The Art of Failure

I hate being new to things because everyone just assumes you don't know anything at all. They try to hold your hand and baby you. Maybe they don't, maybe they're kind of jerky because this assumption and compared to you they know everything. It sucks that a lot of people won't just let you fail on your own. That's my philosophy but most people around me do not share the same idea.

I feel like allowing someone to fail allows them to learn a more valuable lesson and it allows them to learn a lot quicker than this hand-holding method. It's ridiculous that were turned into this kind of coddling society. Where everyone is afraid to fail. They're so afraid to fail that they do stupid things. They make us who are new at a job or in a class feel stupid and inferior. I don't need you to hold my hand. I need you to tell me what to do and then let me do it. If I fail I fail and I learn something from it and I know not to do the same thing again. by allowing someone to fail it allows them to get over the fear of failure. ( although some people need to fail multiple times in order to grasp this concept.)

I feel like this really need some examples and I think you might know where I'm going with this. Thomas Edison failed and hundreds of times before he could invent the light bulb. Scientists and engineers fail all the time before they can get their experiments vaccines or machines correct. I guess we need to stop thinking of failure in negative terms. Instead of thinking of failure as something that you can't come back from I think we should look at it as an obstacle in the way of success. In the same way that gamers die a million times playing a video game before they can complete or defeat the game we should think of failure as an excuse to try again but with a different approach.

Oddly enough this revelation came at the perfect time in my life. The stress of today's economy trying to find the right job in it, and trying to sell a book and it has made me a little jaded and cynical. I mean I'd like to call myself a realist but in actuality I was kind of thinking and failure in the wrong terms. Which means it's time to get off my ass and do what I love to do. (And allow myself to be tortured by my current job 39 hours a week.)

So, like I alluded to earlier it's not worth it to fail if you don't learn anything. It's also not worth it to fail if you aren't taking any risks to begin with. So, do what you want to do and when you fail make sure you learn from it. Failure is an inevitable part of life we just need to stop looking at it in such a negative way.

I Don't Feel like Being Predictable

I think it sounds normal to say that I have issues focusing on things. That is why I suck at updating my blog. I don’t really like regularity so I suck at making a schedule and sticking to it. I suppose it’s because there was this one time that I got an award (which obviously wasn’t an award) called the “needs to try new things” award. I was about 13 or so when I get it and I was pissed. I think after that point I made a sort of unconscious decision to be somewhat unpredictable. It kind of worked because I surprise people sometimes but doing something “out of character.” However, to me, it really isn’t all that out of character.

In my family of all women (besides my dad), I am the tough one, the tomboy, the one they expect to roll with the punches and lift heavy things… I go hiking with my dad, I try to stay in shape, in high school, I played basketball and threw javelin. All things you would expect from a tomboy. However I think it came as a shock to some people when I decided to make a conscious effort to start being more feminine on the outside.

I guess this is why I don’t like to get into routines/ schedules. I find them to be boring and bothersome. I like to be able to do what I want when I want. But I guess that’s not realistic of me to think. I suppose I do a lot of things that aren’t that realistic that result in… less than satisfactory results but we all do it. It’s a part of my “type B” personality. I don’t have to get things done the same way twice, in fact I like learning to do things another way…

It’s somewhat easy to read my personality from my books. My characters are a part of me. I take a little piece of my personality and let it take over when I want to write. That’s what makes writing fun, or hard or even draining. I love writing teen fiction because I can be young(er) and immature again. I can make all the decisions I was too worried to make as a teen in my books as a character and make outrageous (or even just normal) consequences.

However, it gets much harder when you start writing more seriously. Sometime next year I will be publishing a book called The Demon Dealings. It’s somewhat of a spin on my first book the Diary of a Natural Girl in a Supernatural World instead of taking its self lightly, it is a horror novel about a girl, Natasha, who discovers the existence of supernatural creatures. The persona I took on while writing this book was the most draining, heart wrenching and strong character I have ever written. She goes through a lot in the book and I almost feel like I went through it with her. I guess that is what I would say the rewards of writing is; you finish the book and can say “wow. I did this. I wrote this whole thing and as exhausting as it was I can say that I have produced a piece of work that I am proud of.”

The Demon Dealings is definitely a book I can be proud of and while I’m not sure if most of my readers will even like it, I am please with the result of the first draft.  

A potential cover for The Demon Dealings.

Learn Some Common Sense!

There are a lot of terrible characters out there. Sometimes we love to hate them. They’re the best villains but they’re also a little too good in that but most of the time there are characters that you just want to punch in the face because they lack in the most basic common sense.

I feel like this with a lot of characters but I especially feel this way where female characters are concerned. I don’t know if it’s the way that females are portrayed in my culture or if its just the way these characters are written. I think it’s a little of both.

There are a couple of reasons why a lot of characters bother me. The women are portrayed as weak and needy and more often than not can’t get themselves out of something without the help of a man. Or they’re “strong” and opinionated but because of this they don’t listen to the opinions of others. It’s either their way or the highway and if they do have to listen to someone else they make a huge stink about it. And why do characters make the most illogical decisions? Why don’t they take more time to be creative and come up with other possible plans?

I guess what I really need to explain this is lots and lots of examples…

The easiest place to start is the place where characters are easily the most annoying. If you take a look at any teen TV show you will find cliché and teenage stereo types by the ton. Apparently all teenagers do is party and get high and cause trouble. They never go to class but somehow magically manage to pass with flying colors. They’re so smart! Shows like The Vampire Diaries have annoying characters (all of them even the men). Apparently they take it on themselves to save the town and each other from their stupid mistakes all the time.

