Tag Archives: Inspiration

Encouragement and Inspiration…

100_3033

Everywhere you look this time of year there are words of encouragement, hope, and inspiration to help you along with those pesky new year’s resolutions so many of us fail to keep. We all know the sayings and catch phrases and remember them at least for awhile.

When I saw this card… it jumped right out at me… I read it… liked what it said and put it back. Then picked it up again. Put it back and walked away. It pulled me back and it was obvious I wasn’t leaving the store without it.

It’s not just the words, I like the colors, the contented look on the woman’s face.. peaceful and all knowing without being all preachy about it.

Some of these things will be easy to embrace, others not so much.

* Embrace change –- Never an easy thing for me, I usually like things the way they are and fight against too much change… some would say all change but I disagree, I’m trying to accept some change.

*Take the journey back to yourself –- Ahhh, it’s so easy to lose the ‘self’ we are, the one that is inside our heads talking to us. We lose ourselves and become someones mother, wife, sister, friend… the essence of our inner self gets overshadowed. I am definitely encouraging my inner self to stand out and up more often.

*Speak of gratitude –- I am grateful and do speak of it often and hope that it comes through to those I am grateful to, and for.

*Wear yellow shoes—  I used to have yellow heels and yellow patent leather flats and they made me happy. They say you should always have a pair of red shoes and I agree with that, but yellow, now there’s a pair of shoes to dance among the stars in.  (Never got yellow shoes but I have ones with stars on them).

*Unleash your creative spirit –I do unleash my creative spirit… this blog is one example…  and I also like write and to color among other things.

pizap.com15476827554841

 *Be positive – I’m not generally positive, I am a pessimist with optimistic leanings but I shall endeavor to switch that around. Really, I’m positive about that !

*Believe in healing — Definitely, no doubt about it…mentally, physically and spiritually.. we can heal.

*Share your inner light— I try to do that, a smile here, a smile there, it’s amazing how many people react positively to that… see, I’m being positive🙂

*Surprise yourself and do things you didn’t think you could do –I’m always surprised at what I do that I didn’t think I could… I usually need a gentle push from loved ones..okay sometimes a shove.

*Live as if you only have one chance –We definitely only have one chance at the life we’re living now.

fullsizerender (28)

 

How to Prepare for Nanowrimo When You Don’t Plot

It’s that glorious time of year again. That time when thousands of people frantically write a new novel together. It’s like a writer’s Christmas time.

This year I have given myself the extra challenge of releasing a book four days after nanowrimo ends, which means I will be writing a brand new book from scratch while I’m promoting a Ethan & Juliet. Yes, I probably lost my mind, but it seemed like a really good idea in July when I was an anxiety ridden mess. Now that it’s here, I’m committed.

My 2018 Nanowrimo novel is actually a companion novel to Ethan & Juliet. It will be the third and final book in the series, starring Juliet’s little sister, Colleen. Colleen doesn’t have a huge part in Ethan & Juliet, but she has a few of my favorite lines. She has a practicality and clarity to her that Juliet lacks. That same practicality can get her in trouble a lot though, which is why the beginning of the novels finds her more or less moving back in with her parents at 26. *wince*

If you want to know what it’s like preparing for nanowrimo as a pantser, you should check out my Instagram for a look at my brainstorming.

I don’t do a lot outwardly to prepare for Nanowrimo. I do a lot of mulling and thinking, and a little bit of note taking. Otherwise I spend time making sure I have the tools I need to make November go as easily as possible. Since I’m going to spend most of the month with my mind wrapped up in figuring out how this story unfolds as I write, I take steps to make life easier on myself.

    • I’m going to clean and organize my office
    • I’m going to find a couple of meal plans on pinterest so I don’t have to think about cooking or groceries, just go by what the list says.
    • I’ve announced my novel on the nanowrimo site, complete with synopsis
    • I made a cover for my novel
    • I started a playlist (started being the keyword, there’s only five songs so far)
    • I started a Pinterest board–again started, there are only two pins so far, because the only I know for sure is who my characters are. (I don’t actually use Pinterest boards for inspiration, I use just do them for fun and sometimes research.)

The other thing I do is give myself a daily goal of 2000 words–every year. That way I’m ahead of the game from the very beginning.

My personal goal is usually to hit 50,000 by Thanksgiving. When Thanksgiving is on a reasonable date like the 27th, that’s totally doable. Since Thanksgiving is the 22nd this year, I highly doubt I’m gonna make that. I’ve chosen the the 26th as my 50,000 word goal.

