Can I Borrow You for a Second?

Can I borrow you for a second?
Take your heart and make you feel?
Can I open your eyes to a story,
And convince you that it's real?

Though you may feel your heart is breaking,
I promise I'm going to make it better.
No matter how good or bad things get
I'll be with you, letter by letter.

Pertaining to my organizational skills as a writer (or lack thereof)

               One of the hardest aspects of being a writer for me (besides continually chasing down the ever-elusive muse) is being organized about it.

               More often than not, I find myself working on six or seven different stories at a shot, which keeps my "In progress" folder on my desktop busy. And as someone who's been writing for a long time and can't always get to a computer in time, I have a fair amount of notebooks about my house.

               There's just something about taking that pen into your hand and seeing those words spill onto the pages of a notebook, isn't there? I've always felt the feeling was altogether different than typing onto a computer.

               I have notebooks under my bed, in my closet, in an organizer tote by my bed, and there is always, always one in my purse and on my nightstand.

               Why so many notebooks? If you're a writer like me, and if you spend a fair amount of time at it, more than likely you know the pain of turning that computer on, settling down into your chair with your bathtub-sized cup of tea or coffee, opening that file..... and suddenly, you feel all the blood draining out of your face, leaving you with a dizzy, light-headed feeling, your eyes glued to the screen.

               "File not found". Poof. Days, weeks, months, years of work, vanished without a trace.

               When I was still in high school, I lost a story that was over 250 pages, size ten font, single spaced. More recently, I found a story I'd been working on for five years had become corrupted, and the checkdisk decided that it would be a good dear and "fix it for me". Over 1100 pages poofed overnight. 5 years of work, up in smoke.

               I spent the next week begging and pleading with my computer, swearing and calling it every name I could think of (inventing some new ones along the way), opening temporary files and going off of old saves and wracking my brain to piece the story back together because I couldn't stand the thought of letting that much work go without a fight.

               I'm happy to say I got most of it back, and that because I'd been working on the story so often, and read over it so often, I didn't lose nearly as much as I would have if I hadn't kept my notes.

              I'm a firm believer in backups, thanks to that cute little 250-poof fiasco, don't get me wrong, and after the 1100 page snafu? I've become even more of a spastic saver than I used to be-- one main save, a couple of backups on separate hard drives and USB drives, and my ever-existent pile of notebooks.

               My husband gets it, but then he called me on the phone on his way to work the day of the 1100 fiasco and was greeted by the sounds of me panicking and hyperventilating and all-around freaking out at the thought of losing so much time and work. He doesn't question my need for notebooks anymore, and to be fair, I'm trying to be better about my organization-- I keep my creative clutter cornered in my little cubby hole in my bedroom, by my computer desk.

               If you're currently a writer or looking to become one, I hope my ordeals serve as a warning-- if you're not a spastic saver of your work? You should be. I can't stress enough over the need for backups, whether it's on another computer, or a separate hard-drive, or a USB, or notebooks. Always, always back up your work. It's better to have too many copies, than to wake up to find that all your work has poofed.

               I'd much rather have a pile of notebooks under my bed than the "it's gone" heart attack any day of the week. 

Finding Jesse (Side note set after "Run Jesse")

http://avsongbirdshortstories.blogspot.com/2015/06/finding-jesse-side-note-set-after-run.html

Are you a twisted and sarcastic romantic like me?

               Some days I find myself sitting at my keyboard, blog up, staring blankly at the screen, fingers poised but frozen at the keyboard.

               It isn't a matter of not having anything to write-- nothing to say-- nothing rolling around causing all kinds of chaos in my head. 

               Sometimes it's a matter of knowing whether or not to share whatever happens to be going through my mind at the time.

               For one, the matter of "appropriateness" comes into play. I have a sarcastic, sometimes twisted sense of humor, I' always loved horror movies and scary stories, and yet I've always been a hardcore romantic at heart.

               We're talking a love of moonlight dances, shared sunsets, kissing in the rain when I'm not up to my eyeballs in horror movies and all things zombie related (And sometimes while I'm up to my eyeballs in horror movies and all things zombie related).

               Throw together a combination like that and an overactive, unchecked imagination from hell, and you can get into all kinds of trouble if you're not careful.

               Especially when it comes to branching out and introducing yourself to the world for the first time, and not knowing whether or not they'll get your humor.

              

I got into a lengthy discussion with one of my readers today.

               I got into a lengthy discussion with one of my readers today.

