My First Legal Drink!

It's finally happened, I've made it to 21. Usually it wouldn't be a big deal, but considering all m friends are a couple years older than me, it's finally nice to be able to go out with them and have drinks. We had such an amazing time at the cheesecake factory and I couldn't have asked for a better birthday.

My first legal drink and I got a strawberry daiquiri. It was kinda cheating, since I've had one before but it was delicious. I'm dying to try a martini and a margarita now. I also had a shot of washington apple. It was okay, but I would have preferred jack. Now I'm another year older and so much more determined to start my life. I'm trying to look for jobs in libraries that don't require a degree yet.It's actually pretty hard to find one, but whenever a job goes up, I always apply. Crossing my fingers that they call me.

I also can't wait until spring. I'm more than ready to start classes again. After a year without them, I absolutely miss everything about it. So here's to new beginnings.

On a even brighter note, me and my best friend were talking and finally were able to come up with a day that we can go write. We're going to go hang out at Barnes and Nobles, grab some coffee and just plan/write our hearts out. She's a bit ahead of me with knowing what she's going to write. It's a idea that she had had for years now and started writing, but never really knew where to take it. It's been nearly four years and she's finally going back to it, after me begging for so long.

I still haven't a clue as to where I'm ever going to start. I was going over all my old works and they were good, but they aren't something that I would really like to continue. I've always tried to write a vampire story, but it has never worked out for me. Usually because I always think that it should be this dark gothic thing, but in my head when I imagine vampires, its all glam and social elites. I will forever love the dark moody vampires or the vampires that kick ass and wear leather all the time, but in my head, my vampires have a king and a queen, they have masquerades and live in places like New York City, London, Milan, Venice. They are beautiful creatures that deceive and manipulate to get what they want. They've been around for thousands of years 

So I guess I do have a sort of backdrop for my story and what kind of image I want it to give, but that basically all I have. Maybe I'll actually have something to work with for thursday.

It's All New

So it's been a while since I've last posted and I want to say that I've been super productive and been kicking butt with all my goals. Some I have, some I really haven't at all. About a week ago I dug out all my old paints and brushes from the garage and started painting. Nothing big, and it's been nearly two years since I've even thought about drawing, much less painting, but I just got this sudden urge,

My process is really just putting a bunch of colors on the page before it actually turns into anything. I wont even begin to tell you how much of a mess I made. My mom wasn't too pleased with it, but she's always loved my paintings and now we're in the process of hunting down frames so we came put them up in the living room.

Speaking of hunting, there are vampires in Universal. This week was the official start of Halloween Horror Nights and us lucky team members got our very own preview night. Let me tell you, as I was walking through the Dracula house, my mind was going crazy with all sorts of ideas when these vampires were jumping out at us and hissing in our faces. Then my mind was completely blown when we walked through a scare zone that is completely dedicated to a masquerade ball. I was buzzing with excitement and nearly talked my friends ear off with how many story ideas I had.

Although we don't get much of Autumn here in Florida, it's my favorite season. I love the idea of leaves changing colors, the chill in the air just starting and of course, the things that go bump in the night. There's two sides of my really, The side that loves soft and whimsical things and then the slightly larger side that loves all things supernatural and slightly disturbed. There's no middle. Which I think is why I always struggle with my writing. On one hand I want to write whimsical sad stories about journeys and love and then on the other hand I want to right dark gothic stories about blood and curses. I still haven't been able to find an in-between.

There's this one book called Daughter of Smoke and Bones that managed to pull it off so perfectly in my opinion. It's all writing so whimsically and magical, yet at the same time its angels and demons and wars. I want to be able to perfect that skill.

Has anyone ever seen this show? I started watching it when it first aired, but then I was always working and never was able to see it. I found it on netflix the other day and I remember how much I loved it. Now I'm just frustrated it had only one season.

Really all of this is just adding to me wanting to write more, but the big problem is that I don't know what to write. Every time I start to get something, I scrap the idea because it either reminds me too much of something else or because it doesn't want to go anywhere afterwords. Hopefully I'll buckle down and start writing soon.

Slapping Myself Awake

Lately I've been freaking out internally and sometimes externally as well. I started this blog almost three months ago in order to gather my thoughts and to hopefully motivate myself to start writing again. So far, it's been a no go. I have been doing better then I was a year ago where I couldn't even get a basic idea about anything. Now I'm slowly, very slowly trudging forth in some unmarked path that I have no idea where it'll take me, but at least I'm not standing still anymore.

In two months I'm going to be 21. Less then two months really, about 52 days. My 17 year old self is screaming at me asking me why we haven't graduated college yet or why haven't we traveled or heck, why haven't we written one book? Even if it was a complete mess.

Yeah, my 17 year old self had a fondness for cuss words. Now I try to stray away from them, but I can't help but let it get to me. I did have all these plans especially about school. I was never serious about it, but I was the kid who got good grades and had a steady 3.2 GPA. I just never saw the point until I graduated high school and knew that I needed some type of degree so I wouldn't be stuck with a theme park job like everyone else I knew.

