Jimmetta Carpenter – Page 36

There Is No Time Like the Present

April 16, 2013 jcladyluv

Yesterday the April issue of Write 2 Be magazine came out and in my letter from the editor I wrote about springing into action before too much time has passed and you realize that you haven’t even accomplished half of what you set out to achieve this year. As I was uploading the issue to the site the news about the Boston Marathon explosions broke in on the TV and I just shook my head at the actions of someone who was obviously busy doing the devil’s work. It made me saddened for those who were injured and certainly for those killed but I also felt like my message of springing into action was even more relevant.

None of us know what is going to happen from one day to the next and waiting around for the eventual time that is going to come for you to achieve those goals might just result in you wasting time that you may not have to waste. We have to stop living for some time period that is a year or two from now and live for the moment, for today. We keep putting things off and biding our time until someday gets here when you’re finally going to get moving and attack those goals, those dreams, with the determination and drive that should have been there all along.

For the ones at the marathon that died yesterday, particularly the eight year old little boy, they won’t get a chance to wait for someday to get here. Their someday is gone now and while there is nothing that we can do to bring them back, there is something that we can do to honor them and to honor all of the lives that have been taken way too soon from their eventual tomorrow. We can stop waiting for someday, or for a year from now, or even months from now. We can start living out our dreams and serving God’s purpose NOW! Not tomorrow, but right now.

They say that there is no time like the present and when I was younger I really didn’t get the depth of that saying. However, as I have gotten older and as I have seen terrible things happen throughout this world I understand what that means. There’s no time like the present because that’s all there is, is the present. Live as if today was the last one you had. I don’t mean live as if you’re going to die tomorrow, but rather enjoy your life today, enjoy the opportunities that you have today, take advantage of the goals that you can achieve today, and be happy today. None of us knows what tomorrow will hold. All we have is today!

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

https://write-2-be.com/

http://unpleasantlyplump.wordpress.com/

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

Write 2 Be Magazine is now out so please go check it out at http://write2bemagazine.com/. Also please go and join the magazine on twitter https://twitter.com/write2bemag, join the email listing for the magazine or submit a request for an author interview at Write2bemagazine@yahoo.com, and also like the Write 2 Be Magazine fan page https://www.facebook.com/Write2BeMagazine. Please help support my endeavor and my new journey and help me spread the word about Write 2 Be and its meaning.

The Caliber of the Classics— Has Classic Literature Been Forgotten?

April 11, 2013 jcladyluv

I read a blog post yesterday that questioned whether or not the classics are necessary to be read. It made me remember that I once questioned that myself. I must admit that when I was in high school I didn’t read a lot of the classics that one was supposed to have read at that age. I read some but others I attempted and just couldn’t get through it, at least not then anyway. However, since then I have read a lot of the classics that people always talk about and refer to quotes from as books that are just meant to be read in one’s lifetime and I must say that I think reading the classics makes a writer better.

There was a certain standard in literature that the classics upheld, a certain caliber that they were an example of. A certain level of writing that one had to be qualified to have in order to really truly have their books on people’s shelves. In the days of the classics they wrote deep, thought provoking stories, and breathed a particular depth into their characters.

In today’s society, while you have your writers who have that special something, who are of that caliber and who do uphold those standards of classic literature, there are far too many writers who haven’t met that standard and they don’t hold themselves to a particular style of writing in which they don’t just settle for putting anything on the page. I thought about some of the classics that I have managed to read (some later on than others) that made a difference to me and had an effect on my writing. Maybe some of these had an effect on you too.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
WutheringHeights by Emily Bronte
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
The SecretGarden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

Here are some classics that I still have yet to read (although I should’ve read them already by now) but that I plan on making an attempt to read sometime soon.

A Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

What are your favorite classic novels? What classics would you still like to read if you weren’t so busy writing your own novels?

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

https://write-2-be.com/

http://unpleasantlyplump.wordpress.com/

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

The Before and the After—A Picture Tells the Whole Story

April 10, 2013 jcladyluv

Anyone who knows me knows that I absolutely hate taking pictures. Not taking pictures from behind the camera lens but to actually be in front of the camera lens itself. So I’ve been on a weight loss journey for the last few years now and I committed to this journey no matter how long it took for me to get to a place of being healthy (and yes thinner too) and happy. I also knew that I couldn’t do this quickly and rapidly because I had tried that before and it didn’t stick and that I didn’t want to lose weight surgically (not knocking it for anyone who has had weight loss surgery—just not for me) but rather naturally and that meant it was going to have to be slow and steady.

