TToT: Make It Happen!

Here I am, speeding along through July and toward the middle of the month.

Now we’re talking, July!

Things are really starting to heat up, or I hope that’s what’s happening. I’ve just got to stay alert and focused on my goals.

TEN THINGS OF THANKFUL

Lately, I’ve been feeling rather restless and in a hurry, impatiently anxious and waiting for something, some things to happen.

What things, you ask…well, read on to find out. Hopefully this second week of July is the week things are really going to start happening for me this summer.

Monday: Shark Week

For awareness brought to these spectacular survivors and rulers of the ocean.

I hope we won’t need a week to remember the sharks, by the time my niece and my nephews are grown, because we’ve done something irresponsible and something we can’t take back, here in 2015.

Online, everywhere you go when searching sharks, so many attention-grabbing articles and videos are posted. However, they are all ones that involve the word “attack” and are meant to fit stereotypes of what dangerous, man-eating creatures sharks are.

That title is old and outdated. I am not sure I could swim with one, but I respect sharks and I don’t want to lose them.

Tuesday: The Mess Of Me

For the pleasant surprise I received when I arrived home, to find a book waiting for me in the mail.

I had been eagerly waiting for this for days, but apparently the trip over from England to Canada, for a book in the mail is a long one.

🙂

        http://www.amazon.com/Chantelle-Atkins/e/B00J7ACVCY

I found Chantelle Atkins on Facebook and have been following her journey as an author for some time now. Then I entered a contest and won a copy of one of her novels.

I sometimes feel bad, entering contests for books, because I can not even read them in print. I didn’t really want to take the chance of winning a copy away from someone else, but I love books, whether or not I can still read them without the aid of technology. I love to collect them and put them on my bookshelf. I even got a signed copy.

Wednesday: Could it be? A new little storyteller in the making?

For a perfect five minutes, holding my new pal, before she grew once more grumpy and demanded to be returned to her mommy.

My phone decided to cooperate this time, as I got a solid five with my new friend, the sweetest little doll on the planet, while her mother snapped some photos of the two of us, just chilling out.

My friend’s little girl is already ten weeks old and this time I got to hold her for a while, listening to her tell her mother and me stories.

I think she may be a writer in the making, or at least, she’ll be animated and charismatic like her mom.

Thursday: When a friend is in need, it’s Kerry to the rescue.

🙂

For the opportunity to be there, in a pinch, to help a friend out of a late-night jam.

I have a couch and if offering it up could possibly prevent one more over-tired driver from getting into a terrible accident, risking their own death or the death of someone else, I think it’s worth it.

For a huge honour, a most welcome surprise, but a definite humbling pressure to live up to.

I was just about to fall asleep, rather late, when my phone went off. It was a message from a travel writer on Facebook.

I’d submitted a few of my travel articles to this particular travel writer,

Amy Gigi Alexander,

whom I highly admire.

Amy has started a database of female writers, adventure seekers, and travellers.

Writing Walking Women

I didn’t expect that she would bestow me with the title of “number 87) on WWW’s list of women who love travel and writing about it.

As, hopefully, I grow my reputation for being a woman who loves to write about travel, (slowly but surely) I hope I am able to live up to this placement on the list.

Friday: RIP Morgan.

For the chance to have an amazing person in my life and as a part of my family, at least for a little while and always and forever.

I wrote about the impact my cousin had on me, last year, on the ten-year anniversary of his death.

Summertime Sadness

Although we tend to mark these occasions annually, I only wrote about it on the ten year mark, but the people we’ve loved and lost deserve a lot more than that. They deserve to be spoken of often, to keep their memory going.

“Beyond the door, there’s peace, I’m sure.”

Eric Clapton speaks of Heaven, but no matter what your religious beliefs may be, I know we all just hope our departed loved ones are at peace. I sure hope so.

For long awaited emails and now the pressure’s on.

🙂

I have been waiting, for what felt like many months, but really it’s been just this past six months or so that my luck seemed to change for the better.

I found a place for a short story I had written and now the day is very nearly here. My story will be released in an anthology. At least, I hope it will. (A few last-minute jitters.)

Announcing My Second Chance

Hoping all will go well and this isn’t too good to be true.

An email went out to all the authors, sharing a final final edit of the anthology. I hope I know how to follow instructions to get me to Wednesday’s release in tact.

Stay tuned for next week’s TToT post for more on how this went.

For a much needed reminder to be grateful, as the entire TToT is meant for, with the sudden stripe sighting.

While playing with my nephew, at the playground, I suddenly spotted his striped shirt.

For so long now, I’d think my little remaining vision may be slipping away, but then I see stripes and I am happy. All hope is not lost.

A date recently told me he wore a bright green T-shirt to meet me, in the hopes that I could better spot him in a crowd. Nice thought he had. Well, this was ineffective, but then I see stripes and I have hope.

Saturday: DVS

For descriptive video services.

I recently received help, from my sister, to finally get the option on my television turned on so I now have some shows I watch narrated for me.

Some movie theatres do this. (Not always…don’t get me started on that.)

🙂

My brother and I used to rent movies all the time, that came in the mail, with descriptive track to explain the visual parts to us.

