Last week I said I'd pour a rainbow of colors onto the page and see what happened. Let's try it. Since this is a journal, I will talk about what has recently made me...
Angry: A few weeks ago I accidentally (don't ask) ordered a book on crime from the inter-library loan program. I ended up reading it anyway. The book focused mainly on high-profile crimes, and included pictures. While I must admit there was some fear and sadness involved, the main emotion was anger, and I don't think that's a bad thing. While it was a difficult book to read, it also gave me an insight into how much Jesus has done for me. The Bible says there are no big sins or little sins, only sins. My own sins may not physically be as ugly as murder, they are still sins, and just as ugly, spiritually.
Excited: How God had me in mind from the very beginning of the world. He chose my base characteristics from among the genes of my parents, and then he left it up to me what I would do with them.
Nervous: Preparing for college, wondering what the future holds for me.
Happy: My wonderful family. Music. Also, coming up with a good blog post idea :)
Think: The book,Anthem, by Ayn Rand. It was very interesting and I have only once read a book like it.
Dream: An idea for an extended field trip that will probably never happen but is fun to think about.
Showing posts with label journal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label journal. Show all posts
Friday, March 1, 2013
Friday, February 22, 2013
Rainbow
Okay, so I've made up my mind. I received good feedback on my last post, (thank you, Amanda) but there was one problem: I didn't enjoy writing it. Since I get to write what I choose on here, I might as well make it something I like doing. So here's my decision: this blog is a journal, not an advice column. My subtitle reads "the scribblings of a crazy author." That's what these are going to be. Scribblings. This is a place where I don't have to worry about grammar, proper form, or organizing my thoughts. A place where I can forget about every piece of writing advice I ever heard (which is what I do anyway, during my first draft) and just enjoy doing what I enjoy doing: expressing myself. This is where I just pour a rainbow of colors onto the page and see how it turns out. I'm going back to once a week. It's easier now that I don't have to think about.
Friday, January 25, 2013
Let me introduce myself
My name is Elisabeth, I'm from the land of ice (Michigan) I'm home schooled and I'm eighteen. I like to sing and write and read and worship God. I like to be direct and blunt.
I feel kind of guilty about having only one post, but hey, everyone has to start sometime!
I didn't start really writing until June of 2011, and I've been exclusively using pencil and paper until about a month ago when I discovered that nobody gets up until ten O'clock around here. I am not a morning person, but this is the only time I can get privacy while using the downstairs-only computer. So I make it work.
A little bit about my history: I've been a bookworm since before I could read. I became aware of my desire for adventure after I read Gertrude Warner's The Blue Bay mystery. Thus followed a period of intense longing for the kind of adventures the Alden children had. In my drawing book over a picture of a person in a ship, I wrote this poem, with the original spelling. It's not dated, so I can only guess that I was nine or ten.
I wish, I wish, with all my might, to have an advenchure, in God's sight.
I hope to go on a flight or a cruse, but please don't make me get a bruse.
It's pretty silly, but it was the beginning of the writing bug, and let me tell you why.
After a while I pretty much figured out that the Alden's type of adventures are pretty rare, and they either happen by accident or when you have tons of money like they did... or they can happen in your brain. So I read every adventure book I could get my hands on, and started going on adventures in my imagination. For the past five years I don't think there's been more than a handful of nights that I haven't done this, though I've moved on from the Robinson Crusoe dramas of my tween and pre-tween years. My adventures are now more grown-up, and incorporate different characters from myself, but, truth be told, they are still adventures and I am still very much a part of them.
I wrote my first story when I was either six or seven, a short story entitled the Adventures of Cat and Dog. I tried to write a few different Robinson Crusoe-type books, but never finished them, maybe because they were just that- Robinson Crusoe's, and not mine. In 2009 or so, I came up with a more grown up story, a biblical time romance. Long story short, it died. My current project is a story from the American Civil War, and it's going much better, though I can't tell you specifically how much is done because much of it is still in the giant notebook that I was writing in up until a month ago.
