Dear Asshat:

There will be no “Flash Fiction Friday” today because I felt like getting this out of my system. Enjoy!

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Dear Asshat on YouTube,

It’s a bit humorous that you appeared on my channel only about a week after my blog post about dealing with people like you on YouTube. Humorous enough, in fact, that I thought I’d go ahead and write this little letter to you to share the mirth with my loyal (and significantly less asshat-ish) followers.

You swooped in on one of my videos like an emotional time bomb, not content to simply rage directly at me, but also intent on spreading shrapnel to my viewers via rude replies on their comments as well. You were quite worked up, it seemed, about my decision to purchase 15 of the GameStop Black Friday Funko Mystery boxes back in November. That’s nothing new; plenty of people got a bit frustrated with the fact that I’d chosen to buy so many of the boxes (despite the fact that, as I’d explained, my particular store STILL had boxes over a month later, so I didn’t exactly keep anyone from managing to get one). However, while some people definitely got upset, defensive, and sometimes even a little mouthy and rude, your comments were a new kind of ridiculous.

You didn’t just get angry at me for buying so many boxes: you called my very character into question in the weirdest way I’ve ever seen. You called me a number of names and slurs and implied, to my complete and utter confusion, that spending so much money on my “stupid hobby” must mean that I get a huge baby bonus or that I’m on welfare. I can’t even begin to explain how stupid that sounds and how hard it made me laugh. Do you understand how things like welfare work? Also, did it never occur to you that, hey, maybe I can afford to spend a lot of money on my “stupid hobby” because I (*SHOCK*) have a good job? I know, totally hard to comprehend, right? Crazy-sauce, even. That totally couldn’t be it. No way.

I got a good chuckle out of your strange and unfounded accusations, and at first I was going to do what I usually do and simply ignore you, because there is clearly no sense in arguing with someone who jumps right from “she spends a lot of money on something frivolous” to “she’s totally on welfare”. But then I noticed that you continued your tirade on the comment threads of several of my more reasonable followers who weren’t being assholes. And in those tirades you implied that I am somehow a bad mother because I (*GASP*) spend some of my money on something that’s not directly related to mothering. THE HORROR. My daughter totally must be traipsing around in soiled hand-me-downs and subsisting on two crackers and a glass of water for each meal because I choose to purchase collectibles on occasion. That’s a totally reasonable jump right there. Excellent detective work, Sherlock.

Ah! Shit! Proof of my complete inability to love and raise a child! Get it away!   GET IT AWAY!

I could have left the comments up; I’m sure that either my husband or some of the followers whose comment threads you raped would have gotten pissed of to rip you a new one. Or I could have ripped you a new one myself, because lord knows you certainly deserve it for slinging unwarranted insults at someone you know nothing about. But you know what? It’s not worth it. It’s not worth letting the comment section of my video devolve into a bar-room brawl over this, because your poor attitude and strange, unreasonable slights show me that you’re clearly an emotional wreck who needed to take out a great deal of frustration and anger on a total stranger.

So, congratulations! You’re the first person to ever have not only one, but a large number of comments deleted from my YouTube channel, and if you feel like dropping by again I’ll be ready and waiting to report you for abuse. Cheers! And here’s hoping that you manage to find the anger management course that you so desperately seem to need.

Love and kisses,
Your Friendly Neighborhood “Stupid Bitch”

Sometimes a Little Deprivation is a Good Thing

Week 4 of The Artist’s Way is about “recovering a sense of integrity”. It mostly speaks about listening to your gut feelings about what is and isn’t good for you. Cameron urges you to look to your morning pages for clues – things you’ve been complaining about or getting angry about every time you empty your mind – of things that you can change. This chapter urges you to consider making the big scary changes that you know you need to make but that you can’t bring yourself to make for whatever reason. (For example, leaving an abusive lover, or ditching a friend who is an emotional vampire.)

This week I’m not going to share an exercise, because instead I want to talk about something else that pops up in chapter 4: something that is surprisingly difficult but totally worth it.

At the end of chapter 4 Cameron suggests a week of “reading deprivation”, and that’s exactly what it sounds like. She suggests that artists, by nature, tend to spend great quantities of time reading (whether it be books, magazines, newspapers, websites, etc) and other like-activities (watching TV and movies, playing video games, etc). She suggests a week of cutting yourself off from these activities. The reasoning is that they are distractions, that artists have a way of doing everything but what they really should be doing. Cameron goes on to talk about how whenever she brings up this idea of “reading deprivation” to her classes, she is inevitably met with anger and disbelief. People insist that this is impossible, that they can’t just cut all forms of reading out of their life for a week, and besides that, “what will I do with the time?”

Even before Cameron went on to explain just exactly what you can do with that time, I found this a little funny. “What will I do with the time?” REALLY?