Now I have that function turned on for my television, but then I came across another website, full of MP3 movies. This means there is no picture. Just soundtrack. That’s all I need. The list of movies isn’t bad. My brother showed me one last Christmas, but this one I found all on my own.

For strong family and friends in my life.

I have family who deserve to get everything they have been praying for and just might be, to friends who are discovering strengths they never even knew they had, to other family with daily longing for a loved one who is no longer with us.

These people demonstrate this strength of character, not just one day a year, but all 365 days. It’s in everything they do, that which helps me remember what true bravery and perseverance look like.

I want to thank them all.

See how this week of mine started out a little slow, but grew with its momentum? See how things really started to heat up as the week progressed?

I’m off now to make sure I have things in order, to put in the effort and make it happen.

😉

I’m not going to miss this chance.

NANOWRIMO 2014: Priorities, Goals, and Motivation

Okay, so in case it has skipped anyone’s notice, we have arrived at the end of November.

This means that the month of NaNoWriMo is nearing its finish.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed this either, but I missed last week’s Fiction Friday, my usual post here and I did it for a reason.

Not for the reason I wrote about in my previous NaNoWriMo edition of Fiction Friday:

Rebellion.

Not for the cool, wild, hip concept of being a rebel.

🙂

But more like avoidance…avoidance of returning to the place I was at last year at this time.

The reason why I avoided writing any sort of update last week was I knew then and I certainly know now that I will not be reaching fifty thousand words on any novel, not this time.

I did it on my first try, but I guess I’ve learned that, in writing as in life, my priorities can sure shift, only one year on.

In author/writer Alana Saltz’s latest blog post,

What NaNoWriMo Has Taught Me About the Writing Process,

she writes about her own experiences, over the past handful of years with this writing challenge.

It is a helpful thing to me, to read about someone as successful as her, and how the same ups and downs (although not wanted or welcomed) can happen to anyone.

Alana says the two things that made the difference for her, the year she completed the challenge, were focus and a lack of distraction. these two go hand-in-hand, in a big way.

Last year I had distractions, sure, but I was highly focused on getting the novel I had been storing in my head for years down in actual words.

I don’t know where to go with it next and I do know I love the writing I am doing now. this means I didn’t want to give up all the focus I use for blogging multiple times a week, for this huge novel, that has not moved out of the first draft stage since I wrote it one year ago.

Will it have a sequel or will I keep writing?

What do I want it to be and to mean?

I definitely have my share of distractions at this point.

I have discovered that I love blogging, that I find it highly therapeutic in my life right now. I can’t say I feel that way about my novel-in-progress at this time.

In this day of technology and with the advent of ebooks, I hear authors saying all the time that it does no good to have one book, but what counts is to write one and then another and another, until you can build momentum.

As for the points made by Alana, this is my take on it:

1.
Motivation

I am motivated, but apparently not to grab the reins of the story I started last November, and run full-speed ahead.

I am motivated and I set goals all the time with my blogs, every week and month. I keep a fairly steady schedule of posts, present and future. I live by certain deadlines all the time with a blog and now a second one, especially when I am guest posting and hosting guest posters. It is imperative. People, not only me, expect this.

2.
Community

I do not have this, quite as much, with NaNoWriMo. There are no local NaNo groups, at least none I have discovered readily.

As for a community, I have found this in the blogosphere and I like it.

3.
Distractions

I am distracted constantly, my mind constantly wound up. I feel a sense of focus and calm when I am blogging that I couldn’t give up nearly enough to return to the novel that I started while still a part of the life I used to live and am not living in the same way anymore.

4.
Determination

I am determined to make something of blogging and more recently, with travel blogging. This is where I am right now and, although I may regret putting more and more time between myself and the novel I started, right now I must live in the present and future and not allow myself to return to a past I can’t afford to reexamine at this time.

The problem, for me, is that I don’t know if I have more than one novel in me, if I even have this one and the ability to finish it to any real end.

In an extremely uplifting video I came across earlier today, as I was thinking on how I was going to end off my lack of a completed NaNo goal for the month, what I wanted to say here, author Alina Popescu made some valid points:

NaNoWriMo14 – The Deadline Menace – Video on YouTube

I am a writer, like she discusses, whether I write novels, short stories, memoir, reviews and interviews, or travel articles.

I AM A WRITER.

I have discovered I like writing, in a way I did not understand one year ago, and I will follow this path, wherever it may take me.

All I know, at this point one year on, is that I have things inside me to say: about love and relationships, about heartbreak and moving on, about the movies and music that are my inspirations, and the people and places that move me and teach me so much.

Now that I have discovered this world of blogging, and most recently travel blogging, I needed to put all my focus on these things because they are getting me through.

I guess I didn’t really think anyone who might happen to read this would really care that I could not pull off fifty thousand words in a month, two years in a row.

Really, I am the only one I owe any explanation to, whether in my own head or heart. This post just helps me lay all that out, for the record, because maybe next year I will return to this post and start again with Till Death…

I am not giving up on that dream of publishing a story of fiction, but perhaps I am not meant to be mainly a writer of fiction at all.

Living in the present of November 2014 I am a blogger and I like that title and the feeling that gives me.