A Word of Thanks

I just wanted to drop a line while I am out of town to say thanks for all the kind words you guys left on my Origins blog post. I truly believe that everyone has the ability to pursue their dreams, whether it's writing, or in another field all together.

Right now I'm sitting in a hotel, waiting for my husband to get off work.Yes, we're taking a vacay while he's working. He's only gone until 2 in afternoon and then we have the rest of the day to hang out. So I have half a day to relax, write, read, eat, whatever I want. This is also REALLY weird since I've never been away from my kids for more than five hours. It's a little scary, but much needed, especially with my due date only eight weeks away. I'll be back on Friday. Until then I hope to be able to stop by some of your blogs, and get some writing done.

And I hope you guys had an awesome Valentine's day, and if you didn't celebrate, an awesome Tuesday!

Origins Blogfest

DL Hammons, Alex J. Cavanaugh , Katie Mills, and Matthew MacNish should be thanked for hosting this blogfest! I love Origin stories in comic book series, but mine isn't nearly as exciting. But I love reading all of yours, so I thought maybe someone out there in the vast world of the Interwebz might be interested in mine.
Without further ado, The Origin of Prerna Pickett, Writing Extrodinare:

It all started on the day I was born...okay, maybe it was a little bit later than that. I spare you nitty gritty details. I've loved writing for as long as I can remember. Whether they were a mystery involving a classmate named Nevada, or cheesy love songs that made no sense. My mom is a poet. At one point she wanted to write a novel (she still wants to when she retires). So when I showed interest in the art of writing, she was more than encouraging. That's when I learned that you could write for a living. That making up stories was an actual profession! I went around telling my family and friends that I wanted to be an author when I grew up. It sounded magical.

Then as I got older I started thinking that it wasn't going to happen. I wasn't special enough to be an author. It seemed like a pipe dream. I continued to work on things, but never really took it seriously. Back in '04 I graduated HS and went away to college. My mom got me a brand new laptop and I felt quite fancy. One day I was sitting in my dorm room all alone, while my roommate was in class, and I decided to write down a story. It sucked. It sucked so hard  I immediately deleted it. And even though I only wrote a thousand words at most, I felt absolutely ridiculous for thinking I could actually do something that had been calling to me from an early age.Three years later I got pregnant with my second little guy. That's when this overwhelming need to write started to take over. I couldn't push it away anymore, shove it into some dark place where dreams go to die.

So, I sat down and started the story that had been gnawing at me since high school. The words flowed from my brain to my fingers with more ease than I thought imaginable. I reread the words. They weren't half bad. Then I thought 'hmmm...maybe I shouldn't have given up so easily the first time.' The days that followed were filled with more words, coming at me faster than I could keep pace. And I never looked back.

What can you learn from my story? Don't give up so easily. Don't think you're not special enought to pursue your dreams. There's a reason you have that feeling eating away at you. And you'll never know until you've tried if it's worth it.

Five for Friday

1. So I reached 100 followers this past week! It's a little surreal that there are that many people out there interested in reading my thoughts. And welcome to all you new faces! I wish I had some awesome giveaway or some kind of gift of appreciation, but I'm boring. I'll try to think of something. I want to have one sooner rather than later.

2. I'm going around and introducing myself to my fellow campaigners. I had  a positive experience last time, and met many of you through it. I know it'll be just as great this time around. I'm going to participate in as many of challenges as possible, but with due date fast (not fast enough!) approaching, I'm not sure how many I'll be able to do.

3. I only got few hundred words down this week. Better than last week(not hard to beat ZERO), but I'm still feeling a little wobbly in the head as I recover from this illness.

4. I've read three books in the last two weeks. Two were good, and one was...not so much. It had a great premise, and could have gone beyond my expectations, but it was kind of stale. I think the biggest reason I didn't enjoy it is because I didn't feel anything for the main characters. I didn't connect with them, and quite frankly, I didn't like them. Oh well, sometimes it happens.

5. I have to tell you guys that the best breakfast I've ever had was on my Honeymoon (we went to LA) at the Original Pancake House. I hate pancakes and this place converted me. I'm so freaking excited because they opened one here in town! Woohoo! So you all know what I'll be doing the weekend (stuffing my face).