Not many people know this about me, but I have a very addictive personality – not when it comes to drugs or alcohol or anything like that, no. I have an addictive personality when it comes to casual gaming and internet use. Several years back now I discovered a site called Gaia Online. For all intents and purposes it’s a multifaceted online community where you play games, follow storylines, and interact with other players in order to…well to be honest, the point is pretty much to keep earning money so that you can keep buying pretty outfits for your character. There’s not much more to it than that. I hooked on to this site when I was first working at the paper mill. I had moved away from home, and my husband (then boyfriend) hadn’t yet followed me because he was finishing school. So I was up in this new town, all alone, with only my new job to fill the day…and my new obsession. I can’t really convey to you how much time I spent on this game. It was day in and day out. Sometimes I’d be up until 1 in the morning playing it. It was the greatest time vampire of my existence, and it took a surprising amount of effort to quit it.

For me, this crap is worse than crack.

These days I’m more wary of this kind of thing, but my little addictions pop up in other ways – binging on other peoples’ blog posts, reading countless Cracked.com posts on my iPhone, playing Angry Birds with the baby on my tablet – and I have to be wary of them because time just vanishes when I allow them into my life. But here’s the thing…when I am able to abstain, to keep myself from wasting time on one of these little habits of mine, the absolute last thought in my head is “what will I do with the time”?

I will fully admit that I am failing the reading deprivation suggestion, mostly out of good old fashioned stubbornness, but in the past couple of days since I read about it I’ve been very mindful. I’ve been working my “reading” into little pockets of the day when I’m able to multitask (reading a Cracked.com article while stirring a pot for supper). As a result I’ve been squeezing more time out of the day, and do you know what I’ve been doing with it? I’ve been writing. I’ve been cleaning. I’ve been organizing. I’ve been doing all the things that I constantly avoid doing by way of these little time vampires that weasel their way into my head and make me feel like I should be focusing on them instead.

And that’s the key, I think. If you are able to inject more time into the day, and your reaction to that is to ask, “what do I do with it?”, you’re in denial. If you take half a moment to look inside and think about all the things you need to get done – or even all the things you want to get done – I’m sure you’ll come up with a million things that you can do with that extra time.

So get to work, people. Check Facebook a few dozen times less today. Put down that mobile game that just goes on and on and doesn’t really have a purpose. Turn off that TV show that you don’t even really like. A little leisure time is good (important, even), but our time is also too precious and too short to waste so much of it on everything but what we really need (or want) to get done.

Have you ever tried something like “reading deprivation”? How did it go? Do you have any little addictions (reading, mobile games, TV) that take up way too much of your time and keep you from getting anything done? Why do you continue to give in to those addictions? Please share!

Accountability Tuesdays – Week 34

Fellow bloggers, do you ever peruse the spam section of your comments folder? I’ve been flipping through there lately whilst permanently deleting them, and I’ve got to say it’s quite a riot. The spelling and grammatical errors, the blatant inability to properly speak English, the giant walls of Chinese character text, the ceaseless waves of adds trying to sell me things like Viagra. It’s really quite amusing. That said, thank the makers of WordPress that the spam filter on this site seems to work really, really well. I think if I had to put up with all this stuff popping up in my main comments folder every day I would absolutely lose my mind. 😛

Okay then, let’s get on with it!

Health and Body Image Goal

Last week was the very embodiment of “sitting on the fence”, wavering between healthfulness and the exact opposite of thus. See, last week my husband, our daughter, and I went on a shopping trip. We traveled one province over to Fredericton, New Brunswick and shopped for two days straight…then we drove backwards a little to Moncton and shopped for another day…and then drove all the way back to Halifax and shopped for another day before finally heading home in the late hours of the night. Now the thing about four straight days of shopping is that it involves a lot of walking (healthful), and in our case also a lot of carrying the baby around because she’s a lazy little bugger (healthful to everything except my back). By all rights, by the end of that trip I should have lost about five pounds, that’s how much “exercise” I got. Ah, but then there’s the other part of a four-day shopping trip away from home…fast food. Yeah. I believe we had a healthy breakfast on two of those days, and an actual restaurant supper on one of them. Everything else was Tim Hortons coffee and donuts, Taco Bell Big Box Meals, and A&W Chubby Chicken Wraps. It goes without saying that no, I didn’t lose any weight while I was on this trip.

In other news, however, the leak in our basement that I mentioned in yesterday’s post – along with the overwhelming stench of cat urine that I couldn’t seem to locate the origins of – led me to began scouring down the basement yesterday. I’ve got it clean almost back to the pellet stove, which (you’ll have to trust me on this one) was a good bit of work. I have some more to do throughout this week, but the point is that soon I’ll have my basement back in working order and cleared of all the junk that we’ve been tossing down there, and I’ll be able to start exercising down there again. That’s not to say that I will (I’m a terribly fickle person, you see), but that’s my intention. Those of you who pray, please pray for me to have some motivation, please and thanks.

