NaNoWriMo

So guys!! Its almost that time of year again! NaNoWriMo!

For those of you who don't know November is National Novel Writing Month, and I have decided to participate this year. It'll be the first time I've ever done it. I found out about it last year in December so I couldn't do it. But I'm really excited!

I would be lying if I said I wasn't nervous. In NaNoWriMo the goal is to finish writing a novel in 30 days, that's 50,000 words. What you do is make a profile on the website and submit your word count. Like I said before, this is my first time participating so I don't know enough about it to explain it well.  So here's the link to the website if your are interested.

But, now that I'm doing this, I think I'll start with a clean slate. A fresh story, New world and new point of view. Who knows? Maybe this will help kick start my creativity again because, I'm not going to lie, I've been in a little bit of a slump.

I was thinking of different worlds I could create. I was thinking of creating a world where you couldn't feel your emotions. You could only taste them.

Like mad would taste ashy and sulfuric.
Happiness would taste smooth and sweet,
Peace would taste bitter like a hot cup of tea in the morning.
Love, well, love would be hard. I had a hard time thinking of what love would taste like. Would it taste like fire, because of passion? Or would it taste like sweet, but obviously a different kind of sweet than happiness. But being it love is being happy, so maybe it would be a combination of the taste of different emotions. I'm not sure. Love is something unique to each person so I feel like it would taste different for each person as well.

This idea sounds really hard to write a whole novel in, so I think I'll just save it for like a short story or a poem. I'll be doing some serious brain storming over the next couple of days preparing myself for November first. Whatever is it I decide on writing, I'll be posting it on here chapter by chapter.

I'm excited! I can't wait to start a new project in a new world with new characters!

I just hope I can keep to this and actually do it, 50,000 words is a lot and I have a hard enough time as it is trying to schedule in writing my other project. Keep me in your prayers!

I will keep all of you posted! Also if you are going to do it, add me! A.S Lamoore 
With the caps and the dots and the space, in that order!

Pulling out my hair

Writing a book is a horrific experience. Filled with many late nights, many cups of coffee and I don't even like coffee I just drink it because it makes me stay awake. Not to mention aggravated parents because you stay up so late. Tears. And plenty of tears.

I just turned in seventeen chapters to my editor and I'm panicking. To me writing is something I do with every fiber of my being. I put my heart and soul into everything that I write and I know this draft isn't perfect so there will be some constructive criticism.

I never knew how close I was to being finished until talking to my editor. All I need to do is write and ending then I'm done drafting. Easier said than done. 

There is so much going on I just can't get myself to write my story. It feels like the world is trying to throw everything at me all at once so I can't do this. Writing is my escape, but it's like I'm locked in a jail cell, searching for the keys through the bars and coming up empty. 

If feels like I'm never going to finish, that twenty years from now people will come up to me and ask me how my book is doing and I'll tell them the same thing I've told all of you. "I submitted seventeen chapters to my editor and all I need is an ending." 

Oh God help, please. 

Eternity feels longer than Forever

"I have aged in the months since my husbands death and my diagnosis. My skin has the wrinkled appearance of wax paper that someone has tried to flatten and reuse. My eyes fail me often- in the darkness, when headlights flash, when rain falls. It is unnerving  the new unreliability in my vision."

These are the beautiful words of the talented Kristin Hannah. These are the words that made me realize that this life passes so quickly, its frighting. 

This was the second paragraph of the book and I just had to put it down. It painted such a vivid image in my head of what my future holds. It terrified me. I was so overcome with sadness at the thought of living long enough to see all my loved ones die. Of how my own body, that is so reliable and strong now, will one day fail me. My once perfect vision will fade and my strong legs will weaken and will need the assistance of a walker or cane. Will my mind fall apart? What if I couldn't write anymore? What if my eyes became so bad I couldn't read? What if I would become so weak I couldn't take a walk in the woods. All of the hope I held so dear to my hear of the future shattered in my grasp. I was afraid.

