The Writer who overcame writers Limbo, The Reader who is researching and seeing locations come to life!

 One of my favorite things to do when writing is look for photos that inspire me. A name, a place, a flower, whatever sparks the muse or mood I guess. Every once in a while I find a photo I love and I have to find out more about it. My current book has a character from Missouri, it is where my mother grew up and I have always wanted to visit. Thanks to the amazing internet I can visit their. The left is a photo and below are of Rock port, Missouri..I loved the fact that it was black and white and also was charming. The classic buildings are adorable. I decided my girl needed to grow up here.  My research has been so much fun. All of my stories are set in Portland, Oregon where I grew up. So I find the city and all its buildings amazing. Portland is great in that it restores the old and meshes it with the new buildings. In some areas it looks as if you stepped back in time, just like Rock Port below. England is also a place I have always wanted to visit. Wikipedia is one of my favorite sites on the internet and I love that I can find small towns and villages there.

The next set of photos are of Overton, Hampshire, England. Where my girls dad grew up. I chose these towns based on the photos. It is beautiful how a town or a moment can be captured behind the lens. I hope I am able to capture that in my stories as well.

There are so many times during this writing process when I am just overwhelmed there are so many books out there to read. So many versions of what to do, how to write etc. I have found this is my way. Research, visuals, and sometimes going in person to a location to see it, feel it, smell surroundings etc.

The above photos are of the Pearl district  it is one of my favorite places in Portland, Oregon. It is fascinating to me that a warehouse district is now an upscale shopping an restaurant district, it also boasts loft living at its finest! Below is my current building. I found a photo of this. Just its corner. The first shot of the brick building was all I found on the internet. I only had a street number. So I went in search of this actual building in the Pearl. It is better in person then online and the buildings around it are too. Below are some of the photos.

Around this area is also my other place to be when not writing Powell's city of books. It is one of the things our city is famous for and it lives up to its name.

Below are quotes I love, they describe writing in its essence..

Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia. ~E.L. Doctorow

A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket. ~Charles Peguy

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. ~Sylvia Plath

So I am happy to say my writers block is gone hallelujah!! As a reader I started reading my story as a  it has been great, except for a few parts... (well stuff I forgot to add, my poor readers glad I caught it!) Documented above is my research has lately on my current book, and adding to finished book...

~Life is a work in progress as writing is...Until next time readers, and hopeful writers. Jess =)

The Writer who succumbed to writers block, The Reader who went back to being just a mom.

 I know when I started this blog my excitement was evident. I had accomplished a long time goal. Writer me was anxious to get everything done as fast as possible. Reader me, was researching everything. Yet, I work full time,the holidays, and my children, and trying to be a wife who has energy for her husband is completely exhausting and debilitating sometimes. Even in exhaustion I always find time to be a wife and mom.  However, ask me how to manage time for myself and I usually laugh. Time for myself is a foreign country?

 A friend of mine pointed out something today I hadn't really thought of.

 My friend said: Your frame of mind is to be a mother and a wife. Your mind will be used for them first.  That statement was so true. The "me" in the scenario left after I got married and had kids. I will always put there needs about my own. I can always find the kids stuff, my hubby's stuff. Ask me where mine is, I have no idea most of the time. I laugh about it, joke that even at 38 I am senile. In actuality I am amazed if I get an hour to myself, and honestly I am not usually thinking about writing. Even though it is such a huge part of who I am, I still chose it last? I wonder if this it the reason for my writers block these past two months. I never intended to not write for two months. Everything I have read about blogs, says you are supposed to write every week to get a following? My goodness, I don't even get a day off some weeks.

 So my natural reaction when I cannot write is "mom mode." Which is okay because its also me. It is not a motivator to write though. So I have felt recently like this maybe isn't what I am supposed to do. I have been second guessing myself and making excuses not to write..This procrastination is not me. I am usually an all or nothing gal. So I have been cleaning, cooking, and doing all these other things instead of write. I wonder if anyone else experiences this? I also had a birthday in January and as you age, I think you spend time thinking about what you haven't done. So the above picture is accurate for how I have been feeling lately about my writing. I also started editing and took out good stuff because I was over analyzing things like always. The below picture is also accurate lol..