Editing Goal

This one stands exactly where it stood last week. I’m still transcribing my notebooks (they seriously feel as though they’re never going to end), and through this am also editing as I type. By all rights I should be working on editing my zombie apocalypse since that was the original subject of this goal, but these notebooks are another distraction like the supernatural romance was – I feel like if I don’t get them out of the way I won’t be able to focus on my apocalypse. It’s really quite frustrating. Sometime in the future I have to figure out how to better organize myself. I’m the very stereotype of the scatterbrained writer who can’t keep track of anything they do.

1,000,000 Word Goal

Because of the aforementioned shopping trip, I didn’t exactly have a lot of time to write this week. It’s not an excuse, it’s an explanation. The trip had a purpose, one which we achieved gloriously in my opinion, so that’s all there is to it. Despite this distraction which tore me away from my writing, however, I did manage to pluck out 11418 words. Most of that was morning pages, but there’s a bit of blogging and transcription in there as well.

And with that, I have a mini-goal for myself. My best week yet was somewhere in the range of 24,000. This week I’m going to try to break 30,000. That’s over 4200 words per day. It will be very difficult, I think, but all the transcription I have to do will surely help me. Wish me luck!

Getting to Know Yourself

The third week of The Artist’s Way is about “recovering a sense of power”. This week looks into several concepts. One of these is anger, and how we should use angry feelings toward ourselves (“Oh my god, I’ve gotten so fat!”) to reveal those things in our lives which we need to be focusing on.

Another of the topics is “synchronicity”, which basically refers to great things that happen to us (coincidences, most of us call them) that help us work toward our goals. Most of us ignore these things, (“Sure, I met this awesome writer agent who is really friendly and helpful, but it’s totally a coincidence and she won’t want to read my manuscript.”) because we’re more scared of actually achieving our goals than never achieving them.

And the third topic is shame, which most of us have way too much of. We think poorly of ourselves because of concepts that society forces on us (“Artist’s are just lazy people who don’t want to get a real job.”) and that keeps us from following our dreams and goals for ourselves.

As of the writing of this post I haven’t been able to find the time to work on any of the tasks for this week, but there is one exercise that was in the bulk of the chapter itself that I thought I could share. It’s a series of “finish this sentence” lines that are meant to evoke some thought and emotion into who you are and what is important to you, as well as your feelings about certain concerns and issues that might be blocking your creativity.

The bold part of the sentence is the prompt, and the normal font is my response.

1. My favorite childhood toy was…probably my Super Nintendo. I can think of dozens of other toys that I absolutely loved, but the SNES holds a special place in my heart, along with such games as Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy III(VI), and Uniracers (yes, Uniracers…shut up!).

2. My favorite childhood game was…Jailbreak. It goes by other names in different areas, so for clarification it’s basically hide-and-seek in the dark, where “it” sends people to “jail”. If one of the hiding kids is able to get to the “jail” without “it” catching them, he/she can yell “JAILBREAK!” and everyone runs off to hide again.

3. The best movie I ever saw as a kid was…probably the first live-action Ninja Turtles movie. I saw tons of movies as a kid, but I can specifically remember waiting in line at the theater to see this one and I was definitely not disappointed.

4. I don’t do it much but I enjoy…reading. I read more than most people I know, but still not much considering that it’s one of my favorite things to do. I love reading, but it takes up so much time that I don’t have.

5. If I could lighten up a little, I’d let myself…attend a “Write-In” during National Novel Writing Month. “Write-In”s are basically when a group of writers were are participating in NaNoWriMo get together and hang out at a cafe or at someone’s house and just enjoy each others company while trying to write as much as possible. There are a couple in the next town over every year but I never go because it feels like a very un-adult thing to do for some reason.

6. If it weren’t too late, I’d…go away for college. The degree I got has served me well, so the university I attended was fine, but I always regretted not going away just to experience the whole “dorm life” thing.

7. My favorite musical instrument is…the guitar. It has always been a little difficult for me to play since my fingers are so short, but it’s more fun than the piano, and I just love the sound of a good acoustic guitar.

8. The amount of money I spend on treating myself to entertainment each month is…almost non-existent. In the past couple of months I’ve spent a bit of money on video games for the Vita my husband bought me, but normally I don’t really spending anything at all. If you work it out monthly over the course of a year it’s probably less than $10.

9. If I weren’t so stingy with my artist I’d buy her…some craft courses. There are lots of awesome-sounding writing courses on WANA International and Writer’s Digest, but I just can’t bring myself to spend money on my writing when I have no way of knowing if I’ll ever make any back.

