Sweet Love and Ginger

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Help a Girl Out! Fill out my Survey!

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This little space has grown so much in just the past year, and I am so thankful for that. Now I want to know what keeps you guys around and continuously coming back. It would mean the absolute world to me if you would take just few minutes to fill out this super simple 14 question anonymous survey.

Thoughts on NaNoWriMo

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There are a millions thoughts spiraling around in my head right
now about this challenge, it was everything that I expected and everything I
wasn’t prepared for if that makes sense.
The first week of the challenge was easy. I had already mapped out
my story pretty well, and had it sitting in my head for months waiting for the
writing to start so when it did it felt more like relief than anything. After
that I started to realize that I’m not the best writer. I mean I’m not
terrible, but punctuation and proper sentence structure are so not my thing. As
if you needed more examples just look around my blog for a minute. I’m great at
conversational writing, you know the kind of stuff that shirks sentence structure
and has a lot of run on sentences, yeah that is my thing, but you really can’t
do that when you are writing a novel for the masses.
I also realized that while I had mapped out the entire novel I hadn’t
thought about getting from point A to B in a seamless manner. I would write a
paragraph or a whole page and then have to stop re-read and re-write the whole
thing because it was out of character for someone, or it was too abrupt a scene
change. Half of the time I simply wrote a sentence similar to; who starts the argument?
Or How do they get on the roof? Yeah there are a lot of roof scenes in this
one, but what do you expect in a city without power, all they have is the moon.
Towards the end of the challenge I found myself wanting to go back to the beginning
and re-write scenes so that it made more sense with the ending. I know I still
need to do that, but that wouldn’t help me get to those 50,000 words so I had
to fight the urge and it was hard.
I do feel super accomplished that I was able to complete all
50,000 words. I mean that’s a lot of words, a lot of time, and a lot of
thought. It was hard. Not quite as hard as everyone made it out to be; there
were definitely some hard parts, but there were also some easy parts. I really think
that writing character profiles and mapping out the novel gave me a huge leg
up. I also tried to write more than the 1667 words that were required daily so
that it wasn’t a terrible blow if I needed a night off here and there, and I defiantly
did. There was a time in the midst of week 3 & 4 where I was dangerously
behind, but I was able to catch back up without too much heart ache. The
hardest part was when I finished the story at 38000 words and realized all
those part’s I couldn’t write before were the only way that I was going to get
this thing done. Unfortunately around 43,579 words I decided that forcing more words into this book would only take up space and make it worse of a mess than it already was. I was struggling, and while I know now as I knew then that I could get there to the prized 50,000 it wasn’t going to benefit me or my story. I quit just a few days shy of Nov. 30, with a complete draft of my first novel. It equals roughly 175 pages in typical novel text and size. For someone who has never thought to take on a task such as this and who leans away from right brained activities I think that’s large accomplishment. 
Something that I was able to gain from this challenge is an
appreciation for how much I need creativity in my life. I’m an engineer, and my
day is typically spent doing paperwork and crunching numbers so forcing
myself to be creative for an hour each day actually caused a huge bloom in the amount of
creativity elsewhere in my life. I found myself aching to paint, and create
other things around the house instead of coming home and vegging out on the
couch. I feel much more light hearted, and happy than I have in a long time and
I think it’s proof that I need to make time
to create a priority in my life again. I may not write every single evening, but I will do something and hopefully these
feelings will only continue to flourish.
Overall I am happy with this challenge and I think I gained so
much more than its original intention. It is something that I would definitely do
again. Now to figure out what the next steps are with this novel.
If anyone knows any  content editors send them my direction. I will pay them in baked goods!

Now before I go I have to ask, have you been creative lately? Do
you think it’s an important part of living a balanced life?

Phrase Canvas DIY

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I stated before that I want to put more effort into
decorating our little apartment and this is the first project that I am sharing
here on the blog for it.

It’s a pretty simple DIY. All you need is a canvas, some
letter stickers and the paint colors of your choice.
The phrase I had in mind is from a song that is very special
to both me and Chuck, and will be our first dance song when we get married in
10 months. Woah! 10 months seems like it’s so close I mean we got engaged over
a year ago already!

Anyway I really wanted to make something that was meaningful
to us and this just felt right. Here is the song FYI.


I started by painting the canvas my favorite green color and
letting it dry completely, overnight. Then I placed the letters and painted my
second color over it. I went back and added a bit more green to blend it a
little better, and give it a more abstract look.

Overall I’m pretty happy with how it came out. I love that
it gives me something new to look at every day also.

Some of you may have seen the same canvas before when I had
hand lettered a C.S. Lewis quote on it. Sometimes you just need a change.

Have you done anything to freshen up your home lately?

Music to Write by

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Just in case you need some really kick ass music to listen to while you work on your dystopian fiction, here is a playlist of what I am listening to while writing this book.

Jimmy Eat World – Pain
Rise against – Entertainment
Lindsey Stirling – Elements
Spineshank- New Disease
Lindsey Stirling – radioactive
Lodre – Yellow Flicker Beat
Rise Against – collapse, the dirt whispered
Lindsey Stirling – Crystalize
Anberlin- The Feel Good Drag
Dropkick Murphy – Shipping up to Boston
Fort Minor – remember the name
Rise against – Whereabouts unknown
Skillet – Monster

And and amazing video, because I seem to be obsessed.

In case you are wondering yes this is a total reflection of the type of book I am writing.

Part Time Vegetarian – 6 months In

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I have been doing this part time vegetarian thing for 6
months now (you can find out why here). I can’t believe it’s already been so long. As I kind of predicted
the whole thing has gone pretty easily for me, and I think it’s a lifestyle
change that I am going to stick with for the long hall.
There are a few things of note however that I want to
mention about this change. It’s been hard to organize my thoughts on anything
but writing lately so I’m just going to use bullet points right now.

Weekends are the worst, especially while travelling, or
visiting friends. I mean bacon with breakfast is so hard, and not always
doable.

When traveling most rest stops are not equipped for anyone
with any kind of dietary restrictions. Everyone must be better at planning for
car trips than me.

Everyone is suddenly worried about my protein intake, even
after I tell them all I’m still getting more than I need.

Chuck never seems to be full if I cook a vegan meal. I think it’s
his mentality, or maybe because veggies are not as calorie dense I should cook
more than I would if we were eating meat? We are working on that.

Almond milk. I always knew it was good, but oh my, it’s so
good. All in my granola, and oatmeal. Phew! So good.

I’m forcing myself to eat an actual breakfast. It has
not been easy. This is something I have struggled with since I was a teen.
Breakfast first thing in the am is not my thing, but we are getting there.

Skipping milk in my tea (unless its almond milk, again
yum). I’ve also successfully cut out sugar, except for the occasional afternoon
treat.

I am going vegan more often, and craving more
vegetarian and vegan meals.

Eating more raw food. I mentioned before that I
started just grabbing random odds and ends from the fridge to comprise my
lunch, well now that’s a habbit, and I’m eating a lot more raw veggies because
of it, and our fridge is not piled high with all kinds of random food that goes
bad (bonus).

I feel lighter, and my digestion much more pleasurable.

My past cravings for mounds of cheesy pasta have
subsided. Now I crave soup and rice. Odd right?

With the holidays approaching I’m wondering if anyone else is changing their diet in preparation? Are you packing in a few more vegetables before you overload on sweets?