I WON! YAY!

I am an official Winner of the PiBoIdMo 2010! Yay!

I do solemnly swear that I have faithfully executed
the PiBoIdMo 30-ideas-in-30-days challenge, and will,
to the best of my ability, parlay my ideas into picture book manuscripts.

I completed 32 ideas in the month of November. But woke up on 1 December and couldn't stop. By the end of the day, I added 4 more. I hope to continue with this. I'm currently working on one manuscript I want to submit by this time next year. With all these ideas that keep popping into my head, maybe I can have a book a year for the next 30 years! Oh, I know...dream bigger...Have 30 books a year :) Naw, I am still learning all this. I promise to work on one thing at a time. AND COMPLETE IT! 

Thank you Tara Lazar!

Elliot's Dreams

Elliot's Dreams by LadyJai on Storybird

Not sure how many people have been introduced to StoryBird's challenge for November. I was only recently introduced when I read Megan Bickel's Like A Barrel Of Monkeys story and was inspired to play with my own. It was loads of fun.

In fact, it was so much fun, my son has made three of his own. I've privately published those on my account but if anyone wants to read how an 8 year old's mind works when writing stories, just shoot me a note!

An unintentional but awesome #PiBoIdMo effect

I have been dilligently working on my PiBoIdMo ideas. And on occassion I have even expanded from the idea into a full fludged story. Since the 1st I have completed four stories. Well, the  stories have been completed, now it needs refining I am sure. But they have been written. As a test subject, my nearly 8 year old son has been reading them. Over the course of the last 13 days, he has managed to be "inspired" as well and has come up with four of his very own stories. Granted, they aren't as complex, or congruent, as a story should be, but he has writen them. He has been inspired by PiBoIdMo to write! I am so excited! I must fuel this interest while he feeds my need. PiBoIdMo has inspired not only me,  but my son as well. Thanks Tara!

Happy First Day of PiBoIdMo! (AKA My brain is active when I don't want it to be!)

This weekend has been great! The A&E TV show, Hoarders: Buried Alive has been a wonderful therapeutic aide. We have been cleaning out 20 years of packratting junk from our garage. It's a slow process but we are well on our way to cleaning it out and finally being able to park a car in there! One third has been thrown out so far, in the two weekends we have attempted this. The room and progress we have made is amazing and I am so proud! If we learned anything from that show, it's that if you have to think about it more than 3 seconds...toss it! Because if you think, you then begin to reason why you should hold on to something you've had for 20 years and haven't used for the last 15! So, yeah, no sense having a "garage sale" that just feeds the hoarding fire.



Another accomplishment this weekend has been that our son had his first ride without his training wheels! It took him over a year to muster the courage and keep plugging at it. After grandma bought him his scooter, he wanted nothing to do with that bike. Just recently, we had a new boy move in a few doors down that has been so kind and helpful while riding his bike next to our son's. And in only 2 weeks time, he has managed to get back out there and ride. So we decided to try taking the training wheels off. And you know, he's quite good! :D Yay! He had the best support from 2 of his friends and us of course! He stops very well so far. Now if we could just get him to start on his own. :) See for yourself here (of course I have to brag! Oh and you can see some of the trash we moved from the garage for garbage!):

And then came a grueling night of kids and parents in Halloween costumes. Last year we had 10 kids come to our door. This year, Oh My! I couldn't even begin to count them! It was great! We definitely have a growing neighborhood.  


I also had to provide my mom some computer tech support, which I never really like. But, it was quick and painless this time. 


So, yeah! I was oh so very tired. I must be getting old, because I have been falling asleep by 9pm ever since my son has been so mobile. :) But again, something from the depths of my brain woke me up at 2am. It was hiding there, in the fog of sleep. But as I lay there trying to go back to sleep it started to clear and come to the front, nagging at me trying to get me to write it all down. I finally realized that I couldn't let this pass me by. Remembering past experiences with such idea/story writing, I know I would never have remembered this story when I woke in the morning. I had to get up and write it. My brain was just too active for me to sleep. So, I realized, that it was the first day of PiBoIdMo and was happy I wrote this down. 


Do any of you suffer from an over active brain at the most inopportune time? 


And also, are there any groups out there where I can join to have critiques of my work read by peers? 


Happy PiBoIdMo!!

How I Decided to do PiBoIdMo

A year ago, a friend of mine participated in the NaNoWriMo, but it was already over by the time she introduced me to it. I had signed up in December to do it this year. Then, I completely forgot about it. Life just got in the way. Then, last month, she brought it up again and I was seriously considering it. After several weeks of mulling it over and trying to actually learn HOW to write a novel, I got cold feet. I decided I was not ready for this. There was too much information overwhelming me and the feelings of inadequacy came back hard. I put this in the back of my mind.

