Had a really amazing work-out on Friday. Pushed my muscles to the living end - primary goal. Plus I think the treadmill and my eating plan have resulted in a drop of a few pounds in the last two weeks - secondary goal.
I'm in between a size 18 and a 16 now. I've broken through the deadlock. My goal is ultimately a size 14 by the end of 2011.
Love getting in shape. It feels great to feel strong and active.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Maybe it was Whoopi Goldberg?
I think, all those years ago, when I first thought about turning Quest into a novel (Quest was originally a 100 page poem that was truly awful), I remember seeing The Color Purple and loved the movie! More so, I was captivated by how exotically beautiful I thought Woopi Goldberg was. To me her features and marvelous brow (which is somehow delicate and regal at the same time), appeared to me like the face one might see on a relief wall from ancient Mesopotamia; the portrait of a Queen or Pharoh. I knew, when Noane's image came to me, that perhaps it was Woopi's face that was my influence.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Why was Noane written the way she is?
Some have asked me why I made the main character, the heroine, the17 year-old Noane, African American (although she is in fact neither from Africa nor America, since Quest takes place on a mythical Earth in mythical times).
I have no solid explanation for that other than Noane's looks had always been defined in my thoughts from the beginning. She appeared out of the mist - or myst? - and I couldn't shake her.
But I knew I wanted my Noane to be a strong female character, in her middle-to-late teens, who is old enough in wizdom to run her own farm. And, when she is forced to leave, is strong enough in will not only to survive, but help those she meets.
I wanted her to capture the heart of a man and a beast - so she is beautiful of course, but her beauty lay also in her actions; her desires, her stubborn determination - and so her ability to save herself when need be. To use her wits, not magic stones or blessed swords to rescue herself or her friends.
And I wanted her to be neither the conventional frail, white princess nor the pathetic damsel in distress.
Noane to me is an strong-minded, exotic, wonderful girl who knows her way and goes it. Who makes her own choices and refuses to bend her will to others. Yet she is full of love.
Noane is my hero(oine)!
I have no solid explanation for that other than Noane's looks had always been defined in my thoughts from the beginning. She appeared out of the mist - or myst? - and I couldn't shake her.
But I knew I wanted my Noane to be a strong female character, in her middle-to-late teens, who is old enough in wizdom to run her own farm. And, when she is forced to leave, is strong enough in will not only to survive, but help those she meets.
I wanted her to capture the heart of a man and a beast - so she is beautiful of course, but her beauty lay also in her actions; her desires, her stubborn determination - and so her ability to save herself when need be. To use her wits, not magic stones or blessed swords to rescue herself or her friends.
And I wanted her to be neither the conventional frail, white princess nor the pathetic damsel in distress.
Noane to me is an strong-minded, exotic, wonderful girl who knows her way and goes it. Who makes her own choices and refuses to bend her will to others. Yet she is full of love.
Noane is my hero(oine)!
Monday, March 1, 2010
Quest muse number one...
Quest began as a very long poem I wrote while I was working nights, to keep my mind occupied - and because I loved spinning tales. But the poetry market, I soon understood, was scanty, and so I decided to spin the poem into a story and, before I knew it, I had nearly three hundred pages!
As a wife and working lady, it has always been difficult to make the time for writing, but it was a beast impossible to ignore. In between work-a-day, part-time language instruction and family life, my type-writer or computer often got dusty. But I persevered and the rest of Quest's history is a lot of typing and re-typing, and sending it out to countless publishers (who, to the last, wrote back I must say very polite no-thank-you's), and finally I decided I would self publish.
Now I'm working on Book II of Quest and am more excited than ever. For me, it was spinning the story and making others see and feel the things I liked to see and feel when I was a girl - but from within the pages of a faerie tale. Making others experience what I saw in my head and felt in my heart is what keeps drawing me home to my pens, paper and keyboard.
Though I have published a few other shorter stories in my local newspaper and a fellow writer's anthology, as an author my greatest love has been this book.
My hope is that Quest takes you back to a time when you were ten or twelve. You'd leave your house and ordinary things, wander off to sit under the orchard trees, or escaped to the play-house or to the park and, in your quiet corner away from the everyday world, lose yourself in a story of wonder; an adventure story you yourself might often have imagined as you played childhood games.
For me that world was, and now is, Quest. And I think my journey has just begun.
As a wife and working lady, it has always been difficult to make the time for writing, but it was a beast impossible to ignore. In between work-a-day, part-time language instruction and family life, my type-writer or computer often got dusty. But I persevered and the rest of Quest's history is a lot of typing and re-typing, and sending it out to countless publishers (who, to the last, wrote back I must say very polite no-thank-you's), and finally I decided I would self publish.
Now I'm working on Book II of Quest and am more excited than ever. For me, it was spinning the story and making others see and feel the things I liked to see and feel when I was a girl - but from within the pages of a faerie tale. Making others experience what I saw in my head and felt in my heart is what keeps drawing me home to my pens, paper and keyboard.
Though I have published a few other shorter stories in my local newspaper and a fellow writer's anthology, as an author my greatest love has been this book.
My hope is that Quest takes you back to a time when you were ten or twelve. You'd leave your house and ordinary things, wander off to sit under the orchard trees, or escaped to the play-house or to the park and, in your quiet corner away from the everyday world, lose yourself in a story of wonder; an adventure story you yourself might often have imagined as you played childhood games.
For me that world was, and now is, Quest. And I think my journey has just begun.
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