It’s like characters in any show (or movie for that matter) feel the need to save everyone if they have any sort of special ability. But why? Why does this responsibility fall on you? It doesn’t, you just think that cops can’t do their job and the justice system sucks (which I will admit it does have plenty of flaws).

Anyways, there is a reason I don’t watch shows that are purely based in the genre of drama. Everyone in those shows make me want to knock myself out with a frying pan. Where do these people get their logic? I have no idea but it’s definitely not anywhere credible.

And why is it that a lot of female characters seem to make decisions based on emotions and not logic? Offenders of this are Lori and Andrea from the Walking Dead who managed (Spoiler alert) to get themselves killed because of their poor choices. Of course this was all for the “good of the group” or whatever BS they like to spew.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is Michone who comes off as a robot at first because her decisions are more rational than that of the “emotional and opinionated” Lori and Andrea. I might be pushing that one a little but the point remains the same.

Of course the same thing can be said for movies that can be said for TV but the characters are less annoying because you only have to put up with them for 2 hours not 7 seasons.

There is a reason that I don’t watch shows that are mainly in the genre of drama (or why I don’t finish a lot of shows) and it’s the same reason why I don’t watch shows in the genre of romance (romantic comedy is a different thing). I don’t like all this back and forth, all of the miss communication. It annoys me and I just wish people would be straight forward and maybe none of your stupid crap have happened in the first place. I don’t like things where the main conflict could be avoided with a simple conversation because I sit there the whole movie wondering why this wasn’t said in the first place.

Anyways, I can probably go on about this forever so I will just end with this… I’m pretty sure what I just said up there is this: characters, at least to me, aren’t very logical and I wish that they would use their brains every once in a while but I guess not every person is a like and the same can be said for characters.

I guess the writers must be doing something right if they’re pissing me off this much.

Andy Dwyer Thinks Your Idea is Great

I have a lot of ideas swirling around in my head 24/7. In fact, I have so many ideas going through my head that the thing that puts me to sleep at night is basically plotting random stories I know will never go anywhere. As a self-proclaimed nerd I can admit that most of these stories are fanfictions. I don't really see the point in putting metaphorical pen to the metaphorical paper for something that already has its own plot. I have much more fun creating my own characters and making them do whatever I want. 

For me ideas are just a normal occurrence. I have literally walked into a store, saw a person and BAM idea based on some random stranger... (Ok, I am aware that sounds really weird) all because they were wearing a cool shirt or doing something shady. It can happen anywhere, any time and be caused by almost anything.

So what do I do with all of these ideas? 

The first thing I do is write them down. You never know what you can use again in the future. I can't tell you how many ideas I've gone back to and combined with other ideas or tweaked and made it something brilliant. 

The second thing I do is imagine how would they end and how would they begin. If there isn't going to be very much in the middle maybe its not worth my time right now. Maybe it need something more to bulk it up, make it readable. That's why I write it down and if I'm lucky I can use it again in the future.

Sometimes the idea isn't really an idea but rather a quote or a character I would like to see in a movie or TV show. The quote is also written down and saved for another day but the characters are special. The characters will get used. More often than not if I have an idea based on a character I will start something right away, give the character a beginning at the very least. I feel like this is my most common form of operation. The reason for that being my dislike for female characters in just about every TV show, movie or book... but I will save that rant for next time.

As for the quotes... I once was sitting in an extremely boring meeting. I wasn't sure what the point of it was because all of the complaints being made were the same as the ones I'd heard last time but none of the mistakes had been fixed. So needless to say I was ridiculously bored. A random thought occurred to me; I might die of boredom. Somehow this lead to a fantastic idea about people killing themselves to obtain superpowers. Hopefully that idea will see the light of day within the next five years...

The point to all of this is that ideas are endless. Sure they may not always seem original but there are uses from them even if you don't see the use right off the bat. 

Here's a little something I came up with a while back that started with this sentence...

"I'm a rather unremarkable person... if you don't take into consideration the whole teleportation thing."

So yeah, ideas can be anything and everything if you see them for what they can be. The real test is what you do 

Good Luck!

An Introduction to the Madness

Hello all you love readers, my name is Nicole Willis but most of my friends just call me Willis. I am the author of a book called The Diary of a Natural Girl in a Supernatural World and I love writing. I like to have fun with it and I hope that my readers have fun reading it.

Anyways, I have a tendency to ramble and more often than not I rant about random things. This blog will more than likely consist of random excerpts, ideas and a whole lot of ranting (potentially.) So expect something random from me at pretty much any time...

And while you wait for the insanity to begin enjoy this picture of rabbits that look dead....

Oh, and here is the cover of my book along with its description...

"I cannot believe that I am actually doing this. I mean I guess I had some sort of new school year's resolution or something but writing in a journal... yeah. So not like me but here I am.

Ok, let's just get the basics out of the way so I don't have to waste time explaining this later. My name is Dia and I am... well, I'd rather not say what I am. What's important is what I am not, and that is human. I am just pretending. But they don't know that. Nope, none of the mind readers or vampires and certainly not those meat heads they call werewolves. I am just trying to pass for a natural girl in a supernatural world.

Its not that easy. I have to fake that I don't have powers, take all the crap that people throw my way for being 'human' in a school full of supernaturals and I have to make sure that I don't disappoint my parents expectations for me as a supernatural.

All in all life is fantastic... fantastically annoying and kind of insane. But I can deal I mean I have for this long. At least until someone like Niklas (a stupid vampire) or Seth (my best friend's boyfriend's brother...) comes in prodding me demanding to know my secrets... Ok, not really demanding to know them but prying into my life like it is some oyster to be cracked...

Boy are they annoyingly persistent... They probably know more about me than they should, meaning my powers, which is going to cause me a whole hell of a lot of trouble.

What have I gotten myself into?"