I then found this medium by chance about a week ago. I've been reading a lot on the Picture Book genre and I think this may be more my style, until I can learn more about the novel and then I can venture out into YA novels/novellas. I want to thank Christie Wright Wild from her Write Wild blog. She was my first contact into this and her blog sparked the interest. From there, I was able to expand into the Writer's Platform-Building Crusade by Rachel Harrie and have since gained some followers and even more information. I enjoy reading everyone's posts, learning about their lives and their struggles with writing. But most of all, I especially love that there is a place for me to go that I actually "fit in". I know it will take time before I can find some friends that I can converse with more than a few words in the comments. And I am hoping that one day I can actually do that. Maybe even find a writing critique group that can help me with my manuscripts. Any suggestions would be wonderful, as always!

Anyway, I came across Tara Lazar's blog about PiBoIdMo and I just had to find out more information. Upon further reading, I believe this was such a better fit for me than NaNoWriMo. I have decided I will be participating in the PiBoIdMo 2010! Yay! Go me! Now, let's hope I know what I am doing!

3am comes early...and so unexpectedly!

Last Christmas, I bought my son the "How To Train Your Dragon" series by Cressida Cowell. He wanted to see the movie so bad when I showed him the trailer back last October. We had made a deal. I would not take him to watch the movie unless he read the book. He agreed and had all 6 books by the time the movie came out in March. I even read it after he was done.

Last night I took him to get his first Library card. It was one of his Cub Scout requirements, but still He was so excited. He now has his own library card and can now check out his very own books. I started teaching him how to read and write by the time he was three. By the time he was in Kindergarten, he was reading at a 3rd grade level. Now, he is in 2nd grade and is reading, what I think are the 10-13 year old age groups. His school library will not allow him to check out books above his age group and "AR" level. I seriously do not believe in holding him back. Hence the reason why we got him his own library card. They do not restrict what books he can check out so much like his school. At present, I am struggling with getting him to read anything other than "Captain Underpants" and "Diary of a Wimpy Kid". He is at the point where he counts the pages and how many pictures there are. And now it seems he doesn't want to read. I keep telling him that if it's a good story, you won't care how long the book is. In fact, if it's good you won't want it to end. But he just doesn't seem to understand that. I'm saddened about that now.


Anyway, while out last night, I also went looking for a recommended book: Writing Picture Books by Ann Whitford Paul. I could not find it in any of the libraries, nor on my ebook Needless to say, I was sad. But I found it in Books-A-Million, one copy, so I bought it right on up!

I guess I must have been excited to get started or something because at 3am this morning, I just could not sleep. I ended up in my son's room writing some ideas down for a children's book that's been tumbling through my mind...I have 4 written pages of the intro alone....and that's pretty much me writing and re-writing and I'm still not quite happy with it. I seem to just get snippets that I jot down in my margins and white spaces of my notebook. After an hour sitting on his floor, I ended up trying to go back to sleep. No such luck. So at 5am, I just got up, got dressed and went to work. It is going to be a very long and dragging day. Good thing I got some RedBull...

Thank you all for the welcome!

Thank you all for the welcome. It is most kind. I am in the process of reading all of your blogs and subscribing to them as well. It is slow going. There is never enough time in the day to do everything. There is so much information out there!

I am having a hard time discerning what area I am most interested in writing for. I do not have any drawing skills whatsoever. I have ideas for what I think are picture books, but I don't know what age group to classify them in. I also have ideas of what the pictures should look like in the books, but where do you go for an illustrator? Do you just write the story by words alone? I think I am going to have to do more research before I do any more writing. I feel like a big fat FAIL!

All this information I am reading has really either confused me or just made me feel inadequate again. I really do not want that feeling any more, but it seems to creep up all the time. I know nothing in life is ever easy. And if I want it, I must work hard for it. But why do these feelings always seem to creep up and get me down? They just need to go away! I keep telling myself it's a slow learning process. I guess we all go through this from time to time. I just need to get over it. 


Currently, I am working on an idea and trying to learn how to expound upon it into some type of children's book. I will undoubtedly need to go to the library and start reading books on "how to write for children(or picture books)" something similar. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance!
--LadyJai

Ok, so now what?

Ok, so I've set up my blog, now what? I really don't know what to "blog" about and if anyone is interested. I'm just a dreamer lost wallowing in my mind of all the things I want to do in my life. But the main one is becoming a published writer. 


I've finally gotten back with the interest of writing again. I have, over the years, written many poems and loads of little snippets of story ideas. I have several notebooks with unfinished thoughts and I'm left wondering where I was going to go with the idea. 

Since I started teaching my son to read, and he has ever expanded his reading career, I have thought I might enjoy writing children's books...namely picture books. One of the dreams I dabble with is writing a novel of some sort. But that is a monumental task. When I think of this and how to approach it, I am lost. I don't know how to plot, to develop my characters, or even the story. My first attempt at a short story amounted to a chaotic mess that I am scared to clean up. My mind began at the end, then continued with the beginning, developed something in the middle while I struggled with tying it all together. It came out "ok" in my book. I still have lots of questions. And I know I have some serious housecleaning to do. I will get there. 


I graduated from college with a writing degree, if you can believe that; however, it was more of a journalism degree and I never really was exposed to the creative side of it all. So, no formal education for me on this. This will all be self-taught. I am in the infant stages of this, so any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated. I wonder if there is an online writer's group somewhere.....