My day Off

    I don't work today, so I thought it would be a wonderful idea to stay up late last night. I "Went to Bed" around nine, I didn't turn off the light til three. I stayed up reading these two books my dad bought me from half price books (which is be best store ever) One is Note To Self by Samara O'shea. It's about journaling and "other dangerous pursuits". It's a cute little book and I finished it last night.

     The second book I got was "No Plot? No Problem!" by Chris Baty, and oh my freaking goodness is this book good. It doesn't talk about qualiaty, it's all about quantity. You're only goal of your self inflicted NaNoWriMo is the thresh out 50,000 words. I Love this book because It's not like some stuck up writer talking down to us, it's this real guy telling us how to write our book. But this isn't all about writing, it's more about HOW to write: finding your space, snacks to have on hand, how to tell your family to leave you alone, and so much more. But it also gives you tips and motivation during your month of writing. As you've probably guessed I am totally doing NaNoWriMo in November but I'm going to give this a whirl in July after my birthday to see if I can set up some writing habits.
    Unlike NaNoWriMo My July WriMo is going to start off from that 5000 word manuscript I haven't finished. My two main goals of my WriMo is to get down 50,000 words and set up a writing habit. I'm waiting til after my birthday so I'll have my computer and don't have to be bothered.
     I think NaNoWriMo isn't going to be that hard. Two words; Thanksgiving Break. But we'll see how that goes when we get there.

Thanks bud

So I spent the night last night at my friends house. This is a really rare occurence. I had fun but we were talking and she was amazed with how I never need to talk about personal things with people. Things like my first kiss, and boys, and my family problems. I told her I just keep a journal because Journals don't go blabbing to people. She said I should keep doing it becaus it's good. I suggested she start one then she said she thinks it's totally lame and it's very shallow. Then she compared my journal to her third grade journal with a lock and key. I'm ok with saying I love my journal...I just doubt I'll be going to many more sleep overs for a while.

Journaling: why you MUST do it

My mom kinda laughs at me when she sees me writing in my Journal. Then I tell her Mart Twain, Benjamen Franklin, Lewis and Clark, and the Queen of England herself all keep/kept Journals. As a writer you absolutely MUST have a journal. Writing in a Journal is not writing like you would for your blog or novel. It's writing when you're not worried about sentence structure or verb variation It's you on the page. Don't get me wrong you can certainly use your Journal for working through scenes and character write ups but don't worry about editing what you put in your Journal. Getting into the habit of Journaling is like any other habit. You just have to do it everyday. I use journaling as a sort of warm up to my writing. It lets me keep my everyday emotions separate from my writing emotions. That may not make sense but what ever. Journals are a great place to plant ideas and let them grow as you work with and/or around them. I have a good five pages in my journal full of "Story Ideas" every time I get an Idea it gets scribbled down fast as I can manage so I don't lose it and it's tucked away until I choose to work with it later. Recently I had a journal entry that I developed into a Short story and It worked wonderfully. There's just so much your journal offers for you to pass one up. You're going to make mistakes and that's OK. It's your Journal. Use it everyday no matter if all you did was wake up and troll YouTube videos. You can draw, mind map, create, scribble, doodle, jot, plan, play with styles, work with emotions, and think all in the papers you hold as your journal. Get a Journal. I mean NOW. Make sure you'll write in it. (you all know my obsession with moleskines) Use a pack of stapled together copy paper and a pastel for all I care just get something you can write your thoughts in so you can refer back to it later. You don't want a file of half done word documents brushed into a corner of your computer. Get a pen and a notebook and get Journaling!