10. Taking time out for myself is…almost impossible. When I was working out West I was accounted for 23-hours of the day, and when I’m home I can’t even sneak away for two minutes without the baby hunting me down and wanting something.

11. I am afraid that if I start dreaming…I’ll crash and burn. I’ve been allowing myself a hope and prayer for the past while, but it’s a tenuous grasp. I worry that I’ll put all this effort into something that I never get anything back out of.

12. I secretly enjoy reading…all these cheesy sexy-vampire-novels-that-are-marketed-toward-teenagers that are out these days. Don’t get me wrong, I still like my vampires to be scary-ass monsters that will rip your throat out, but there’s also an inherent charm to the sexy ones, especially if they’re sexy and dangerous.

13. If I had had a perfect childhood I’d have grown up to be…a writer, for sure. It’s what I’ve wanted since the third grade, so if everything had fallen into place perfectly, that’s definitely what I’d be doing today.

14. If it didn’t sound so crazy, I’d write or make a…series of novels based on all of my favorite video games from my childhood. Games like the Final Fantasy series, Chrono Trigger, the Breath of Fire series, and Secret of Mana all had such amazing story lines, I’ve always thought they deserved to be fleshed out and paid more attention to. I’d love to put 100% of my attention into these things, IF I had any belief that the respective copyright holders would ever allow me to publish them. For now, I’m just spending some of my writing time on the Final Fantasy VI one (a girl’s gotta dream).

15. My parents think artists are…artists? I really don’t know how to answer this one, since I’ve never really asked them. My parents are supportive; whether that reflects their actual attitudes toward artist or not, that’s all I really know.

16. My God thinks artists are…non-existent? I don’t have a God, so I doubt he thinks very much about anything at all.

17. What makes me feel weird about this recovery is…just an overall sense that it’s silly and pointless. I can honestly say that some of the tasks have prompted some “Ah-ha!” moments, but overall I just feel like it’s going to turn out to have been a huge waste of time.

18. Learning to trust myself is probably…one of the harder things I’ve ever tried to do. I might seem confident sometimes, but inwardly I’m pretty sure that I have no real talent and will never succeed in my goals.

19. My most cheer-me-up music is…mostly alternative rock from my younger years. Oddly, even when the lyrics are the exact opposite of “cheer-me-up”, things like the Offspring, GreenDay, and Blink 182 give me a little burst inside. That’s why I have tons of their songs on my phone.

20. My favorite way to dress is…jeans and a tank top. I don’t really like dresses because I hate having to sit properly, and I’m not a huge fan of shorts because I’m not a huge fan of my legs. I prefer tank tops to any other kind of top because they’re cooler (I get overheated strangely easy) and they show off some of the qualities I actually like about my body, like my shoulders and upper back.

So there’s a little piece of me, as per The Artist’s Way’s exercises. Did you learn anything?

What about you? Care to share your answers to some or all of these questions? 🙂

Accountability Tuesdays – Week 33

I’ve recently coined a new phrase that I think will catch on: “Trying to write with a toddler around is like trying to do complex mathematics while covered in puppies.”

Okay, so it’s not terribly clever, but it’s true. For all the parents out there who are trying to take their writing seriously but have young children in the house with you at the same time that you’re trying to work…you’re not alone.

I love my daughter beyond words, but no one with kids can argue with me that trying to work from home with little kids around isn’t like climbing uphill, backwards, wearing four hundred pounds of gear. It’s a little difficult, is what I’m trying to get at.

And with that said, let’s move on to the accountability, shall we?

Health and Body Image Goal

Last week I laughed (digitally) at this one. This week I am in so many stitches that I’m turning blue. I’ve been battling with some major sugar cravings that seem constant and unyielding, and no, I haven’t done any “real” exercise. That said, I’m in the process of cleaning up the basement so that I can start doing my workout videos ago. The only problem with this is that my cats have recently decided that they don’t much care for their litter box. The entire basement smells like cat pee, and I’m at a loss to figure out exactly where the smell is coming from. Pray for me, my friends. I’m gonna need it.

Editing Goal

I haven’t done any editing in the traditional sense, but I have been doing something that I think is just as important. With the hell of several great blogs and some interesting articles on the Writer’s Digest website, I’ve been making some important notes about changes I want to make in my zombie apocalypse novel. I think these changes will really improve the flow of the story and the believability of the characters, so I’d say that’s as good as actually doing some editing, right? Damn right!

1,000,000 Word Goal

Again, this week I didn’t get as much writing in as I was hoping, but my total turned out to be surprisingly high. Between blogging, transcribing, morning pages, and other Artist’s Way exercises, I managed to wrack up a total of 24263 words, which if I’m not mistaken, is my best week yet. I may not reach a million words this year, but I am definitely destroying my previous years’ records.

