Just Jot It January: Celebrities, Sadness, and Stormy Weather, #JusJoJan

Today’s prompt is brought to us by:

Aaron Elmore.

As a new year begins I search for the motivation I see all around me, the kind that is going to get me to the places I strive to get to. I feel the blueness of January and hope I can find some momentum in the months to come.

This week has been a bad one for loss. It seems strange that I let the deaths of celebrities I’ve never met affect me, but perhaps it’s a way for me to channel some of the sadness I feel for people in my life that I do care about.

Where is my missing motivation then? How can I find it?

It’s vitally important that I do because, as I feel the losses of late, I know that life doesn’t wait around forever. I may not always feel the motivation to wake up in the morning and take the world by storm. I don’t always feel like I have the energy for that. If there is a storm, I take shelter from the wind and the rain, but then I come out and search in the debris, and looking for that missing motivation is a real fight some days.

I try not to think too hard about how far I’d have to go. I know it isn’t an easy process, to do the hard work necessary, to find success as a writer. If that is my dream, can I find the motivation required to reach that goal to, in any guise?

I want to write things, lots and lots of things, and to put them out there, sharing them with others. I have goals and I want to be published in a specific literary magazine or website, but at my worst moments I lack the motivation that it would take to make that happen.

Realizing that life only gives us all a certain number of chances, I hope to do better. I hope 2016 can help get me there.

Just Jot It January, #JusJoJan

Linda’s contribution today is highly thought-provoking on the things I often ponder about my writing and when I read about other people’s lives online:

Just Jot It January 14th – Motivation

If you are motivated to know more about this month-long blogging project,

you will find all the rules here.

Spotlight: Mamarazzi

Mamarazzi

By Brooke Williams

Release Date: September 11, 2015 from Prism Book Group

Order

HERE.

Danica Bennett isn’t sure what she hates more…her job or the fact that she’s good at it.  As one of the many Hollywood paparazzi, she lives her life incognito and sneaks around trying to get the best shot of the latest star.  When she is mistaken for an extra on a new, up and coming TV show, her own star rises and she becomes the one being photographed.  Add that to the fact that she’s falling for her co-star, Eliot Lane, and Danica is in a whole heap of trouble.

My Review:

Who is The Mamarazzi?

Who is the one behind the disguise?

Danica is doing what she can, taking pictures of celebrities, to make a living. Her first love is photography and she has big plans and dreams, but must support her sick mother. How can she come out from behind her disguise and be the daughter any mother would be proud of?

Eliot is the big star and he has his eyes on Danica, from the first moment she works as an extra on set of his new hit show.

Heat, sparks, and water. She is nervous to be around him and is pleased to find out he is a complete catch, unlike his co-star.

The two of them are powerless to fight their mutual attraction, as Eliot shows her the acting ropes, but her secret threatens to blow it all apart.

She must get the perfect shot. What is she willing to risk for that?

She discovers someone else’s secret and there is someone out to destroy any chance she might have for happiness with Eliot.

I read this story, in nearly one sitting. It is a sweet read and William’s writing style makes you route for Danica and Eliot, from that first connection on set.

Hollywood chews and spits out many, and it’s due to William’s writing and her love story, given to two deserving characters, that makes Mamarazzi stand out.

It’s a fabulous reveal of the hidden world of Hollywood paparazzi and with the twists and turns of a love story, put to the test.

Note from the Author on the book’s inspiration:

I’ve always been fascinated by the Hollywood life and the idea that “they” are different from “us.” The idea for Mamarazzi has been with me for a long time. I’m not even exactly sure when I came up with it, but in college, I had a screenwriting class and I had to write a portion of a screenplay. I wrote “Paparazzi,” which was the same general idea only with a male lead character. When I began writing romantic comedy, the idea came back to me and I decided to chance the main character to a female and call it “Mamarazzi.” I even had a naming contest so that facebook fans and blog readers could name the characters in the book. Every character in the novel is reader named and approved!

