Because life is full of adventures

Author: Dixie Page 1 of 3

What is the Best Writing Tool?

Over the years I have found myself using a pencil anytime I have wanted to write. This has been my favorite way to write, although I also have enjoyed using different colored gel pens. While pens are a great way to write I have always wanted to erase things. When they made erasable pens I did try them, yet I didn’t like them. That was back in the 1990s, so I just continued to write with pencils.

My favorite kind of pencil has been a regular number 2 pencil that you sharpened. I have used and still occasionally use mechanical pencils. I enjoy the fact that they never had to sharpen. Still, I prefer a regular pencil even to a mechanical one.

Besides the fact that you can erase a pencil, I cannot tell why I prefer using it over a pen. I feel some of it is the way that it is so easy to write with and flows very nicely. Pens can do the same things yet I seem to hold a pen tighter causing my hand to hurt.

Earlier in the year I was taking a Creative writing college course and trying to get more creative practice. While I am always trying to find ways to spark my creativity, I also am looking for tips from successful writers. In my search for tips, I came across an interview on YouTube with Author Neil Gaiman, by Tim Ferriss. This was my first time watching this YouTuber. If you would like to check out the video you can find it here.

In this interview, Gaiman talks about notebooks he prefers to use when writing a first draft, advice he has for aspiring writers, the way he works on projects, his preferred writing instrument, and a few other things. While I had heard of Fountain Pens, I had never thought of them as a good choice for story writing, but more for things such as calligraphy and fancy writing. Upon watching Gaiman’s interview and hearing him talk about these pens I had the desire to try one out to see how it writes.

Well, I did not just go out and buy a pen. Gaiman mentioned that not everyone is a fan of the pen. The tip he gave on finding one if interested, yet the place he mentions I know there was no way for me to be able to get there. I looked at a few on Amazon but did not purchase any. When Amazon notified me that one of the pens I had looked at was on a lightening deal I used a gift card to purchase it. When the pen arrived, I tried it out and I am so grateful to have learned about this pen.

I earned the gift card from Mistplay where I play games for points. If you are interested in checking out Mistplay use my link here. The link allows me to earn a small amount of points.

Since I was taking college courses over the summer and I enjoy using different colors for the different courses, I ended up purchasing a pack of colored fountain pens to use for my classes. The first pen I bought happened to be one I could buy new ink for to replace the vials.

I would recommend giving them a try. Here are a few options from Amazon. There had been an Amazon Basic one that I bought, but it seems to have been sold out. You can get 20 vials of black ink for $12 here. There are color vials for sale for about $9 for six different colors here. I thought that fountain pens would be expensive, but there are a lot of options on Amazon that are fairly priced such as this one.

I feel as though you just have to find some good ones. Discovering that I enjoy using this pen over any other pen. This pen just seems to glide over the paper and is easy to use.

Let me know what kind of writing material you enjoy using. I am interested in finding new things to use and love learning what others like to use. I am looking for new notebooks to use and would love any suggestions on some or suggestions about good fountain pens.

Finding the Best Way to Remeber Friends

As I mentioned in my last post I have been taking some college courses and one I took was Creative Writing. Since I have been wanting to share my writing with others I thought I would most definitely like to share some of the things I wrote recently on here.

A few years ago right after I found out that I was pregnant with my last son, I discovered that my best friend from third grade had suddenly passed away. It was a tough time and knowing she was gone was hard to handle.

For the last six years as October came closer, I would be very sad and sullen, since my friend’s birthday was coming up. Since she has passed away both of her grandparents who helped to raise her have also passed. She left behind her Mother, two sons, and a daughter.

In my creative writing class, we did some prompts and created short stories, and when I sat down to work on one of the prompts I felt that I would try and focus on things that had happened in our friendship, yet eventually, I moved away from making it about my friend. After a few short stories, we moved on to writing some poems. These poems I wrote came about due to the things that I had experienced in my friendship with her.

As it is her birthday this week I felt that to honor her memory this year I would share one of the poems I created. The following Poem is in memory of J.N. K.:

I Did Not Know How to Tell You

I did not know how to tell you How it made me feel, So I just did what had kept me safe And hid from all the pain.

I could not see how this would hurt you Or take us on different paths, All I understood was the pain it had caused, So I hid from all the pain.