And that’s that for this week. Ciao!

Going Sane

Week two of The Artist’s Way is about “recovering a sense of identity”. If that sounds a bit ambiguous to you, you’re not the only one. In reality, the chapter is more about recognizing the things that are poisoning your ability to take yourself seriously as an artist, and striking them from your life. The chapter talks about “poisonous playmates” (i.e. other artists who are having a rough time and bring you down with them because misery loves company) and “crazymakers” (i.e. those people in our lives who are terribly destructive and waste our time and energy with their selfish ways). All in all, the chapter encourages you to look for the things and people in your life that are selfishly keeping you from reaching your full potential, learn how to avoid their destructive ways, and use your newly-freed time and energy to focus on more important things, like your art.

The tasks for this week are based around paying more attention to yourself, to the things you want to do, the person you want to be, and the life you want to live. Because these tasks are a little personal in nature, I don’t really feel comfortable sharing them with the online world. That said, I thought I’d share one of the tasks that I think could be helpful to people in seeing what’s missing in their lives.

The task is called “Life Pie”. First, you draw a circle and divide it into six equal pie pieces. Next, on each of the pieces write one of the following:

Spirituality (for the godless of us, this can mean whatever you feel it means)
Exercise
Play
Work
Friends
Romance/Adventure

Once you have your pie pieces labeled, place a dot in each slice to represent how fulfilled you feel in that area of your life. Closer to the center of the circle means less fulfilled, and closer to the outside of the circle means more fulfilled. So, for instance, if you absolutely hate your job, draw a dot near the center of the circle on that pie piece. If you have a ton of wonderful friends, draw a dot near the outside of the circle on that pie piece. Once your done, connect the dots, going from one pie piece to the next until you have what will likely look like an extremely lop-sided six-point star, like this example:

The point of this exercise is to show yourself where you’re lacking. If you’ve got all work and no play, for example, you’re not well balanced. The pie pieces that represent the most unfulfilled parts of your life are places where you need to work harder to bring a steady state to your psyche.

The second part of the exercise, then, is to do little things to increase the “fulfillment” of the pie pieces that are lacking. If your “Play” piece is almost empty, find something fun to do in your spare time. If your “Exercise” piece is lacking, take yourself for a walk or take a trip to the local pool for a free swim. The key is to stop looking for huge amounts of free time and take whatever you can get to do little things that make you happier.

Without actually sharing it, I can tell you that my pie is horribly lopsided. There are a few full pie pieces, and there are a few nearly-empty ones. Knowing that, I hope to bring a bit of balance, if I can.

How about you? Is your pie balanced, or does it look like a misshapen spider? Did the pie help you realize what is missing in your life? What do you plan to do about it? Please share!

Accountability Tuesdays – Week 32

As mentioned yesterday before my little excerpt, this weekend has been more than a little busy. We spent the entire weekend visiting family and taking part in various events. We even spent a chunk of time just shopping around with the baby in tow. It was all a good time, and we ended it off with the baby’s first trip to a super-wavy beach (which was a blast), but it finalized in the most exhausted me you could imagine. I slept approximately ten hours last night, and I swear I could sleep at least ten more. But the world moves on, there are more things to do, and so I’ll have to just pretend that I slept twenty hours, okay? Okay.

Health and Body Image Goal

*insert slightly insane laughter here*

I actually probably lost a pound or two over the past four days, because that seems to happen whenever we spend a chunk of time visiting down home, but for the most part I can honestly say that this goal did not even exist in my mind this week. The only exercise I did was dragging the baby around, and the only non-fatty food I ate was the vegetables that we had with our steak on Sunday. And that trend isn’t likely to end for a little while yet because I have a children’s birthday party to go to this evening (sugar sugar sugar), and then sometime over the next week and a half we are planning on a shopping trip to New Brunswick (fast food, fast food, fast food). Wish me luck in not actually gaining a bunch more weight!

Editing Goal

I’m a bit up in the air on this one. I didn’t technically do any editing for my zombie apocalypse novel, since I’m focusing on trying to transcribe my notebooks right now. But then again, I’m technically editing as I’m transcribing. The transcribed stuff will likely still be revised and edited further once I’ve gotten everything properly organized into Scrivener, but I am editing bits and pieces as I’m typing them up, so I guess you could say I’ve been doing mini-edits? Yeah, let’s go with “mini-edits”.

1,000,000 Word Goal

I didn’t get as much writing in as I was hoping, because I grossly overestimated how much time I would be able to spend on my laptop while down home visiting people, but I still managed a chunk. By counting my transcribed words (which, I have to be honest, I still feel a little skeezy about, but whatever), I managed to eek out 17166 words. A fair bit of that is also The Artist’s Way exercises and tasks, of which I have many more to do this week, so hopefully next week’s word count will be as good as this one was!