Of course here we are four years later with a theme park job and kicking myself for missing so many opportunities that were literally slapping me in the face. Now I'm pushing myself to go back to college after nearly two years without it. Sounds absolutely terrifying, but I know it's going to pay off in the long run.

I know I want to work in a museum or a library. Those are the two things that I'm most sure off. I know I want to study Humanities/History. I know I want to write a book. I don't need to share it with the rest of the world, but it's something I've been wanting to do since I was 11 years old and first figured out that I love writing stories.

Come January, I'm going to head straight towards the campus and start my classes and I'm going to work my butt off. I keep imagining this life for myself and I'm not doing anything about it.

Besides school, there's the way I'm viewing myself both physically and mentally. It isn't healthy at all. I've never been confident in myself at all, and there was a time a couple years ago where it got really bad. I managed to pull through with no ones help but my own. Nobody really understood at the time what I was going through. Everyone could see it, but it was easier for everyone to look away and I don't blame them. Lately, I'm starting to realize that the voices that were always getting my down back then are starting to get louder and louder. Back then I used to drown them out with music and a blade. I've realized that I can't do that again.

So it starts today, changing my thoughts. I realize that I'm probably going to crash and burn a few times and want nothing more than to give up. Hopefully I don't.

Hello August, why is it still so hot?

It's never cold in Florida, not really. We have Summer and then about one month of cooler temperatures at some point between November and February. I hope one of these days I can see all four seasons.

I've started saving up for a car and so far its going well. It's nice actually having money right now. I'm also planning on going back to school, though at the moment I'm not sure which one I want to go too. I've been studying at Valencia for a while before I decided to take a break since I had no clue what I even wanted to study. Now I do, but they don't have to program that I want, where as in Seminole, they do have a course for Humanities and still offer the direct connect to UCF. Only thing is the closest Seminole campus is still pretty far away from my house and I don't want to do online classes. Luckily I still have until December to decide what I want to do.

Work has been going pretty great, though not as well as we had hoped. They are cutting back on hours like crazy which I don't really mind, but at the same time it does suck. At least I'm still getting hours.

Another great thing that's happened is that I started Supernatural. My friend has been telling me about this show for years, and I have seen a couple episodes before and they had been good, I just never really knew much about what was happening. I finally started from season one and I can't believe I've waited this long to get into this show.

This is just to great and I'm slowly dying from all the emotions it makes me feel, plus my paranoia is completely shot and every little sound I hear is a ghost or a demon now. I don't know why I do this to myself, but I don't care.

With all the paranormal stuff going on in the show, made my realize just how much I love this genre and brought me back to when me and my friend visited BAM and I found myself in the New Age area. I've been telling myself I will write something about witches and magic and maybe even demons, vampires and every other things that goes bump in the night for the longest time now, but about five seconds after I make this decision, I go back and say I'm not ready or my idea doesn't have enough to actually start this. So for the past two weeks, I've been tentatively doing some research and reading more stuff in the genre as well as watching more shows about it.

I've got an idea, nothing big yet, but it's a reason to write this out. I have my main character and I have what sets the entire story into motion and keeps it moving. I haven't actually started writing anything down. It's all in my head at the moment slowly making itself more and more real.

Hopefully, if I keep going the way I am, I'll be able to actually start planning on actual paper soon.

I Don't Know What To Call This

It's been nearly month since my last post and I wan't to say that I've been completely productive with my days and that my words are just filling up pages in my notebook, but I can't say that. I actually did go and have a writing day with my friend before this month started and I had this idea all planned out to the point where I could start writing and it made sense, but I couldn't go through with it. It was all about vampires and in my opinion it was just what I needed. the perfect blend of violence, and freedom, and fighting for what was right. I couldn't even start it. So far the past months, I've been doing nothing but going to work and coming home to sleep. There were two or three days where I actually got to hang out with friends that wasn't at work and that was amazing.

I'm still in the process of reading The Bloodlines series by Richelle Mead and it's still good. I just bought the third book and now there's two guys on the cover as well as the girl. I'm really hoping that it doesn't turn into some love triangle. I can't express how much I hate love triangles, which was the main reason why I stopped reading young adult books in the first place because it seems that's all there was with every book I would pick up. I was completely hesitant on stating this genre again, but I remembered how much I loved The Vampire Academy series a couple years ago, so hopefully it isn't too bad. Right not it's the only series I'm reading and I have no idea what I'm going to red next. I don't know if I'm going to start the Harry Potter series again or just try to find something else entirely.