I’ll admit that at certain periods throughout the process it has been slower than others and of course there’s moments where you reach a new stage and you plateau. However, I have managed to remain vigilant and have lost well over a hundred pounds but yet I still don’t like taking pictures. My best friend asked me once if I had any before pictures so that I had something to compare things to because I constantly have an issue of looking in the mirror and thinking that nothing has changed regardless of the fact that my clothes have gotten looser on me and my face is visibly different, but as I stated before I have never liked to take pictures with me in them.

So today when I went to the gym (knowing that I had taken a picture for the membership card when I first joined the gym) I asked if I could take a new picture for my membership card. When she took the picture and printed out the new card I took out my old one and looked at the side by side view (you can see it below-sorry it’s not a clearer picture) and the difference was, in my opinion, very noticeable. I was ecstatic and overjoyed and of course I went and showed everyone in the gym my before and after and one lady even pointed to the before picture and asked who it was. That motivated me even more.

Here's my before and after... See the difference! — Here’s my before and after… See the difference!

What does any of this have to do with my writing you might ask? Well you know they say a picture is worth a thousand words and in today’s case my before and after pictures made a lot of things clearer to me. That before picture was not a happy woman, perhaps a woman who faked it with some success, but definitely not happy. But the after picture was a happy person, a more confident person, a more secure person, and a healthier person. It in many ways mirrors my journey of writing that I spoke of with such frustration in yesterday’s post.

My writing career, years ago, around the time of that before picture, was existent (barely) but it wasn’t moving in any direction. It had gotten off the ground (maybe about a couple inches) but it hadn’t took off, it hadn’t even gotten midway, it was just stagnant hovering somewhere around the point of the wheels of a plane being an inch off the ground but not yet ready to take off. It has been a slow journey in that regard as well but unlike with my weight loss journey where I had succumb to the reality that slow and steady is better for me and in the end will garner more promising results, more lasting results, with writing I had wanted it to be a rush to take off. I hadn’t thought about the fact that if slow and steady can win the race in one area, why wouldn’t it be the right track in the other area as well.

My writing career is still definitely not where I want it to be but it is definitely beginning to take shape and it seems to be ready to take off. Just as with my before and after pictures in my road to a healthier and happier version of myself, I couldn’t see the progress before and it appeared as if nothing was really happening, my writing career has its before and after points as well. My writing career, my writing style, has changed and taken different shapes right along with me and looking at the body of my work over the years I can see the progress now. I can see the fruits of all of my hard work and I am just as overjoyed at that as I was to look at my before and after pictures from this morning.

Sometimes to see the bigger picture, you really do have to capture it in a picture. A picture doesn’t just show the physical changes in a person but sometimes you can see a whole story in the person you are looking at in that picture, the emotional changes, the mental changes, the career changes. So what would your before and after of you look like? What story would it tell to the world?

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

https://write-2-be.com/

http://unpleasantlyplump.wordpress.com/

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

Sometimes I Question the Journey

April 9, 2013 jcladyluv

“Faith isn’t believing without proof – it’s trusting without reservation.”

~William Sloane Coffin

So I’ve been having one of those days where I’m wondering what all of this is for. What is the point of pursuing all of my dreams when the journey to get to them is so daunting and frustrating and exhausting and painful? When I still find myself having to worry where the next flow of income is going to come from and nothing is definite (which is what the beginning stages of a writing career looks like), it makes me wonder what I am really struggling for.

I am a chronic worrier and while I know that it is not good for my health to stress about things that are beyond my control I still somehow manage to do it. I keep thinking, this year it’s going to happen for me just the way that it’s supposed to, and then it doesn’t so I get geared up for the next year to be the year that my hard work begins to pay off. Yet still, not the rewards I had hoped to be reaping by now.

I get worried sometimes that this is all for nothing. The struggle, the sacrifices, the tears, the anxiety, the not knowing, all of the things that come with following your dreams and just throwing caution to the wind. I wonder if I made the right decision years ago and if maybe I was wrong about my ability to really make this work.

Yeah it’s been one of those days. I have those days sometimes, and some are worse than others. But then I remember that writing is something that I live for. It is my purpose in this world and it is my vehicle to express myself and to be able to change the world. Writing is something that I was born to do and it is the purpose that God gave me in this world. On the days when I am in a state of constant worry and when I am wondering what the point of it all is I will have to try harder to remember that the point is to serve my purpose no matter how hard the struggle or how long the journey.

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

https://write-2-be.com/

http://unpleasantlyplump.wordpress.com/

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

Stuck in the Same Place I Left Off At

April 4, 2013 jcladyluv

I must admit I had anticipated this first week of CampNaNoWriMo was going to go a little better than it has been going. I picked up my novel and got reacquainted with it that first day like I said I would and it brought the energy back that I had for telling the story and I was ready to pick back up where I left off. Well almost ready anyway.

