It Beckons

It’s been over a year since I last posted. Sometime after NaNoWriMo last year I had decided to get back into posting, but things just got away from me. And as NaNo approaches this year I’m starting to feel that urge to write come upon me again.

Several times over the summer I have had ideas spring on me and I’ve written snippets, but the only problem is, I have no plot. I just have a beginning, or at least one little glimpse of some other world. I could keep writing from these snippets, but I can’t find the words to continue. I don’t know where to go.

It’s maddening to have an idea, something that excites me, but then not know where to go from there The urge to write is growing everyday. The more I read the more I want to write. I’ve even started listing to the Writing Excuses podcast. My hope is that the spark will start to grow and ignite into a full fledged flame. But unless I give that spark some tinder, nothing is going to happen. So begins the writing. The writing with no direction. Words spilling forth with no purpose, no idea, just words. And maybe, just maybe, a plot will emerge.

Taking a break

Things are a little bit crazy at my apartment and I need to take a break for a while from blogging. I apologize to anyone who reads!

Not only am I up for two different positions at work, but my roommate’s life has taken a downturn and I’m spending more of my free time with her.

I hope all your lives out there are a little less chaotic than mine is right now. I hope I won’t be gone too long!

The Things I’d Like To Learn…

I’ve got a slowly growing list of things I’d like to learn, and finding time can definitely be a challenge.

For a while now I’ve wanted to learn how to tat, mostly because its generally a small thing and is something I could keep in my purse and do whenever I’m stuck somewhere or waiting in a long line and have forgotten to bring a book. I also want to learn it because you can make some really beautiful lace with it.

I also want to learn how to paint, which I suppose is not always something you can be “taught” how to do well, but I’d like to take some lessons in the various mediums. I have dabbled in oil painting, but I’d really like to try my hand at watercolors and acrylic. I even almost got an BFA when I was in college until I switched to another school that didn’t have any art classes.

And an old desire has recently sprung up. And that being learning how to play guitar. Now I took about one lesson when I was in high school with my sister, but we only had one guitar which was hers and my desire to learn eventually fizzled out as I have small hands which can make playing guitar really hard. But I’ve really started thinking about it again and I may find myself visiting some pawn shops in the near future, especially since I have a friend that is willing to teach me and another friend that wants to learn also. And I’ve always found that its easier to do things regularly if you have someone else doing it with you (sibling don’t always count, though).

Are there any activities, hobbies or other things you’d like to learn?

Birthday Time!

My birthday is tomorrow so I’m taking the weekend off, which also means nothing interesting to post today…

So go check out this awesome music video by Parry Gripp instead:

Is it Christmas yet?

I’m somewhat impatiently waiting for December to come. And it has something to do with ebooks and libraries. In case you haven’t been keeping up with some of the news about Overdrive, Kindle books will be added to their collection in December. The official date has not yet been released, but we’ve been promised that it’ll happen before the end of the year. Hints here and there make it sound like it’ll be something that will happen around Christmas and that doesn’t really surprise me. Especially since the news will probably boost Kindle sales.

And the best part about Kindle books coming to libraries near you, is that Amazon is going to be giving FREE copies of the ebooks that libraries have already purchased. So sometime in December, for every ebook that your library has purchased through Overdrive will then also be found in Kindle format as well as ePub or PDF. And all future ebooks your library purchases will come as a package with the Kindle format and an ePub and/or PDF version as well.

Now, I won’t be buying a Kindle or any other ereader just yet, but I’m looking forward to testing out a Kindle from work and downloading books through my library on it. I haven’t posted about the Nook that I got to play with, but I have to say that it definitely makes me very, very tempted to pick one up.

It’s Friday

Friday, Friday…

And what a week it has been. Lets just say that I’m not entirely ready for the weekend because Saturday is going to be my big day to push to get the rest of my room organized and unpacked.

It might seem a bit odd that I haven’t finished doing that since I moved several weeks ago, but I’ve been picking up every extra shift I could at work the last few months and it looks like next month is going to be about the same.

It makes finding time to write extremely difficult, especially when I have so many different things I need to do. But I do plan on setting aside some time tomorrow to rewrite a short story I wrote several years back that has stuck in my mind. And while I’m pretty sure the finished product will not resemble the original lines I wrote, the spark that I see when I read those words will be there.

This particular story was a result of word prompts I did every day one October before NaNoWriMo. It was a practice I really enjoyed and have missed doing since. In fact, aside from trying to do a free-write journalish bit everyday, I will start doing word prompts again. And if you so feel the desire, leave a comment with a word you think would be good for me to try on for size.

Do you have any favorite writing exercises?