Hope you guys have a fun weekend filled with yummy food!

Campaigning!

It's that time of year again! I had a lot of fun the last time around I did Rachel Harrie's Campaign Challenge, so why not again? It gives me the opportunity to get to know more of my fellow writers, and to be involved in some great challenges. So, click here if you want to join the fun. Get to know more of your fellow writers. Get involved in the challenges. I look forward to seeing you all there!

Genuine Insecurities

Sometimes I think I talk too much. That I laugh way too loud at a joke. I worry that I'm one someone who likes to talk and not really listen people, that I enjoy the sound of my own voice. I can get loud in certain settings. Well, mainly when I'm around people I'm truly comfortable with. I enjoy swapping stories with people, but maybe I tend to overshare. Those are things that start to come to mind AFTER I leave a social setting. While I'm there I get so caught up in the moment I never stop to overanalyze something I said or something someone else said. These are insecurities that come to the surface after the storm has left a village ravaged (or in my case, after I've talked my head off and quite possibly hogged a conversation). But they're not enough to make me stop being me. I try to be more concious of what I say and do around others, but for the most part I shrug it off. I figure it's too late, what was said was said, what I did is done, and there's nothing more I can do about it. If I inadvertently hurt someone's feelings I'm more than happy to apologize.

When it comes to my writing all I seem to carry around with me are my insecurities. While I'm lost in the throes of a great scene these insecurities don't seem to plague me. It's after, much like with my social awkwardness fears, that they come to life. But unlike those, I can't seem to escape my writing insecurities. They keep me up at night. They make me doubt myself. They make me feel like less than I am.

Okay, I know I'm not a BAD writer, but does that mean I'm any good? There's no real way to overcome these insecurites. Even when someone compliments me on my writing, I tend to ignore it, instead focusing on all the things I'm NOT doing right. It's incredibly frustrating, but I think this is something that plagues all of us writers, for better or for worse. It's what drives us to be better. The truth is that you'll never get down things down on paper the way you view them in your head. It'll always be a little off. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Often what I put on paper molds itself into something I didn't even think possible. When I started Fire and Ice, I never imagined that I could create a world with so much magic to it. With Cursed I'm finding that sometimes the bad guy isn't really the bad guy. What we started with in our heads turns into something more meaningful. I think so, anyway. It's just a simple outline of a map that shapes into something more concrete as we go along.

So, with that said, I'm still insecure with my writing. I don't think I'll ever not be. But I love that I've come to accept my writing for what it is. It may be flawed, but those flaws add up to something I didn't even imagine could take place. And of course there's this thing called editing. If nothing else, you know if a scene isn't exactly where you want it to be you can go back and erase it. Very unlike the mistakes you make in life.

Five for Friday

1. The sickness has taken over our home. It makes me feel blech.

2. I have not been at all productive this week. No words written, no editing, nothing. My brain has refused to do much of anything. All it wants to do is sleep. I like that idea.

3. I went to the library (okay, I did ONE productive thing) and picked up about eight books. A few that were familiar, others I'd never heard of. I'll let you know which ones I like.

4. It's Super Bowl weekend!!! Even if you don't watch the sport the rest of the year, this one game brings out the fan out in all of us. Along with plenty of yummy food including wings, pizza, chips and dip, and so much more.

5. Hope everyone has a fun and SAFE weekend. Don't do anything too crazy. I hope to be better by next week. Plenty of rest and fluids are a must.

A Blogfest

I've been absent this week, but in my defense I'm fighting a cold, have house guests, and am just plain old exhausted. I wanted to stop by and tell you about a blogfest taking place on February 13th hosted by DL Hammons, Katie Mills, Alex Cavanaugh , and Mattthew MacNish called Origins. The point is get on your blog on February 13th and share the story of your writing origins. Click here to sign up and for more details. I'm not sure if I'll be back tomorrow or not. I'll definitely try to be back on track next week...but we'll see. I hope you all are doing wonderful. I hope to stop by some of your blogs later.