Tag Archives: literature

Aug 1 2013

My Need to Stop “Wanting”

I need to stop “wanting” to do something and just do it.

I went on Instagram the other day and captioned this Michael’s inspirational photo with this spiel about how I need to be more creative, and/or write more. Ask me what I’ve done so far. Go ahead, ask. Better yet, why don’t you guess. That’s right … nothing.

I’ve got this huge mental block that’s a mixture of procrastination and utter fear and it’s making me freak the f-ck out. My ultimate goal in life is to be a creator — in multiple senses of the word and I find that my creative process is just not what it used to be. And that scares me. Have I lost it? Have I lost my ability to create?

Most nights I feel as though I’m sitting the dark, waiting for the muses to speak. A soft whisper, whimper, anything in my ear. And I just can’t find it. I can’t find the words or the will to start. Am I going deaf, or are they just not talking anymore?

“I want to…” is how I preface sentences these days. I don’t like it. The only way to make it stop is to be proactive and my normal surges of artistic, innovative energy are just NOT there.

I swear, this is why some of the more creative people throughout history had to smoke opium, or drink heavily in order to produce masterpieces. This damn pressure to make something out of nothing. It’s insane!

But I’m rambling…

I saw a lady today and I tried to craft a hint story about her:

“She reminded me of mocha and chocolate, but looked nothing like it. Pouted lips and tiny wefts of hair she struggled to contain with a pin.”

Then after a minute of thinking, I found that I didn’t like it. And it was a word over. But in the back of my mind I congratulated myself, stating that at least I tried. I wanted to craft a hint story and I did. Failed technically, but I went after it.

Where has the inspiration gone? Am I going insane? Am I slowly but surely going out of it because I’m over-thinking and over-analyzing the situation at hand? It should be pretty simple to just do something — to just get up, and push myself to write something or craft something. To just do, instead of wanting to do.

Is this quarter life crisis just kicking my ass in more ways than one?

GRRRRRRRRR!

In the past, when I wrote, it was almost like an out-of-body experience — my thoughts just floated onto the page and came alive on their own. I was a vessel and the story, its characters, the emotions … everything just came out of me just like Ray Bradbury said about all his best stories. They wrote themselves and he was just the person, the vessel they used to come into existence. Sigh..

Well, at least I wrote today. That’s better than nothing.

May 28 2013

The Left Hand of Darkness Made Me See The Light

I completed The Left Hand of Darkness  with about 7 days left in the month to go, achieving my first goal of finishing the epic sci-fi novel before the end of May.

As I mentioned before, the book is slightly dense, and the hardest yet most endearing part of the book dealt with the journey of  the two main characters, Genly and Estraven, across this massive ice land. I didn’t think I would make it through, much like the characters. But I did. And when I made it through with them, it was a quick succession of events that ended with me being very teary-eyed. I may have shed a tear or two.

So … what did I take from the book?

1. To Push Beyond the Envelope
If it’s one thing that Ursula definitely does throughout most of this novel, it’s making you think. From the introduction to the end of the book, this woman had my brain working overtime. First she gives me an an androgynous/sexless/hermaphroditic society, then he poses questions about the consequences of equality, and then she talks about the duality of a person, while weaving in all these sociological and political undertones. It was like:

2. To Make a Story Rich
TLHOD had a lot of vocabulary. At one point I thought I was straight out stupid because I didn’t know half of the words in this book. Then I realized that she made them up! And used them so flawlessly in between actual words that I couldn’t tell the difference. And of course, her story was made all the richer for it because her world was complete with its own words to describe its culture

and last but not least…

3. Don’t Be Afraid of a Long Tale
As I previously mentioned before, I only got into TLHOD after hearing it mentioned in a movie I watched a while back.  It was only after I started reading the book, did I learn that it was a part of a larger tale. One of my fears it to have a story that’s really now and not interesting, but sometimes it does take several tales (sometimes even different ones that interweave in and out) to tell a story, or make it more interesting. Not to mention, I loved the way Ursula changed her narration between scientific findings, to the point of view of one character to the legend of a group people to the point of view of another character for the same event.

That’s about it for now. Oh, I’ve also started on book 12 of 13 in the Sookie Stackhouse Novels (aka the True Blood books) called Deadlock.

After this book, it’s Dead Ever After and then we can say goodbye to all the characters that I’ve grown to hate, dislike, loathe, can’t stand, and love. However, I did read somewhere that we can apparently expect an epilogue novel with a follow-up of all the main characters. *shrugs*

Con Amor,
-Alja

May 22 2013

Had a Grimm Night With Silas Weir Mitchell!

Hey there!

As I mentioned earlier, I’m going to try to “blog” as much as possible — even if it’s not book/writing related because there is more to moi than just my book-reading and novel writing. Any who, just wanted to say that last night was such a SPECTACULAR night for me and I couldn’t be any happier that the stars FINALLY aligned in my favor! I, along with a couple other fans, got to speak with Silas Weir Mitchell from my fave show, Grimm!

