Welcome to the Weekend With.... my twisted thoughts

Today is going to be a little different. It’s been a crazy busy week and I didn’t have an interview lined up. Normally when that happens I track down one of my mystical or historical friends for an interview. Alas, this week there was no free time. So, I’m going to start the weekend with Post 4 of Arlee Bird’s A to Z Challenge.

O is for Optimistic
I’m often told that people are amazed by my positive attitude, especially when they learn the kind of life I have lived over the years. Like everyone, I have a dark side and am no to go there and wallow in the land of self-pity or across the sea on the isle of anger. Luckily, those times are few and far between. Yes, I’ve been to hell and back several times. I’m sure I will even end up with an unplanned vacation there again in the future. I had my time of hating life, the world, everything… you know those times when nothing goes rights, everything you do or say is wrong and you just want to crawl in a hole somewhere. That was my world at the end of my marriage and after my divorce. God knows, I don’t know how I managed to keep the friends I had, because I was not fun to be around. But one day, I woke up, looked in the mirror and said, “I’m not this person. Growing up, I was everyone’s sunshine. I want that person back!” And I began a journey of learning to accept the things in life I couldn’t change, learn from the mistakes I made (and boy do I make a lot. Shhh… don’t tell anyone), to see the good in things instead of the bad. It wasn’t an easy road. I had to retrain the why I thought. Every time a negative thought popped in my head, I would make myself think of something good about whatever it was. Eventually, it became second nature. (Be warned I still have my moments and 5 min fits of rage and/or crying occasionally). The thing about being human is we have all these warring emotions trying to take over or get out, and for some, we bottle them inside until they explode and that’s not healthy. Being intelligent beings, we have the capability to harness those emotions, explore them, learn form them. Will I always see the brighter side? I hope so, but I will relish the good with the bad because that is what makes life worth living and being able to feel all these things is what makes us alive.

P is for Perception/ R is for Reality
I’m combining these two together because they go in hand. In the world, there is what is real... concrete, fact, data or proof to back it up. There is also, perception… how we see things. Now, those two things should be the same, but they rarely are because as individuals with the ability to think for ourselves (at least most of us) we each have unique perception based on any number of factors. For the individual, perception IS reality. This is something to remember not only in writing but also in life. By remembering this simple theory, you are able to have more patience when dealing with those whose perception or reality doesn’t match your own. Having been involved with elderly whose memory is not what it used to be, the overcommitted who often think that they are the only ones doing EVERYTHING, children who have survived neglect and abuse, and some people who, well, just don’t have a firm footing in the real world of the rest of us. I’ve dealt with egomaniacs who think they are gods, agoraphobics who think the world is out to get them, even pathological liars who have told so many lies they no longer know what the truth is. The point is there is what is Real, but sometimes we need to alter our perception and place ourselves in the other person’s shoes, to look at the world through their eyes. We do it all the time when we read. When we write we create whole new worlds for our audience to immerse themselves in. However, in life it often takes a little practice. A great way to practice is to watch people and put yourselves in their place.

Q is for Quiet Time
Ok, honestly, I can’t think of a great “Q” topic at the moment, so since I rambled on a bit on those other letter’s, let’s pause for a Quiet Moment.

S is for Satan
LOL, just kidding, some of you are going, “what the…?” Told you I have a dark side.

Seriously, “S” is for Scenery.
I’m a very visual person, when I read something or someone describes something to me I get an instant mental picture. Most of the time, this is a good thing. For some, they need to actually see something to be able to visualize it or be able to associate it with something they have already seen. That’s where our job, as authors, can get tricky. We have to set the scene and make the reader feel as if they are walking through the world in our book without be so overly descriptive that they get bored and lose interest. It’s a fine line. So I ask you, my fellow readers, how do you like to discover the scenery in a story? And my fellow authors, how do you like to unfold the scene so your reader is as captivated or emotionally effected as your characters?

T is for Titillating Plots
You know the ones… the ones where the author has you so spellbound that you simply can not put the book down until the end. Having read literally thousands of books (actually I own thousands of books), sometimes I get to the point where I just don’t want to read another word of a particular book. Not because it’s bad or even boring really, but I think my fellow reviewers may agree… when you read book after book after book, if it isn’t titillating, you just want to say, “Next!” Sometimes you just need to be grabbed; sometimes you just want to lose yourself between the pages. The book I reviewed yesterday is such a book. Not because it had non-stop action, spicy hot romance, out of this world adventures… it was just so well written that once it got hold of you, you had to ride out. As a fledgling author still trying to find my voice, I haven’t mastered that quality yet. Can it be learned or is it just an innate quality some writers have?

Enjoy your weekend. I'll post the final post of the challenge on Monday.