Well kids, I have avoided using a computer for seven whole days. Part of my computer purity and detox program. Apparently, there is life away from writing … though I miss writing.
So as I drove to work and nearly slammed into a huge truck with a Prozac ad brandished on the back, I came up with a little Prozac pitch for writers:
Writing on Prozac; no characters died … but a clown cried.
Maybe it’s a poem?
Oh, I do miss writing.
Tania L Ramos, Author Unmedicated 
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A few posts ago I declared that I would take a hiatus from writing due to life and the way it interferes with my love of writing. To put it in perspective, when I love to do something I want to do it all the time and I want to do it well. Between working, raising children, running the WritingApocalypse.com website, book shows (it’s that season again) and all the other surprise things that life doles out, it became difficult to find time to write. And because I was staying up until all hours of the night trying to sneak in a few chapters only to wake up three hours later for a full twelve hour shift of nursing at the hospital, it felt like I was starting to despise my true passion. And because of that, I knew it was time to take a break.
Let me say this: So many of you wonderful bloggers and authors immediately sent me well wishes and gave me the thumbs up to take a break. I thank you all for that. It felt like a huge relief to know I am not the only author who needs to get off the boat and take a side excursion for awhile. You all eased my guilt trip a bit, though I still feel like I’m missing something when I’m not writing . . . so I know i’ll be back.
Since my short break I have so far: worked in my yard and planted numerous flowers and fruit plants. Made the call to fix the pool. Updated the WritingApocalypse.com website. Wrote out my reviews. Caught up on emails. Started to get the desk organized. Finished reading a book. And just sat down to hold random, useless conversations with my friends.
Alas, taking a hiatus has been good for my soul and sanity. Still, those grungy teens full of hope and life have sat patiently and silently by. I know they are there awaiting their story to be told. I hope they hang around a bit. The more rest I get, the more I feel a welling of courage to write that next book. I was right in taking some time off. Then again, I’m usually right :-)
Tania L Ramos, Author Taking A Siesta
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Life is exhausting! It is downright, sometimes, just painstaking to climb out of bed in the morning. The earlier I try to get to sleep, the worse it seems to get. I’m an episode of Scooby Doo where he is trying to run forward but is remaining in place. That’s me; stand still motion in a forward motion world.
So several things have come to fruition and not all of them positives. In fact, when I initially thought of writing this bit on Monday about giving bad news, I was handed some bad news. Word hit me that a good friend of mine took his own life Sunday afternoon while his wife and kids were at market. This is a very young man and amazing poet. In hindsight, his poetry sometimes left stepping stones into the torment he felt, but he masked it in pretty words. Sometimes blue simply means blue, and sometimes it really is a metaphor. Friends and family–and myself–wish we would have read between the lines. What if? I get tired of that question, it is the one that haunts the longest and burns the deepest, always leaving a crater in my soul.
What was my original blog supposed to encompass on Monday? Two things: bad reviews and self defeat. I’ll start with the first. Unfortunately, not all books we read for my website WritingApocalypse.com are top quality, and so we must write letters of rejection. Boy, do we hate that. Seriously, it tears at our gut, especially when people tell us this book will be life changing or is going to be the best we have ever seen. And it isn’t. How do you tell someone that without feeling some sense of sorrow. I hate getting bad reviews, but hate giving them more. It’s part of the job we tell ourselves. It’s part of writing. ”Why can’t all books be good,” one reader stated. What is the answer to that? We wish they were. So comes the point where have to write a tactful letter and say goodbye to a book that will not make the website.
And what of self-defeat? I’ve hit the topic a time or two, as it seems to really be creeping around the soul a bit more lately. I love to write. I love to write. I love to write. At the same time, I love having free time to work in my yard, to workout, to hike, to walk, to sit and talk without remorse that I should be editing or writing, to enjoy reading a book for pleasure, and to enjoy my family. There is a story in my head, but it is difficult as I have no real map into this one, just bursts of colors like fireworks and hope that people will care to see the show. Couple that with the fact that it will inhibit how I can distribute the book, and I’m doing a total face-palm. Should I take a hiatus from writing to catch up on life? Or is writing my life? Between a full-time job, part-time job, kids, health, home and writing, something has to give. I’m at a crossroads, as I do not want to say goodbye to any of them, but only one is truly able to be put off.
Monday was a day of mourning on so many levels. I must say goodbye to a dear friend and with that I have no choice. The team must turn down a book for inclusion on the website, and that is just a fact of life . . . they aren’t all winners. Finally, do I also say hello to a goodbye of my own? I’ll sleep on it . . . perhaps jot down a chapter and see how easily it flows. Until then, I say goodbye to “How to Save a Life,” which is finally finished and still in the working title stages. At some time, I will find the time to finish editing. Sometime . . .