Goodbye Borders

Growing up I lived in a very small town. We had all of two bookstores in town. One of them was a locally owned bookstore, that is probably jumping for joy at this news, because its main competition in town is the Waldenbooks store in the mall. Of course that little local bookstore still has to compete with the paltry collections you find in Safeway and (a very small) Walmart, but you can bet that they are going to start getting a lot more business now.

Oddly enough, most of the time I lived in that city, we only visited the locally owned store a few times, mostly because the more we shopped at Waldenbooks the more discounts we got, not to mention we were also heavy library users. But because the local bookstore was in a part of town I rarely visited, I was mostly unaware of its existence for a long time.

It makes me wonder how many people in town are standing in the mall looking at that Waldenbooks that will soon be disappearing and wondering how in the world they are going to get their books. How many of them don’t know about the small bookstore downtown? And how many of them will finally make the plunge into e-readers because they think they don’t have much of a choice left outside of ordering books online? And, of course, how many of them will start visiting the library more often?

It provides a bit of irony for me to think about the death of a chain meaning that the locally owned bookstore will gain new life, when chains could often result in small businesses shutting down because they couldn’t compete. I’m definitely glad that the small little bookstore downtown in my home town has stuck it out throughout the years. Because it means for those people who prefer paper to electronic mediums, they will still have at least one good place to buy books (though I sincerely hope that the library will always be available for them to borrow from).

But I can’t help but wonder if there are towns out there with struggling libraries (or even none!) and only a Borders or Waldenbooks as a places to find reading materials outside of grocery store selections. So, it is a bittersweet farewell that I bid to Borders. I dearly hope that there aren’t any people out there left without a bookstore or library.

Harry Potter

While I was just a bit too old to grow up reading the Harry Potter books (in fact I’m pretty sure I didn’t even hear about them till after they started making the first movie), I have spent a significant amount of time immersed in the books and movies. And though I am sad to see the end, it was an end I knew was coming and one that I was pleasantly surprised with, especially considering I had some friends that were bemoaning the departure from the book in the final installment from the previews alone.

I definitely had some mixed emotions as I walked out of the theater on Thursday. My initial thought being that I didn’t think I would ever watch any of the movies again, a thought which I quickly dismissed and said, “Of course I’ll watch them again, I’ve already seen the rest a few dozen times”. I still think it is a strong possibility that I won’t, though. I definitely will pick up the last movie when it comes out on DVD so that I can finish off my collection. However, it’s at an end for me. The story has closed. I have seen the end. And for some strange reason, I feel no desire to pop in any of the other movies again. Maybe my thoughts will change in the future, but for right now, I’m happy, pleased, and ready to move on.

Overall, I have been very happy with the movies and how closely they have followed the books compared to many other book-to-film ventures. You can’t deny that they did a good job in that respect and though they often did have to cut scenes, especially scenes that many would have loved to see, they generally weren’t central to the main plots of the books. Now of course, I have only read each book once, something which I do with pretty much every book I have ever read, and I generally read the books either after watching the movie or many years before movie came out. So, in general the links between them were fuzzy and I think it aided in my enjoyment of each format.

And there were definitely added scenes that weren’t in the books that left me feeling weird, but thankfully in movies, scenes don’t generally last more than a few minutes, so you aren’t subjected to them for very long. But to avoid any spoilers at this point, I won’t touch on the one aspect of the final movie that bothered me, but for those of you that have seen it, I’m guessing it bothered most of you, just as that part of the book bothered many people (though I actually wasn’t, but probably because I had very low expectations of it based on what people had told me).

How do you all feel about the final installment and the series as a whole?

What time is it?

Oh that’s right… Kind of late.

No post today, maybe if I can gather my senses and organize my brain I’ll get the post I had planned to do on Harry Potter done tomorrow.

And if you might be wondering, no I did not see the midnight showing, instead I saw it 8 hours early.

Reunion

I had a lot of fun over the weekend at my reunion, even if I did get completely soaked on the fourth of July. Being home was a lot of fun and I got to spend some good time with some old friends. Unfortunately it did rain almost non-stop (about 6 inches the first day I was back), so I didn’t get to go do a lot of the outdoors activities I was hoping to.

I also found it quite amusing that most of the people in my class showed up an hour or two late to most of our activities. Of course, I expect that most of them also had other activities they were doing that might have made them late as over half my class still lives in town. And I honestly wouldn’t mind some day being one of those people.

I have fond memories of our “little” island, even if I didn’t take full advantage of everything the town and surrounding areas had to offer. I had some good friends and had lots of fun. And lets be honest, being back in a colder climate was wonderful. I have to say, I’d much rather be cold then hot, because you can only take off so many clothes before you get in trouble, but putting on an extra layer or two does not draw as much attention and won’t land you in jail.

I sincerely hope that I will get the chance to return again soon, whether permanently or just to visit friends.

I hope you are all having a fantastic Friday!