Tamlyn’s Bliss

Moon by day

Crappy pic taken with my cam phone

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On being yourself

We are on our way to Amsterdam, first going to see the new Bond movie, and then dinner followed by a theater show. I dressed up for the occasion, and I have to admit I feel great.

I am wearing clothes that make me feel the most home in my body, strange as it may sound :)

I am myself now, pure and simple, I reflect who I am in my clothes and in the way I present my self to the world. I walk confident now (despite the high heels) and that is a wonderful feeling.

It also makes me think. Why would you ever settle for anything less than truly being yourself.

If you feel happiest writing, then write, if you feel the happiest digging your hands in muck, do it.

It is my firm belief that moments like I am experiencing now, those are the moments that count in the end. Don't be one of those people who, at their deathbeds have regrets. Can't make a change then, but now? Be yourself, be happy :)

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Do sweat the Small Stuff

It is evening, I have just closed the curtains and switched on the lights. In the kitchen the pans are on the stove, and in them a simple meal is cooking. The cats are cuddled up together, and I just finished writing on my nanowrimo. I look around me and I just cannot stop smiling.

I do not think I have felt this blissful in a long, long time. Every step I take, every song I hum is bliss. Even the rain falling cannot deter that strong, soul-full feeling of utter happiness. It makes me realize, that finding your bliss is not something only for the huge turning points in your life, it is for those small moments where everything simply is well in your world.

It made me realize that when you wait for the moment you will be happy, you miss the small signs, the flicker of realization that you are already there.

When you are looking for more bliss, more fulfillment in your life, sweat the small stuff.

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little synchronicities

Just now I came home with a couple of chrysanthemums for my  small cubes on the coffee table. I started cutting the stems so the flowers would fit in the cubes, and filled up the cube. I had some flowers left over, so I grabbed a small pot from the shelve.

I put the flowers in, and then turned to put the pot on the table.

At that moment I froze. I looked at the pot, and then started to grin. Turned out I had put the flowers in a chinese pot with the same flowers painted on it :)

I love these little synchronicities, they make you stop and live in the moment, even if it is only for a couple of moments.

PS with the post is a picture of one of the many flower arrangements I made in the lil glass cubes. When I have found my camera again, I will post a picture of the pot :)

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art post: temple

edited photography

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my plotting process

Angengland on twitter asked me this question, and I didn't have enough space for the answer (140 characters can be a lil too few lol). It was easy to decide to make today's Nablo post about plotting my current novel.

I started out with an idea for a paranormal romance. The idea was born walking through the streets of a neighbourhood I have grown to really like.

From that I started to freewrite, about characters, about events happening. I opened a file and just began a brain dump, basically.

As the image of what the story should be like began to grow, I opened various files, one for plot ideas and one for characters, and just sorted out the brain dump notes in those files.

Then I began to snowflake the plot, but stranded at the first page. It just felt too restrictive for me. What did help was a really good talk about the book, telling about my ideas and how I felt the plot would progress.

I sat down and began to write the backstory in general, wrote what brought my characters to the start of the book, and then used those notes for my character work sheets (which are very basic. If this works out I might share them :) )

After that I started writing out the plot per chapter, and then dividing up the chapter in scenes, all using my notes. As I began to plot I cut out some of the ideas I had, added others (the most significant discovery in this part of the process, that my MC liked another girl better lol), and from there grew the outline I am now going to write the novel from. All the while I was writing my plot out, I wrote down new thoughts and ideas about my characters, and the motivation for all my characters became abundantly clear by the time I was at chapter 7 in the outline.

It was a very exciting process, and I got to discover parts of my novel that I probably would not have discovered if I had just started writing from that one idea I had at the beginning of this blog post.

I recognize this process is very haphazard and chaotic, and I have no doubt it will change, but it works for me, and that's what counts :)

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perspective

The low moment of the French trip this year was the tire exploding on the caravan when we were on the freeway.

I had a major panic attack, that only subsided when we were safely off the freeway, and the new tire was placed on. And then came a major turning point. As we headed back to the freeway, the navigation system guided us along a beautiful road. It was gorgeous and I admired the scenery.

Then I noticed the signs.

War cemeteries, British, Canadian, South African, American...

The road took us through the Somme area, where many people died during World War 1.

Suddenly I felt so lucky to be alive and to be there to watch that. It put everything into perspective for me. What is a mere panic attack on the freeway, and losing another 200 euro's on the second flat tire in a week, measured to the suffering depicted in the seemingly endless row of graves lining that gorgeous countryside in France?

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One of those days

Today is one of those days where everything wants to go wrong horribly, and it does. It started with my toe getting acquainted with the bed post in the morning (we have a four poster bed. Worst thing is that my pc keeps crashing in windows, so I finally made kubuntu my default boot on the computer. Of course I have a couple things I can't run outside of windows, but it should be fine, all in all.

All this makes me feel way less than blissful, and in order to get back to feeling it again, I decided to garden. The dog loves it when I am in my garden, he always runs around like a little pup (despite his advanced age of 15). I get to dig out the weeds and prune my plants.

And that made me realize something.

All the emotions and thoughts caused by my grmbly day, those are weeds. I can either let them grow, and fester and overgrow my inner garden, or I can just pull them out and go back to feeling blissful.

It is a great visualization too, with every weed you pull out of the garden, pull out one of your negative thoughts, especially those towards yourself. Then get a bag, and toss the weed in your compost bag.

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adventures of a newbie to plotting

Day two of NaNoWriMo, and I am still not writing on my novel. I am still working out the kinks in my plot, so my novel will be easier to write.

I am an organic writer, have written most of my work that way, but found that it is almost impossible to edit the work. The plot goes everywhere, the characters aren't consistent throughout the book, making it all work is costing me a lot of time and energy, and it is frustrating as heck. 

So for this nano I decided it was time to change that.The plotting is unexpectedly fun, I have already shaken up the plot several times, from changing the heroine of the story (as I realized the heroine I wanted for him, was way better for my MC's best friend), to finding more and more motivations, quirks, gifts of the characters in the book, even for some of the C-cast :)

I would have had these revelations during my organic writing too, the difference is, that I changed the book halfway through the story (happened literally with a book I wrote two years ago, I decided my MC was way better matched for another character, and changed mid writing), now I change it in my outline, and its way less work :)

I think my outline will be done tonight, so I can start writing my book tomorrow. I have no doubt it will still be hard work, but I have learned a lot from plotting a book out beforehand. Who knows, I might finally get to send a book to a publisher next year!

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first artwork post

At the beach, summer 2008, edited a picture taken with my crappy camera :)

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