  I always made a joke that I will live to be one hundred because I want to experience all of God's gift he put on this earth before I leave it. But I never stopped to think what that would in-tale. 

We are blessed with maybe eighty years if the Lord blesses us, to live on this planet. Seems like a lot. But it's not. We are like may flies. One day here and the next day gone, dissolving back into the ash in which we were created from. 

So whats the point? What significance does my life bring? I agree with Augustus Waters fear of oblivion. There will come a time when everyone who ever knew us will die and it is like we never existed. 

When I walk outside, I think back through the ages. How many graves do I walk over? There was not always lush grass under my feet. God knows how many bodies died at the spots where I stood. And I don't even know their names. I feel like I owe those ghost something. I try to imagine what kind of life they lead when they were alive and honor their spirit silently, to myself. Because one day I'll be the ghost another far off stranger will be walker over, and I would want the same.

But as tragic and hopeless as this all seems.

 There is a hope.

Forever the dust of our bones will cover the earth, and even this world will pass away. But in our eternity we will sit by Jesus' side, in our true home. God's heavenly kingdom. You see after our bodies wither away and our souls are forgotten on earth. Our spirit will go to Him. As long as we invested in our eternity while we lived like may flies. Jesus died for us so we could escape from the fear of oblivion and burning in the fiery pit.

It's no joke. 

But you don't get saved from humanities curse by being a good person or just because you say you are saved. Or because you choose not to believe. Ignoring it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. 

"I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." John 14:6

Jesus is our golden ticket to our eternity. Not only does He give us an eternity with Him. He makes our short lives in this world meaningful. We are called to be soldiers. To fight against the enemies evil plans, and to fight against our own flesh. We are ambassadors of the one True King. Spreading good news and guiding Jesus into the lives of others, saving their souls. 

It you don't think that is important then you have never been in the service of a King. Not only are we his soldiers, but we are His children. We are Princes and Princesses. Members of the Royal Guard. 

And to me, that's what makes our short lives meaningful. To work as hard as we can to destroy our selfish empires and expand His kingdom. So that when my time comes, when my vision starts to fail and my body weakens. I can wait in anticipation to see my Lord's face, to hear him say the words. 

"Well done my good and faithful servant." 

My thoughts on flaws

Flaws.

I hope you weren't looking for some inspirational post about how flaws are what make you beautiful and nobody's perfect and all that jazz. If you are, you have come to the wrong post.

As much as that is all true I'm going to talk about author flaws.

I was on good read the other day and I came across a review on John Green.

The review went a little something like this: (Its not word for word but its the jist of it.)

"I first read The Fault In Our Stars and I absolutely loved it. So much so I went on a John Green reading binge. But I was author blind. I read all his books and realized how flawed they all are. His characters voices in the books sound all the same. They are good reads but there is too many flaws."

First of all...NOOOOOOOOOOOO not all of his voices sound the same, yes they are all kind of that dorky, quirky personality but they are all different.

Second: ALL AUTHORS HAVE FLAWS IN THEIR WRITINGS!!!

J.K Rowling has admitted to switching rooms around in Hogwarts.

The classics that we praise so highly of are not even perfect, if they were why would they have annotated versions of them.

Gosh.

Plus John Green is my favorite so I had to defend him.

Scavenger Hunt For Souls

So you found this. Maybe you just randomly found me on google plus, or maybe even my blog was the next one after the "next blog" button on blogger. Maybe you were even lucky enough to get one of my little cards off my mom, despite my quiet protest because as much as I love her support, at times I get a wee bit embarrassed, you know being a daughter and all. But it is appreciated nonetheless.

Whatever ever road you travelled to find me it doesn't matter because you're here now. Prior to this you probably weren't too sure on what you'd find on a future author's blog. Would she have short stories? Annoying little blurbs about her insignificant life, well rest assured there is both. But you did find this post, and I believe it was not by accident.

