Back to Wordpress!

I have had a couple of messages / emails concerning followers being unable to reply to my blog, so I have made the decision to move back into my old Wordpress account.  I have updated, copied, and removed quite a bit of stuff, so it's still a little jumbled, but I hope to have it all corrected and fixed soon.

To those that are currently following me - I hope you will continue to follow me over at the current blog.  This was a fresh start, so hopefully it will not inconvenience many people.

Thank you for all the wonderful comments and feedback that I received from each of you!

Melanie's Musings can now be found here.

For those that don't trust / like links, you may find me at

http://crystalflow.wordpress.com/

Melanie

Shine On Award

I have been nominated for the Shine On Award by the very awesome Krista over at Color Coordinated.

The Rules

1. Display the award logo on your blog.  
2. Link back to the person who nominated you.
3. State 7 things about yourself.
4. Nominate 15 other bloggers for this award and link to them.
5. Notify those bloggers of the nomination and the award requirements.

7 Things About Me

1.  I am the youngest of 5 kids, so I am spoiled rotten.
2.  I enjoy camping, hiking, and anything else that involves water and outside.
3.  I love gardening.  This year, my garden included tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, zucchini, watermelon, cantaloupe, green beans, potatoes, and spinach.
4.  I have 3 other blogs - a personal one, a gaming one, and the one I moved all my writing stuff over from.  (It was getting a little crowded.)
5.  I collect frogs, dragons, and swords.
6.  I enjoy playing World of Warcraft, Legends of Zelda, and Final Fantasy games.
7.  I consider myself shy, but anyone that knows me swears otherwise.


Nominees (Please forgive me, I will get these up ASAP, but I didn't want Krista to think I was ignoring her message to me, so I wanted to get this posted)

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Musings on Muses

Last head's up before it happens:  I will be returning to college next week (August 12th), so while I will attempt to make one post per week (on the weekend, most likely), there may be weeks that are skipped.  Working full time and going to school full time are not helping my addiction to writing!

With that said..

My muse returned to me today.  I have missed her these last few months, but she flew through the open window and perched herself on my shoulder as I was getting ready to leave for work.  I spent the entire hour drive trying to focus on driving and not parking on the side of the road to write down ideas.   I'm happy for her return.. and the seven pages of notes I wrote out once I got to work are proof of that.

I have read biographies, newspaper articles, interviews, etc - in which an artist (writer, poet, musician, painter) introduced their muse as a real life human being.  Mine is different.  She does not exist outside of my own mind and she was named Arianna after the sister of one of my very first characters.

I'm hoping she plans to stick with me for a bit longer this time, because I need her.  Not only for my own writing and musings, but for the Science Fiction writing class I'm taking.  We have a lot to go through in the coming months..

When The Words Won't Flow

In a post far, far away... I mentioned writer's block.  There are plenty of internet arguments going on as to whether or not writer's block exists.  For the most part, my advice for when you were stuck was to just write complete drivel until you got it out of your system.  Because you can't edit a blank page.  

I'll go ahead and state it: I believe writer's block exists.  And sometimes, you just can't write the complete drivel to get it out.  I have my book of ideas, I have my outline, and I have my story perfectly in my head.  But somehow, somewhere, the neurons that should be firing in my brain just won't communicate what's in my head to my fingertips.  For those that don't believe in writer's block, we'll call this THISISTERRIBLEMAKEITSTOP.  Why do I give it that name?  Because this is terrible, make it stop.

I'm having a fairly bad case of it right now.  I have my outline, the points I want to make in the chapter, the details needed, and how I want it to play out perfectly in my head.  But it refuses to write itself on paper.  So instead of needlessly smashing my head against a brick wall over and over again until all the words fall out, I decided to blog.  

At any one time, I can have a hundred different blog posts going through my head to type out - whether it be for my gaming blog or my writing blog.  But this "writer's block / word block / whatever you wish to call it" seems to be affecting all aspects at this time.  For anyone reading, I will apologize ahead of time, as I had to force myself to write something in order to get the words going, but it seems extremely subpar.  Here's to hoping that my creativity will spark again soon, as I have several people waiting for my next chapter, and they're getting a bit impatient.

On that note, I should also pass along the warning that my bi-weekly (or sometimes tri-weekly) posts may go down to one a week soon.  My last year of college will begin on August 12th and the course load is heavier than normal.  If you see any strange posts concerning Calculus, Anthropology, Geology, or English, my brain was probably deep in study mode.