Tag-mania

I have spent all morning doing what I have intended to do for a fairly long time now. Label every single one of my posts. I'm not sure why I bothered. I guess it can help add traffic and stuff like that, but I don't care very much about that. It was fun, and somewhat interesting going through my old posts. 

Regardless, I have now done it, and I guess if you have some deep desire you to crawling through my past posts go ahead. 

Also, there is one unique label. I'm not going to tell you what it is, because then it would be easier for you to find it, (not that I think you'll look.) Do not worry about not being able to tell if you've found it or not, if you find it, you will be able to tell. If you find it and want to feel like you won or something, leave a comment in the post labeled with that special label and I'll send you prize. Or maybe not. Only if you ask me to, and if I do it will probably be something lame like a home made book mark, creepy sock monkey, or a friendship bracelet or something. It really all depends on who finds it, (if anyone finds it at all) and how insistent they are about getting a prize. 

Adventures and Experiments in Writing

Salutations one and all, in this post I will be discussion recent actions I have taken in my most riveting and startling writing career, (career used in the less popular meaning of a pursuit, regardless of your job.) Take this as a warning, or a lovely introduction to a wonderful post.

Free writing. Anyone who likes to write has probably heard of the exercise. For twenty to thirty minutes you write, free hand, not thinking about what you are going to write, and you can't stop writing. 

Sounds easy enough.

Holy cow! It was practically impossible.

This free writing is supposed to help with creativity and brainstorming, as you have to come up with something to write RIGHT THEN!!!! It also is an exercise which is supposed to sharpen your mind, to help you focus on something and not get distracted by other random thoughts. The two approaches are these: One, just start writing. Simple as that. Write blah blah blah, or jabber jabber jabber if nothing else comes to mind. Two, pick a topic and write about that. A spontaneous essay if you will.

It was so freakin' hard. I know some people have a fairly easy time just writing on and on, and at first I thought it would be fairly easy for me as well as I can keep up a monologue for a long time. I never realized though how often I paused in my writing. Not necessarily to plan in general what I was going to say, that was easy enough to do. A single topic can do me for a couple of pages. No, I realized with this exercise how often I pause for grammar purposes. I sound like a total idiot if I don't pause! It went beyond not editing. After reading through what I wrote I literally could not tell what I was trying to say. The funny thing is that I don't even notice these pauses most of the time, unless I'm actively trying not to pause.

As well as free writing, I have also finished the first draft of my most recent novel, Earthly Gods. It's kind of like Pilgrim's Progress and Lord of the Rings combined...I guess...if I had to describe it. It's about a boy, named Ashvik, who goes in search of gods who demanded him to be sacrificed.

Yeah...great stuff that. It's better than it sounds...really.

I've started editing Earthly Gods, had have even made decent head way into the outline for my next book, the third and final in a trilogy. The first was Beyond Happily Ever After, the second, Not Quite True Love's Kiss, and the working title for the third is A Place Not so Far Away.

For those of you who know about NaNoWriMo, I'm sad to say I haven't been doing it this year.. This would be my third year doing it, if I was doing it, but I am not, so it won't be my third year. I considered it for a while, but with completely Earthly Gods only recently, and the move to Tennessee there was no time. It almost doesn't feel like November without the frantic writing. Perhaps that's way Thanksgiving really took me by surprise. There was no NaNo to make it feel like November. 

The Pros and Cons of a Big House

As you all should know my family is basically all moved into our new house, (new for us anyway.) It is a lovely home tucked away into a beautiful neighborhood in the center of Columbia Tennessee. It is comprised of bits and parts from several generations of building, most of it old and vintage looking, with random modern parts stuck into it.  

The house is also big.

Like huge, at least compared to the old house. The Bend house wasn't small, per say, but small for seven, eight people to live in. While someone still has to share a room in this new house, each room is just...bigger. The fact that it's bigger is probably the most significant difference between the Bend house and this one, and has been one of the hardest things to get used to as of yet. Like with anything in life, there are the pros and cons.

The Pros: 

Of course the fact that there is just more room. What looked like a ridiculous amount of stuff in the Bend house doesn't seem quite so ridiculous anymore.

Sock sliding. There was no where to sock slide in the Bend house. There is the perfect long stretch in this house. Though sometimes this could probably be put in the Con list, considering it can result in injury, broken furniture, and holes in the wall. 

