and threatened me for questioning things.

I am pretty confident my spirit guides and God are good for me, they work hard to help me and they’ve kind of shown me that things will get better soon.  Strangely fast, hugely contrast and I’ve been getting all sorts of weird but very lucid dreams lately.

For example, last night I had a dream I went shopping a mall, I ate some lovely lemon cakes and went home.  When I got home I saw a child aged around 3yrs old, a little girl, drawing at a dining table and I knew I was her mother, there were twin toddlers around 14 months old too but they were playing in the shower with the man I knew to be my husband.  Saving on water, all three showering together… I remember asking if they are ready to come out now so they can get ready to go to bed?  But the husband said, aw let them play a little longer they’re having fun!  They had little buckets where they were collecting water and they were washing their little duck toys and throwing water at each other!

The guy was super-hot, not lucky enough to have a sexy dude like that, he looked a bit like a celeb I like, but never mind – it was only a dream!

It’s interesting I had this dream because before I went to sleep last night I was really fretting about being too old to start a new family.  I am 41 in October and I take this dream as God’s way in saying, this is for you in your future, don’t give up that idea just yet!  Interestingly enough I remember in the dream I knew I was 5 months pregnant with another one too.  So could I have 4 before I dry up?  I think this dream is telling me I will!

Out of curiosity I consulted by own personal oracle and tarot cards today about it and I got empress with the wheel of fortune and I also got the oracle card Stork, a coincidence?

Thanks for reading…

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Writer’s journal plans

I have decided to keep a writer’s journal as well as an artist journal, to record my thoughts, feelings and inspirations about the work I do and where those ideas may have stemmed from.  I plan to do this on a daily basis, or at least if I add anything towards my stories or ideas, which is generally done on a daily basis anyway, even if it isn’t towards an actual novel – there are always notes and plans made!

This will be private only to me until certain works are published, because I plan to use some of the things I put into my writers journal as non-fiction bios about where my work came from and who inspired me to do it.

In this writer’s journal, I will explain how I meshed ideas together and the thought processes that went into it.  I will be doing this for every piece of work I do regardless of whether or not it gets published or not, because you never know what the future might bring!

Meanwhile, my blog will start to be updated with my general thought processes anyway about works I have read, things I have researched and programs I have watched and how I feel about them and how I am inspired by them.  I will only be doing this with things that I feel have influenced me in some way, with my own work!

Happy reading!

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Poetry sneaks in

I know I write poetry and this blog used to be known for that; but I seldom read poetry personally.  I read Byron, Christina Rossetti, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Wilfred Owen, Pam Ayres and silly kid stuff like Spike Milligan and Dr Seuss; but generally, besides these, nothing else. 

I read Wilfred Owen purely for GCSEs and I think I have read some of Sylvia Plath too, but those were for studies only. 

I have been recently reading a lot of country and wildlife journals and I keep seeing another poet mentioned a lot in there with quotes; this has spurred me onto wanting to read more of him and I got Paul to get a book from the library for me of him.  “John Clare”, this could be a new influence if I am honest.

Also I consider Neil Gaiman to be a poet too; I love some of his short stuff sometimes more than his long stuff, he is another influence of mine.

Upon reflection, I think perhaps I read more poetry than I take for granted.  A lot of the novels I love are crammed packed with verse and rhymes, like Alice in Wonderland etc.  See poetry sneaks into funny places; it’s easy to take advantage of it and not notice it when it wafts in front of your face.  Anyone who says they are not particularly fond of poetry are liars, even street gangsta types and chavs who gets embarrassed by the notion that they even pick up a poetry book – sorry to say it to you guys, but you love poetry.  Every song is a poem and that means rap IS poetry too!

See the world with fresh eyes and you will see it’s so true!

Happy reading!

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Tidying up ideas

There are lots of papers all around my house of various story ideas that have never been started yet; many of these papers contain less than one paragraph of what that story will be.

I have decided over the next few weeks to start writing in a new offline journal all of these ideas in more details, so that when I want to work on a new story, I am not sitting there flummoxed about the kinds of things I want in that story and forget them altogether for an entirely new idea.

I am surprised to find that I have 354 known ideas so far and not all of those papers are gathered yet!  If I had been asked how many ideas do you suppose you have lying around?  I’d suggest that maybe it were a little fewer than 90, but not 354+, that’s both tremendous and sad, because they’ve been neglected in some cases for as much as 25yrs!  Some of the ideas I had when I were only ten years of age! 