What’s the number one thing I do to ensure a nanaowrimo win?

I pre-order the winner shirt before November even starts. I have literally invested money in this, and I can’t spend money on a shirt I’m not going to wear. And I can’t wear a winner shift if I don’t actually win. So, I write my 50,000 words and wear that darn shirt everyday for basically the entire month of December, because that’s how good it feels.

Are you doing Nanowrimo? What are you doing to prepare?

My Great-Uncle, Louis A Young … The Incredible Man With No Hands…

 

Louis A Young 1887 – 1952

When he was 14 years old in 1902 Louis lost both his hands in a chemical explosion in Newark, NJ where he lived.  One arm gone above the elbow, the other several inches above the wrist.  A devastating accident but did it stop Louis from living a full and productive life… absolutely not.

He dressed himself, played baseball, boxed, he shoveled snow and coal for exercise. He  was an avid fisherman who could rig his own line and reel in his fish without any help.  He also supported a wife and family and his father.  He could use artificial appliances but did not advocate them which he believed to be too heavy and rendered muscles insensitive. Instead he used a simple leather strap, between the strap and his arm he placed the object he intended to use, such as a knife or fork and by tensing his muscles he could hold it firmly.

2018-07-29 longisland 031

pizap.com15336670147291

2018-07-29 longisland 064 (4)

By vocation he was a news dealer in New York City.

His newsstand at Union Square.

2018-07-29 longisland 033 (3)

 

He was a volunteer instructor at The Institute for Crippled Men in NY and for the U.S. government in its rehabilitation work among soldiers.

He was an amazing man and although he was my great-uncle I never knew about him until recently.  He was one of my paternal grandmother Josephine’s brothers, but she never talked about her family… that generation seems to have been very closed mouthed about a lot of things unfortunately.

But… along comes Ancestry and all kinds of  information becomes available.  I want to take a moment here to thank Ancestry and our new found cousins for the opportunity to not only know about this particular uncle but in gifting us with new family members 🙂

Back to our story.    My daughter Deb got notification from Ancestry about a possible match. The match is Louis’s grandson, Bob Jr whose father, Bob Sr is Louis’s son. Bob Sr was turning 89 in July and would we be interested in meeting the family and celebrating Bob Sr’s birthday with them???????? Um… yes, very much so.

On a beautiful Sunday afternoon in July off we went to Long Island to meet the family and what a wonderful day it was.

 

So not only have we found out about our incredible relative, Louis Young, but we have also met the nicest people you could imagine…and… they’re family… how terrific is that.

It is great to connect with new found relatives and to find out about ancestors, but also, in my opinion, is finding out the stories about them.   With Louis Young it’s an awesome story about fortitude, bravery, perseverance and optimism and I’m glad and proud to know his story and pass it on.  🙂

 

Even A Badass Needs a Nap

Yes, I am calling myself a badass. Look at that badass messy desk.

I woke up at 8:06 this morning.

We leave for school at 8:05.

I know what you’re thinking, what happened to getting up at 5:30 to get your word count in? I thought that was a thing you were doing.

It is, and I am. A week and a half in, getting up that early every day still isn’t easy, but I love the quiet and the freedom it gives me for the rest of my day when I’m not stressing when and how I’m going to cram in the rest of my words.

But today?

Today Rufus happened.

Rufus has started sleeping through the night–mostly. Sometimes he gets up at 3:30 am and won’t go back to sleep. Then I get up and get all of my early morning things accomplished extra early, but by the time we get through the school day and I spend a few hours on my feet at work, I go from a badass writer mom who does it all to a spitting mad badass you don’t want to mess with.

And then Rufus wants to get up at the same the next morning, and I have to tell you, I do not do so well on four hours of sleep or less. So this morning, when Rufus woke up and I was able to get him to go back to sleep, I fell asleep right along with him.

When my alarm went off, I shut that sucker down and kept right on snoozin.

Then of course, I panicked when I realized exactly how long I’d slept and the whole day was thrown outta whack.

But you know what? I’m not sorry.

My sore, overworked body needed those couple hours of extra sleep, and so did my husband. So did Rufus. Sure, Felix was five minutes late for school, but we got there right as they were serving breakfast, so it was a win all the way around.

Have I fit my word count in yet? No.

Maybe I won’t today.

And I’m OK with that.

I gave myself a break today, because obviously my body needed rest. Instead of writing, I knit at my desk while I watched some author business related videos I’ve been saving up. Those were way scarier than not hitting my word count.

