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 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 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 elusive novel finished, what now?

It has been a huge dream of mine to create a novel, it is a book I have been working on for over ten years. Last month I wrote the last paragraph! I am astonished. I mean you have a goal for a very long time you never think your going to achieve it. I put if off so many times because I was a mom, and a wife and working all the time. However I never let that dream fade even when people I love told me, "writing a book is not a real job." "Its a fairytale Jess, not real." I have listened to the naysayers for years. Sometimes I actually listened to them. Now I am stepping away from the past and reaching for the future which is publishing my novel. I hope this blog will serve as a resource to others who are on the same path as me, ones who have this dream, and want to complete it. This is step one. I hope you will follow me all the way.

www.facebook.com/authorJessicaPOwen
 Thanks for reading this. Jessica