Free Writing: Introducing Gable

 Gable collapsed to the ground exhausted and heartbroken staring at the broken remains of what what once had been his best friend. Blood dripped from a large gash in his forehead and formed a shimmering crimson pool at his knees, the sun dancing merrily upon the slick sticky fluid as if the heavens were somehow celebrating  his bittersweet victory or perhaps reveling in his pain. Gable wouldn't torment himself with why’s and how’s, he already knew the answer to these just as he knew that he was now once again truly alone in the world. He rose from the ground dusting the dirt from his knees and gathered Kaleb’s belongings. Stuffing them into his dirty tattered knapsack and then putting the sun to his back he slowly began walking, not caring where he ended up. The police would be here soon enough, someone had to have heard the screams, it doesn't matter, there will be nothing to be found by the time the authorities arrive.

  The day was hot and humid as most days are in southern Arkansas. The cicadas droned on that same soothing song they always seem to be singing on these hot sunny days. The one that makes you wish for nothing more than a glass of cold lemonade and a nice shady tree to sit under. “It’s hot.”, they croon, “Time to rest. No need to work, no need to play, just relax lest the sun be sending you home.” Gable paid their soothing song no heed, he was marching to a different tune, one that pulled him from deep inside and called him like a siren calls to a lost  and lonely sailor, the seductive song of power.

Handling Negative Reviews

   Getting a negative review can feel like the worst thing in the world to a new and budding author. Somebody out there has looked at your work and found it so lacking that they felt a need to share it with the world. Your heart races, your mind reels, and your soul crashes in upon itself. You want to rally, rage, hiss, spit, hide, cry, and quit all at once. This feeling is natural. When you are an author, you are also a parent and the manuscript you create is your beautiful defenseless child whom you long to love, nurture, and protect from all bad things. However, negative reviews are not always a bad thing. Instead of giving in to your initial instincts and just reacting take the time to consider what the reviewer is trying to convey.
   It is imperative that you remember that user reviews are not meant for the author. When a reader leaves a review on a book it is meant to express their overall impression of your work to other readers. In most cases, reviews are not a personal attack against you or your book, they are quite simply an individual reader's opinion of what they have read. This being said, oftentimes the best way to deal with a negative review is to ignore it completely. That's right, I am telling you to stay away from negative reviews. It does not matter how good you are at what you do, there is always going to be someone out there who thinks differently. This is a good thing, if it wasn't so, we would all be robots run by the exact same operating system.
   If you cannot stay away from negative reviews then at least try to learn something from them. As I have said before, a review is simply one person's opinion of what they are reading. Read the review objectively and seriously consider whether or not it points anything that you could possibly improve upon. If the reviewer states that your work is a mess and hard to read through and you do not use a professional editor then perhaps you could benefit by hiring one. If they complain that the characters are underdeveloped or difficult to relate to then perhaps you could add in more detail and flesh out the character a bit.
   These things do not make you a bad author they make you human and humans make mistakes. Humans also have feelings and emotions and sometimes reviewers do not take these into consideration and can be quite cruel. It is up to you, the author, to behave like a professional and refrain from reacting in a way that could possibly reflect upon you in a negative manner. You must remember that when you appear in any public forum, whether it be standing in line at the grocery store or posting an update on your Facebook page, you are painting a picture of who you are for your future fans. If you give in to your emotions and allow yourself to behave negatively, such as lashing out at the reviewer in a public forum or simply giving up on writing, you are painting an image of someone who is very unprofessional and insecure. This is not the image you want your fans to walk away with. You as an author should hold yourself to the same standards you would expect from your fans when you interact with them.

Freewriting: Creating Ecstasy

Sarah watched as the warm, cheerful firelight deftly swept the lonely shadows up into its loving embrace. They nimbly twisted and turned around each other gently twining together in an intimate dance meant only for each other. She always wondered if she was the only one who understood how erotic it was to watch this carnal mating of light and dark. Were there others who looked into the shadows and turned away blushing as if they had just walked in on two impassioned lovers or was it just her? She never dared ask anyone for fear of being ridiculed by her family and peers or accused of being a hopeless romantic cloaking the world in her own amorous idealisms.