 Then a co-worker encouraged me, an another demanded more pages, and then a dream I had about the story actually made sense. Here I am; excited about writing again and motivated to share this story with you. I was stuck in this scene and didn't know how to write my girl out of it. Then it just came to me and I stared writing at my lunch that day.

 So my self-doubt just about overwhelmed me, and it almost succeeded. Yet, I am here again and trying anew. Cross your fingers and kick writers block on its a@%..That is what I am going to do.

~Until next time readers, and hopeful writers. Jess =)

The Writer who counts her Blessings. The Reader who reads Charles Dickens.

 You know how thanksgiving is all about the food, and getting together. Mostly cooking for days and then hoping it turns out good. Well I think Christmas is all about the gifts. I mean all the advertisements and such that try and get you to buy. Your so busy trying to find the perfect gift you forget the price, you buy whatever is left. Or you are one of those people who shop the day after Thanksgiving and hope they don't get killed shopping for socks! It is so funny to me the complete polar opposites Thanksgiving and Christmas become. Yet they were both formed to give thanks for you blessings and your families, our freedoms. I am so glad there is still sanity in my house, we generally make our Christmas gifts, and I only buy things for the kids. It has become a tradition for me to make ornaments of some shape or form for the grownups in my family. I love the symbolism of the ornaments an how they represent special times, and memories in our lives. I am a sucker for cheesy Christmas movies too, and I have to have a real tree!! I know I am weird...

 As a Writer, it is all about the details and describing that perfect person, that perfect place, and the perfect scene and sometimes it is difficult. I mean right now, I have a vision for this scene and I cannot seem to create it on paper, so then I will look for visual aids. Sometimes I find them sometimes I don't. It is a process like this when creating anything. So I guess my traditions of making ornaments is like writing a book. Its a process and its different and unique each time. So I look forward to see what my family thinks about what I have created. So even my gifts are all about the details..

 The Reader me is always reading wonderful stories of hope during this season. My kids and I always chose to children from the giving tree and purchase gifts for them another one of my traditions...Christmas is that amazing time when people give more of themselves and help others I love it..Reminds me of my favorite Christmas movie and book. A Christmas Carol..Dickens has been a favorite of mine for years and years. I love his stories. I hear a lot of stuff about the man, but all I know is the stories. So if you have never read his book it is one that should be read!! Scrooge learns that giving is way better then receiving..He is amazing at his details, smells, sounds, you feel as if you are in the story! I aspire to this. Its amazing.

Quotes above and below are some of my favorites. Enjoy.

 ~I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. ~Charles Dickens

I agree Mr.Dickens, Hope you all have a wonderful and blessed holiday season.

 ~Until next time readers, and hopeful writers. Jess =)
PS I have three query letters ready to be sent out in January, cross your fingers for me..

The Writer who is Thankful... The Reader who is in search of Thanksgiving recipes?

 It is amazing to me that as I get older, I am still learning each day. I enjoy the challenge of learning new things each day. I have been doing this lately with recipes and trying new ingredients and different tastes. My family has enjoyed this too. All of them except my 10 year old son he is less then thrilled with new stuff but he has been trying it. I used butternut squash with a pork chop recipe it turned out yummy. Heres the link to that recipe by the way:

 http://www.cookinglight.com/food/quick-healthy/quick-easy-pork-recipes

This Thanksgiving was no exception. I am the oldest of three. I have always had a certain responsibility when it comes to holidays and in recent years it usually means I host the events at my house and everybody comes...So when holidays arise it is hectic.  This year was no exception. I was hosting and in charge of making the main meal! In the past it has been my house, I am the host and everybody else brings the food. I just show up usually because I am working at the hospital. So I have been spoiled I guess! I have made a turkey before but never for other people at a large event. I was very stressed. I was sure I would mess it up and everyone would be talking about the mess up till I die. My family is great that way. Reminding you in subtle ways forever, like the time at Christmas when the flue on the fireplace was closed and started a fire not knowing this and caught the wreath above it on fire!! Lol, I can laugh about this now. I am happy to say I didn't burn the turkey!!! No fires either!!!  So I learned that with faith and a good recipe food turns out very good.

