New blog feature for writers and a recap of my most recent travels

I'm instituting a new section of my weekly blog. I will be blogging a weekly writing tool. It could be a thought provoking question, a prompt, or other various writing exercises.

The prompts I like the best are ones that are a sentence or two to be included in your answer to the prompt. Feel free to change words around, use it anywhere in the prompt, or forgo its use and simply use it as the inspiration to get you writing. I'd love to see the response, so make sure to comment them to me! Also... if the amount of response is good, I will turn my prompts into a challenge and provide either weekly or monthly prizes to the winner, so spread the word!

September 23rd Prompt:

He strode across the lawn with one purpose, delighting half of the onlookers, and horrifying the rest.

All genres welcome!

Now... onto my travels...

Some of you may not be aware that I have been traveling on and off since February. I was laid off in January and have been jet setting ever since.

Feb-March: Oregon
March: Cincinnati and Manteca California
April: Michigan (home state) sick as a dog with H1N1 I swear!
May-July: California: Manteca, Sacramento, San Francisco, Santa Cruz
July: Texas, Oklahoma
August: Michigan
September: Chicago, IL and Colorado/ Denver, Boulder and Estes Park

Here are a few perks of my trips!

Silver Falls, OR: How postcard-esque is that! I hiked 4 miles around Silver Falls up and down throughout the gorges and peaks of the region. This was the first waterfall I saw that day--not the tallest or the biggest, but I had to go out of my way to see it and am damn happy I did. It houses faeries, I'm sure of it.

And now for a different part of my Oregon trip. I love guns and a friend from Eugene, OR was happy to take me out to the middle of nowhere to shoot his handgun. He took pictures the whole time and actually caught a muzzle flash! How cool is that! This pic ladies and gents has not been altered, that is truly what a muzzle flash looks like. Oh yeah, and you get to see my kick ass gun shooting stance.

This is a picture from the tallest point in Oklahoma. This is where the deer and the antelope (read prairie dogs) roam. Home of buffalo and long horn steers. This is the range and many people call it home. I went out there twice in the span of a week. The next picture will explain why.




AHHH! Meers! Possibly the best burger I've ever had. This place is literally in the middle of NOWHERE in Oklahoma. You drive down a windy road, make a turn, and slam on your brakes because people are walking out in front of your car to go to this place. Some of the open spaces in the previous picture are Meer's Long Horn Steer grazing territory. This restaurant was voted to have one of the top 10 burgers in the nation by family owned businesses. It has been open decades (getting close to a century now.) Not only are their Meer's burgers delicious, but their peach cobbler and homemade ice cream is to die for. The restuarant started as a smallish building, and they added several shanty's onto it. Makes for an uneven floor, but I'm happy they added space! As a recovering vegetarian of 10 years, I stared at the Long Horn Steer head mounted on the wall, took a bite of my burger, and thanked it for having such a delicious cousin.



Estes Park, Colorado: Home of the rock formation Twin Owls. This is not the most scenic picture I took. Come on, I was in the Rocky Mountains people, majesty abounds in that place. But we've all seen picture after picture of the Rockies (and yes, it really does look that amazing) But the Twin Owls kind of stole my heart. They truly do look like owls all huddled up to one another and I'm a sucker for rock formations that look like things.


You may notice I don't have any pictures of California. I didn't have my digital camera and didn't have a chance to do much site seeing there due to other responsibilities. However, I did manage to make it out to Santa Cruz--talk about the epitome of a beach boardwalk town. It took us 2 hours to make it around the town twice (a small town) just to find parking. At one point we were on Beach Blvd and people walked,rollerbladed, meandered, skateboarded in front of us for 20 mins while we stood still. Santa Cruz, or Santa Carla as some of you may recognize it from The Lost Boys...

I can see the allure of trains

Currently I am riding on a train to Chicago from my hometown of Kalamazoo. It is only a two and a half hour ride, but here I am, actually going somewhere and I'm able to write. With my back to the engine, I only see where we've been. It's strange for a control freak who has a gun fighter mentality—back to the wall/corner and front toward the door—to like having their back to their destination, yet I find I trust the train. They are a sturdy mode of transportation and with the exception of the movie, The Darjeeling Limited, they can't get lost. They have a set destination, a clear path to their goal. I could use a little of that in my life.

It doesn't make sense in the realm of safety, but I like seeing where we've been instead of where we're going. I know that what I see is safe. Nothing extraordinary is going to pass my view until it passes that of others. I may hear the child behind me, who is playing his video game on low volume, gasp with excitement should something of interest pass us by, but I don't. Instead I hear the horn of the train, the shifting of the rails and my fingers pecking on the keys. The pecking could be my favorite noise, but I have to admit, the horn adds a nice touch.

I should travel like this more often. Trains are a forgotten mode of transportation here in the United States. Maybe that is why I feel inspired. I feel like I could be in Europe or traveling somewhere completely new. I've been on a train before, but I am a virgin train writer. I am a road tripper. I like to drive places, but I may have to reconsider.

A train is like the synapse in the brain. It is the electrical conduit that takes people from one place to another. This in-between space is also where creativity flows, at least for me. It flows through the cracks and you only gain access to it by having a few cracks in your exterior. A train only lets on passengers in certain spots. Creativity is much like that, make sure your frame of mind it set to embrace the creativity.

I find a closed mind has very little creativity. Although to be fair, I think a completely open mind would leave one a little aimless—being constantly bombarded with ideas with no direction. Humans need limitations. At least I do. I need to have a goal, even if it is a hazy blob in the far future. I lay down my tracks toward the destination and I travel as far as I lay. The more planning I do and the more consistently I write, the more track I have and the farther I travel, the more defined my goal becomes. Sometimes I lay my track a little off course and I have to steer it back. Sometimes I run into a hill and have to decide to take the extra time and effort to plow through it, or if going around it will be better. Your track, very much like a train, has to be purposeful. You can't lay bits and pieces of track all over the place and expect to get anywhere. A clear set path, albeit sometimes curvy, is the way to go.