When I got to the point where I had left off I remembered what got me stuck at that part to begin with. I was left with the problem of not really knowing how to write the scene that the next chapter is supposed to start out with. Well that problem did not vanish with time. I still don’t really know how to start the chapter.

I am finding myself repeatedly researching information that is necessary for the scene and still not knowing how to write this scene. It’s an important scene and I want it to be right. So now I am still stuck at this scene. I know that it can be worked through with some time but I constantly feel like I have less and less time available to write all of the stories that I imagine can be told. I guess I just have to buckle down and work harder on that scene so that I can move the rest of the novel forward. Well I suppose it’s time to get back to work!

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

https://write-2-be.com/

http://unpleasantlyplump.wordpress.com/

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

A Fortune to Be Told

April 3, 2013 jcladyluv

I know that most people don’t give a lot of credence to fortune cookies or the supposed advice that they provide inside of them. However, I am one of those people that do often times (not all the time) take what my fortune cookies have to say. Of course they have to make some kind of sense or else I just toss them to the side.

My fortune cookies seem to always have meaningful messages that somehow just magically apply to whatever situation I am going through or whatever motivation that I happen to need. At moments when I questioned whether I was making the right decisions I would get fortune cookies that read “Depart not from the path which fate has you assigned”, or “All your hard work will soon pay off”, or my personal favorite “God will give you everything that you want”. Now I know that they may sound like some really good lines that the fortune cookie writer just happened to come up with but you have to understand the timing in which I received them.

So I stumbled upon one today (yes I keep all of the good ones stored away) that reminded me of how much our past experiences help to mold our future. It read “the best profit of future is the past” and that is true for anyone but I think writers in particular get great use out of their past experiences. We take the stories from our past and use them to shape the stories of our future. One experience that impacted you greatly when you are younger, for a writer, can turn into hundreds of stories when you are older.

Thinking about this, in some ways, makes my somewhat cherish my bad childhood, or even the mistakes that I made as an adolescent or young adult. I used to wish that I could take some of my mistakes from my past and get a do-over but then I would be changing my story, and the stories that I have to tell in the present and in the future. I would be erasing all of the material that I have for some pretty good novels or even non-fiction cautionary tales in the (near) future. You can’t go back to the past but you can turn your past into a very beneficial future. You can let your past fuel the passions of your future.

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

https://write-2-be.com/

http://unpleasantlyplump.wordpress.com/

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

Camp Season Has Officially Begun

April 1, 2013 jcladyluv

Okay so today is April 1^st which means that (in addition to it being April Fool’s day) it is the first day of CampNaNoWriMo. I have decided that I am going to finish this novel so that I can get it into the editing phase. Now of course I should’ve started back up today but I opted to, instead, get reacquainted with the novel because honestly I stepped away from it for quite a while and I need to not only remember where I left off but get excited about it again. So here’s to all of you campers out there who have decided to also take the plunge into novel land for the month of April. Wish me luck in actually finishing it this time around!

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

https://write-2-be.com/

http://unpleasantlyplump.wordpress.com/

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

The Office That Could Make Me Never Want to Leave

March 28, 2013 jcladyluv

As I prepare for CampNaNoWriMo, which begins April 1^st, I start to begin to try and curb all of the excuses that may arise that tend to keep me from sitting down in the chair to write. The one thing I think that I never seem to be able to get just the way that I want it is my writing area.

See my so-called office (pictured here below) is not really an office but more like a nice corner of my bedroom in which my desk fits really well as well as the mini bookshelves that surround it, and there’s a bulletin board sitting above the desk with list upon list of tasks and projects that need to get done. Of course there are also pictures of certain places that I want to travel to for inspiration of what I’m working towards. It’s a nice office for what I have to work with.

But it’s not my dream office. My dream office is…well why describe it when I can just show you…

This is the office that I would love to be able to call mine. I’ve even started a Pintrest board with all of the different types of offices that I would not mind calling my own. However the picture above is my overall perfect office. This office, I could write in and you would probably have to drag me out to come up for air. What’s your idea of your dream office?

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

https://write-2-be.com/

http://unpleasantlyplump.wordpress.com/

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

My Younger Writer Fantasies

March 27, 2013 jcladyluv

I was reading an email ezine that I subscribe to from Christina Katz this morning that got me thinking about the side of writing that I don’t often like to think about. That would be the business side of being a writer. It’s the side that has to eventually kick in if you really want to turn your creativity into your source of income and have the ability to make a living doing something that you love to do. Apparently it is the side that I haven’t figured out how to turn all the way on yet.