And even of you are badass, it’s OK to give yourself a break when you do big and scary things.

I’ll be back at it tomorrow, plugging away at the keyboard as well as making my terrible and great plans for world book domination.

Stay tuned, and don’t push yourself too hard. Even badasses need a nap now and then.

 

 

Thirty-Three

It’s that time of year again when I get all navel-gazey and write that self-indulgent post everybody else was writing a week ago about how their year went and what they want to do differently this year. You know the one–about all the ways they’re gonna be thinner and taller and shinier in 2018–except I’m gonna be thinner and taller and shinier for my 33rd year.

    1. I started off this year by quitting my day job. Not a new story, but a scary one.
    2. It was a difficult adjustment. I spent most of the first couple months crippled by anxiety that we were going to go broke. It didn’t help that I was exhausted from working a full-time job with two babies around and taking care of a house and just in general being a human in modern times.
    3. I spent months doing nothing but reading and playing with the kids.
    4. There is absolutely nothing wrong with doing only that if that’s what makes you happy.
    5. But it was not what I wanted to do.
    6. I came back slowly by adding in a mostly-daily yoga practice, which I kept up most of the year. If I wasn’t doing yoga, I was out walking and playing with the kids. Sometimes I did some light weightlifting.
    7. The decision to do something–anything–active everyday helped shake me out of my anxious funk. (This is 64,000,000,000 times easier to write than it is to do.)
    8. That and a continued positive balance in our bank account.
    9. In March, I started  the final revisions on my first finished novel, The Other Lane.
    10. Old news, I know. I’ve talked about that to death. But the other night, my husband and I were playing around with a book cover maker, and he made me a cover for it.
    11. It looked like it was a book written by Graham Greene or John Updike about something that only gives rich white dudes anxiety, and he called it The Other Lane, or Prepare to Be Devastated.
    12. This is not an inaccurate alternative title since it’s meant to be a reimagining of Jane Eyre. (Does me saying that make you want to read it, or just make you roll your eyes?)
    13. Speaking of Jane Eyre (and Sense & Sensibility), I highly recommend Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine
    14. That and The Bookshop on the Corner.
    15. I listened to the latter, and it’s set in Scotland (both of them are, actually). Every time I went back to reading whatever silly romance I was on at the moment, the cowboys all had Scottish accents.
    16. Not sure what it says about the caliber of the book that I remembered they were cowboys, but not where they were cowboys.
    17. Sometimes, I also enjoy reading horrible books.
    18. When I do, I tweet a lot, because they get my inner editor all riled up.
    19. Oh that’s right. I was supposed to be telling you how I’m gonna get taller and thinner this year. Oops. Forgot.
    20. Funny story, tho. When I went to the doctor in April, I measured in at 5’6″. I’ve been 5’5″ since high school.
    21. So, I actually did get taller last year.
    22. *Checks “getting taller” off the list.*
    23. Sometime during the summer, I got up the guts to start querying The Other Lane to literary agents.
    24. Get this. I was also finishing up the first big revision of Ethan & Juliet, my second (finished) novel. At the same time. (No, this one is not based on Romeo and Juliet, but it is about a doctor and a midwife.)
    25. The combination of those two things made me feel like I was worth a million bucks.
    26. So I promptly went out and started a YouTube channel about knitting.
    27. Holy shit you guys, I just checked and I have 27 subscribers now! Last time I looked, I seriously had like, 3.
    28. Which tells you how much attention I’ve been paying to YouTube.
    29. But seriously, it’s been a lot of fun, and I plan to continue. Someday.
    30. In the meantime, I am working on a couple other writing projects, like revising my 2017 nanowrimo.
    31. And I’m playing around with doing some self-publishing.
    32. Oh, and I still plan to do yoga everyday. How’s that for taller and thinner?
    33. Now, if I want to be shiny, all I have to do is add glitter.

Advent Calendar Fun!

This is our third Finch & Foxglove collective advent calendar! I wanted to share with you the first of my illustrations which is this friendly penguin. This year I've decided to paint them directly on canvas and then upload them digitally! Here's the first one (above).

Our group calendar can be viewed here on our calendar page: http://www.finchandfoxglove.com/advent-calendar-2017/

Or alternately the beautiful images from my colleagues and I can be seen on our collective's Instagram account here:
https://www.instagram.com/finchandfoxglove/

My first online class!

