Camp Time!

In a little over a week, I'm going to participate in the Camp NANOWRIMO. I'm very excited and working on my story idea. But in the meantime, I still have the book I wrote in the NANOWRIMO November session. I also have another book I wrote a couple years ago. Right before I got laid off.

I write books. I just never know what to do with them. Both of them need work. I paid someone to edit the first of these two books and it's completely marked up. The critiques are mostly about my passive voice and my pronouns. I almost need a complete rewrite of this one. But the good news is that I can look at it again. After I got laid off, I shut the book away in my mind so I never saw it again. It was an office romance dedicated to my coworkers and it was such a painful subject then. But looking at it now, the story isn't as bad as I thought. All this time, I think I made the critiques from my editor so much bigger in my mind. Like she said, "THIS BOOK IS AWFUL. AWFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUL."

The second book is my most recent one has not been edited at all, but I have been going over the first draft. I've come to realize that I don't like the style I wrote it in. I wrote it in a past/present style. One chapter would be set in the present, with the next chapter being in the past. Past, present, repeat until the end. The first thing I did with this book is remove all the past chapters and saved them into another folder. Now I just need to read the book without the past and see if any are truly needed.

Fun stuff, huh? I wish that simply writing a book is the hard part for me. For me, it's editing and acknowledging all my weaknesses. I have so many stories in my mind, I just have a hard time putting the down in writing.

I love writing and since that's what I love, I will keep doing it. Eventually something will stick. I've been wrestling with mortality lately and I know I will regret not pushing ahead. Not writing. I know that's why my dad would want me to do. I have his picture in the shelf across from my desk and I look at all day long. I saw his eyes in my rearview mirror this morning. Yes, they were actually my eyes, but today the looked more like his. I always understood the scene where Harry Potter sees Dumbledore in the mirror that Sirrius gave him. It's actually Albus' eye, but I know the feeling. I often seem my dad in the mirror.

The point is that I think if he was here, he would tell me to keep pushing. To keep swimming. Even if I'm the only person that reads these books. Even if they are crap. Because I don't like to think of the alternative to writing.

Wish me luck! :)

Throwback Thursday: My First Kiss

My first kiss happened my freshmen year of high school. For some reason I thought I was oldest person ever to not be kissed. Never mind that I was probably all of 14 or 15 at the time. I needed to be kissed and NOW. I started my high school year determined to be kissed, whatever it took.

My first kiss wasn't a DJ Tanner moment where I waited for the right guy and the right timing. I can't even remember how I met the guy we kissed. I just know he qualified for the job by having long hair (in the day of hair metal bands, this was all it took) and lips. Really, that's all I was looking for.

I remember his name, but seeing that we are in the digital age, I won't say it here. I do have one picture of us together in school. In it, I have a really bad perm and crazy eyes. He's wearing a jean jacket and a dopey expression. I believe we are holding a stuffed animal of some sort. I don't know why.

The kiss happened on the bleachers of my high school. I do remember that. I'm assuming it happened during lunch since we had open lunch at the time. 

I have to admit that I didn't like him that much. But I didn't not like him. I was just curious about what it was like to be kissed and he served that purpose. My best friend at the time tried to show me how to kiss (no, this isn't that kind of story...we didn't practice with each other), by having me kiss my arm.

It's not the same. And my arm still hasn't forgiven me for the violation of our trust.

When the kiss did happen, there wasn't fireworks or music. There wasn't even a cheesy 80's ballad in the background. It was weird. There was a lot of tongue. I didn't really feel anything, but self conscious. 

My real first kiss with someone I actually loved came later. In the meantime though, I had been kissed and had started my high school career the way I wanted. I got the worse grades of my life my freshmen year, but I had experience kissing, so what did that matter? I was a mature woman-child who didn't need no stinkin' education! 

I broke up with him a couple weeks later and never looked back. But he will always be a footnote in the story of my life. I think that's pretty cool. He probably wouldn't. And neither does my arm...