And speaking of The Artist’s Way, I’d better go work on a bit of that while I’ve got a chance, before that children’s party I mentioned earlier. Later!

Fiction Fragment Fridays: Returning Hope (Chapter 5 – Part 3)

Continuing on with Final Fantasy: Returning Hope!

Reminder: If you’re looking for the previously posted parts of the story, go to the “Categories” drop-down banner on the left banner of the site and choose “Final Fantasy: Returning Hope”.

*Spites via http://www.videogamesprites.net

Locke led Terra back to the room with the beds she’d spied upon their arrival. They were both silent, neither sure what to say to the other. Locke motioned Terra toward a corner bed in the empty room and she sat down. After a moment of hesitation he turned and sat facing her on the next bed over.

Terra’s mind was swirling. ‘Our only hope’, Banon had said. What could he possibly mean by that? What was she supposed to think about it? He hadn’t explained anything at all, just dazzled her with a fairy tale and left her with a hell of a lot of confusion and questions. Was he…was he expecting her to fight for him?

“Locke,” she said after what felt like an eternity of silence, “Why did you join the Returners?”

Locke’s eyes probed Terra’s face, but she was staring resolutely at the floor while she awaited an answer. After a moment he sighed, lay back on the bed, and crossed his arms behind his head. “Someone important to me was jailed by the Empire,” he explained slowly. He didn’t use so much as a pronoun, but Terra’s mind flashed an image of Locke standing next to an older, more rugged version of himself…father and son. “I’ve hated the Empire every since,” Locke continued on. “When I realized that they were completely rotten to the core, I sought out and joined the Returners. I wanted to make a difference.”

Terra considered his words for a while before speaking again. “But I have no significant other in my life, no one to fight for. No one to ‘make a difference’ for.”

Locke turned his head to look at her, and this time she was looking back. “That’s not entirely true,” he told her. “Your memory still has a lot of holes in it, so you can’t be sure that someone like that doesn’t exist for you.” He smiled. “Besides, I’m sure there are people out there who feel that you’re important to them. They’re probably out there right now, somewhere, counting on you to do what’s right.”

Terra couldn’t decide whether that was a comforting thought or not. It was nice to imagine that there might be people out there who were emotionally attached to her, but it was also frustrating to think that they might be counting on her to make a decision that she felt completely inadequate to make. She just didn’t know what the ‘right decision’ was.

She popped up from the bed so suddenly that Locke jumped. “I need to move,” she announced. “Take a walk or something.”

“You want me to come with you?” Locke asked, propping himself up on his elbows.

“No,” Terra replied slowly. She turned toward the door. “I need to think.” She strode off before Locke could object.

There were plenty of people wandering the tunnels of the hideout; more than Terra had expected, men and women of all ages. It seemed that the Empire was more widely hated than she’d realized. It was difficult to find somewhere quiet to think. She met up with Edgar in one room, and he gave her some thoroughly unhelpful advice.

“It’s tough to try and talk you into joining us,” he’d said with a careful smile. “If we push you too hard then we’re really no better than the Empire. So we want you to make up your own mind…trust yourself.”

Later, by the food bar, Sabin gave her some even less helpful advice.

“The only thing I can add,” he’d said thoughtfully, “Is that you can trust my brother implicitly. He’s a good man and has always been fair with me. You can trust him, Terra.” He added with a sheepish grin, “But don’t you dare tell him I said that!”

After a polite smile to each, and feeling thoroughly uninspired, Terra eventually made her way to the mouth of the cave entrance. Here she finally found a quiet place to think. It was still fairly early in the day, but the sun was beginning to disappear behind the large walls of mountains, casting shadows across the valley.

For a few minutes she let her thoughts disappear beyond the mountains as well. The warm breeze blew through her hair and she stood with her eyes closed, listening to the sounds of the evening; a wolf’s howl, an eagle’s cry, and the grass in the valley rustling in the wind.

“Peaceful, isn’t it?”

Terra jumped about a mile before peering around the corner of the cave entrance. Banon was there, a few feet away, sitting down against the stone wall. His eyes were closed, his head resting back.

“I come out here sometimes, to think,” he explained. “It’s a very calming environment.”

Terra hesitated for several moments before walking over and sitting down next to him. “That is why I am out here as well,” she admitted.

“Hmm…” said Banon. “Trying to make up your mind about joining us?”

It was another few moments before Terra responded. “Yes.”

Banon offered no more, but Terra soon found herself irresistibly displaying her thoughts for him to see.