Nook and crannies. So many nooks and crannies. Such as a small attic room, a garage that has about 13,876,744 rooms in it, and an unfinished basement, really unfinished. It literally looks like a cave down there. You open the door expecting to find just another ordinary room but no, instead you're greeted by rocks full of fossils from the Triassic period and a gentlely flowing stream.

More room for book shelves!!! I know that should be included in the first Pro, but if you're me books shelves take a special priority. 

More space to get away from other people. Or, being less cramped, if that sounds less anti social. 

Cons:

Everything is fifty million miles away. Every time I want something from some other part of the house I need to pack a bag of provisions, put on my hiking boots, and bring at least two bottles of water with me. 

ALL OF THE LIGHT SWITCHES!!!! Especially since it is a new house, a light will be on in some random part of the house and I will have to spend the next fifteen minutes looking for the switch to turn it off. 

Cleaning. Enough said. (Mum is saying amen about right now.) 

There they are, the pros and cons. Not all of them, I'm sure, but enough. Do you have any opinion about big house/small house. Which is better? 

A Thousand Days

For a little up date on what's been going on in my life right now, I present you with A Thousand Days. (Like the heading I made specially for the occasion?) A Thousand Days is journal like thing that I will attempt to keep for a thousand days. Unlike many journal/diary situations each entry is no more than a paragraph long. The idea is to have a short entry every day, but for an extended period of time. In this case, every day for exactly one thousand days. So far it has been surprisingly difficult. Either I almost forget and have to do it after I've already gone to bed, or I don't really know what to write about since it is hard to either pick one thing after a busy day, or the day has just been empty of anything but unpacking. I'm hoping to post my thousand days entries about twice a month.

A Thousand Days

Everyone has a story to tell, every person a journey yet ahead of them. For a thousand days I will tell mine. I single paragraph a day I will write which may not mean much for one day, but over a thousand, and it will tell a story, it will show a journey.

November 2012

Day one: Uhg, day one and I've already messed up. Technically it is early day two. Also I'll have to write the first several days in a different notebook and then transfer them to the journal I would like to do this in as I have already packed it. Take a deep breath; this is the start of a new adventure.

Day two: This morning when the movers arrived it was all stressed excitement as they arrived early and we had a few things lift. It was crazy frantic stressed energy, then it was a tedious calm while we hung around outside. Cleaning up the house after the movers were done was bitter sweet. I'm moving away from the only house I've ever really known. The house felt so strange and empty, no longer quite the home I knew. While the three little kids sleep over at the Craig's the rest of us are staying at the Red Lion Hotel, the hotel we stayed in when we first moved to Bend. (Not that I can remember but I still appreciate the poetic balance to it)

Day three: Today was crazy. Several hours of driving, and because of incorrect traveling calculating we are going to have to drive a lot more each day. Yea. Luckily today is day light savings time, so at least we get an extra hour of sleep after a long day. Also, time zones are driving me crazy, and we've only passed through one so far.

Day four: Oh my word, today was incredibly awful. There was all kinds of stress, and house and house of driving. Tomorrow should be a shorter day since we will be visiting Megan. It was strange; as we drove through it state each had a certain smell. In fact, the smell changed more frequently than the scenery. The scenery was either brown grass lands, or brown hills.

Day five: Today was much shorter, and much less stressed filled.  We arrived at Megan's house at about 2. We'll be staying all of tomorrow and leave Wednesday morning. Sean made us dinner, and they even invited Sugar Timm, (his first name is actually Andrew.) Since I have nothing much else to say, I'm going to go ahead and talk about the shoe tree we made, since I do want to talk about it since it is kind of connected to the move and stuff. In Bend there was a tree we called the Boo Radly tree, because it looked exactly like the Boo Radly tree. It was near the center of down town off of (insert later.) On Wednesday we ate dinner at Chan's one more time and then threw old pairs of shoes into the Boo Radly tree. Chances are people will just think it was a Halloween trick and the shoes have already been taken down, but it was still fun to do. 

Day six: Buggy is so much bigger now. Today we went to the Garden of the Gods. It was pretty cool, and then after that we went to eat dinner at Chilies. Tomorrow it is back to the grind. I also read a lot. A book called The Name of a Rose. Monks are weird.