A clear path however doesn't mean to shoot straight through to the end. A train, much like your creativity needs to be fueled. A train needs passengers to go someplace. So stop every once in awhile and pick up a few creativity passengers of your own. Let them ride as long as they want, but give them a chance to hop off when they've gone as far as they want to. Feed them in the cafe car and let them be the conductor for awhile, especially if it is their first train ride.

About the video:

I couldn't find any videos I liked about trains, so I moved into looking into ones about brain synapses, but honestly, the animation of how they work is flat out perverse. So then I decided to look up videos about being creative. I came up with this... and it is perverse... or is it?

Finding yourself is overrated

I'm going to get a little new agey on all of you here. Prepare yourself as you deem necessary.

I am a Virgo. Yup, the Eternal Virgin, which can basically mean we have a giant rod stuck up our asses from time to time. However... there is something else that softens this critical quality that we Virgos have. It's called being a mutable sign.

Per Wikipedia:

In astrology, the mutable signs (also called common signs or bicorporal or double-bodied signs) are a subgroup of the zodiac. They are Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius and Pisces. The mutable signs straddle two temperate zone seasons, encompassing an inherent duality in its symbolism.

In the tropical zodiac, mutable signs coincide with the times of change in the seasons. They are associated with change and versatility. Individuals born under the four mutable quality signs are thought to be adaptable, impressionable, sharp, sympathetic, communicative, resourceful and restless, with a gift for seeing both sides of a situation at the same time and an immense desire for knowledge, variety and new ideas. They supposedly adapt very well to new situations, possess much flexibility, seldom have any particular agenda and are perfectly happy to fill in an assigned role. However, they are also said to be inconsistent, changeable, nervous, indecisive and irresponsible, with a tendency to get wrapped up in tiny particulars. There is also a certain duality associated with all the mutable quality signs.


So what does all the gobbledygook mean? It means that we Virgos tend to take on traits of those around us. In a sense, parts of our own personalities are muted and are replaced with our friends, family members, coworkers etc.

You know those girls in high school that would change what music they listened to or the way they dressed based on the guy they were dating...?? Yeah. It's like that.

Sounds kind of horrible right? Never really being yourself and always being a chameleon to the people around you? Sure it has its moments and I must say that I spent a lot of time trying to figure out who I really was. I spent years hating that I didn't know if I really liked something, or if it was because a friend liked it, or a boyfriend. I constantly questioned myself. The conclusion? This behavior is part of who I am. I definitely have my own tastes, even if it takes me awhile to figure it out. And really, what is so wrong with enjoying something for a time because someone around you enjoys it or because you want to find common ground with someone? Also, I've found that it doesn't apply to those who are closest to me. I don't take on traits of my best friends or my family members. I think I understand them well enough that the curiosity gene in me doesn't activate itself.

There are a lot of pluses to being mutable. We get along with a wide variety of people. We can be quite empathetic. We experience, and truly enjoy varied hobbies, tastes, subject matters etc.

It is particular useful for writing. Writers, fiction writers in particular, have to really get inside someone's head. It's a natural occurrence for those of us who are mutable signs. We spend the vast majority of our lives being parts of other people in order to understand them and relate.

So as a writer I saw that finding yourself is overrated. Finding and understanding other people on the other hand is wildly fascinating and helpful.

Mute Karaoke. Who needs standardized sign language anyway?

A writing critique group: To join or not to join?

I'm torn about whether critique groups are right for me. However, perhaps some of my experiences will help you, as a writer, to make your decision.

Critique groups have done the following for me:

-Clued me in to the mechanics of writing: i.e. my passive writing at times

Not only passive writing, but adding more sensory description, improper sentence structure, grammatical elements, shown me where I can improve my technique or voice.

-Critiquing the work of others is valuable.

It shows you different ways of writing. Seeing the way others write, can help you identify what your style is, and what you like and don't like. It can also help you vary the way you word sentences and your structure. This is invaluable to me as a writer.

-Being around other creative individuals, in particular writing fuels my own creativity.

Whether you're bouncing ideas off one another, or simply inspired by their idea, I find being around other writers fills me up. I enjoy living in a world of words and it's nice to share that with someone, or many people.

My negative experiences with critique groups:

-Getting bogged down with negativity.

Becoming wrapped up in their opinions and preferences instead of what's best for my book.

-Not having readers in my genre.

Urban fantasy has its own jargon and there is a general level of understanding by most readers. Urban fantasy allows for a larger word count and I believe, a slightly more patient reader where mystery is concerned. This doesn't translate well to a mainstream fiction writer.

-Not finding the right mix of people.

I do think that these groups can be quite effective, but I think that the group has to be just the right recipe of people for it to really shine. Personally I have found one reader who is always willing to read my novel as I write it. She is invaluable to me and if I had a whole group of her in a group I'd be there in a second. However I don't.


So my consensus on my experiences? Well I took a break from my group for quite a few months, but I recently joined back up. I do like being around them. For now I am only critiquing their work. I'm not sure the members are right for my work, they don't read my genre and don't particularly like it.

A word of caution: Everyone is entitled to their opinion, however that doesn't make them right. Even if more than one person agrees, their opinion or suggestion may not be right for your book. As a writer you have to have a thick skin, but you also have to have a very clear sense of your story, or it could be all mucked up like a pot of soup with too many cooks. Beware.

This has nothing to do with the blog except that I've been listening to it repeatedly over the last few days as inspiration for my writing. Enjoy!