Actor Silas Weir Mitchell

Yes. I got to speak to Mr. Monroe on a live chat forum on Huffington Post Live. << Click the link to check the video and forgive my awkwardness — I had technical difficulties about a second before the show aired where I couldn’t see myself at all and thus I had a bad camera angle, stared into space and bit my lip a lot…>>

It all started when I was approached on Twitter (probably because of my fanatic live tweeting) to do the segment Monday night. I thought I missed my chance because when I responded I didn’t hear back from the producer, but then Tuesday afternoon I got a text asking if I was still interested. Of course my answer was:

If you’re a Grimm fan such as myself, you can understand the amount of happy that was flowing through my body.

So I and another fan, Courtney Wood of Grimm-fan.com, got all set up and after about eleven minutes of the show’s host getting Silas all warmed up, we were on screen asking him questions! Though before the chat they told us we could get like 3-4 , we were only given two a piece due to lack of time. Whomp.

I really wanted to ask Silas what kind of Wesen baby he thought Monroe and Rosalee would have (Blutbad, Fuchsbau, or a Fuchsbad-Blutbau hybrid) , but I got two questions out — one he said “was a good question” and another where he commended me for using proper Wesen terminology. Of course, I was like:

After showing my sisters (who are also Grimm fans) the segment and hearing my mom squeal at the sight of me on a live streaming show, I came down from cloud 9 a bit to do my live tweeting for Grimm’s season finale. *SIDE NOTE* It took me a long friggin’ time to be recognized by Grimm’s Twitter page up until maybe last month. Then they switched the show from Friday to Tuesday and I guess the Grimm Twitter handler on Tuesday hasn’t recognize my awesomeness yet, so I haven’t been retweeted since.

Any who, I was hoping to be picked up by the Grimm Twitter feed for the finale, but instead I got a favorite from actress Bitsie Tulloch aka Juliette.

Bitsie Tulloch Favorites My Grimm Finale Tweet

Now this isn’t the first time Bitsie favorited my tweet. This is actually like the fourth time. But it shows that girly likes what I say. And apparently, last night she really liked what I said because she tweeted this at me:

Bitsie Tulloch Tweets She Digs My Grimm Finale Hashtag

Yeah, that happened. And then sometime later actor Reggie Lee aka Sgt. Wu favorited my tweet about him.

Reggie Lee Favorites My Grimm Finale Tweet

It’s not the first time he’s done that, but you know it was like Grimm actor overload for me last night and I was loving

EVERY. SINGLE. MINUTE.

Oh yeah, *completely off topic* I helped a blind guy off the train yesterday. And I felt really good about doing it.  That’s it for now. Be sure to click the links because they are live and you can see me, tweet at me, and everyone else mentioned in this post.

Con amor,
-Alja

Jun 4 2012

Muse is Sickly…

And so, in trying to keep with documenting my success in finishing a novel by the end of Summer, I am here to inform you that my muse is sickly. Not only is she sickly, but it seems that she’s got laryngitis as I haven’t heard a peep from her in some days. A few times during showers she may muster up some form of plot development, but aside from that, I haven’t added much to what I’ve already got, which is okay because I’ve mustered up something in the 10-11 thousand word range. But, considering that I need to be somewhere around the 80-100 thousand range by September…it is a bit worrisome.

Nonetheless, I shall prevail. I think my sudden blockage may be due to the fact that I need a good book to put me in the frame of mind of the time. With that being said, I’m looking to read a good copy of  ‘Jane Eyre,’ preferably on a beach soaking up some sun and much needed relaxation time. I am hopeful that I will procure my copy of the book soon, though I’m not sure if I want to borrow if from the library -which I haven’t been to in MONTHS- or if I should just get the bloody copy from a Barnes and Nobles and hold on to it in hopes that it’ll be one of those books that I read every Spring or something. It can be added to the ‘classics’ section of my personal library which already includes such books as “Mansfield Park,” “Little Women,” “This Side of Paradise,” ” The Jungle,” “A Tale of Two Cities,” “Wuthering Heights,” “Frankenstein,” “The Awakening,” and “The Jungle.” None of which I’ve actually read yet. Jeez-Louise I need to get better with my reading.

Well, that’s all I have for you so far. I will be posting up excerpts of what I have AND I will also be posting up some poetry and short stories as I started in the past. I need to make this blog thing a little more lively, then hopefully people will like me enough to actually want to read more.

W/love,

-Alja

May 18 2012

Something – Entry 6

All is full of love…

Damn this Bjork song.

Is there such as thing as being addicted to wanting love? I know that there are ‘attention-whores’ but are there ‘love-whores’ out there?

You’ll be given love

For a great deal of my life, I’ve wanted to love and be loved. Being that I was the weird ‘odd-girl-out’ it obviously took a long time to start being noticed for the right reasons. Continue reading →