Day seven: Another looong day of driving. To pass the time we've been listening to the Dragon Rider book.  When we got to Topeca we had a late dinner at Panera Bread, which was supper tasty. I hadn't realized how starved I was for vegetation until I had finished the entire salad.

Day eight: Today the driving wasn't as long, we finished at about 6. It would have lasted about a half hour longer but the switch to our head lights suddenly busted, in the middle of the highway, after the sun had set. So yea, we stopped at a town about 30 miles before the town we had planned. At the hotel I will probably change the e-mail I use to log into various sights. My old e-mail account uses a cable company which we will not be using in Tennessee.

Day nine: We arrived to Columbia today! The house is absolutely amazing. It's all old and stuff, but not dilapidated. There are all these twists and hidden secret spots and small attics. Yet despite that we are still staying in a hotel as all our stuff is not being unloaded from the moving van until tomorrow.

Day ten: The house is now filled with all of our stuff. It is kind of over whelming. Despite the fact that we're here and so is all of our stuff, all I can see is how much we need to unpack.

Day eleven: The more things we unpack the stranger it seems. Before it wasn't so weird to be sleeping in a weird house, especially since I've just spent the last week sleeping somewhere different. Now that more things are being unpacked, it is becoming real, and surreal, more and more. All of our things look strange in this new house.

Day twelve: All of the days are kind of running into each other. It's hard to swallow that it is November 12th already. Most of the time I feel no different from usual, but every once in a while it will suddenly hit me that I've moved, and for a few moments I feel nothing but this over whelming weight on my chest.

Day thirteen: This thousand days things is harder than I thought it would be, and I'm not even half way through the first month. More same ol' same ol' today. Just unpacking some more and going around the town. We checked out the library (no pun intended, seriously, I'm actually sorry for that one.)  Unfortunately it is a small town library, which means it's small, which means fewer books.

Day fourteen: What to write, what to write. The house is really coming together, which is grand. The house is so big. There aren't really many more rooms than in the old house, but all of the rooms are just bigger.

Day fifteen: Getting to this a bit earlier today, at 8:30 instead of 11. Where has all of the time gone? I can't believe it's Thanksgiving in only a week. Quite a bit of October and basically all of November has been eaten up by the move. Obviously how late it is surprised me quite a bit. Looking up I've realized I've complained about this before.

Day sixteen: The one day I write the entry a little earlier something interesting happens later at night. Well, not super interesting to the rest of the world, but I and my family are weird enough that it counts. Last night we saw a (I think "a", there is a slight chance that it is supposed to be "an") opossum! It was just, walking all around the place outside of Colleen's window. We opened the window and tried to scare it so it would play dead. DIE YOU STUPID OPOSSUM!!!!!! I believe is what I said. Hopefully none of the neighbors knew it was us making the noise. On to today, I've made great head way in my next novel A Place Not so Far Away.

You know what would be fabulously, positively awesome? If you, dear intrepid reader, joined me in my journey of a thousand days. Sure we wouldn't have all started at the same time, but that really doesn't matter when you get right down to it. If you start now, we'll still have over two years to clasp virtual hands and hearts together in this fantastic quest. Invite your friends, invite your family, invite strangers, invite your enemies, invite your pets, invite anybody and everybody. It will be great!

 To even make it even more official, I present you with my first button ever!!!!! I made it using the tutorial that I found at the blog Code it Pretty. I need a tutorial because I actually know nothing about html code. To use the button just copy the code in the box bellow, and then past it into a HTML/JavaScript gadget if you use blogger, if not, past it in what ever widget thing you need to post it into.

<div class="Brilliant-in-the-Weirdest-Way-button" style="width: 187px; margin: 0 auto;"> <a href="http://beccapillsbury.blogspot.com/2012/11/a-thousand-days.html"> <img src="http://i1214.photobucket.com/albums/cc498/BeeaBoBo/AThousandDays2-1.jpg" alt="YOUR BLOG NAME" width="187" height="125" /> </a> </div> <!--end button code box-->

If you don't join, that's cool too. No not really, actually that's pretty lame. Come one! It's one little paragraph a day. this is a perfect journal idea for people who don't actually want to journal.