 My most interesting thought while as the READER looking though all the cookbooks and websites. Was how a recipe is like a good novel. You have all these ingredients and temperature, and you make it and have faith it will turn out good. I think this is what in essence what writers do. We add all the ingredients, and after we try the recipe once, the next time we make it we change it to our tastes, or add other ingredients we like, and the recipe becomes ours. A good story is something that you read and you love. As the WRITER I am always thinking well if I wrote this story I would have added more to this, or taken this out. It is like doctoring a recipe. So I am still working on the recipe that I think will work best for my finished novel and I am creating a new one with my second  book.

  So I am very thankful for my family that keeps me grounded and my husband who gets me to laugh a lot when I am stressed. I am grateful for my friends who keep reading my ramblings and my future friends that will read my stories. Happy Belated Thanksgiving everyone. Hope you have much to be thankful for, and many blessings to reflect upon.

Until next time readers, and hopeful writers. Jess =)

The Writer who's never been to a critique group before?

 So I may be the only writer on the planet who has never been to a critique group. I was trying to figure out why I had never been critiqued. My result I have been living in my story, and its characters for so long (10+ years) I forgot to ask what other people thought. Does anyone else have this problem? Every project I enter into is a complete immersive experience and I forget all else lol. I either have an all or nothing button. I use with everything in my life. There is not medium button.
I started editing my book and I have to stop myself from over editing. It is very hard. I worry I do not have enough, and then I worry I have to much so it is a precarious ledge I find myself on.

So when I went to a critique it was just to see what it was all about, and it was very interesting. I was intrigued by all these people and there amazing ideas and stories. So many different ages of writers too, There were retirees, college students, moms, teachers, college professors, and me just a working gal. It was also an affirmation for the Writer me, that I am not too old to chase this dream, I am not too old to get this book published. The moderator is actually a publisher and an editor so her experience is going to be so great too. The best part for the Reader me, it was fifteen books being read simultaneously  in two hours, it was awesome. I was thoroughly impressed by how the group was organized and run. Each person critiqued two pieces in a group of fifteen. Each person got assigned different books each week so there's lots of variety.  There is memoirs, short stories, children's, science fiction, young adult, romance, humor, and action adventure in this group. I cannot wait to go back in December. Unfortunately I can only go this group once a month. In my rotation at the hospital I only get one Tuesday off a month, this  group meets every Tues morning. So my stuff has not been evaluated yet. It will be next month though. I will have to keep you posted as to how that goes. I took most of last month off from my reading and my writing, I was a little burnt out I admit. We had a lot of family activities as well.

 Writer me, has been doing some study this month on the psychological aspects of characters.Characterization etc. I found a wonderful book at the library called: Breathing life into your Characters. How to give your characters Emotional, and Psychological depth. By author Rachel Ballon PhD... I was so wonderful in fact I bought my very own copy. I will have to keep you all updated on how that book goes and how this pertains to my new Character in my second book. Reader me is working on an 8 book series I just got from the library. It is action/thriller/romance which is what my second book in progress is. So its also research at least that is what I tell myself lol.

In reference to what I was reading, this last month. I didn't read much but my kids were reading a lot of the R.L.Stine Goosebumps series, and it reminded me of a favorite author I read when I was just 13-15. Christopher Pike, his scary young adults books were just what I needed when I went through my goth, and black period. I wore only black and read only horror Frankenstein, Bram Stokers Dracula, and numerous other titles. He was a wonderful author that focused on high school students and murders in small towns. They were fantastic. In the spirit of Halloween and last month. Here is the link to his page: https://www.facebook.com/ChristopherPikeBooks
http://christopherpikefanclub.com

Until next time readers, and hopeful writers. Jess =)

The writer whose dream to finish her novel has become reality!

Reading has been my thing since I was my son(10) and daughters (13) age. I was  one of the anti-social kids who always had her nose in a book. If you read my previous blog I also read in part to block myself from the bullies, and the snobs I went to school with. I equipped myself with learning anything an everything! My Mom used to pick a word from the dictionary and we would learn its meaning. So cool. Also nerdy,lol..

 I felt that knowledge was power. As a kid we never had a lot of money so we would spend our summers, and weekends at the library. It is one of the best memories I have. Libraries are the best invention next to hot water heaters as far as I am concerned lol..