“It’s just that,” she started, “I think you’re the ‘good guys’, but how do I really know? My memory has so many gaps. How do I know that the Empire isn’t perfectly sound and that the Returners aren’t just a group of rebels who want to overthrow the government?”

Banon chuckled a little, and the response he gave almost seemed to be rehearsed. “I suppose when you put it in that sense, you really can’t know for sure,” he told her, his eyes still closed gently. “But we don’t fight because we know we’re right. We fight because our hearts tell us we’re right. Tell me, Terra, knowing that the Empire enslaved you against your will, what does your heart tell you?”

Terra didn’t have to think very long before admitting, “Anyone who would do that to someone has to be bad…”

“And as for us, well,” said Banon, “We can’t really prove to you that what we’re trying to do is inherently ‘good’, but certainly there’s no harm in observing for yourself. Allow yourself the time with us in order to give your heart enough evidence to decide properly.”

Terra considered this for a long time. She watched an eagle, its wings spread majestically, soar high in the twilit sky. “Yes…I suppose so…”

Now, finally, Banon opened his eyes and turned to look at her. “Then I must ask, as it’s been killing me, you see,” he said with a flicker of a smile, “Have you made your decision? Will you give our organization a chance and possibly become our last ray of hope?”

Terra continued to watch the eagle until it landed on a nearby ridge, where sat a large nest. She spied several tiny bald heads peek up as the mama-bird nuzzled in.

“Yes,” she whispered.

Banon’s eyes lit up. “Really? You will?”

“But,” Terra interrupted loudly, “I’m scared.”

Unable to hide his jubilation, Banon twisted to place both hands on Terra’s shoulders and grinned. “That’s natural,” he told her. “But try to have faith. If everyone works together, with a common goal in our hearts, we’ll be successful. Never give up hope!”

Terra allowed herself a small smile.

With a childlike bounce, a grinning Banon jumped to his feet. “I believe,” he said aloud, “That it is time to call a meeting!”

Live Your (Imaginary) Life

The first week of The Artist’s Way is all about recovering a sense of “safety”. Miss Cameron fully admits that this week will probably feel silly, even stupid, but that you should push through it anyway because it’s important. The exercises involve writing affirmations (basically sentences that you say to yourself to tell yourself how great you really are), acknowledging your “blurts” (negative thoughts that spring to mind, such as “I’m such a terrible writer”), and facing the demons in your past that have caused you to think negatively. The whole idea, overall, is to face the fact that we all have an internal voice (a “Censor”, she calls it) that shouts negative comments at us all the time, even (and especially) when we don’t deserve it. And generally this Censor is a culmination of all the negativity we’ve had to endure from our peers and elders throughout our lives.

But the exercises aren’t all about facing negativity. One in particular was actually quite amusing, I thought. Basically, imagine that you have five alternative lives to live; who would you be and what would you do? The point isn’t to be serious, it’s to give life to the you that your inner child imagined you might become.

For myself, the answers were immediately clear, because there are five things I’ve wanted to do for as long as I can remember. Hey, I know, why don’t I share them here? 😀

Imaginary Life #1
I’d be a (successful) writer, as if that weren’t entirely obvious. I would write fiction novels and occasionally publish a book of short stories. I would have a room in my house specifically for writing, with shelves of books on every wall, and a beautiful desk in front of a large, bright window. The desk would house my laptop, and a stack of notebooks and pens, and I would write there all day while sipping hot tea and cafe mochas.

Imaginary Life #2
I’d be a singer/songwriter who specialized in the guitar. I’d write and compose all my own songs and travel the world playing shows and festivals. I’d be on the road most of the time, but when I wanted to rest I’d come back to Cape Breton and play around a campfire with my friends and family.

Imaginary Life #3
I’d be a famous artist. I’d delve into all the different mediums; drawing, painting, sculpting, etc. I would have a room in my house dedicated to art where I would store all kinds of different supplies from around the world, and I’d draw and paint on the walls to chart my inspiration.

Imaginary Life #4
This one might surprise even my closest friends and family, but I would be an actress. I’d do all kinds of things, from movies and TV shows, to cheesy horror movies and voice acting. In particular I would regularly audition for parts in action-adventure movies as the damsel-in-distress who is actually pretty kick-ass all on her own.

Imaginary Life #5
I’d design video games. I would do a little bit of everything, from concept art and character design, to programming and beta-testing. I would want to be a part of every aspect of the process, and I would help to create characters and storylines that draw in the gamer, as well as controls and gameplay that keep the gamer hooked.

#1 is pretty obvious if you’ve read at least one of my other blog posts or have known me for more than five minutes, but the others may be a bit surprising, especially to those who don’t know me personally, so let me explain a little.