I hope you found your sunset Matt. RIP
Tania L Ramos, Author Hating Goodbyes
Posted in Publishing Venture
Tagged book, death, defeat, edit, editing, life, novel, review, suicide, tania l ramos, write, writer, writing, writing apocalypse
The morning started off as cool with a light dusting of iced air creeping over the mountain. It was the first day of spring and the day Elsa loved most. Despite the bitter bite on the air, she ran outside wearing only sweatpants and a light t-shirt with Hello Kitty house boots. She slushed through the crunching ice, now thin and moist, sounding like Frosted Flakes cracking under her foot.
It was spring! It was supposed to be a joyous, but lack of her father arriving home after another drawn out saga of arguments between her parents meant he would miss this tradition of watching the first spring sun peek out from behind the peaks atop Bear Mountain. Elsa drowned out the endless cackle of her mother as she shouted her daughter was acting crazy and would catch a cold and die. But Elsa cared less. The misgivings of her parents had long since wore through any teenage patience she had, and missing the rising spring sun was something she was okay to catch cold over.
Still, the eastern sky was barely lit with a spry flare of hazy orange feeling its way into the night’s dusky blue. Elsa stood among the pines, taking in the scent of fresh dew on pine needles and relished in the tantalizing scent that filled her nose. Spring had its own fragrance, and on rare occasion when it arose any other time of the year, she would instantly float back to the first day of spring and standing out on the slurry with her father as they awaited the first warmth on the mountain.
She stood in an opening between two tall pines as the burnt orange ball rose in a slow teasing pace. Eyes closed, she lifted her head to the sky, longing and anticipating the touch of flares upon her frozen face. It was time to wake up from winter’s hibernation and she could hardly wait, now standing on tip toes to stretch up and allow her skin to swallow up the heat.
Then . . .
The first beam of light danced on her fingers and there was an instant sensation of nerves waking into pins and needles poking at her flesh. She was cold and the reviving flesh ached at the new warmth, yet stretched out further to bathe in more. Every inch of her small frame was engulfed in small increments at a time until the light of the world held her. Her head lifted higher and she felt the moment a smile crossed her face.
The pins and needles became like small lighters held at her flesh. This was all wrong! She opened her eyes wide to be instantly met with a burning ball of fire and quickly let out a pained gasp. Every inch of skin crawled beneath the searing sun and she felt as if being burned at the stake. Laden knees gave out and her burned palms were first to lay in the slurry of stinging ice and water. She screamed in deafening agony, knowing the sun had betrayed her, helpless to move from its light of death as she lay cooking under the sun, sprawled against a bed of cold, white powder.
As years went by, the scars, tiny little cropped circle reminders, remained to serve as notes of the day the sun became an enemy. The words she heard whispered around the small town at night were vampire and witch. They couldn’t be more wrong. It was a disease, not a curse. One that changed her life, her mentality and made her hide behind the darkness of the night and curtains . . . alone.
If there was one thing she could she wish for . . . but it wouldn’t be the wish you would think.
*****This has been an introduction into my next book–still untitled. Just a tease, and I hope that it was*****
Tania L Ramos, Still Heeding to the Voices
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Hello bloggers and good morning. Today I am coming to you from very warm and sunny Las Vegas. I arrived yesterday to a wonderful resort with great staff, bedside view of the pool, cool room and piss poor internet service. Heh, can’t win them all. besides, I’m here to write, not socialize–as if.
Last night, as I stared out my window and watched visitors play in the brightly lit pool, I wrote a scene set in a hospital. This morning when I woke up, I opened the window curtains to the full and inviting sun and wrote about a woman sitting in a bleak, pitch black hospital room.
When my internet finally gave way to working (despite the cost of $9.95 a day for use), I caught up on some Facebook posts and looked up a song that has really set the pace for this current WIP. While watching this rather downtrodden and eye opening video, I again looked out my window. Such an uplifting day. It’s the kind of day that inspires me to think about getting life back in order. The kind of day that makes you want to seize it! Ha ha! I can do this. Heck, I want to run a marathon . . .
Okay, so you get it. And yet, here I am, writing a dark indie novel about the ties that bind and sometime break us. I’ve said before that I listen to music to create a mood, but it has occurred to me today that I don’t need that same setting to create ambiance in my book. I can just as easily write death and destruction from an awesome vantage point as well as I can write sunshine and rainbows from my dark closet.
Okay, here is the video I was speaking of. Thompson Square “If I Didn’t Have You,” which pretty much sums up my book WIP. EXCEPT, this book isn’t about a romantic couple, it is about the struggle between a mother and son, with some Tania L Ramos twists and subjective fiction.
Tania L Ramos, Author With a Great View
Oh, look, there is the view from bed. Mmmmm, I love writing getaways!
Posted in Publishing Venture
Tagged author, book, family, fiction, las vegas, mother, novel, setting, son, tania l ramos, thompson square, wip, work in progress, write, writer, writing
