Art in Writing

I remember when I went to elementary school and I took an art class. It was a lot of fun, but one thing the teacher told us has always stuck with me. She said that every artist puts a little bit of themselves in every project. I found myself thinking about that recently and it hasn't ever been more true for me than it is now. I find myself relating to the characters that I write more than ever. I wrote one who worked in a shoe store at the time that I was working in a shoe store with the same inner thoughts as I had. I also just started writing about a character who distances herself from most people, someone I find that we can all relate to. No, I don't think the average person is anti social and ignores others, but I think we've all faced times where we've felt alone. The character that I am writing now is a werewolf named Anyssa, she's someone that I find myself relating to more than I've ever related to any of my other characters. She's been through a bad relationship and does her best to avoid getting into a new one, but sometimes things just happen. Although it's not a romance, it has elements in there like a love interest. A good story is more complex than just going from point A to point B. The reader has to enjoy the ride or they won't pick up anything else that you've written. In a way, your reader knows you better than anyone. They are reading something you put time and effort into, something some people might say is part of you.

Love Geek Fuel and Steam?

I have decided to partner with Geek Fuel and bring you an incredible deal. If you sign up using my link you not only get a box full of goodies, you get three steam games! 

Steam 3 Game Bonus Pack in your first box! 

I realized that I can't take Supergirl or any other show/comic/game that does this seriously

I haven't watched Supergirl yet. I am actually very behind on the shows that I want to watch, but today I was scrolling through my newsfeed and I saw something that I just had to write about. Her arch enemy is Lex Luther's little sister. I haven't read the comics, so I don't know if she is one of the villains in the comic, or if she even actually exists, but I hate comics, tv shows, books, and video games that do that. It's almost like they are too lazy to make up their own villains, and I would have preferred that she just fight Lex. I don't see anything wrong with that, she's supposed to be a strong character so she should be able to take on anyone. I do realize that Supergirl was created the same way, but I feel like she's been around long enough that she is now her own character. It doesn't just bother me that they create a female version of a male character, but also when they create another version of the same character, like Subzero in Mortal Kombat, he's just the original Subzero's brother. Don't even get me started on Frost though. She was meant to be a female Subzero, they just gave her a slightly different storyline. I can excuse older video games, since they had no choice but to reskin some characters, which is why MK has so many ninjas. It just really annoys me when a character is created just for the sake of being the same character.

I'm a writer, but that doesn't mean I'm perfect

I'm a writer. I wrote a book about zombies, but that doesn't make me or my writing perfect. I make typos. I misspell things in tweets. I don't use proper grammar and spelling in my blog. It doesn't bother me that I'm not perfect. I'm not trying to be. When I use my blog I'm normally writing about things that I care about, and when I'm tweeting it's mostly to have fun. I don't use spell check everyday and most of my blogs are short (as I'm sure this one will be), but that doesn't mean that I don't take my actual writing seriously. I think of writing as something that will be my career.

Why I decided to write about one of the worst things that ever happened to me

I came across an article recently asking for personal essays that involved any stage of romance, and since I am not doing so well financially, I decided to write an essay. I sat for awhile, just staring at a black screen. Anyone who's written anything in their life can relate to that, and also how annoyed they get writing the first sentence and deleting it over and over. I usually write fiction since my life isn't that interesting. Finally I thought of something, but I wasn't sure that I wanted to go there. I wasn't sure if I was healed enough to write that particular article. Would anyone even want to read what I had to say, or would they think that I was just trying to shame my ex? I thought about some of my favorite authors and started to write the article. In the past I had cried whenever I thought about the event, but this time I didn't. This time I flew through writing the article, even finding things to add when I was finished. When I was completely done I sat there, staring at my computer and thinking about what I had written. Should I submit it under a pen name?After some debating I decided to submit it under my name. While I hated what he had done to me, I knew that he had only made me stronger. I'm not sure if the magazine will publish me or reject me, but I really hope that it publishes me. If it doesn't I plan to revise the article and try again.

How 2015 killed my inspiration

Much like I imagine an artist does, I spent most of my life finding inspiration everywhere. I could watch a movie and get a completely unrelated idea simply because one of the characters had a red bike. It felt like I couldn't go anywhere without a notebook to jot down what inspired me, but now I don't feel the same. When I watch a movie it's always just a movie. I could even find inspiration in the worst movies. I used to have to pause youtube videos to write a scene in my novel or pull out my cell phone mid-conversation to write notes on whatever had inspired me. Now I don't do that anymore. In 2015 I had the misfortune of having my cell phone ripped from my hands whenever I took it out for any reason.  I think this ruined an aspect of note taking for me. I also had no time to write and all I did was watch movies and I didn't bother to look any deeper into the movies that I was watching. I also stopped reading, and my writing suffered as a result. I am always second and third guessing my grammar. It makes me sad that I can no longer hear a song on the radio and picture a character interacting with it. I honestly don't know how to get back to where I was.

