Excuses, Excuses

I apologize for my absence.

There's been much business and lack of motivation on my part.  I had the county fair to get through, and a novel to edit and send into the OYAN contest.

But all of that was like pulling teeth, since about the beginning of July I've had no motivation.  None.  Zip.

I managed to get everything done, and exceeded everyone's expectations in most areas.  I even managed to finish a third draft of my novel and whisk it off to the OYAN contest ten days before the deadline.

Over the week of fair I felt good.  I was finally getting stuff done.  I was getting to spend time with my friends.  Fair ended.  So I decided to start school to try and keep myself doing stuff.  I seemed to help, but I had problems keeping up, and I managed to get behind within the first week.  On Monday the following week I resolved to do better, and forced myself to get out of bed and get the day started...

...but I got stung by a bee and had a nearly serious reaction.  I spent six hours sleeping after an EpiPen and three doses of benadryl scattered throughout the day.  I didn't even go to dance.

I thought maybe this was supposed to be a wake up call, and on Tuesday I managed to catch up on everything for school.  And then I got behind again....

So here I am, trying not to completely die, and trying to keep myself motivated with the thought of State Fair and Nutcracker Auditions.  I'm hoping some brilliant solution will drop out of the sky for this, but at the moment, it doesn't seem to be happening.

In other news, I'm thinking of totally revamping my blog and starting over.  I'll still keep all the old posts, but I'm going to try to post every Saturday, and it will probably be more of life update-y thingy, since I really don't think I've had enough life experience to be posting about life and writing things. >.<

~Charlotte Grace, the Mind Traveler

The Craving for Adventure

Today at about 8:30 on a Facebook chat I asked one of my longest friends this question:
"Do you remember two years ago, and you'd been gone for Christmas, and you missed the first week of dance because of Missoula, and I waited for you after the show forever so I could see you again?"
It resulted in a rather long discussion on all the things we used to do together.  She and I had been fighting all last year, and only resolved the issue after a prolonged silence, when we both had a chance to think.  Both of us were at fault, of course, but that's a different story.
Still, the chance to talk about all the pretend games we used to do, exploring the sheds, hoping to find a dead body, or buried treasure (all we ever found was dust, and dust, and more dust), playing two-man baseball, law court, writing stories together...it made for a very good Valentine's Day, and it ended with this comment from me:
"You know, [Friend], I think I write stories now, because I miss playing pretend with you..."
I've always had a thrill for adventure, a yearning to find a trapdoor that led me to another world, or find out I have some mysterious power.  Not only did I play pretend with my best friend, my sister and I concocted hundreds of plots and characters with our stuffed animals, I wrote short stories, my sister and I would run around pretending to be heroes in training, Indians, or explorers all afternoon.  I still have such a fascination with knives, swords, bows and arrows, explorers, jungles, deserts, dinosaurs, outer space, that it's almost pathetic a times.
And yes, I write for the emotional impact, but also to fulfill that craving to have adventures.  Stuffed animals have lost their touch, I no longer have time to run around all day, but I can still have any adventure I want by reading and writing.
Words are a beautiful thing.

~Charlotte Grace, the Mind Traveler

Why I Write

I've been thinking a lot lately.  About everything.  And tonight in my various wonderings I realized why I write.

I have a very hard time sharing my heart with anyone, even my closest friends because...it has been broken.  The one who did it doesn't know it, and I didn't realize it until recently.

My mom actually pointed that out to me the other day, when my sister was doing her job of prying.

I write to share my heart in the most indirect way possible.  I fumble with words in real life, but in writing I can tweak it, fix it, bend it, coat it, until it has the meaning I want to convey, and a strand of my heart twisted in it.

It's how I share me.

God bless,
Charlotte Grace, the Mind Traveler