Promises I Intend To Keep

In the spirit of following in the footsteps of nearly everyone on my Facebook Feed, I decided yesterday to share my 2013 year in review. Now, looking forward, there are a few things I'd like to share with whoever reads this blog about my goals for 2014. That way, I have them in writing, and I have people to hold me accountable.

1. Write more. The last few "starts of seasons," I've said I was going to finish a book, or a story, but looking back I know that's super unrealistic. With work (more about my new job to come), school starting back up and just normal life, I think writing this blog and working some here and there on my writing will be enough to keep the creative juices flowing.

2. Have more life experiences. I recently read somewhere that it's hard to write when you have nothing to write about. This, I'm coming to realize, is incredibly true. I had a ton of life experiences last year, but a lot of them were DECA related, which is hard to work into a novel. In 2014, I want to explore more places, do more things, and experience the world around me - maybe a little bit more than the world of my computer.

3. Actually use my planner. I have a $35 planner from Lilly that I NEVER use. Literally, the only things I put in it are big dates on my monthly. This year, I want to start using it more for classes, planning this blog, and keeping track of commitments with friends.

4. Interact with more online content creators. There was a time, long ago, when I followed 40 different blogs and interacted with their writers on a near daily basis. Today, I only keep in touch with one, Micaela, via Facebook. I would LOVE to find more friends online, and actually interact with them as the year goes on.

5. Get involved on campus. Last semester, it was virtually impossible to do much more than the 2 successful DECA meetings we held. I went straight from my 8-12 classes to 1-6 work half an hour away, missing pretty much all university sponsored events. The upside to having a more flexible employer and taking my classes online? A ton more chances to get involved on campus, and possibly spread the word about UNT Collegiate DECA in the process.

And on that note...Congrats to UNT on their Heart of Texas Bowl win this afternoon! I may not have a ton of school spirit, but I am incredibly proud of my Mean Green players.

What are YOUR New Year's resolutions? How do you intend on making sure they happen? And leave your blog in your comment if you have one! Let's make #4 happen.

Fantasyland

As someone who grew up in a house full of books and DESPISING all forms of the English language (IE: writing, reading, and the limiting of the amount of which we speak it), I would never, as a small child, have thought "Hmm, I really want to be an author some day." If someone had suggested that to me, I probably would have told them to get a harsh reality check and maybe look at my standardized testing scores.

For those of you who know me now, but did not know me then, you're probably going "WHAT? HOLLY HATED READING AND WRITING?" I know. Shocker. But alas, it is true. Until about the fifth grade, I absolutely refused to pick up a book and read out of my own free will, despite my desperate English major of a Father's pleas. Then, the summer after 5th grade, I was asked to do just that by my school. Choose a book from a list of suggestions, and do a project over said book to present in my first Advanced Placement class of my secondary school career. So what did the pink loving, blinged out cell phone carrying 11 year old Holly pick out of the small selection of options?

A princess book, of course.

Princess Academy still is to this day one of my favorite books. It tells the story of a young girl from a mountaintop territory of a small country, who is chosen as a potential wife for her Prince and using her "quarry speech" learned as a child, manages to save the girls of her princess school from a group of bandits. It was the first opportunity I was given to imagine a world I was interested in, with my own interpretations and images.

From then on I was hooked. I soaked up every book I could, and in the 7th grade I read the most words out of anyone in the school (yes, we had those kinds of contests). I found my niche in fantasy novels, falling in love with the Harry Potter world after watching the movie and getting the okay from my slightly shocked parents to buy the book. And then, then came the fan fiction.

My introduction to writing was a silly one at best. It started out as an idea. A "what if" scenario, as so many fan fiction authors will tell you their best stories begin with. "What if the Mirror of Erised was never moved?" My serious Harry Potter lovers will get the reference. And so I started. And I kept writing. And I kept writing. And a few days later, I gloriously printed out my newly penned work and handed it to my dad to read. I kid you not, I think I saw him tear up.

Years later, and a few of my fan fictions have more words than most full length novels. I started blogging, still picking up any book I could find. And then the ideas came for my own works of art. So since Freshman year, I've been working on two or three different ideas for books.

Camp NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is almost at a close. I have not done as much writing as I wanted to, but I'm giving myself a little slack - there's a lot going on in this soon to be UNT student's life right now. But I'm hoping that sharing this story, my story of how I came to love words, love the feel of pen on paper, fingers on keyboard and the sight of my stories coming to life, would help someone else who's world seems a little small, become a little bigger.

And on a perfectly good sidenote, can I just say, THERE IS A MOVIE COMING OUT ABOUT A JANE AUSTEN STAY AWAY CAMP?!

Le boyfriend claims he wants to see this...but I get the feeling he will have no idea why everyone is flipping over Collin Firth in a clingy shirt.

And...end fangirling.

Stories of your own to share? Favorite books, stories, even movies from your expanded worldview? Share below!

Love,
Holly

Stop the World

As if I can't say it enough, life has become insane!

I've literally worked almost every day I've been in town since the beginning of June-I'm beginning to think I'll never get the smell of BBQ out of my clothes.

But I am finding a little more free time. I got about 4,000 words into my book that started as a NaNoWriMo (that's National Novel Writing Month for you non-nerds) project a while back when I hit an inspirational spike last night while closing up at work. Yay for having mind numbing tasks where you can think about other things!

In short, the book is about a school for girls with special powers (yes, similar to X-Men), which has to make some serious changes when their all male brother school burns down and they have to house the boys for a year.

I always picture the clique from the early seasons of Gossip Girl when I'm working on it.

It's been a pet project since I was 12, originally a short story, but it's since expanded to this crazyness that's barely 3 chapters in and over 12,000 words long.

I'm also trying to find a way to start getting really into my summer school classes. With the way my schedule worked for this upcoming year (Seniors '13, woot woot!), I'll be at our local Technology Center all day, rather than my home campus, so I'm trying to find a way to fit in all the classes I still need before graduation. At the moment, I'm in the middle of a ridiculously hard online PE class (my Travel Tourism class counted for one semester, now I'm just trying to get the second semester done without getting gross in public) and have yet to start my online French II course, both provided by Texas Tech ISD-two things I never thought I'd see together; my name with any Texas school.

I did recently stumble across an adorable site/blog called College Prep, and it's not what you might necessarily think. It's actually this really cute blog run by a college girl named Carly who seems to be as pearl obsessed as I am! I love finding people who manage to be awesomely smart and stylish at the same time. I'm adoring her use of Lily Pulitzer sticky notes and Kate Spade agendas-if all my paychecks weren't already being allocated towards DECA, I might invest in both!

Carly's super cute agenda. I have a similar one from Walmart in Tiffany Blue.

But alas, I'm sticking to being a high school recessionista. I will always love my designers, but for now it's Dollar Tree and Walgreens for me as far as school supplies go.

I'm also managing to catch up on my TV shows while cleaning. I'm on Season 5 of Eureka, Season 2 of Game of Thrones, and Season 5 of Mad Men. I'm still trying to catch up on Degrassi, but I can't get myself to sit down and actually watch. I know, a former Degrassi Die Hard, saying she can't watch Degrassi. I'm just having issues loving any of the plotlines in the later bits of this last season-Dave kind of annoys me, Clare/Eli have gone a bit stale, and Fiona needs to go back to curly hair!

That's all for now, I think. I'll probably do another post tonight about my recent Leadership Retreat with the officers of Texas DECA, but for now, I've gotta go get ready for another rousing night of serving BBQ to crying children and elderly couples.

Toodles,

Holly