rush, rush, rush...

So I'm limited on time to blog. (Did you pick up that this one also started with another so?) I have the rare opportunity to blog my hubby and son come home. He offered to pick him up since I had to run an errand. So now t hat I'm rushing there are far more spelling and grammar mistakes and no time to correct them but now... on to business. So the other night I banged out a chapter. I was totally in the zone a luxury I rarely have. I don't usually have the time to sit down, reread what I've done recently so I can get into the "zone" but I did and it just flowed it was great. It barely seemed to take any effort at all and that is what I imagined writing to be like. I even read through today to do some editing and very little was needed I felt. But I do feel that my writing is very amateur and raw. I read and article today that Stephenie Meyer is working on two new books and finishing up the Host trilogy. Well I absolutely loved the host and I really love Stephenie but then all the pride I felt the other night after finishing a chapter was completely stomped on when I started thinking too far ahead. I want to be a writer like that. I want to band out 2 or 3 chapters a day and have it be effortless. Just my hands and mind being the interpreters for my imagination. But I still feel so dumb for lack of a better word or uneducated. I'll have to stop my train of thought because sometimes I can't form the right sentence or I can't get the words in the right order. I'm having a hard time projecting the feeling in my head into words I can put on paper. Now, I know that this will not happen over night. I know this. The hard part is reminding myself and believing it. It's like any skill, drawing, piano, base ball ~ practice makes perfect. So with out trying to burn myself out I take every opportunity to try to better my vocabulary. Word exercises. I mean that's the whole point of this blog. And then I feel guilty. Guilty that I should be spending more time with my son instead of pursuing selfish interests but then I try to justify that I need something for myself and I already spend a lot of time with my son. But can you ever really spend too much time with your child??? It's a battle. Then I look at my story. I feel inspired by other stories but is it too similar to anything in particular. what if it becomes a best seller then it's picked apart and I'm called a plagiarist? what if the story's not good at all and I'm the only one interested only because it's my break from reality? I have one person in mind that I would want to critique it. My husband is the only one who knows about it right now but to be honest I don't think he'd be the best judge. He's not into and kind of love story. But my friends has one pace for everything ~ slow. And is easily distracted ~ "squirrel!". So I don't know what to do. I don't know any legitimate writers other than the one and only one I'm friends w/ on face-book. I dunno, I guess I'm just doubting myself a lot right now. I guess I can say one good thing: I typed out this entire blog before going back and correcting any spelling errors. Progress!

Faux Pas?

So this is my third blog and I'm noticing that I start them all with the word "so". I don't know if that's a writing faux pas or if that's acceptable. I keep reading all these ehow articles to help improve my writing and it just keeps talking about how all through life we're taught proper punctuation and grammar and in the end if you actually decide to become a writer you can throw that all by the way side because a career in writing means there are no rules. You can have fragments galore! I find that hard to believe. I find that I judge my sentence structure just on what flows. If I reread it and it just seems to go on an on and makes me want to stop reading all together then it's not only a run-on, it's a run-on gone bad.Like lyrics to a song. You have to keep a rhythm, that's what makes it flow. Fragments which end up framed in that hideous red squiggly line once again scream at me "wrong! Wrong!" But when I'm reading a novel it's the fragments I love. They are so simple, to the point but powerful among all the long winded trains of words. So if we spend the first half of out lives being taught all these rules only to ultimately break them, should we choose a career as a writer, why teach them in the first place? Just one more thing to make me question the American educational system. But I actually have a real dilemma and I'm hesitant to write it in my blog for fear that someone may read it even though I turned a lot of my settings off for others to see it. I'm afraid if I hash it out here in what I set up to be my personal journal that someone will come across it and steal my idea. I think a lot of myself don't I? Assuming that my story is so good that someone would actually want to steal it? Honestly, I think that I have a great story idea and the more I research and develop it I think it could be great. The dilemma I"m having now is that some of my side characters seem to be developing a story of their own that I feel could out shine my main character and that's a no-no according to ehow.com. But I think it may actually help to type out my thoughts. When I start going through everything in my mind I just get off course, distracted by something else. Maybe I'm finding my side character more interesting than my main character and they're developing a voice of their own maybe I shouldn't fight it. Maybe I should let it flow. Maybe that's the real story?Actually just sitting here deciding if I did want to type anything specific about my story I just realize what would be a brilliant way to give my side story a voice! And I can do it in the sequel! I love it when I'm caught off guard by a brilliant idea! So I'm off to make notes! ~later

Sleep baby, sleep.