               He asked me how it felt to document my life's details, to share not just my work, but details of my life and of my past with people I've never even met. He said that some of the finer details of my life made him feel uncomfortable, and I get that. Some of the things that happened in my past are touchy topics with some people.

               Living through them gave me a better understanding of others who've gone through the same thing.

               I gave it a fair amount of thought before I answered him, wanting to be as honest as I could be, and I told him it's hard, sharing yourself with others like that, opening yourself to others like that.

               But at the same time, it's therapeutic, sort of getting everything out there in the open like that, it's healthy. Certainly healthier than burying it all deep inside and letting it fester, letting it make you angry and bitter and making you feel guilty.

               Doing things like that allows things like that to own you-- and that path is certainly not a healthy one to travel down. It will leave you angry, bitter, self-destructive (and possibly even destructive), and it will isolate you.

               And it's a far better frame of mind to be in when you own your past, than when you allow your past to own you.

               At the end of the day, it's important to remember that everything that happened to you, everything you've been through, made you who you are now. That you wouldn't be who you are without every decision-- good and bad.

               Without every memory-- good and bad.

               Without every regret that haunts you.

               If you went back in time and changed any of it-- any decision you made, any action you took, any regret that you had-- then came back to the present, you wouldn't be you anymore. So everything I've been through, everything that's happened to me, everything I've ever done in my life-- I am who I am because of it-- all of it.

              It's a comforting thought, to see how far you've come in your life, and to recognize that fact.

               My blog is where I post my thoughts, my poetry, my stories. It is an extension of who I am. And I know not everyone blogs the way I do. How boring would it be if everyone blogged the same? There's no wrong way to blog. Blog what you want-- write to inspire, to get opinions, to begin discussions.

               If it's judgment you're worried about-- mockery, ridicule-- and what people think, don't. You can't let that thought stop you from doing what you want to do with your life.

               People will always judge you-- by who you are, by what you do, by what you look like and how much money you do or don't have.

               People are going to judge you. And some of them will be assholes. That's just something you're going to have to face. Because not everyone you meet will be an asshole. And if you don't risk the assholes, at the end of the day you'll be left wondering if you didn't just miss out on the chance of crossing paths with someone who could just change your life-- someone who would invigorate you, change your mind, make you see the world in a way you hadn't before.

               I've always been a firm believer in the life-changers-- the walking muses. I've met more than a few people in my lifetime who've inspired different works in me for various reasons. And they shall remain nameless, with my gratitude towards them just for existing-- for being who they are, and for inspiring such thoughts in me-- for sparking my creativity, and my imagination. I love them for opening my eyes, for changing my mind.

               I've met some interesting people since I started my blog-- writers, readers, people from all over the world. I've taken criticisms and compliments, been told how they loved or hated my work. I've read the work of others who'd read mine and chose to share theirs with me. And I was flattered at the thought that they wanted to know what I thought. I've had people asking me about what side projects I've got going, stories I've already posted, and what I plan to post down the line.  

               Do I regret sharing so much of myself? So many details, even the ugly ones? No. Because I'm just starting to branch out and to have people reach out to me, to contact me, and I'm coming across incredible people I might never have met if I hadn't taken the leap into online sharing. People who've told me "Oh my God that's how I feel" or "I went through the same thing". I couldn't have had that if I hadn't been so open about my past, and my experiences.

               Do I regret it? Not even close. If it makes you uncomfortable, if it bothers you that I write the way I do, that I talk about the things I talk about, then I'm sorry, and I hope you don't let your experience here make you shy away from reading the other works of the other writers on this site or others. Some of the best writing I've read over the course of the last few years has been by people who've been bloggers-- some of them fanfiction writers (before you judge, seriously, check them out). Some of them are incredible writers, people who fall in love with stories and shows and characters the way I fall in love with stories and characters. People who want to share their love of the stories and characters with others in turn.

               I get that. As a writer, as a reader, as a lover of books and comics and movies and all things creative and imaginative, I get it. After all, what good is fantasy, imagination, movies, books, stories, if you're not emotionally invested on some level? How boring to sit back and read something or watch something and afterwards "Yup that was something" and just go about your life completely unchanged by it?

               Do I regret? No, not even for a second.

Let me hunger

Let me hunger,
Let me rage,
Let my passion stain
the page.


Let the fury crash
Like lightning,
Let it surge across the sky.
Let me paint everything
Of nothing.
Let me flourish,
Let me fly.

AVSongbird blog vid #4 - I want to be real with you a minute.