I don't know what any of you are going through. I don't know what trials God is guiding you through, or if you even believe in God. Maybe you hate His guts and you still don't know why you are even still reading this blasted post. But I promise, whoever you are, this post is for you.

I was listening to Rend Collective and the song Alabaster came on and it brought me to my knees. I was dealing with some hard stuff in my life. And life being life it wasn't something tangible, I couldn't touch the chaos with my hands. My outside life was fine, happy family, best job in the world But on the inside I felt broken. Life can throw us some curve balls, horrible circumstances, shocking tradedy As horrible as those things are, I believe some of the hardest battles we have to face is the ones being waged between our own two ears. They are the ones we throw on a happy mask for because we are too afraid to admit something is wrong and we would rather act like everything is fine. Come up with excuses not to talk to our friends or family about it, which alienates us and  ultimately makes it worse for ourselves.

So anyway back to the song, Alabaster. There is a line that goes:

 

I am broken at Your feet

like an alabaster jar

every piece of who I am

laid before Your majesty.

 

This really struck a cord with me because I have this think about brokenness. Like I used to think that I was the only one in the whole world who was broken. ( I was only 17 don't hold I against me.) Obviously I was wrong. Everyone is broken in someway, some more than others.

 

 

In my church, we have these gorgeous Tiffany stained glass windows that are 200 years old, well they will be in 2017. I've looked at them almost every Sunday since I was 5 and they started just to blend in and I stopped noticing them. Well I had a thought one day that brought my attention back to them, when you look at stained glass all it is, is a bunch of broken glass dyed then placed together to create something absolutely breath taking. If an earthly man can do that to mere glass, imagine what your Father in Heaven could do with your broken pieces. He has a rather marvelous gift of turning broken into beautiful.

 

Up close, stained glass doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But as you back up you see the bigger picture.

 

 

 

 

It might not make sense now, but place your broken pieces at His feet, surrender to Him and watch as He takes your pieces and make them beautiful.

 

This post went really off what I was originally going to talk about but I know somewhere out there someone will get something out of this. Whether tonight, tomorrow or ten years from now.

 

When I wake up tomorrow I know I'm going to instantly regret posting this and will want to take it down, but I promise I won't. I'm not really on for speaking my deep thoughts, it makes me feel vulnerable and I hate that.

 

But I am a stained glass window, and I have to let my Creator shine through me

 

The Otherworld

Dreams.

Why is it that we remember some dreams but others are like a black cloud of nothingness. In the mornings light we search our consciousness for a mere ghost of an alternate reality. But what we find is more nothingness.

Nothingness shrouded with mystery. When those sleepless nights place a black veil over my dreams I can't help but wonder if it is my own mind protecting me.

Our minds can be our own worst enemy, but could it be a double agent?

Feeding us our most terrifying nightmares only to blot them out with inky darkness. Succumbing to regret and shame, wanting so desperately to fix the mess that it created.

Or maybe our mind is truly our enemy and it steals away the only paradise we have on this Earth. Our 8 hour ticket to the Otherworld.

A place where thoughts bounce amongst the stars and our bodies slide in and out of  Saturn's rings. Where we can fly and be with loved ones that are no longer here.

The Otherworld is vast space, as wonderful as it is horrifying. But what scares me the most is not the experiences we have during our visit but how powerful our minds are to erase such a visit.

True Colors

I always knew writing a novel would not be easy. What I didn't know was hard painful it would be. When I first started outlining I had my plot down. I knew from start to finish what was going to happen and why.

Well now I just want to cry. What I wanted to happen is happening differently. What I thought what would happen is not. And now my characters have taken on a mind of their own and I can't control them anymore. I am no longer the creator, just the instrument, I am being used.

It is so hard. I give published author's so much credit.

I am on the brink of a breakdown. The thought that I am a little over half done with my manuscript terrifies me because I am so close to being done.

I don't know how I'm going to end. So much editing needs done, I know I'm going to have to cut A LOT  of scenes. I am beyond stressing myself out. Maybe I just need a break.