The other day me and my friend were hanging out at Books A Million and I found myself in the new age area looking at all the books they had about magic, spells, and tarots. (I don't know why they call it new age, when it's been around longer than Christianity) But anyway, I've always wanted to learn more about this stuff. I've always found it fascinating and would always check out books about Wicca and Pagan stuff at the library whenever I wanted to write a story about witches. I fell in love with this kind of stuff and how they were connected to the basic elements and so on. While I was standing there, I was just itching to purchase all these books and start my research. I didn't get them but its been on my mind and I haven't been able to think about anything else or the fact that I really do want to write something about spell castors. Whether they are going to witches or not, is still undecided in my head.

I've been thinking about it for a long time now too. How I want it to be a YA and how it's mostly about self discovery and romance, because I can't write anything without having some type of romance in it. Though the way I see it in my head, I know I'm going to have to right it differently then my previous stories and I know that's mostly whats been holding me back from starting.

On other news I'm going to start cleaning up my pinterest. I have too many folders for things that don't need their own folders. So hopefully while I'm doing this it'll set off some type of inspiration and get me moving on my plan.

Camp Nanowrimo!

It starts it 6 days! I'm so excited for this. Every time Nanowrimo comes around, I always get excited for it but I never have a decent idea to start it. This time is different. I have a pretty good idea what I want to write and I almost shocked myself when I figured out if was going to be a young adult story. I haven't written anything for that genre in years. Usually it's been that my main characters sort of age with me, but I just knew this wasn't one of those cases. I see my character aging and rowing up, but I see the very start of when everything bad starts to happen. (I love when bad things happen in stories, I don't know why)

So title? check!
Characters? check!
Plot?check!
and whats this, a plot twist? check!
whats that, I have plans to make it a series? check!

I'm super excited about this. The last time I had actually planned out an entire series for a story was back in high school. I was just entering 11th grade and came up with this series that I loved and still do love. I have it stashed somewhere on my flash drive(where ever that may be) It's also the longest story I've ever written (about 20,000 words) I know that at some point in my life time I going to go back and actually complete that series, because it was so cool in my opinion. I certainly had a lot of fun while I was writing it. It was all about reapers, and death, and goddesses.

Now my new story!

I started writing some things for it just to see what kind of point of view it should be. At the moment, I decided first person. It's been a long time since I've even written in first person, so we'll see how this goes. I'm keeping it in mind that I can always switch to third person if I don't like it. I'm going to spend the next five days between work and plotting. That's all I have plan and maybe go to the bookstore and get the next book of the Bloodline series.

But so far I've decided to call my story Love Me Dead. I'm not sure if I'll keep it, but I love it and so far it goes with the story which is good enough for me. I don't want to say too much about it, just so I can keep my excitement alive. Usually if I don't tell people, it encourages me more to actually write and have some stuff for them to read. I don't know its just the way I work.

Of Love and Other Things

I'm a sucker when it comes to a good romance book. Usually I'm going up and down the isles in barnes and nobles just plucking books of the shelves and reading their backs to find out more about them. Usually I never go looking for a book in particular, unless I keep hearing about it. There are two types of love stories that I'm addicted to. The first being about two people coming together and just traveling the world and falling in love with the adventure and finally each other. There's just something so magical about it in my opinion. I love reading about these characters just finding themselves and experiencing life. I'm usually not one to read a story without some type of fantasy in it, but there are those books that sneak their way into my heart and stay there forever.

On my journey to the bookstore I picked up two books. The first was Just One Day by Gayle Forman. I found out about this book a long time ago, but never gave it any real thought. Today I just happened to see it on the bookshelf. I finished it in five hours. I could not put it down. I kept grinning like an idiot and fell completely in love with this story. The second book I got was Bloodlines by Richelle Mead. I've read her Vampire Academy series and fell completely in love with Rose. When I found out she had started on another series in the same world, I flipped. I've known about it for a long time now, but I never really read it because I knew it wasn't the right time. Now I'm looking forward to reading it.

So, I've come up with this great plot and characters for a magical realism story. Like I have everything I could possibly need to just start writing and get a couple couple paragraphs in, but I haven't started writing. I'm so completely frustrated with myself. On one hand, I do want to write this story about magical things with this amazing world that's almost like a complete fairy tale, but then deep down I want to write something completely badass. I have this idea for this girl who's just completely sure of herself. Like the kind of girl who walks like she owns the world underneath her feet and she knows it.

Part of my wants this beautiful and magical world while this other part of me wants the darkness and violence and drama. (I always say that I'm a Hufflepuff on the outside, but a complete Slytherin on the inside) I'm not sure what I'm going to do at this point at all, but I know I have to do something.

While I was also getting myself lost in the bookstore, all I kept thinking about was why I wasn't working in one? I want to be a Librarian, it would only make sense to start somewhere. It's what I want to go back to school and study. I really want to work in a bookstore and the only ones close to me are Barnes and Nobles and Books-A-Million. I like both store just fine, but they have this thing where apparently you have to know alot about the nook and getting people to buy their membership. I don't mind the nook and I wouldn't mind selling it, but why memberships? Why cant bookstores just be about books and not memberships and meeting certain numbers.