Saying my goodbyes

I knew it would be the very last day I would spend with you. I still chose my clothes carefully, put on make up, did my hair, then went out to meet you. We held hands and we went to all our favorite places. I remembered them all. The good, the bad, the unusual that happened in each. I took a moment to relive them briefly. Then I remembered those before you. After a while, longer for some, shorter for others, the memories had become distant, the good shining brighter, the pain and hurt a silly joke by now. It will be the same for you..

I had such high hopes for you. I embraced you when you arrived, as I had so been longing for you! I was sure when you came, we’d make it all right! We’d give each other what we needed and witness each other’s happiness. I was so wrong about that! You came storming into my life, took it and made a huge mess out of it. You turned everything upside down and then did nothing to fix it.

Towards the end, you tried to give me what you thought I wanted, but failed to understand what I really needed. It’s ok, I understand you had greater concerns than little old me…

In the end, I now look upon you and see how insignificant your fabric of fading moments is. Whatever your plan was, you failed…

If you wanted to challenge my dreams, my balance, and my beliefs… maybe you did. But it changed nothing. I am not really smarter, nor stronger, but I am not weaker either. I don’t trust less and I don’t lie more. I don’t hope less and I don’t have more fears than when I began.

While with you, you tested all of my limits. You probably meant to break me, but failed. I now know what I am capable of. And it was more and better than what I imagined. I found out there’s nothing wrong with loving someone truly, unconditionally, with giving away every piece of your soul. You did teach me though that it can result in massive amounts of pain that crack the very foundation of who you are. But even those wounds heal! So if your plan was to make me stop believing in love, you again failed.

I was betrayed by friends during our time together and even lost a few of them along the way. I stopped believing in them, but not in friendship altogether.

And now we have reached the end. I smile and you no longer understand my smile. I know something you don’t know.

The secret, my secret, is that I have survived you. I am still standing here. There will be more for me to see, live, experience, while you are already on your way to becoming a distant memory.

Goodbye, 2011!

Author name:
Alexa
Discussion:
No Comments

NaNoWriMo, a lesson in writing and how to approach it

WritingThis year, in an effort to make myself write the story going wild in my head, I joined NaNoWriMo. As it sometimes happens, despite my enthusiasm and my willingness to write about 2000 words each day, I got only a little over 14,000 words written throughout November. Luck was not really on my side, although my muse was, and I found myself wanting to write and unable to. Client work, personal issues that got me into an emotional roller coaster, everything that wasn’t supposed to happen, did so.

But the truth is that although I wished to use NaNoWriMo to write 50,000 words, that was just a dream. I could tell client work will pile over me in November, but I had a different expectation – get the story started, write a nice chunck of it, see what needs tweaking in story line and characters, and then keep on going. I did keep on going, although at a slow rate, but I managed to create a habit that will get me to the end of my novel. Read more…

Author name:
Alina Popescu
Discussion:
No Comments

Reading list June-July

Reading is a big part of my writing experience. I get inspired, I learn and I thoroughly enjoy it as a way to spend my free time. Sometimes deciding what to read next might be an issue, so for those of you in need of inspiration and to keep track of books I’ve read, here are the books of the past two months.

Mircea Cartarescu – Frumoasele Straine (Beautiful Strangers). For my Romanian readers that don’t have the book, here’s a PDF version from the publishing house.

Raymond E. Feist – Magician

Naomi Novik – His Majesty’s Dragon

Charlaine Harris – Grave Surprise, An Ice Cold Grave and Grave Secret, or novels 2, 3 and 4 of the Harper Connely series.

Stieg Larsson – The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – first book in the Millennium Trilogy

This month I am aiming for more than 3-4 books a month. Will let you know how it goes. What are you reading these days?

Author name:
Alina Popescu
Discussion:
No Comments

The Writer and the “Published Book” Myth

Most writers I know, of which I know myself best, are still occasionally or permanently haunted by the myth of the “Published Book”. We sometimes tend not to see ourselves as “real” writers and instead give us names such as “wannabe” writer unless we have published a book. And it’s often not any book, but the book, the one we picture ourselves selling into thousands of copies. And if we’re really dreamy, also see ourselves signing the book deal. With a certain pen, not a cheap one, one that is precious to us. We type a lot, but we still fantasize about the touch of the pen on the paper when we sing those deals, the first one for the book, the second one for the movie.

Why we fear to call ourselves writers escapes me. Maybe we think that once we do so, we need to live up to the name of our profession. And I believe we are not really sure how to achieve that. What we get from not considering ourselves “real” writers? We look down on ourselves, we drop books because we believe them not to be very good, we see this part of what we are as a hobby, a pass-time and not the real deal. Read more…

Author name:
Alina Popescu
Discussion:
3 Comments

Novel Update – The Final Storyline

The worst thing a wannabe writer can do is to keep changing the story. I have been doing that for a while. I kept twisting and turning Alexa’s life around as mine did and never could get to a point where the novel was as I liked it. A few weeks ago, I got a smashing idea and weeks later I still believe it is doable. Therefor I decided to lock this storyline and keep writing, no more changes. I have to believe in it first, so that other people can believe in it later, when it’s written.

The story will have three parts. Depending on how it develops, it will be three different books or a novel with three parts… For now, the general idea is that there will be three separate books. And I will start writing right in the middle! There is a Romanian saying about starting in the middle and a comparison with hens that are in the habit to jump in the middle of any pile of anything, from food to dirt, but I will ignore it for now.

So here is the main sketch I’m working on: Read more…

Author name:
Alina Popescu
Discussion:
No Comments
Older entries