Tag: teachers

Garden of Future Possibilities

There are those creatures in your mind that claim to take control of you when you are not looking.  These creatures of the mind have many names – Depression, Anger, Fear, Sadness, Melancholy, Moody, and Demon. They whisper in your mind’s inner ear hurtful; untrue things to us.  They pretend to know us with calm voices, angry voices, emotional voices to sound like you.  The way to hush these creatures inside us, these demons is to force them into submission.  Crack a whip at them like venom from a snake.  Crack that whip as loudly as you can inside your mind.

The demon Depression is among all the others in your Garden of Doubt.  You stroll through it careful not to step on any of them so not to rouse their sleeping heaps of flesh and shadow.  Soon, you find an ‘interesting’ demonic Depression or Fear.  You walk up softly to it, and as the demon awakens, snarls at you throwing its venomous words your way, you stand tall and crack that whip of Submission. The sound is mighty loud as though Zeus the God of Thunder himself threw a bolt at the Demon’s feet.

Cracking the whip once more, “NO! You are my bitch! You come with me! NOW!”

That very moment the Demon Depression has a steel collar around its neck.  Demon Depression whimpers, but then screams at you obedience hoping you’ll cave in.  You crack the whip once more, the Demon cowers back and follows you to your work space.

Crack the whip again and point, “Get over there to the wall! Chain yourself or else!” The Demon growls angerly at you, but then gazes at the whip and obediently takes its place against the mighty Wall of Faith.  Looking upon this Demon of Depression chained by all four limbs, you study it to great detail.  Then, a light bulb goes off over your head!  You star to write!  You star to paint! You take a break from the work and you dance with glee at what you created from said Demon of Depression. Soon the work is done. You admire the beauty of what you created.  As you hand your piece onto your Wall of Creation, you look back to see that the Demon of Depression has shrunk in size to that of a puppy. The darkened colors of blues, purples, sickening greens and brownish-yellows has all be faded out. All that is left of the Demon of Depression’s colors are transparent, fading ever so more and more as the life energy from it’s darkness has been transformed by your work of inspiration.

Just before the Demon of Depression fully disappears, it transforms into a seed.  A single seed in a shape it chose to be – pastel colors in oval shape?  A glorious gold in shape of a twenty side dice? Silvery shimmers come off of it like light from the sun or moon as you old it in your hand. You hold the seed close to your chest as you smile with love all around you. Turning away from the Garden of Doubt, you open a gate to another garden – the Garden of Future Possibilities. You walk through the garden with pride. For each battle with the Garden of Doubt, you reap what you sow of the seeds in which the Demons transformed into.  The Garden of Future Possibilities is colorful beyond measure. The colors are endless. The flowers of all kinds of shapes are endless and beautiful.

Finding an empty place to bury the seed, you place it in the hole and cover it in the good tilled earth. Water it with light. Give it plenty of shine from your soul. Watch your garden grow with strength of your heart.

What will you find in your Garden of Future Possibilities? You won’t know until you put that Demon of Depression into submission. You are the Master of Depression. It will be hard work to fight them all even if you have thousands to face every day. It is your job to face them, but remember you don’t have to do it alone. Call a friend to help you fight the demons with you. You are not alone in your darkened garden. There is light and love waiting to help you. Reach out. I know you can do it.

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Writer’s Drama edition: Back Up Everything

Nearly two weeks ago, June 28th, my beloved laptop died. I had that computer since 2009. It was my beloved companion and co-worker in my writing projects for my first novel “Soul’s Little Lie”, some new short stories and some new novel ideas, including the continuation to Soul’s Little Lie of three other books.  I had my whole life on that laptop. I truly loved it until its last breath.

Thankfully, with the help of my best buddy – intuition (gut feeling mixed with images of the coming future), I backed up all my current novels onto disc. I even backed up my art reference pictures for my art classes and whatever else I could. Then, that day on June 27th, I decided to do some serious updates. It wasn’t me that had killed the computer, it was the power supply in the device itself.  I could not shut the computer down, I got that legendary blue screen of death. I tossed and turned in my sleep hoping this was only a dream.

Took it to Best Buy to get the hard drive removed and get some extra files out of it.  Thankfully the hard drive was not damaged.  The Geek Squad clerk suggested I get this USB port drive to drive hook up transfer device.  My friend Robert was there with me, a fellow computer geek.  I had bought a brand new HP computer that day, too.  Took it home, set it all up and began to transfer my old C Drive to the new one with this USD port thing.  Well, as soon as I clicked the C drive, it went black.  Turns out that there were not options to transfer particular files only.  Instead it transferred my whole Vista OS to the new Windows 8 OS and they canceled each other out.  Went back to get my money from the USB port device, transferred some more files onto a thumb drive from the old hard drive and then called HP the next day.

Thank you Huricane Arther for stopping FedEx from delivering my recovery OS for my computer!  It took two whole weeks and with the July 4th weekend, it made it that much longer to get here.  Today, thankfully it made it. I’m typing this new entry from my now fully working computer.

While I waited for the recovery discs to arrive, I didn’t stop writing or reading.  I hunkered down and studied my ass off by reading: The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing by the Editors of Writer’s Digest.  I’m half way done.  I’ve marked up important areas all throughout the whole book that strike a cord with my thinking.  There are sections of this non-fiction that I thought I was the only person who ‘went through this’ or ‘went through that’ as a new writer.  I never knew other writers thought this way of ‘odd tactics’ or ‘odd behavior’ while flushing out a new novel.  I was captivated by this book.  I could not, and still can’t, put it down! It’s like a one on one process with your favorite literary teacher and English teacher at the same time.  A ‘free’ one on one course in writing in the comfort of your own home with no worries of college debt!

In between reading, I would jot down notes here and there in my purple note book for the current novels I’m working on.  Any idea that would come to mind.  I’ve found myself making notes in certain pen colors: Pink for Soul’s Little Lie, Orange for SLL: Broken Roses, Green for SLL: Metal Staircase, Blue for SLL: Cloaked Mirrors and Teal Green for other story ideas that are separate.   If older notes had other colors, I’d draw a star in the proper color in which I made the current notes in.  This way I could find the novel notes I needed at a quick glance. Oh, of course don’t forget that I wrote down which pages to continue from.  The notes are a bit jumbled up, but at least I can find them easily.

As a new future author I can’t stress this enough – BACK UP EVERYTHING!

It does not matter what it is, anything that is of importance to you should be backed up. Granted I should have backed up my documents much, much earlier, but at least I got it done in time.  At the time the only thing I cared about backing up was my novels. If those had died, even the sections of the 4th book and notes which I had not sent to Dave yet, I would have DIED! I would have freaked out so bad! I got lucky this time paying attention to my intuition. Sometimes, a  well worked intuition technique won’t always do the trick.

To close this entry: When your computer has died and you need something to do, continue to write notes of your current novels.  Read books that interest you about your writing.  Continue studying your craft while you wait for that all important package for your beloved computer.  And always – BACK UP EVERYTHING!

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