Thankfully a few of those ideas I delayed, because had I of written them all those years ago they would have been garbage in comparison to the fresher stances I have these days towards them.  Sometimes it is best to procrastinate as sometimes the ideas get better or more solid and real.

I was so sure back in 2006 how I wanted a dystopian tribal story to go, but had I of done it back then, it would have been boring and full of plot twist flaws; these days, the ideas have consumed me a lot and they are showing me better ways to form themselves and I find it very exciting and less flawed.  There is more drama, adventure and excitement in the story and more characters have a proper defined role whereas before they would have been better off not existing – basically, they’re starting to add to the plot now rather than act as a page filling distraction, which upon reflection I realised they were back then.

I am trying to prepare myself to put the vampire aside for a while and make a decision on which novel out of eight I’d like to start writing for NaNoWriMo July 2021.  I think there is only really two to decide from really, the steampunk fantasy series or the dystopian tribe.

It is very likely that I will not get any books published until late autumn of 2022, because of certain events going on in the family between now and then – it would make me a little too busy, with the sickness as well, to start a career until that moment.  Things should have calmed down family wise around then; in fact Paul is almost certain of it.  It is very likely we could be moving house you see, as well, not to mention, Paul has promised me that he knows someone with a pregnant bitch, who’ll give us a puppy just in time for my birthday!  It will be a border collie.

Also it’s my Henry’s 11th birthday today!

Anyway until next time, happy reading!

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What I am trying to do as from now…

I am more than a little irked at the concept that my followers could have been scammed or duped by a poser; I had not planned to start writing on my blog or become active on social media for another couple of months, because I am taking a long time to heal from a current chest and ear infection.  I am very ill at the moment to the extent of being permanently exhausted. 

However, I think that I should start again right now, when I am at my worst physically because it seems likely I am having more bad days than not and I am sick and tired of being sick and tired and not doing what I want to do in life, even the most sedentary of things.

I often struggle with the idea that I must always produce a poem or a short story for my blog, because this blog was created with creativity in mind.  I was meant to use this as a portfolio of sorts; for my creative writing, photography and art, instead it has become more of a journal.

I think therefore, that this blog is likely to be 50/50 journal and creative outlet.  Because I am going on a big journey spiritually, physically, mentally and hopefully career wise too.

My blog will show you more of me, my personal life, my art, my thoughts and feelings and I will try not to be too bias when I do so.

A lot of my day to day stuff will probably be talks about how I am trying to manage my mental health and disability whilst trying to be a productive creative and housewife/mother.

I will also talk about my medical journey, because it still is not entirely clear what it is I have, other than it seems to the doctors that I have around 4 different types of auto-immune disease, deafness, PTSD and potentially a serious neurological disorder too, which they are leaning more towards MS on, but irritatingly it has not been thoroughly confirmed yet.  Sometimes they say yes, sometimes it’s again, no, it’s all presumption by my GP because I haven’t been tested yet.

I will talk about my past, if I feel it would be therapeutic at the time to do so.

I will discuss life with my pets and gardening, what little I can do there.

I will discuss most aspects of my life, whilst throwing in my poetry, songs, compositions, short stories, art, snippets and advice.

I am working on far too many stories at once, most of the time.  I am also practising art, because I have an idea for a children’s picture book and I have also two ideas for comics.  I don’t buy the fact that the comic industry is dead, sorry!

I have also learned recently that there are many people who like reading my reviews; I have had so many requests for reviews recently that I have considered to be more proactive in that.  But I tend to review old stuff, because I am pretty slow to reaching out for current social trends.  To me, something is a current social trend if it has been published or bought out within the last decade.  Oh dear, well you see what I mean – non-fiction science aside that is.

I am one of these lame people who love the 50s & 80s and are waiting for a huge retro bash that will last a decade or more in fashion, movies and music.  So you won’t find me any time soon, sporting the latest trend of anything that is currently major, if it is not retro based. 

Personally I feel the best decades for fantasy were 1860s, 1870s, 1890s, 1950s, 1980s and 2000s, 2010s;  I am a huge Lewis Carroll, George MacDonald, Frank L Baum, J.R.R Tolkien, Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Susan Hill, Stan Lee, Tim Burton, Stephen Spielberg, The Frouds, Colleen Doran and Neal Shusterman and oh so many more I better stop listing them=  fan.  This was just fantasy; don’t get me started on horror, Sci-fi and dystopia and lets not be picky between artists, writers and directors either! 