So I haven't blogged the last couple days like I was supposed to. Partly I think because I didn't have the time and partly because I didn't know what to write about. I mean, as practice I'm supposed to sit down and type for twenty minutes, no corrections, no stopping. Can anyone really do that? If I have a spelling mistake I must go back and correct it other wise that red squiggly  line just seems to be yelling at me, "you screwed up" "Mistake! Mistake!" Maybe that's one of the things I'm supposed to work on? Just getting the story out as quickly as possible while it's there. Not worrying about spelling and grammar and punctuation. But then what to write? I'm supposed to just keep flowing, jumping from one thing to the next even though one thing might have nothing to do next. Right now I'm having trouble focusing because I'm letting my sixteen month old child cry out in his crib. It's his nap time and up until this last week he's napped on the couch or the floor or in someones arms. I know, I know. But he fights ridiculously hard napping in the crib. Not at night though. At night as soon as he starts rubbing his eyes I can lay him down and walk out and he won't make a peep. I hate listening to him in there, yelling, throwing his fit to be out here with us. Even though if he were out here with us he'd be trying to fall asleep. You'd think considering how ready he is for a nap he would embrace just sleeping in his crib. He knows what its for, he sleeps there every night. He's been crying for fifteen minutes now. He can go over an hour if he's up to it. He doesn't seem to fight it as hard or as long at home as he does at my in laws. I'm sure they give into him more than we do. He's taking more frequent breaks between crying now, just two or three seconds but that's the first sign that he's beginning to give in. But it's not soon enough for me. I hope that it only takes a couple of weeks to break him of this but deep down I think it'll take closer to a month. He's such a fighter when it comes to anything. That's a good thing I think. Of course it will have it's down side. I blame my husband for it but I know he gets it from both of us and I really see a lot of myself in most situations. It's weird being a mom. Weird in the sense that I still can't believe I am a mom. That I'm responsible for another human being. I wonder if he'll be easier to sooth when he can start understanding me. I'm hoping so.He's been crying for nearly twenty-five minutes now and his cries seem to be angrier. Quick burst of screams between sobs. I can almost picture him reaching up on his tip toes, clenching the top rail of his crib, his little body shaking with fury during those quick screams. I hate listening to it but not as much as I hate that he has to go through it not understanding why. My mothering instinct wants me to go running down the hall into his room, scoop him up and rescue him. Rescue him from the anger and misery of it all. But I know that will only make it worse. If I go in there now after more than thirty minutes of crying it will have all been for nothing. A waste. It's quiet now. He must have closed his eyes for a few seconds too long and succumbed to the sand man. We'll see how long it lasts. Sometimes it's only fifteen minutes. The quick recovering gasps being the after effects of his traumatic nap experience jolting him as he sucks in that air. I've spoke too soon, the screaming is back but only for a minute. I hope the final result will be long uninterrupted afternoon naps. A more sound sleeper. Comfortable in his crib. It no longer being a scary place during the day.  I hope my goal is reachable. It's been fifty minutes now and though his sobs will briefly get weaker he seems to still have the energy for the occasional angry sreams. It has to get better. Right?

It's always dark in the beginning...

