It's Friday! Let's Celebrate the Small Things with Lexa Cain! I am her co-host.
We had a safe and fun trip to Illinois last weekend. We left on Friday morning, and we made it back late Sunday night. We visited family and ate lots of good food. All in all, fun was had by all. Yes, the drive was long and tedious, but the kids were all surprisingly well behaved the entire time. I was impressed.
My boys went camping with their cousins and my in-laws on this week. That left the house a little on the quiet side, and Zoe didn't seem to know what to make of that. Still, the quiet gave me a good chance to get some writing done, and the boys seem to have had a fantastic time.
Writing continues, and I think I'm really close to finishing this first draft. I just have to keep reminding myself that I can do this.
It's Friday! Let's Celebrate the Small Things with Lexa Cain! I am her co-host.
We're going on a trip today! We're heading to central Illinois to attend my sister in law's baby shower. Her baby girl is due later this summer, and everyone's pretty excited about that. The drive out there should take several hours, and with three kids in the car, it should be an interesting trip. I'll need plenty of coffee to sustain me.
My writing progress, while it will undoubtedly suffer slightly with the busy weekend we have in store, is still worth celebrating. Are the words spilling easily onto the page? No. The work may be somewhat slow, but it is continuing. The ending of this book is starting to take shape, and I know I'll get there in the end. I just can't let myself give up.
The theme for this month is Unraveled Yarn. There were a lot of possibilities with this one, and I expect there will be a lot of fascinating entries as always. Here's mine, and I hope you enjoy it!
A Life Unraveled
My life has unraveled around me, and it’s
your fault. I can see the threads that
once wove together the tapestry of me, but they don’t make sense anymore. A favorite book that is collecting dust on a
shelf. The faded pink canvas shoes that
I wore for at least a year too long. The
afghan I once started knitting to remind me of my grandmother, only a quarter done
and tucked away under the bed to rot. I can’t
for the life of me pick up those loose threads and recreate my former self.
Why?
Why did you reach into my heart and dig your hooks into it when you didn’t
want me to lay a similar claim on you?
Why did you erupt with jealousy, the flames practically dancing in your
eyes, when anyone else paid me the least little bit of attention? Why did I allow myself to believe that meant
you loved me, and why did I not question how upset you got when I expressed
concern that you were still spending time with other girls?
I feel dumb now. Everyone I know, friends and family alike, tried
to warn me.
“He’ll change who you are,” my sister Leah
said.
“You walk on eggshells around him. Fear doesn’t equal love,” my mom told me.
“I’m tempted to kill him myself,” Dad
mumbled when he thought no one was listening.
I should have listened to them. You knew that, didn’t you? You knew exactly what you were doing to me. You convinced me that I didn’t need to go
back to school, and you persuaded me to say no to my friends every time they
wanted to have a night out. Your reasons
made a warped kind of sense at the time.
“We can’t afford for you to spend the money right now.” “You’re supposed to want to spend time with
me.” “Your friends just want to stare at
guys, and I don’t feel comfortable with you being a part of that.” “You can’t trust other men, okay? Who knows what they might do to you if you
put yourself out there?”
I lost track of my old life. Bit by bit, pieces of that existence fell
away. Days turned to years, and I couldn’t
remember the last time I’d seen or spoken to either of my parents. My friends stopped trying to reach out to me. And I found some relief in that at
times. It was hard coming up with
excuses for the bruises my clothes wouldn’t cover.
Were there times I considered leaving
you? Sure there were. Little snippets of the kinds of fantasies I
had as a little girl would infest my brain from time to time. Perhaps the details were different. Instead of dreaming of being a princess living
in a castle, I envisioned living in a nice home without having to worry about
setting off someone else’s vile temper.
I reminded myself that I once wanted to travel the world and take
photos. I longed to try food from every
country. I toyed with the idea of
writing a book or taking up painting or trying my hand at rock climbing. My life could have been anything, but instead
I let myself wither here with you.
I wish I could pick myself back up and try
again. I’d make different choices. I’d try to put myself first. I’d reweave myself to create something new
and bold. Beautiful. If only I could.