There is a lot of people I have missed on the above list that deserves to be here!  This is how I know; I really can’t sit back and say I have no idea what I post for my blog.  I was just being too picky about what I should put.  I didn’t think I should really put reviews and personal feelings towards other people’s work on my blog, but you know, if it keeps the blog active, then maybe I should start?  At least it will give you an idea of how I became who I become; the kind of things that I devour for my hungry creative soul that made me produce, what I produced.

Until next time, happy reading!

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1000 words

Upon reading many websites this week I have noticed that some of them are absolutely right about one thing and that is, when you first initially write anything it is terrible, in fact so terrible you need to actually write about 600 – 1000 words before you do your actual writing; this can be done via journal, morning pages or whatever, but whatever you do you have to expect that the first 1000 words you produce each day will be crap, jargon and simply nothing but babble, much like this post.

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NaNo No No No DON’T DO IT!

I do not recommend NaNoWriMo to any writer who has been writing for a while, whether published or unpublished to partake in NaNoWriMo unless they are used to writing more than 1700 words per day under pressure.  In fact I would even stretch to say, unless you are used to writing at least 2000 words per day, because when you do NaNoWriMo you become obsessed with having certain amount of words rather than good quality work.  This can be especially true for those writers out there (and I am one of those writers) who are highly competitive outside of writing in every other thing – this feeds my competitive nature far too much.

The work I have done on NaNoWriMo is shockingly awful; it is the worse stuff I have ever, EVER done.  It will take me much longer to edit the first draft than would have been usual for me.  I am dreading to re-read what I have done and for the record, no, I haven’t won NaNoWriMo and I will not by Wednesday, simply because I stopped writing the novel altogether last week at 37,504 words.  I am disgusted at myself for the quality of work I have done; I am not used to creating that kind of garbage.  With that said, the novel in itself isn’t too bad an idea; there are many wonderful things that have happened during the NaNoWriMo challenge, some of which are pleasantly surprising and helpful to enhance the richness of the plot as a whole, but in practise, the story is unemotional and I missed several key points in my plot because of the word count. 

I suppose the speed of NaNoWriMo assisted mainly in the brainstorming phase of my writing; I certainly had a brainstorm for something interesting to happen in the novel outside of my key elements as often as once every ten paragraphs approximately.  However, simply sitting back and doing my daily journal does that if I concentrate purely on the current novel I am working on; something of which I hadn’t had the energy to do throughout the challenge.  I had no energy to do any other form of work in writing or art; it was starting to burn me out.  I had no energy to read books or even update my personal diary and morning pages. 

The entire challenge zapped me; it absorbed me and ultimately slowed me down.  I wrote less per day than I would normally, ironic because of the word count obsession, but it did indeed; slow me down by 800 words per day.

I think I could have kept with the challenge despite the shoddiness of work, if there was more support.  However, my region seems to be a ghost town, hardly anyone has been seen on any of the forums or the chatrooms provided, the only support I had got were from people who were not doing the challenge and were writers who look at the challenge with a sympathetic eye.  I spent ages sitting around waiting for someone to talk to from the NaNoWriMo site, even trying to seek out NaNoWriMo writers from twitter and other places to come up against a social brick wall.

NaNoWriMo although was a terrible experience for me, was still fruitful in its way.  I brainstormed through the toil and was provided with small gems to make my plot as a whole sparkle.  But I have a lot of extra unnecessary work to do, when editing comes around.  Let me put this into plainer terms… The first chapter of the novel will be completely deleted and replaced with only a nice, neat three paragraphs and that is only the first chapter.  Something I am not used to doing, I am not used to creating that amount of rubbish.

I am bored with the novel at the moment, I won’t continue with it perhaps until way after New Year.  Meanwhile I will start reviving my blog again and work on the other two novels I wanted to do during the challenge, without the panic that I shall be a failure unless I reach 50k for just one novel in 30 days.

As I said before, I wrote more outside of the challenge, than I did within it.

So, will I be taking up NaNoWriMo challenge 2017?  You must be joking?  Of course I won’t.

 

 

 

 

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