Now, for the story of how my writing style was developed. From the fourth grade to the tenth, my English curricula was very rigorous. I hated it. I hated all the rules and the hard work. I felt like I wasn't good at it, though I generally got a B average. So my writing was kind of in limbo for that period, though, as I said, I wrote a few Robinson Crusoe-type stuff that I never finished. In my junior year, I moved on to an SAT preparation course because my English only went up to the tenth grade. I had already written a few scenes of my current book in the year before. They were really bad, and I had quit, I think, but I'm not sure. Anyway this SAT prep book stated that the single best preparation for the SAT was reading good books, and it gave us the freedom to choose the books we wanted from a list of classics. Being the bookworm that I was, I loved that!
Thus I began what I believe was the single best thing I ever did for my writing style. I loved most of the books (once I got used to the hard words) and my tastes began to change. The books I had enjoyed before I began my journey now seemed shallow. They didn't sound good anymore. I looked over my old manuscripts, and saw them for what they were: they were terrible. A friend of mine says, "When you read crap, you'll write crap." I've found this to be very true in my own experience. When I began writing again, my style was much better, and I found myself enjoying it. Finally I had the freedom to break the rules! I now find it irritating when people feel like they always have to follow the rules. No matter if there's a dangling participle or two, if it sounds good, it's right!
So there you have it. Me, and my writing, in a nutshell. I plan to write on here once every two weeks.
I feel kind of guilty about having only one post, but hey, everyone has to start sometime!
I didn't start really writing until June of 2011, and I've been exclusively using pencil and paper until about a month ago when I discovered that nobody gets up until ten O'clock around here. I am not a morning person, but this is the only time I can get privacy while using the downstairs-only computer. So I make it work.
A little bit about my history: I've been a bookworm since before I could read. I became aware of my desire for adventure after I read Gertrude Warner's The Blue Bay mystery. Thus followed a period of intense longing for the kind of adventures the Alden children had. In my drawing book over a picture of a person in a ship, I wrote this poem, with the original spelling. It's not dated, so I can only guess that I was nine or ten.
I wish, I wish, with all my might, to have an advenchure, in God's sight.
I hope to go on a flight or a cruse, but please don't make me get a bruse.
It's pretty silly, but it was the beginning of the writing bug, and let me tell you why.
After a while I pretty much figured out that the Alden's type of adventures are pretty rare, and they either happen by accident or when you have tons of money like they did... or they can happen in your brain. So I read every adventure book I could get my hands on, and started going on adventures in my imagination. For the past five years I don't think there's been more than a handful of nights that I haven't done this, though I've moved on from the Robinson Crusoe dramas of my tween and pre-tween years. My adventures are now more grown-up, and incorporate different characters from myself, but, truth be told, they are still adventures and I am still very much a part of them.
I wrote my first story when I was either six or seven, a short story entitled the Adventures of Cat and Dog. I tried to write a few different Robinson Crusoe-type books, but never finished them, maybe because they were just that- Robinson Crusoe's, and not mine. In 2009 or so, I came up with a more grown up story, a biblical time romance. Long story short, it died. My current project is a story from the American Civil War, and it's going much better, though I can't tell you specifically how much is done because much of it is still in the giant notebook that I was writing in up until a month ago.
Now, for the story of how my writing style was developed. From the fourth grade to the tenth, my English curricula was very rigorous. I hated it. I hated all the rules and the hard work. I felt like I wasn't good at it, though I generally got a B average. So my writing was kind of in limbo for that period, though, as I said, I wrote a few Robinson Crusoe-type stuff that I never finished. In my junior year, I moved on to an SAT preparation course because my English only went up to the tenth grade. I had already written a few scenes of my current book in the year before. They were really bad, and I had quit, I think, but I'm not sure. Anyway this SAT prep book stated that the single best preparation for the SAT was reading good books, and it gave us the freedom to choose the books we wanted from a list of classics. Being the bookworm that I was, I loved that!
Thus I began what I believe was the single best thing I ever did for my writing style. I loved most of the books (once I got used to the hard words) and my tastes began to change. The books I had enjoyed before I began my journey now seemed shallow. They didn't sound good anymore. I looked over my old manuscripts, and saw them for what they were: they were terrible. A friend of mine says, "When you read crap, you'll write crap." I've found this to be very true in my own experience. When I began writing again, my style was much better, and I found myself enjoying it. Finally I had the freedom to break the rules! I now find it irritating when people feel like they always have to follow the rules. No matter if there's a dangling participle or two, if it sounds good, it's right!
So there you have it. Me, and my writing, in a nutshell. I plan to write on here once every two weeks.
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