She could not deny the fact that she had  many a night sat and watched this very same dance, imagining herself as the lonesome darkness yearning for the light to come and drape her world in its magnificent shadows, dispelling the emptiness inside her. Perhaps she was a bit of a romantic but if that were in fact the case then she was indeed somewhere beyond the timeless bounds of hopeless. Sarah was old enough and educated enough to know that there was no light waiting to shine down on her.

In her mind life was simply what one made of it, as was love. Love did not simply seek one out, you had to tirelessly hunt it down and upon finding it grasp on clinging wildly as you sacrificed every ounce of yourself out of fear that it would escape your grasp and seek shelter in the open arms of another more suiting huntress. She had participated in this gruesome chase to the extent of exhaustion and found that she much preferred the loneliness of solitude over the mind shattering agony that came with heartbreak.

Her imagination was more than enough company for her, easily supplying any lover she could hope for or want whenever she had the yearning. She was more than capable of creating day and week long escapes chock full of intrigue, drama, romance and even horror. Imaginings that left her feeling complete and sated without any concerns of being used or cast aside.

Lisa rhythmically tapped her long, red fingernails against the hard, mahogany desktop as she vigorously chewed on the mangled remnants of a well used, yellow, number two pencil. Sighing, she dropped the pencil and removed her glasses setting them, not ungently, down upon the shining surface of the desk. Frustration set in as she furiously stared back at the rapidly blinking cursor on vivid white screen of her laptop. She could feel it mocking and judging her as the flowing spring of words that had overtaken her, urging her to run to her keyboard in a frenzied rush in order to capture them like so many droplets falling upon a barren desert floor, came to an annoyingly abrupt end.

A Writer's Worst Nightmare!

Do you ever have those moments when you sit and stare at the blank space wanting so badly to fill it with words, that yearning to release the tumult of unbridled emotion that is flowing through you and yet nothing seems to want to come out? The whiteness just sits and stares blankly back at you mocking you, judging you. And then there are those moments when it all comes flooding down on you at once, like a wave of insanity washing over your senses screaming to be expressed, to be admired, to be seen, and those are the moments when you just do not have the time or the means to convey. This is what it feels like to be a writer.

Freewriting: Hide and Seek

  I quickly slide across the rough pavement positioning myself in the dark,cool shadows under the large Chevy Suburban in the neighbors drive. I lie still trying to slow the thundering of my racing heart and silence the gasping breaths that threaten to give my location away. I know he is coming, I can feel it. I listen intently, hoping for any telltale sign of his arrival as I carefully peer from my dark nest. I hear the Stephenson’s Labrador barking several blocks up the street. Cars whoosh up and down the main highway in the distance. The wind swirls dried leaves across the damp grass creating a soft, soothing rustle. There it is, the ever familiar sound of his sneakers crunching the fall leaves underfoot.

  He knows he is going to find me. He is walking, taking his time, taunting me with his confidence as he he savors the hunt. I can hear him coming ever closer. The earthy smell of his cologne is brought to me by the wind dancing across my face like a gentle caress. My animal instincts beg me to take off running in search of a new hiding place but I know I will be caught if I try. I would never win if it came down to a footrace in the open, his long athletic legs would quickly outdistance my much shorter ones. His footsteps slowly draw closer,his pace increases as he assertively bears down on my location.

  I stare out from under the large SUV wildly searching for some sign of my pursuer. I know he is close but I cannot see him. Blood rushes through my ears silencing the world as adrenaline floods into my bloodstream. I can feel my heart racing and my muscles twitching, begging me to rise and flee. I fight the urge to take flight, slowly willing my body to relax as I pull myself deeper into the shadows. Clamping my hand over my mouth, I visualize myself disappearing as I blend and meld with the warm pavement beneath me.