 At Age 10  I wrote my first story. A women in the civil war, and it was 30 pages long. I still have it. I have since added lots of history to it, and changed it. That is one of my many books I want to write. So this is just one of those stepping stones to get published.  I do have two short stories that I published,  on amazon so its a start. 

One of the authors I started reading when my son was a newborn was; Debbie Macomber, She was a mom too, that wrote when her kids were young, and ended up sending out a manuscript and she used her last $ to do it. She was such and inspiration to me. I got to meet her in 2001, she was as lovely as I thought she would be, and so nice.  So she is the author I am selecting this time to highlight.

http://www.debbiemacomber.com, the first book I read of hers was 

~Lonesome Cowboy; it is a Texas series set in a small town. Similar to her Cedar Cove series. All her books are heartwarming an charming. Filled with great little towns, everyone wants to live in. So I hope you will check her out. She has inspried me a "nobody" to go for this dream and live it.

When I started this blog I was excited about my accomplishment. I had finished my novel. It took me 10 years and three months to write it. This book has changed so much since I started. I think is my sixth version.Those have all been stepping stones, and many stairs, I have climbed to get to this point. I think that life is always a work in progress. A journey and its moves in all directions, and sometimes not the ones you plan. That may seem like a long time, but in those ten years, I went to college, moved states, had two children. Worked in retail mostly, and watched several of the stores I had worked for close. I have had so many lows, and so many highs in that time. Yet I feel like this is a brand new start, and exciting challenge. I was unable to go to the critique due to family illness, but as soon as I go I will post my observations and what we are reading. Happy reading, dreaming, and writing! Jess

The writer who reads to escape bullies!

I saw this quote and thought about how this writing journey of mine began. I was in the fifth grade and I was going to a snobby Christian school, my family was the one of the most poor families in the school, we were allowed to go at a discount because my dad did maintenance on the building, and drove the church van. The constant bullies were the rich girls who had dimaond earrings and frosted hairdos at ages 10 and 13? It was crazy to me. They would bully me on field trips because I didn't have trendy clothes, I didn't have diamonds. I looked at them like they were aliens and continued to read my books. Series books were my favorite because I knew the character  I loved would be back. Little house on the praire, Nancy Drew of course. In high school the Sweet Valley High series, and Christopher Pike.

My absolute favorite was a series called Mandie; by Lois Gladys Leppard. It is a little known fact that she wrote her first Mandie; book the Secret tunnel, when she was just eleven years old. Her character was the same age as me and I felt like Mandie and I were best friends. So in response to the bullies whom I ignored. I retreated from people, and social interactions Instead of being negative I turned it into a positive. I volunteered in my English teachers class after school, and the library during school. I sat with little kids in the library and helped them pronounce words. I even sometime recommended stuff to moms. It was here in these two rooms that I discovered my love of reading and the want to write a story that meant something. My English teacher used to give us a word of the day then we would have to define it and write a paragraph about this word. I thrived in this environment I yearned for it. I was the most amazing experience I can remember. Knowledge defiantly has power. So even though I was picked on, I found something that I loved. Reading, and learning.

I have put this dream off for many years, but I have always written stories. I have never shown them to anyone outside family. So this next step will be a huge one for me. I am going to a critique class next week. We shall see what the group thinks of my first baby. I am including a link to the Mandie website if you have any girls looking for a great young girl series. Also Lois's biography. I will try an highlight a different author with each posting, and explain how they inspired me to my completed novel.
~Moral to this is sometimes when bad things happen, in my case bullies. You can chose to make it a positive and it will propel you forward into another direction entirely and it may become what you have always been looking for. =)

Thanks for stopping by! Jess

~Lois Gladys Leppard is the ever-popular and prolific writer of Mandie Books. She has also been a professional singer, actress, and playwright. Lois studied at the New York School of Music and the Voice Beautiful Institute in New York under Glenn Morris Starkie. Additionally, she and her two sisters, Sibyl and Louise, sang professionally as the Larke Sisters and appeared in the operetta Bohemian Girl and were presented at Carnegie Hall. As a drama student, she was in the group that organized The Little Theater in her home town. She has written several plays and was employed with Columbia Pictures.

She wrote the first Mandie book, Mandie and The Secret Tunnel, when she was eleven years old. However, the book was not published until many years later.
http://www.mandie.com