My 1st Story

NaNoWriMo's 1st story campaign.  Writing matters.

Camp NaNoWriMo July 2013

As you can see from my spiffy new badge, I will be participating in Camp NaNoWriMo this year.  (That's short for National Novel Writing Month.)  Basically the goal of Camp is to write a whole novel in one month.  It sounds intimidating, and believe me, I'm feeling pretty intimidated.  However, because I am a deadline sort of person, I thought this would be fun.  Never mind the fact that I will be on vacation for two weeks out of the month.  I want to challenge myself as a writer and so the saying "you'll never know if you don't try" is hanging over my head like a conscience.  Besides, I keep telling myself, it's summer.  This is the perfect time to try it!  (Just wait until the real thing in November when I have school, ugh!  That will be a challenge.)

I'm counting on the support of friends and family and other people who are just feeling generous to keep me going when I want to quit (and believe me, that will be often).  One of the best ways we can be successful, says the program director, is to make our goals very public.  Well, okay then, check.  Even if no one reads it, at least it's on the internet and people have the ability to know what I'm doing this summer.  My facebook and possibly my blog will be smeared with complaints of writer's block and battle cries of inspiration.  At least everyone will know what that's all about.

The last thing I have to say for no one's benefit but my own is a quote by Denis Waitley: "Goals provide the energy source that powers our lives.  One of the best ways we can get the most from the energy we have is to focus it.  That is what goals can do for us: concentrate our energy."

Glass Castle

Music is my one of my biggest inspirations.  Occasionally I hear a very special song that inspires a scene or idea in my head and I write about it.  Sometimes the idea stands alone, sometimes it fits in with a project I'm already working on.  This particular poem of mine I wrote a few months ago, long before my brother introduced me to the song Castle of Glass by Linkin Park.  However, while I didn't write the poem after being inspired by the song, together they tell a similar story, and it's my hope that my readers will see the vision inspired by both.

Glass Castle

The girl sitting on the wall

With her arms around her legs

What is her story?

What hidden horrors does she escape

By staying after school?

She curls in the corner,

Being unobtrusive

She looks up at passerby

She walks through the halls

Trying her best to disappear

Trying not to catch an eye

No one spares a second thought

For one so evanescent

No one glances back to say hello

Why does she insist on loneliness?

What keeps her in her castle?

Hidden away, unreachable

By the outside world

Secluded from the land out there

Enclosed inside a crystal shell

She floats above the clouds

In her bubble of imagination

Spirited away on winds of thought

Away from this crooked world

Where she doesn’t belong