#2 comes about because I’ve always been a bit musical, like much of my family, and in fact much of Cape Breton in general. We’re a musical region. I took several years of piano lessons when I was young, and then moved on to guitar, which I mostly taught myself. Though I haven’t had time for it in recent years, I’ve always loved playing and singing, and it’s one of the few things I feel like I can do in front of a crowd.

#3 dates back to much younger years, stemming back as far as grade school. I loved to draw, and I’d paper my walls with drawings of my favorite TV show and video-game characters. I was never really any good at the other mediums like painting, but I always used to think that if I just kept practicing and practicing, someday I’d be a great artist. Sadly, art in general is something that went by the wayside for me, as I focused more and more on writing instead. The only thing I’ve drawn in years are tiny sketches of the Ninja Turtles at my daughter’s bequest.

#4 is my little inner guilty pleasure secret. I don’t think I’ve ever, at any time, voiced a desire to be an actress, but I seriously started thinking about it in high school as a result of a Drama course. For one assignment we had to do a monologue, and I picked this really dramatic piece where a girl talks about a death in her family. After I performed it the whole class applauded and told me how awesome I was, so for a while after that I convinced myself that I had real talent and would somehow get discovered someday (despite a lack of any kind of effort on my part to actually pursue acting).

#5 is the most childish of the bunch, in my opinion, because it’s based on a childhood assumption that video games were really easy to make. I figured I just had to learn a bit of programming and off I would go. Obviously I’ve learned a lot since then and know that it takes huge crews to make (most) video games, but I still think it would be an awesome profession to be a part of, if only to see the end result of all your hard work enjoyed by millions.

So there you have it! The five imaginary lives of Tracey Lynn Tobin.

If you had five imaginary lives, what would you be? I’d love to hear about your choices!

Accountability Tuesdays – Week 31

Have you ever experienced a thunder storm without the rain? Maybe that’s common in other parts of the world, but up here in Cape Breton it’s not the norm. We usually have torrents of rain coming down for hours before the thunder and lightning starts, but yesterday we had hours of thunder (and possibly lightning, but it was too light out to tell) for hours before the rain started. It seemed odd and unique to me, which is why I bring it up.

Alrighty, let’s get on with it, shall we?

Health and Body Image Goal

Still thinking about striking this goal from the list, but at the same time I’ve been thinking about how to resuscitate it. I do want to be healthier and lose some body fat while I’m at it, but I’ve been expelling some much of my energy on everything else that I can’t figure out how to work this back into my lifestyle. I’m amazed that I somehow have less time and energy while unemployed at home than when I was working 12-hour shifts out West. How does that even work? It doesn’t matter. The point is that what I want to do (once I tie up a few loose ends) is start a three-times-a-week exercise program that I will interweave with three days a week of doing my Zombies! Run! program (which I will have to start over since I’ve negated everything I did before). Currently I’m trying to decide what the exercise program will be. I’m considering taking Jillian Michaels’ Body Revolution and just replacing the cardio days with my running days, but if anyone else has any suggestions for a good three-day-a-week program for women, please share!

Editing Goal

I’m happy to report my best editing week yet since I made these goals. My supernatural romance (tentatively called Moonlight) is complete! I just have to do one more read-through to make sure I didn’t make any glaring errors and then it should be ready for submission. I don’t have high hopes for it, but being able to say that I finally submitted a manuscript to a publisher will be a big deal for me. Plus, now that I’ll finally have that story out of my hair, I can move back on to my zombie apocalypse novel, which is the one I really care about. This one is much longer, so it’s obviously going to take longer to edit, but I’m setting myself a mini-goal to have it done by November, because I fully intend on participating in NaNoWriMo this year and I don’t want to have the last chapters of a zombie apocalypse on my mind while I’m doing it.

1,000,000 Word Goal

Good news! My mini-goal was a success! I wrote my ass off last week, and between blog posts, writing exercises, morning pages, and new-or-changed scenes in Moonlight, I wrote a total of 20194 words! That brings me up to a year-long total of 201938! When I originally made this goal I had hoped to be a lot further along by now, but this is still so many more words that I likely would have written had I not made the goal in the first place. That’s like four NaNoWriMo‘s! In one year! I really hope to be able to keep up this pace. It’s become very unlikely that I’ll hit the 1,000,000 words by the end of the year, but if I’m able to hit 500,000 I will still be very impressed with myself and will mark the goal a success.

As a closing note, I want to mention that I’ve begun The Artist’s Way this week, and over the next couple of days I will be trying to complete as many of the Chapter 1 tasks as I can. I’ve accidentally timed my start such that I’ll finish one week before NaNoWriMo starts, so aside from sharing updates as I go, once I complete the program I’ll do a quick review and let you all know whether it helped me in any way toward writing a new book. Look forward to it!