The Twitter Thing…

I was catching up and reading some of my favorite blogs and I was very intrigued by Roni Loren ‘s post Twelve ways to scare away twitter followers. I began to leave a comment, but it quickly turned into a rant… isn’t that how all posts start? So I decided to do that  instead. I had joined twitter a little over a month ago feeling it a good idea to start a network with fellow writers for support, but after a couple of weeks I began to get spam (not from writers) and since I was new at the whole Twitter thing getting rid of it was a challenge.  One thing you have to understand about me is that I am computer challenged, I have a Facebook account which I rarely access because every time I get the hang of it, they change it.  Anyhow in the beginning twitter was great, Roni herself was a great help. But then follow requests started coming in and I got a lot of “I’ll follow you, if you follow me?” types of tweets, is it even called tweets? It turned out to be a lot of one (One-Way Tweeters) so needless to say it was a little discouraging.  Now I am slowly getting back into the twitter world and hope my experience this time around will be a good one.  I have no problem following you if you give me some input and tweet back, but if you want to be followed just to gain numbers, then you will lose my following. 

Thanks to Roni Loren for her great blog.

Jessica

"Quote Wednesday"

“Commitment leads to action. Action brings your dream closer” – Marcia Wieder

To Paint Or Not To Paint?

There are three things I can talk about none stop books, writing books and interior design.  This week I have decided that it’s time I pay a little more attention to the things around the house that I have been neglecting since we moved in a year ago,  first on the agenda is paint, I have been going through countless paint pallets to pick the perfect color and hope I won’t want to change it in a year.  I live in Canada, so picking bright colors doesn’t really seem like something I need to consider, thought I did paint my dining room red in our previous home, which I changed a few months later because the color even though I loved it was too overwhelming.  It’s already starting to get cold and I find myself going for a lot of neutral colors such as grey and brown tones, I am a firm believer that the color one chooses for  any given room in their house is reflective of the mood they were in when they made the color choice. So I am trying to get away from the brown and grey tones in an effort to feel and come across a little more cheery, and not be part of the murky cold atmosphere outside.  This week I am a painter by day and a writer by night, though I am exhausted by 8pm and all I want to do is indulge in a glass of wine and relax my goal is to at least write a thousand words before bed to keep the momentum going. So far I have made a pretty good schedule for myself and any little change seems to throw me off very easily, therefore I need to stay focus on my writing to accomplish what I hope to accomplish one day.

Jessica

Quote Wednesday

“Books aren’t written – they’re rewritten.  Including your own.  It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn’t quite done it.” – Michael Crichton

You Had Me At Chapter One…

Brookgreen Gardens, South Carolina – Picture by Jessica A. Briones



As mentioned in my little profile I love to read.  I have to admit that last week I slacked on the blogging and a little on the writing because I indulged in one of the wonderful worlds that Nicholas Sparks creates.  A Bend In The Road was simply a book I could not tear away from, this by the way happens to me with a lot of books, some being The Notebook and Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series, which I have read multiple times… 

For me to be able to get lost in a story and become part of the world these authors create never seizes to amaze me, it’s the part I enjoy most about reading.  I strive to some day be able to write a story that not only moves someone, but that will make the reader become or want to become part of that world…

Books you should read at least once:

The Outlander Series, by Diana Gabaldon

The Notebook, by Nicholas Sparks

Water For Elephants, by Sara Gruen

Love In The Time Of Cholera, by  Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The Pillars Of The Earth, by Ken Follet

Reading these books for me, was an experience…

Jessica

"Quote Wednesday"



“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.” – Robert Frost

Inspiration

As a writer I do many things for the sake of being inspired I eavesdrop on stranger’s conversations    it’s amazing the things people say. I pay a little more attention to things that go on around me, I even start thinking back to when I was a teen, which wasn’t that long ago (cough, cough).  It’s amazing to me how much of my experiences I have incorporated into my stories, I take bits and pieces of things my friends and I used to do and exaggerate them a little, though I have to admit at time there is no exaggeration necessary.  Sometime one little memory triggers an entire story, that’s the case with the novel I just finished and I’m in the process of editing and re-editing and at times rewriting. Anyway back to my main point, thanks to Halloween and all that is spooky I came up with an idea for a story line involving a Ouija board and thinking even further back to my lovely youth (cough again) I can specifically recount a time when a group of friends and I played with one. I know creepy, but it’s seemed like a good idea at the time, so here I am now trying to do my best to be a little suspenseful and try my hand at the paranormal and be a little romantic,  What’s a story without a kiss involved right? Wish me luck…

Jessica

Quote Wednesday

“When once the itch of literature comes over a man, nothing can cure it but the scratching of a pen. But if you have not a pen, I suppose you must scratch any way you can.”  – Samuel Lover

All Roads

Brookgrenn Gardens, South Carolina – picture By Jessica A. Briones

“All Roads” is my first completed novel, it took me six months to write and I sometimes wonder if it’s any good… Mind you my sister thinks it’s wonderful, but does that really count? (no offense). My whole dilemma, and I am not sure it’s really something I should stress about, is that it really wasn’t as hard as I thought it was going to be when I decided to finally do this writing thing for real.  Now the editing part of the deal is a bit frustrating and I have decided to ignore the main character Rose and her friends for a little while in order to clear my head. It’s bad enough these folks keep me up at night, I was told it’s called Writer’s Insomnia, I had no idea this condition had a name. Now, what is more overwhelming is going through periods where I think to myself wow this is really good, then, such as last week I went through a period where I was Oh man! this sucks.  Let me tell you, the urge to scrap it and start over was overwhelming, the only thing stopping me was the thought that it was a manuscript of just over 77,000 words that I created.   A piece of work I had never imagined I was capable of, I might be right, it might not be any good, but the fact that I was able to write all that despite my frustration is incredibly satisfying.

Jessica