There are those who can manage being the creative person for a designated period of time and then switch on the business person when necessary for a separate length of time. Then there is me, and other writers like me, who just simply are not born business people. I am the creative person, not the business person. For as long as I can remember I never liked to deal with the business side of anything. But I think that was the fantasies of my younger writer self that just didn’t know any better.

Christina Katz spoke about writers who, when they are younger, have this big idea of being discovered and turned into an overnight success, living an ideal life free from all daily trials and tribulations. I was that writer. I didn’t think so then but looking back on that time now I can see that there were a lot of things about being a writer that I wasn’t factoring in. Things like hard work (on the business end), extreme work ethic, determination, and patience. One more thing I didn’t factor in was confidence. Not necessarily confidence in my writing (because I always knew that writing was what I was born to do) but confidence in the person writing those words, confidence in me.

I thought that I would just be discovered one day, that someone would read my words and feel that they had to be the one who discovered me. I thought that I would be under the umbrella of a major publishing house with a publicists and a person who did marketing professionally so that someone who knew what they were doing could get my name out there.

I imagined living in New York (Manhattan at that) at a young age, working for national magazines and newspapers, and being on the New York Time’s Bestsellers list. I imagined that by the age of 30 I would already have had a dozen or so books out, on bookshelves, or whatever else there was that sold books. What I didn’t imagine, was having to be the publisher, and the publicist, and the marketer, all for myself.

I mean you see it happen to other writers (or so you think because that’s how things appear) and you think why can’t that be me. The truth is that just because it seems like people such as Steven King, or J.K. Rowling, or Tyler Perry were overnight successes with no obstacles in their way, doesn’t mean that there wasn’t a great deal of the other side that went into that success. At some point there is a need to tap into that business side of the writer self.

I’ve been trying to avoid it for years now and it may have just been to my detriment but I have to stop fighting the business side of being a writer. In a perfect world I would love to just focus on my creativity and have my talent be able to stand for itself and propel me forward but that just isn’t a realistic ideal to cling to. I can’t just worry about figuring in time for writing and all of the creative projects I have in the works. I have to figure in the time to be my publisher, and my publicist, as well as my marketer. I have to be realistic in the fact that I can not be the writer who solely focuses on the creativity of it all without fully committing to the business of it all as well. Time to dismantle those younger writer fantasies I once had! Did you fantasize up the writer life in your mind?

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

https://write-2-be.com/

http://unpleasantlyplump.wordpress.com/

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

Blooming Late or Right In Season?

March 26, 2013 jcladyluv

Everything happens for a reason and at the time that it is supposed to happen. That is how the saying goes right? When frustrations set in about my slow (and I do mean slow) progression to writing success (and financial comfort ability) it is really hard to believe that there is any truth to that saying. Half of the time I want to say that it is really just how people justify having a bad round of luck and the walls just crumbling in around them (or maybe that’s just me). However, deep down inside I do know that there is actually truth to it.

When success happens later than you expect it to (or planned for it to) it gets frustrating watching people who are barely out of high school or college achieve success on a fluke or by a chance meeting with just the right person. Meanwhile you work hard and consistently at something that you have the talent to back up and it just seems like mountain after mountain just keeps forming right in your path. You get around one mountain only to be challenged with another.

You’re left wondering why this person can just snap their fingers and have all of what you’ve been working hard for years (and years), and where’s that person’s mountain. Sometimes success just seems to come so easy for some and so much of a struggle for others. I guess some people (myself included) are late bloomers. It can make a person just want to throw up their hands and say the hell with it.

When I think about it, there are a lot of people who didn’t become a success when they first started out. They struggled, stressed, and fought hard to get to their current place in life and it was a mountain to climb every step of the way. Just because success doesn’t come easy does not mean that it isn’t coming. There is a reason that some people have to go through more than others in order to accomplish what they set out to do. Blooming late sometimes just means that you are blooming in season.

The writer I was in my 20’s is not who I am as a writer now in my 30’s. Naturally I have grown, both in life and in my writing, but I have also been through things that have given me experience (and a little bit of wisdom) to be able to open up more within my writing. If I had gotten the level of success that I wanted in my 20’s I’m not sure that I would’ve known what to do with it, or how to handle it with the level of maturity that I could now or in the future.

There was a reason why it didn’t come to me then. I wasn’t ready for it, and I wouldn’t have been prepared. It just wasn’t the time. There is a reason why I haven’t bloomed yet but I do feel that the blooming is about to begin. Better late then never!

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

https://write-2-be.com/

http://unpleasantlyplump.wordpress.com/

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310