  He reaches under the large Suburban and grabs my ankles in his vice like grip dragging me across the pavement and up onto damp cool grass. I scream and kick out wildly trying to break his grasp and escape but it is of no use. He has caught me and now I am going to pay the ultimate price. I go limp surrendering myself to the punishment that I know is coming.

  I watch helplessly as he pins my arms above my head with one hand and reaches down with the other. His long fingers lithely dance their way across my ribcage as my body convulses with laughter. “Okay!” I shriek as I try to squirm away, “You, win I get bathtime tonight but you have to take storytime!.” His four little apprentices who had watched from the porch shriek with joy and run towards us piling up in a large, squealing dogpile. With shouts of, “Alright!” and “Good job dad!”

  We all get to our feet and walk towards the house together smiling and laughing all the way to the door. I have lost yet another summer night game of hide and seek and I could not possibly be happier.

Honest Free Writing: Who is LiraKitty?

   I never was what one might consider to be beautiful. I’m an average height for a girl neither tall enough to model nor short enough to be considered cute. I've always been a bit thick in the shoulders, dwarfing the average shoulder span of a lot of guys. My neck is too thick as is my waist but thankfully I do have a rather nice bust.  My long golden blonde hair always seems lank and greasy no matter how much I wash it, my nose tends to look a bit too big for my face and while my lips are quite full, there is just something about their shape that makes them seem as if they are off kilter. Freckles scatter themselves sporadically across my cheeks, just under my eyes and up and down my nose during the sunny months. My skin comes in three shades: pale white, bright pink and bright red. The amount of sun I decide to torture myself with decides which shade I sport on a day to day basis.
   The only interesting thing on my body is my eyes. I know this because I have spent hours of my life staring at them in the mirror wishing that the rest of me could be that beautiful. I have blue hazel eyes so they range in color from moment to moment and day to day but on most days they remind me of a bright summer sky. I do receive compliments from others on occasion but the only ones I honestly believe are true are the ones about my eyes. They are in fact my only pride.
   My wardrobe has pretty much always consisted of baggy pants, t-shirts, and flannel shirts. Grunge is what they call it, I call it comfy. I never really saw a point in trying to paint myself as something I am not. Girly clothes are pointless, they only emphasize all of the things that I hate about myself. I do wear a sparing amount of makeup in order to hide the offensive freckles that constantly bring attention to my ugly nose. I add the smallest amount of color on my top eyelid in order to draw attention up towards my only pride and joy in the hopes that maybe people around me will only notice the good and not the bad.
   I tend to be a very kind person although I am quite socially awkward. I have never felt as if I fit in and so I have never really learned to relax and interact with other people. Large groups of people make me very anxious, when confronted with them I usually find a corner to silently hide in while fears of people laughing and making fun of me run rampant through my head. This is why I tend to hide away at home between the pages of a book rather than going out and socializing. This is also why the internet has become my best friend.
   It is here in safe, anonymous confines of the internet that I have found a place where I can share myself with the world. It is here, that I have learned to overcome fear of failure and judgement and allowed myself to fly free just as I have always wished that I could.

Books, Chili Cheese Wieners, or Video Games?

   I created an account on Good Reads recently and much to my delight, found out that there are groups made just for reading and reviewing BOOKS! Let me get this straight, you will GIVE me your book, for free, and all I have to do is leave a review for it? Where do I sign again?! I'm so excited to find that I actually do have an addiction that I can feed for free. Of course if you want to feed your addictions as well you can take a look at fictionpress as well, just be aware that if you have a very heavy reading appetite you will exhaust your options quickly.
   Anyways, I am currently torn between reading a new book, joining the forces over at P99 for some classic EQ, or heading outside and grilling these hotdogs. Did you know they make chili cheese Oscar Meyers? No? Well you do now! I know I am supposed to be writing but but but I just don't wanna right now. I want to PLAY! *sniffsniff* Hmm, rambling..better go for now!

xoxoxo
LK