I found this awesome quote while I was hip deep in Cybils reads and I thought, that’s so true. Every year, hell, every month has been better than the last. And if my whole world keeps going like this, greater things really are yet to come.
So I thought about this quote for a while and it made me remember all the other things I have stashed in a bookmark folder called “inspiration” which houses videos and inspirational photography that remind me of book covers and characters or just make me want to write a story about what I’m seeing. It is filled with so much random stuff and I can’t possibly share it all because that’s all this blog would end up being – nothing but one inspirational photograph after another.
But what if I had a blog that was all about inspirational and motivational photography, quotes, videos, etc etc?
Yeah. Yeah I could really use that.
And so one October day while I balanced Anna Dressed in Blood on one knee, I spent about 20 minutes building Airships to Mars, the Tumblr that would put to use all the stuff I’d been collecting. Because if I need this stuff, chances are, other writers might too.
So, allow me to introduce you to my new Tumblr,Airships to Mars : It’s got stuff you might like. There’s no updating schedule, I just post stuff when I find it that other writers, hell, other readers might thoroughly enjoy. If you like that sort of thing, enjoy! If you don’t, that’s cool. You don’t have to check out Airships to Mars in order to enjoy Tell Great Stories.
This icon has now appeared in the right sidebar- by clicking on it you can go directly to the Tumblr (or click on it below) and enjoy! The direct link is: http://airshipstomars.tumblr.com/
I use a lot of pictures as inspiration. I’m a very visual person, which is probably why I’m so drawn to beautiful book covers and so turned off by terrible ones. I have a resource locker on my computer of great visual inspiration and I almost never share them with anyone. It’s not that I’m stingy, it’s just…argh…they feel like mine, my precious, and so I don’t tend to share the things I use personally for inspiration. I’ve got to get better at this
But I’m pulling one of my favorites from my vaults and sharing it with you today. It’s a Flickr user named Stephen Brace. His photos are haunting and gorgeous and tell fantastic stories. Here are a couple of examples and you can find the rest here. Enjoy!
OMG I just realized I’m 8 away from 300 followers! *does a little dance* I honestly never thought I’d get this many, but I think I am in love with each and every single one of you. Thank you for letting me do this blog thing that I love so much. I also can’t wait until November is over, not because I don’t love NaNoWriMo, because I do, but I also love your comments, which I’m not getting very much these days. I miss you all. How are your NaNo word counts?
“Happy are those who dream dreams and are ready to pay the price to make them come true.” Leon Joseph Suenens. I have no idea who Leon is, but his words are wise. The price for publication is astronomical, usually more than most writer-dreamers are willing to pay. NaNoWriMo gives us a taste of that price – the endless hours of toil and trouble, of frustration and panic and fear, of frozen meals and mountains of laundry and occasionally skipping showers for just One. More. Page. It’s the way a search for the right word or metaphor and you can’t seem to move on until you find it and how you kind of haven’t talked to your best friends in weeks because you’ve got a deadline and if you can’t eat at your keyboard then the meal is too fancy.
How far are you willing to go? How much are you willing to pay?
Recently on the Bransforums I said “NaNoWriMo is whatever you make of it and whatever you need it to be.” People seemed to like this statement a lot, so I’m stealing from myself and repeating it here.
All those rules about NaNo (they are the sort begging to be broken, btw) that you have to write 50,000 words to be a winner, that it has to be a novel, that it has to be new, that you can’t have written a word of it before November 1st…tell those rules to go blow it out their nose.
Just by participating you’ve already made leaps and bounds in accomplishments. The opposite of reaching 50,000 words is not losing. Just so we’re clear. I’ve known people who won and did nothing with their manuscript, won and rewrote it, lost and finished later, ended up with an agent, lost and discovered a different, fantastic, story in the burning pile of crap they’d sort of written. I’ve known someone who wrote 50,000 words of short stories, one who wrote a cookbook, one who wrote poetry, and one who wrote dozens and dozens of blog posts to fill up half a year of posts. I have also known spouses of Wrimoers who took the month to work on their own project while their loved one wrote on and on – painting rooms, building furniture, finishing an XBox game.
NaNoWriMo should be redefined as Permission to Do…whatever is in your heart to accomplish. Winning occurs by way of pursuit.
Photo by Philip Newton
Max Wanger photography – so many beautiful, romantic photos I couldn’t capture them all. So just go look at them all yourself. *heartflutter*
Have I ever told you guys about Tyler Ward? I don’t think I have, which is just wrong of me because I shouldn’t be keeping awesome to myself. That’s just rude. We’re friends right? Friends don’t let friends listen to crappy music.
Tyler Ward is a musician who has made a stomping-hot-splash on YouTube for doing covers of songs that are only kind of ok by their original artist but become ridiculously melt-your-ears-and-heart amazing in Tyler’s talented hands. (Also, he’s hot. Like smokin’ hot. *fans self*)
I discovered him forever ago when he did a cover to Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream” which is a terrible song and video when done by Katy (sorry Katy) but became the anthem for all great YA romances when Tyler redid it. Needless to say, I have a lot of Tyler Ward songs on my iPod, and this is one I’ve listened to the most often.
It just about makes you melt in the knees, which is the antithesis of my high school romance experience which had very little knee melting and a lot of awkwardness and gum chewing, but what’s great fiction if we can’t make it dreamy like it should be instead of embarrassing like it is?
Several months ago he did a cover of Katy Perry’s “E.T.” I listened to it while I was cleaning and only sort of noticed it then (I may have also been vacuuming, a bad chore to do when listening to new music) so I didn’t really pay it any attention until the next day in the car on the way to work. My husband was driving and my eyes were closed and WHOOSH, there I went, swallowed up in images and characters and ideas built on the foundation of a single song. I listened to it at least five times on the way to work that day and I kept it on repeat on my iPod while I worked all morning. By 6pm that night I’d written the first rough outline for the as of yet Untitled Superhero YA Novel. True story.
Tyler’s voice is smooth like buttah and sweet like chocolate and yet he’s silly and clever and goofy and talented and it is hard not to be both inspired and completely in awe of that. He does covers of a lot of songs I wouldn’t have given a second chance to, from pop to hip hop to country and I love them all. He has dragged me hypnotized into new music possibilities I had been far too biased and music snobby to ever consider on my own. I am enamored and grateful to him. I am sure I am not his only biggest fan.
He doesn’t just do covers either. He has some originals he performs with his crew, all of whom are equally talented and lovely.
The Rescue – This song is great, but it’s the video that kills me inside. The video is about our own deepest fears and worries – the things we feel we need rescued from. The messages all these strangers, the YouTubers, are sending during this video are heartbreaking and heartwarming and makes you really think about your own biggest fears in a way we often can’t – we aren’t the only one with their burden. There are lots of people out there who need solace and relief from the hardest days of our lives. It makes me think about the WSJ article and how so many readers came out to say “We need these dark themes because life is sometimes too hard to withstand alone.” Sharing the burden and coping together is a magical and powerful solution. I think this song is one of the most beautiful I’ve had the pleasure of finding.