Overall, I wanted to examine what happens when you take someone from one side of the fence and plop them on the other side. In the end, famous or not, we’re all just people. And in this book, they all have secrets…

About the Author

Brooke Williams writes in a sleep-deprived state while her daughters nap. Her romantic comedy is best read in the same state. Brooke has twelve years of radio in her background, both behind the scenes and on the air. She was also a television traffic reporter for a short time despite the fact that she could care less about hair and make-up. Today, Brooke stays at home with her daughters and works as a freelance writer for a variety of companies. When she isn’t working for paying clients, she makes things up, which results in books like “Accept this Dandelion.”  Brooke is also the author of “Accept this Dandelion,” “Wrong Place, Right Time,” “Someone Always Loved You,”  “Beyond the Bars.” She plans to continue the Dandelion story into a series and looks forward to her first children’s book release “Baby Sheep Gets a Haircut” in June 2016. Brooke and her husband Sean have been married since 2002 and have two beautiful daughters, Kaelyn (5) and Sadie (nearly 2).

You can find her over at her website:

http://www.authorbrookewilliams.com/

The Trouble With Being Real, #BeReal, #1000Speak

I usually do a

#1000Speak

topic reveal here, on my blog, a few days to a week before the 20th of every month. I didn’t do one for July.

Perhaps that’s because it is summertime and there’s a lot going on. It’s possible I forgot. Or, maybe, just maybe I couldn’t narrow down a topic.

This month’s subject is “acceptance” and I struggle to accept a lot of things, including myself, on a daily basis.

I am scared to let down my guard with people and in my own head. I don’t know what I deserve. I don’t know how to fully accept and embrace who I am, in this given moment in time.

It’s been a movement lately:

#BeReal,

In a world so quick to judge, just #BeReal,

and

The Village Needs To #BeReal

I am on the periphery of the physical stuff this is referring to. I don’t take selfies and I am not even on Instagram or Snapchat.

I include a photo when and where I can, here, but I don’t know how to embrace and accept myself, in these ways, when I can’t even see myself.

this photo is of brian, dad and you on the stairs in front of the apple.

I am not alone on this line of thinking. Here another visually impaired woman says it better, in one short blog post, than I probably will here:

A Thousand Words Are Worth More Than One Picture

I know acceptance must be a deeper thing than the physical and the visual. I guess I have an advantage, not to be distracted by the rest of it. I guess, but I don’t feel let off the hook – not really.

I am all about being real, as the hash tag prods. I don’t like anything I sense to be shallow or fake. I get very uncomfortable around such pretences and I tend to grow critical. I don’t like that I am so, but I guess we all are, in a way.

I want us all to be our authentic selves, but I can hardly not start with me.

I know I am genuine and all that, but how to accept who, what, and where I am, at this current moment, is the hardest of the hard tasks I ask myself to complete. Yes, I expect that I should complete it, but I know it’s the ultimate work-in-progress.

A lot of the blogging world can be unreal. It is a bunch of humans, but they are hiding behind their computers, fiercely typing away. Then, images are sent out into the world. Back to the blog to try and #BeReal for anyone who happens to read.

Any real connections that are made are usually far beyond me, but not always.

I don’t get distracted by the perfect beach photos plastered all over social media, of celebrities posing for the camera because it’s their job. I don’t know how to look like any spiffed-up version of myself. I don’t even know, from day to day, what I look like in my bathroom mirror.

I don’t wear makeup, not trying to impress anybody. I don’t wear it, because I am not afraid of stepping out in public with blotches and circles under my eyes. Or perhaps, I don’t know but that I should be afraid.

I don’t simply capture moments in time where all’s well. I come here to be as real as real can be. I wish I had more freedom in the rest of the world to do the same.

I wish I weren’t so paralyzed by fear and concern. I don’t accept this status, as it is. I won’t accept anything like what I have accepted in the past. I will be real with myself and anyone else who thinks they can handle it.

I think I can be me, whatever that is, and then I will attract what I put out into the universe.

Words are my most valuable tool in a world of photoshopped images. I can be real with words. I can write about the parts of myself I find hardest to accept and those I know full well are my greatest assets.

God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
The courage to change the things I can;
And the wisdom to know the difference.

–Serenity Prayer