The years went by and by. I tried to see you when I was close by. Things never seemed to be the same, So I hid from all the pain.

I never could forget the friendship That we had. I still could not tell you The reason it was not the same So I still hid from all the pain.

It never occurred to me That you probably felt some pain. I never thought it had hurt you. So I hid from all the pain.

Life could never be how it was, No matter how much I tried. You never told me if I hurt you. So maybe you hid from all the pain.

I can never tell you now all the things I wished to fix. I want to take away, All the pain that did exist. And so I have to deal with all the pain. ~Dixie

Crafting with SVGs

As I have mentioned in a previous post I have been exploring ways to get my creativity flowing again read about here, as well as finding myself and remembering things that I enjoy doing. First one you can find here, and the second one here. One of those things is to put together my photos in a scrapbook and even though I have not been doing this for a few years, I wanted to get back to it. For a little while I had been subscribed to an art journal subscription and enjoyed doing this. The artist Jessi who created the monthly boxes, I believe, talked about how putting your momentos together in a book is considered Art Journaling. This reminded me of how much I have enjoyed doing this and how I still keep a hold of items from different things we have done over the years to put into books.

Well all of these thoughts lead me to remember people talking about die cutting machines and how I had been interested in these throughout the years, yet had never tried or looked into them before, so I felt like asking for one for my birthday a few years ago. After remembering about die cutting, I remembered hearing about the company Cricut and thought it was a die cutting machine company. While Cricut is a cutting machine, it ended up being a lot more than what I thought I was getting into. I received my Explore Air 2 for my birthday back in 2020 when we were shut up in our houses at the beginning of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Upon receiving this new machine I realized it was not what I was thinking I was asking for. I will admit that I did not research a Cricut and the die cutting machines that I was expecting to receive. While Cricut came around and started out as a die cut machine that you used templates with, it has evolved into more.I became a little overwhelmed with how exactly to use the machine, what an svg was, where to find them and all the possibilities I had with this new machine.

Gold Bug Mine

A couple of weekends ago my children and I took the opportunity to visit one of the many mines in California. We were invited to go along with one of my brother’s and his family. My children enjoy spending time with all of their family members and we have been taking every opportunity that we can, especially since moving closer to family at the beginning of the year.

The mine they had chosen to visit is about an hour away from where we live; taking California Highway 50 to the east in the city of Placerville. Placerville is a city located in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Upon arriving at the Gold Bug Mine we were able to purchase tickets for a self guided tour of the mine. This tour uses an app you can download to your phone. If you do not have a phone you can download the app with, they have a device to use as well.

Inside of the Mine

Thrillers by Anni Taylor

A while ago I found a book called Stranger in the woods: A Tense Psychological Thriller on Amazon Kindle using the Kindle Unlimited subscription and thought I would give it a try based off the description. I read this book because I wanted a change in what I had been reading after finishing the Harbinger Series by Jeff Wheeler, which I discuss the first one here and the others are on here as well, but I would rather not bog you down with a bunch of links.

Stranger in the Woods is about the photographer Isla Wilson who takes a month long job in Scottland to photograph the family and property architect Alban McGregor and wife Jessica. Deep in the woods on their property is a chilling playhouse, which Isla learns that two years prior the McGregor’s daughter, Elodie, died after being kidnapped and taken there. Alban does not want to get rid of the playhouse and even has a picture of it on his wall. Being in contact with the family daily Isla gets the sensation that both Alban and Jessica have some awful secrets. The closer Isla comes to finding out answers about Elodie, the greater danger she encounters. When a dense cover of snow blankets the town Isla finds her chances of escaping the dangers limited.

This book was amazing and it kept me on the edge of my seat through the whole book. Throughout the book some of the information starts to lead you in the direction of certain people being responsible for the happenings of the young girl. You get to read the story from the point of view of the main character Isla Wilson as well as get glimpses as to the point of view of the young girl Elodie McGregor two years before Isla came to photograph the family. I felt as though every time you have a suspicion against someone, they end up doing something that makes you second guess your assumption.

This book I feel was amazingly written and I would definitely recommend it to many people. A really good thriller that keeps you guessing at what is going to happen next. I for one did not expect it to have the outcome it has towards the end. Anni Taylor did an excellent job of suspense and conclusion.