About My First Class on Skillshare

My first class is about learning to use Adobe InDesign (which already comes bundled with many Adobe CC accounts) to make beautiful, clean, perfectly aligned contact sheets that are easily edited, updated, and exported to help you sell your work.
I created this course to help de-mystify InDesign. A lot of creatives, artists, and photographers pay for Adobe CC, but are not sure how to take advantage of all the software it brings. So, this is my effort in making Adobe's publishing software work for you. InDesign is a really robust piece of software and the perfect companion for Illustrator and Photoshop when you're looking to put it all together and publish your work.

I created this course to help de-mystify InDesign.
I've used InDesign to produce all kinds of promotional and informational materials throughout the years: business cards, mailers, postcards, booklets, portfolios, and contact sheets.
I focused on contact sheets as a way to explore InDesign and learn concepts that will easily translate to a lot of other projects. If you'd like to learn more, you can check out the class here on Skillshare.
I'd love to hear what you think!! And, if you've never used Skillshare before, here's a link for a  free 2 month trial of their premium membership - the link's limited to the first 10 who use it though, but take advantage while you can!

Weekly Challenge: Optimistic …

The prompt this week is show us something you’re optimistic about, or perhaps a talisman that helps you stay positive and hopeful, regardless of what life (and the weather!) throws your way.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I wasn’t sure what I wanted to post a photo of.  Thought about flowers and animals, the preparations for a lovely meal… and then i started looking at tulips which are my favorite flower and I realized that they make me happy and therefore optimistic.  I cropped this picture so the flowers are off center just to make it more interesting to me.   Hope you like it.

100_3352

 

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/photo-challenges/optimistic/


Wisdom and Inspiration …

Everywhere you look this time of year there are words of encouragement, hope, and inspiration to help you along with those pesky new year’s resolutions so many of us fail to keep. We all know the sayings and catch phrases and remember them at least for awhile.

When I saw this card it jumped right out at me… I read it… liked what it said and put it back. Then picked it up again. Put it back and walked away. It pulled me back and it was obvious I wasn’t leaving the store without it.

It’s not just the words, I like the colors, the contented look on the woman’s face.. peaceful and all knowing without being all preachy about it.

100_3033

Some of these things will be easy to embrace, others not so much.

* Embrace change –- Never an easy thing for me, I usually like things the way they are and fight against too much change… some would say all change but I disagree, I’m trying to accept some change.

*Take the journey back to yourself –- Ahhh, it’s so easy to lose the ‘self’ we are, the one that is inside our heads talking to us. We lose ourselves and become someones mother, wife, sister, friend… the essence of our inner self gets overshadowed. I am definitely encouraging my inner self to stand out and up more often.

*Speak of gratitude –- I am grateful and do speak of it often and hope that it comes through to those I am grateful to, and for.

*Wear yellow shoes— I used to have yellow heels and yellow patent leather flats and they made me happy. They say you should always have a pair of red shoes and I agree with that, but yellow, now there’s a pair of shoes to dance among the stars in.  Come to think about it I do have shoes with stars on them but they’re not yellow.

*Unleash your creative spirit –I do unleash my creative spirit… here are two examples… this blog…and my photography blog, ‘THROUGH JERSEY EYES’  which you can view if you CLICK HERE

 *Be positive – I’m not generally positive, I am a pessimist with optimistic leanings but I shall endeavor to switch that around. Really, I’m positive about that !

*Believe in healing — Definitely, no doubt about it…mentally, physically and spiritually.. we can heal.

*Share your inner light— I try to do that, a smile here, a smile there, it’s amazing how many people react positively to that… see, I’m being positive :)

*Surprise yourself and do things you didn’t think you could do –I’m always surprised at what I do that I didn’t think I could… I usually need a gentle push from loved ones..okay sometimes a shove.

*Live as if you only have one chance –We definitely only have one chance at the life we’re living now :)

100_2207

 

 


Scrapbooking: Greetings from the Lido Deck!

I am so happy with this one!  I couldn't believe I got it done on time to be considered for the Make Art That Sells weekly review either.  Our things finally arrived from Germany and it meant we were in super-unpack-cardboard-box-processing mode!  But, I was also in a "making mode" as well as "where the heck is my scanner mode"... and so I made and found my scanner at last.

Here is my work resulting from the theme we were given: vintage cruise ship correspondence.  It's a bit of a mash-up but I think between the chosen color palette and my brush pen illustrations which have a late 50's early 60's vibe in them, that it's enough to cover the vintage aspect.   I really wanted a Piña colada after drawing this... love those so much.