But for the life of me I can’t do any of
it, because I have no life. In the most
literal sense, my life is over. It ended
the night you took a baseball bat to my head during a heated argument. You should be in prison, but my bones are
buried in a shallow grave that has yet to be discovered. So here you are, still living in the house we
shared together, and no one has noticed anything changed. Why should they when I never set foot outside
the house? When I never called anyone
anymore?
It’s cruel, really. I haunt this place, and it haunts me in return. In life I could not escape it, and in death
it is much the same. I get to see how
little you miss me. My absence means
nothing to you, and I wish I tear your flesh away from your bones. I wish I could unwind you and leave you in
ruin the way you did to me. But I can’t. All I can do is linger and recall all that
came apart within these walls.
It’s all your fault, and you don’t care.
Word Count: 775 FCA And that's it! Be sure to visit the other participants and leave them some wonderful comments.
1. SUBMIT your name to the list below NOW 2. CREATE your entry for the June challenge - UNRAVELED YARN 3. EDIT your entry 4. POST your entry on your blog on the date shown - state feedback preferences 5. READ other entries, giving feedback
ALL GENRES WELCOME except erotica - 1,000 words maximum
FURTHER ENQUIRIES VISIT www.writeeditpublishnow.blogspot.com or VISIT HERE or: this month email: den.covey@gmail.com or nilabose306b@gmail.com
It's Friday! Let's Celebrate the Small Things with Lexa Cain! I am her co-host.
Today marks 13 years since my husband first asked me out. It's kind of crazy that it's already been this long.
Awhile back I kind of got hung up on finishing the first draft of my WIP. The ending has been giving me some trouble. After several attempts at getting things going again, I finally made some good progress on it this week, and if all goes well, I think I should be able to finish this draft soon. Fingers crossed.
A week from today, we're leaving for a brief trip to Illinois to visit family. It'll probably be a fun trip, though spending several hours in a car with three kids should be an interesting experience.
It's Friday! Let's Celebrate the Small Things with Lexa Cain! I am her co-host.
Our dryer broke, which is frustrating since we only bought it a few months ago. The bright side is that we're heading into summer, so I've been hanging clothes outside to dry. The kids have been doing their best to help with this, so that's been nice. The clothesline will hold us over until we get the dryer situation remedied.
We're looking into buying a house sometime in the near future. It's a long and daunting process, but I'm also kind of excited. The kids are excited too. Well, the boys are anyway. Zoe doesn't seem to care either way.
There's another T-ball game tonight, and that means I'll be chasing Zoe around again. I can't deny it's been a good source of exercise.
The optional question for this month is: What's harder for you to come up with, book titles or character names?
This is an easy one for me to answer, because I'm struggling to come up with a title for my novel as we speak. I have plenty of methods for coming up with character names. There are random name generators for smaller characters that don't feature heavily in the story. There are baby name websites that I like to peruse when coming up with names for my main characters.
Choosing a title is a different matter altogether. People expect a lot from a title. It's supposed to speak to the nature of the story you're telling. The title needs to catch the eye of potential readers and pique curiosity. I want the title of this novel to have a good ring to it while accomplishing all these things.
So I'm stuck. The book is mostly done (I got a bit hung up on some of the logistics of the ending, but I'm hoping the revision stage will help me tidy these things up), but I'm no nearer to having a title for it than when I began. Is that unusual? Am I being too hard on myself? Should I allow the title to come to me organically, or are there methods I could use to generate one that will work? This definitely represents an insecurity for me, so any advice would be greatly appreciated?
Do you struggle with titles, or is it character names that trip you up?
It's Friday! Let's Celebrate the Small Things with Lexa Cain! I am her co-host.
The boys had their last day of school yesterday. They're both excited for the summer. Hopefully we get to go places and do some new and interesting things as a family over the next couple of months.
My boys also have their first T-ball game tonight. I'll probably spend most of the game chasing Zoe around rather than sitting down and watching it, but hey, I should get some good exercise out of it.
My husband and I have our anniversary tomorrow. We've now been married for 11 years. We don't have any special plans to celebrate as of yet, but I'm sure we'll be able to find something fun to do.
I'm also celebrating the fact that I'm coming out of a writing rut I found myself in. I managed to get a lot of work done yesterday, and I'm hoping I can keep up the momentum.