Why I almost gave up writing...

I'm sure this will be a hard blog for me to write. It's hard for me to even think of a life where I don't write. Maybe every author goes through a phase where they almost give up on the art. For my entire life I had always envisioned myself as a writer. I always wrote in journals and kept lots of notebooks near me for when I got an idea for a story. I usually filled notebooks with notes and little bits of dialog that I intended for my characters to say. Sadly, I spent most of 2015 away from my keyboard. My ex and I were sharing an apartment and for some reason we spent all of our time together. It was probably just hard to manage being together all that time. Our time together had been special prior to being together all the time and there we were, in each other's faces all the time and getting on each other's nerves. Even if I had been granted the chance to go in the other room to write it would have been hard. I'm not used to writing when I can hear others talking/moving around and he was noisy. He probably didn't think he was, but he used to curse at his video game whenever he would lose (which was often). I would have heard him even if I closed all the doors. We had a patio and I guess I could have gone outside to write, but when I started to hear others it would have halted whatever progress I had made. I really wanted to be able to write around him, but I didn't think it would have been fair to ask him if he could keep it down and I also wasn't sure about sharing my writing with him. In early 2016 we broke up (due to his friend saying I was too ugly for him), and I still found it hard to write. I already had a story written and it just needed to be edited (Zombie Bite). I found myself uninterested in writing and for the first time I found myself wondering why I had even been drawn to writing in the first place. I've wanted to be a writer since I was a child. I was beyond sad, and sometimes I couldn't even bring myself to turn on the computer. I think my writing just sat untouched for about three months while I tried to pull myself back together. I know a lot of people are thinking that I should have just pulled out the computer and wrote to make myself feel better, and I did try that sometimes, but life is hard when you allow yourself to get attached to someone and then they throw you out like a moldy box of strawberries. I was dependent on him, since he had cut off all my other contacts and insisted that I would be friends with his friends. I didn't want to do anything for awhile, not even work. I went to work like a zombie. I smiled and tried to be the person I had been before, but on the inside nothing made me feel better. I went through a period where I would only eat once a day (because he made me feel fat and made me feel like I was worthless). The men who flirted with me during that time were all better looking than him and they all had better jobs too, which should have made me feel better, but didn't. I really did feel like a zombie and sometimes I still do, even though I don't want anything to do with him. He's not a nice person or a good person, and he's really not the person I thought he was. I had goals, not just writing goals but school goals and housing goals and I gave them up because of this person. I beat myself up for it a lot. Anyway, I finally managed to start writing again, but other worries plagued my mind. I am now always worried about bills and my job and how I no longer know what I want to do with my future. I want to be successful, but I don't think I want to be a journalist anymore. It used to be my goal to be a journalist and I wanted nothing more than to be able to write for newspapers or go on the news and talk about current events. I know I could do those things using youtube, but it doesn't feel right. I feel like I lost part of my personality. Sometimes giving up writing still crosses my mind. I keep thinking that I'll never sell books and no one will care to read what I write. Am I right? I don't know, but I'm going to keep pushing myself, at least for now.

Comic books and angry women who don't understand them

Normally I wouldn't bring attention to something like this, but I am so annoyed with this video and many others on this woman's youtube channel. I wish I could just write her a quick comment getting my point across, but she has her comments disabled. I'm talking about this woman:

She clearly doesn't read comic books, but feels ok talking about them because she's seen someone else's youtube video. Oh, and she says Fable 2 is a video game in which you are forced to play as a male getting revenge for the death of a female family member. The funny thing about that is that I have that video game and I play it as a FEMALE character. In this video she talks about all comic books being so awful to woman because a lot of females die in the comics. Well a lot of males die too, and not only that both male and female characters frequently come back from the dead, most of the time stronger. Jean Grey is the perfect example of this, since she comes back as the Dark Phoenix. Gwen Stacey is back as Spider Gwen. This woman also keeps referencing the Killing Joke and Barbara Gordon being shot by the Joker. Yes, she does get shot by the Joker, and she does later become the Oracle (which many people look up to as a strong female character), but she also later gets to walk again and even takes up the mantle of Batgirl again. What about comics where female characters don't die? Does this woman even know there are comic writers who are FEMALE? This woman also claims that many of the male characters who died went down fighting and the female characters did not. Elecktra dies by fighting Bullseye. Just about every female who died in the Walking Dead died fighting, and I know a lot of bad things happened to some of the women in that book, but I believe that the Walking Dead portrays violence very accurately. These are things that actually could happen to people if they were in the same situation. There are many others who have, and yes some woman in comics were killed in very unfair ways, but there are many different genres of comic books and to just group them all into one genre is unfair. One of my dreams is to create a comic book. Sorry for the rant, but it's clear this woman was just looking for something to be angry about. If she happens to stumble upon my blog I would like to advise her to do research next time before posting an angry video.