Last week, I decided to do a productivity experiment/challenge that included living for a week as if I had no wifi at home (though I live with three other people, so I couldn’t actually turn it off). I had other challenges for the week as well, which I’ll recap throughout the week, but I want to start with this one because it’s such a profound challenge as an ever-connected Millennial. Continue reading
In my post at the beginning of this week, I promised I was going to take some time during the week to blog about my Level 50, a term I took from Nerd Fitness to describe my ideal life. The idea is that you have know why you’re doing what you’re doing. What do you want your life to look like? Life is about the journey, not the destination, to be sure, but what direction is that journey taking you? Continue reading
Happy Sunday! Tomorrow’s the start of a new week, and to celebrate the upcoming launch of my productivity eBook, I wanted to start a new series on my blog. You see, I’ve spent many, many hours of my life reading productivity blogs and books, listening to lectures, etc. But there’s a difference between knowing all of the fabulous productivity advice that’s out there and actually using it. And since I’m trying to get this eBook done and out to you all as soon as possible, I thought, what better way than to do a series where I actually take my own advice and chronicle my progress? Continue reading
Just one more week until we find out mentor picks for Pitch Wars! If you’re a writer and interested in getting manuscript feedback, check out the contest to enter next year: http://ow.ly/RqhJ7
If you’re familiar with National Novel Writing Month, particularly if you or someone you know has done it, you’ve likely heard some of the horror stories that seem to crop up each year. People lose notebooks, flash drives, hard drives, files, and every piece of technology they own crashes. That’s why National Novel Writing Month even has a “Back Up Your Novel Day” on November 13 or 14, depending on the year, to remind participants to back up their hard-earned words on an external hard drive, flash drive, or in the cloud, because bad things do happen to good writers.
The closest I’d ever come to that was losing about 60 pages of a work in progress in high school because I was writing in spiral notebooks and lost one of them. But that was before the genesis of my adventures in NaNoWriMo. Other than disasters of my own making, like giving up too early, nothing like that had ever happened to me. Before this year. Continue reading
Hello, all!
Sorry for my long blogging hiatus. Today is the beginning of yet another National Novel Writing Month, which means, of course, that I’m procrastinating by writing on my blog. I feel a little justified, though–I went to a midnight kick-off last night and wrote 1,777 words, so I’ve written my goal for the day. Of course, I should get ahead for the days coming up when I won’t actually get there…
The kick-off was a ball! The Pittsburgh Wrimos are a fun and quirky bunch, and hanging around IHOP late into the night pecking words out with them was a lot of fun. One of our awesome MLs (Municipal Liaisons) got us goodie bags, which are great. So I’m off at a good start to the month, though I am a little sleepy this morning.
For those of you on the NaNo site, my screen name is _cgirl921 (a holdover from five years ago that I can’t seem to change). Add me and pressure me to keep up on my word count!
That’s all for now, folks. Count on me to keep blogging as I find ways of procrastinating without being on Facebook. Weeee!
(Wordcount: 1,777)
If this is hell, I
wonder what heaven looks like.
You cannot imagine a sky
bluer than this blue.
What’s the Platonic form
of butterflies?
You close your eyes and smell
the sunlight on the long grass.
Will the stars sing with us?
Every square inch of you
bursts with dandelion seeds.
I wonder how perfect laughter
sounds.
A nightingale swoops down
from its branch and chirps at you.
What is God’s Chord?
The warmth on your skin almost
lulls you to easy summer sleep.
What will love be?
You open your eyes, but you’re still
looking at the same sky.
Maybe another day.
You settle into the grass.
But it’s pretty damn beautiful here.
Sunlight bursts its way through the curtains
I’ve pulled tightly shut and rolls my reluctant
body out of bed, cursing and grumbling
the whole way down an hour and a half
after my alarm went off.
Shower in a fog, dress haphazardly,
and stumble down the stairs, tripping
on the last two steps (the first one’s
crooked). Turn on the coffee machine
and push down the lever on the toaster.
Sunbeams stream into the dining room
and I sit down. Inhale the hyacinth
in a small glass vase with daffodils.
Listen to the coffee machine humming.
Take out a book. Close my eyes. Breathe.
I feel like this is sort of cheating for NaPoWriMo because this is a poem I wrote before, just slightly reworked for my poetry class. I’m not sure that I like the revision. If you want to see the original version, you can check it out here. Enjoy! Continue reading
Backwoods Pennsylvania nothing but
Black tree silhouetted skeletons against
Dark gray sky with pale remnants
Of sunset hanging on in the western distance
Flying through rolling hills flashing
Highway signs rushing by in shades of green
Music reverberating through the car blurring
The lines of rain that empty the sky
Onto the black and yellow paved roads
“Some Nights” we stay up racing back to the city
Downtown lights slowing after endless black
Hills sailing over the bridge and needing
A new tank of gas.
Chloe Hawker 