So... I'm writing a book. I know. I know what you're thinking. Oh, lord someone else who is absolutely ordinary who thinks they might be one of the rare people with the special gift of writing. It's almost like winning the lottery really. I mean, I guess anyone can write but rarely are they any good and even more rare there are so few successful. But it's weird, it's like last year it just hit me; all these books I read with all these great details and story's ~ I could do that. I've been doing that in my mind my whole life. Imaging stories and playing them out in my head. every time I wished I hadn't said something I'd replay back in my mind and replay it the way I wished it had gone. Or things I wish would happen like the guy I was in love with all through high school coming to me on the day of graduation to tell me he'd loved me all along. I could set the scene, know the dialogue and I could make my own heart swoon just playing it out in my mind. So back to why I decided to set up a blog. So I started writing my book last summer I can't quite remember how the idea came to me I was thinking about twilight, yeah the multi-billion dollar industry started by mom of three Stephenie Meyer. I loved her books on a level I'd never felt before. I was Bella in her book, I was there. It was me she was writing about. I watched Stephenie's interview in the extra features on the twilight dvd. How it all began with one scene from a dream and it blossomed from there. She'd never completed college, which I could relate to but no doubt had more education than my one semester. She was a stay at home mom of three boys, the youngest being a year old. My son at the time I started writing was six months. She wrote like crazy after her boys went to bed, I wrote what I could in my notebook at my kitchen table after my husband and baby went to bed. I felt that she could have been me. and with all the day dreaming and imagining that I'd done in my life I could put it all on paper and maybe, just maybe others would enjoy it as much as I'd enjoyed Stephenie Meyers books. That's what I wanted. If money came from it that'd be a bonus but to give someone else a thrill through my stories, that would be success in my book. So I wrote every night, in the beginning my husband would ask me what I was doing. I felt silly, I didn't want to tell him. I thought he'd laugh at me. Then finally one night when he asked again what I was doing and I brushed him off with another "nothing" he sighed and walked away frustrated. I decided to tell him prepared to be laughed at. And I told him he could. He could laugh at me and I didn't care. Isn't that horrible? I expected him to laugh because I probably would have laughed at someone else had they told me that they were writing a book. I deflated it from the beginning, told him that it was nothing big, just a hobby and it would probably never go anywhere it was just something I wanted to do; a creative outlet. He looked at me sincerely and said "okay" and kissed me goodnight. No teasing, no laughing just... support. How great is he? I'll answer that. The greatest I keep finding out. So again back to why I started this blog. I hopped on ehow.com and looked up "how to improve your writing" because I feel that my struggle is my education and my vocabulary. I'm sure my grammer and punctuation needs improvement as well but lets just take one day at a time. But ehow suggested I get a blog. write daily. write for twenty minutes with out correting or stopping or going back and changing anything. So I've already failed at that because I can't stand to move on to the next word and not correct a word that's spelled incorrectly. But then not only did I have to start a blog but I had to come up with a signature so I decided I didn't want to use my real name and I didn't want to do anything cheesy like "so n so's mom". Don't get me wrong, I LOVE my child more than life itself but this, this is for me and only me. So I've not connected my name to it in anyway but wanted my signature to have something to do with writing. I racked my brain and then walking across my kitchen to the fridge it hit me "Scribbling Scarlet" - perfect! Then the pressure of what to call my blog! For this I racked my brain even harder. I wanted to name it after a place because after all it will be the place I escape to when I need to deflate or empty my thoughts like trash. Shangri-la? No. Pandora's box? I had to look that up because I couldn't remember the story behind it, yeah, only evil comes from Pandoras box so that was not fitting. So finally I start looking up synonyms for a secret place and when I get to the S's I see Sanctum, "Scarlets Sanctum!" How perfect? It fit with my signature and everything. So this is where I start. The beginning. But It's always dark in the beginning. God sat in the dark heavens creating, planets, stars and light. So that it was what I will hopefully do; create stars and light. And this place, my "sanctum" will hopefully be where I improve. Improve my writing style and my vocabulary. Practice makes perfect so on top of trying to work on my book I need to blog for twenty minutes a day about nothing. The things so far that are bothering me about my own writing is my style I  guess. I feel like Eddy Haskel writing, all goody-goody. why is that? Am I turning my characted into a square? Surely I hope not. I feel like I over detail. I love to detail and I can see the scene playing out in my head but when I try to put it on paper or the monitor in this case the words don't flow like I'm lacking the words. I know how the scene makes me feel and how I want the reader to feel but the words aren't matching up, their lacking. I'm missing the most important tools. So hopefully between reading more books that I will enjoy and be able to study and practicing writing here I'll improve and figure it out. Don't get me wrong, I am under NO delusion that I'm going to turn out a perfect novel right off the bat but I don't want people reading it thinking a thirteen year old turned it out. You know? So wish me luck and hopefully five years from now and many best sellers later I'll be looking back at this, my first blog thinking I remember that hopeless feeling I had when I first sat down at my kitchen table and wrote this as my son was busy watching his favorite movie just so I could have those twenty minutes. Not sure what I'll do tomorrow. I guess I'll be back after he falls asleep.