Iron Garland by Jeff Wheeler Harbinger Book 3

Recently I got an offer from Goodreads.com for two months free of Amazon Kindle Unlimited, which allows you to read and or listen to certain books for no additional price. Normally it is $9.99 a month for access to over one million books, of which you can have ten different books at one time. I figured that since I have the opportunity to use it for free, I might as well read the rest of the Harbinger series.

While with the first two books I used the same service to listen to the books instead of reading it myself, which took about a month each time, I decided to read the third one. Now with the first one it took a while for the book to catch my attention fully. Since that point, the other two I have read did not have that issue. I think this may be the way that the characters were introduced and the amount of time that it took to get to the more interesting happenings in the book.

As I stated this third book, I had no problem with the amount of time it took to get into the book. It was so interesting that I read the whole book in four days.

Daring First Writing Prompt of the Year 2021 January

So as promised I am here with the first of many Writing prompts of the year. At this time as I stated in my previous post which can be found here I have been searching for writing prompts. When I started this journey I thought that I might have some in one of my writing books that I own, and that was not the case. While they are good resources they just did not have writing prompts as I thought they would.

I have a tool set called “THE WRITER’S TOOLBOX” by Jamie Cal Callan that I thought would have some ideas, and while it is advertised as “creative games and exercises for inspiring the “write” side of your brain” I did not feel it is what I was looking for. It does have a nice feature of helping you if you are stuck on your first line of a story, as well as ones for the middle and ending. It has a lot of different things, but I just did not feel it was what I was looking for, so I went to the internet to find some writing prompts from other sources.

While I was looking I discovered that there are a lot of options out there and I have been working on compiling a list of the ones I find interesting. With that being said I feel that I am falling a little behind on what I was planning to do. It was not my intention to take this long, but in the course of going about my days I happened to be playing with my youngest child and was getting some Nerf guns ready for a little Nerf battle when he decided he needed to try and shot one of them right at my face. Unfortunately he was able to do just that and ended up hitting me right by my eye and made life a bit difficult for a few days.

Writing Prompts

Recently my friend Alex Schenk asked if I wanted to join her and one of her other friends in a writing prompt challenge. They had picked a prompt to start off of and you just had to write from that one idea. Being a writer who is trying to get back into the groove of writing I agreed to join.

Within the week I had taken the time to start on this prompt. As with life things seemed to have gotten into the way of me finishing up the writing on this prompt. Here it is a month or two after she had asked if I wanted in on this and I have not finished the prompt writing.

As with most things in life I would rather continue to work on something over time and eventually complete it, than to just give up on something even if it has taken me an extra long time to complete. If I leave something and never return to it I feel like…well actually I am not really sure what it makes me feel, but I do not like to leave things like that. I have to eventually find a way to complete something that I have started.

Is Writer’s Block Real?

For the last fifteen years or so I have had a hard time with my writing. While I have been able to do a little bit of writing I feel like for the most part I have had writer’s block. I say this because when I sit down to do some writing nothing comes, or if it does I feel like it is just me forcing myself to write.

The last eight years have been rough to find the time to try and write since I have been raising my children and focusing on their needs more than being able to do the things that I may want to do all the time. The first of those eight years I just had my first son, and I was still working. Two years after he was born we moved our family to another state and while I was no longer working I did become pregnant with our second and third children and I was mainly just drained all the time. Since then I have been focusing on raising my children, a few times off and on, on my own while my husband was working in another part of the state.

While I am trying to find the part of me that use to write, I am still having a hard time coming up with things to write about. I hope that this blog would help me to be able to bring back the creative writing I have missed all these years, but so far I have not been successful.

Adventures at LEGOLAND!

This fall when the school had its fall break my husband and I decided to take a vacation with our children even though only one of them goes to school at this time. We went to the San Diego area and took them to LEGOLAND. This was the first time any of us had been to LEGOLAND and we thought it was a really good place to take them that would have rides as well as a place that features something they all love.

All of my children enjoy playing with Legos and while there are times when they will not play with them for a while they always come back and play with them for days. They love to build the different sets that they have received or to just build whatever they feel like making with their Legos.

While there are still a lot of things that not all my children could do at LEGOLAND, they all found something to do and had a fun time including my youngest who wasn’t even two years old yet when we were there. He enjoyed going on some of the rides, and did not enjoy other ones at first, but eventually warmed up to it.

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