The Moving Chronicles I {The Statistics of Leaving}

I've moved about ten times in the seventeen years I've been on this earth. And I'll be moving once more this fall, but (hopefully) I'll be there for four years.

And growing up I used to hate moving. I didn't understand how it was a blessing or anything, I was stubborn and I wanted to stay where my friends were. I didn't want to leave the house I'd been living in (I mean, I was pretty good at decorating! ;) Moving is hard.

It struck me that a lot of people don't know what it feels like to pack up their entire house and move across the country. A lot of people stay in one state their entire life. That's crazy to me! The longest I've stayed somewhere is four years. The shortest I've stayed somewhere is six months. I've been on the East coast, the West coast, and into the Pacific.

So this is going to be a series blog posting. This first one is about preparations for moving and all that jazz. There's a lot more than you might think. Of course it's different for everybody, but I'm going to give you a personal, up-close look at how my family does it. As personal and up-close we can get within these next paragraphs, anyway. Hopefully this is helpful for any characters of yours who go through the moving process/move a lot!

1. Housing 
Once we find out where we're moving, we generally look at housing in the area dad will be working in. It's nice to find a house before you get somewhere. Not all people do that, I'm sure, but it's nice to move in right when you get there. Sometimes we'll even take a trip out to look at houses before we move. We did that when we moved to Colorado because my parents decided to buy a house.
However, this last move was a bit different. We had to wait about a month to get the house we wanted, so we were in a hotel for weeks.

2. Packing
So this works differently for different families. What we do is secure a packing company to come and pack our stuff into boxes. They wrap Every. Single. Item. with multiple sheets of that packing paper stuff. But it's weird because sometimes they'll wrap a little doodad (ie: a random game piece that was laying around) like five times and then wrap the fragile vase only once.  They put the things into boxes, label the boxes according to which room they belong in, tape em up, then they're gone. This usually takes hours, but doesn't go into another day.
+ Randoms about packing day
a.) There's usually about three or four packers from a company. They'll separate into the house and each of them will take a room. This means there's going to be like four different kinds of music blaring through your house and you can't do anything about it. Last time I believe we had country, rock, and some sort of rap or something. And then my mom was in the kitchen playing Christian music. It was crazy.
b.) They won't pack liquids or valuables like jewelry. I can't remember why liquids are a no-go, but if you have paint, shampoo, soap, anything liquid, they won't take it. Jewelry and the like is a no-go because they don't want to be held accountable if something comes up missing. They won't pack up costume jewelry either. But it's really for their protection and yours.
c.) Besides the liquid and jewelry thing, anything in sight WILL be packed up. We usually stuff a closet or room full of the stuff we're taking on our move (luggage, instruments, anything we're going to need after our stuff is gone, during the trip, and before our stuff arrives at our new place). So if you don't have your stuff set apart, it's going to get packed. Even your dirty clothes will get packed. It's happened to me before. *facepalm*
d.) When they're done, you're going to have boxes. Boxes everywhere. They will be piled high to the ceiling so you think they're going to fall on you.

3. Movers
These are the people who come the day after or even up to a week after your stuff is all packed up. And usually (seriously almost always) movers are late. They should come earlier in the morning so they can finish by night, but sometimes they don't come until afternoon and it goes until eight or nine at night.
They roll out plastic to protect your carpets, and the doors are flung wide open for easy in and out access. So if you have pets, you better make sure they're secure someplace or at a friend's house. The movers process is involved. My dad usually has a checklist to make sure everything is going good and everything is accounted for. (Though I can't remember if this is just for receiving the stuff after the move, or both).
+ Randoms about the movers
a.) It's polite courtesy to feed them during whatever meals they're at your house for. We make sure water bottles are handy and Gatorade to replenish whatever they're losing as they work. It's heavy-duty work to move the boxes and furniture. Fruits like watermelon are refreshing for them.
b.) When they're done getting your stuff into their ginormous moving truck out front of your house, that's the last time you're going to see your stuff for a long time, depending on where you're moving.
c.) If you can't get your stuff right away (if you're staying in a hotel for a month or something), your stuff will be stored in a nearby storage unit. And when you're ready, the new movers (for unloading) will pick up your stuff and bring it to your house.

4. Cleaning
I'm sure you can hire people to deep clean your house before you leave, but after living in it for however long, it'll need to be cleaned. Everything is open now. So get ready to vacuum, clean bathrooms, clean windows, baseboards, fill in holes in the walls, paint, etc. A lot of times we'll get somebody to come in and do the carpets, I think. There's a lot of stuff to get ready for the next people. Even if nobody is moving in after you leave, it wouldn't be cool to leave behind a dirty house.

5. Road Trip!
After all business is taken care of and the house is ready to go, it's time to head to the next destination! Hopefully the hotels/camping areas (wherever you'll be staying during your move) have been taken care of already. If you have pets, you have to make sure the hotel you're looking at staying in lets pets stay too. If you're going to be staying at a few hotels along the way, it's nice to have a special hotel bag with clothes in it that's easily accessible so you don't have to unpack the entire vehicle looking for whatever you need overnight.
We usually have any valuables with us that we didn't want taken. This includes laptops, video gaming consoles, and instruments, as well as personal information like bank stuff, insurance stuff, and important papers. Don't forget medical papers!


So that's the end of the first installment of The Moving Chronicles! I hope it was helpful and you can add some realism to your oc's moving experience!

The next post will (hopefully) cover some behind the scenes stuff (emotional reactions to moving).

God Bless!
Rachel

Cut out Clichés! {Advice I Don't Agree With I}

Hey all! Sorry I haven't written in a while, I just got back from a family vacation! No, not the Family Vacation--thank God!

So there's a lot of writing advice out there, yeah? On fiction, non, poetry, characters, plot, planning, dialogue, setting...there's writing advice for everything. And the thing is...a lot of those people who give the advice think they are 100% RIGHT.

Alas, not every person out there giving writing advice is right. Actually, there's a lot of writing advice out there that I 100% disagree with.

Especially when it comes to dialogue. Sure, there's some things that shouldn't be done (according to some people)...I get that...but what if I want to do it that way?

There's a lot about avoiding clichés when writing dialogue. But guess what?
People...REAL people use clichés all the time in their REAL dialogue. If we don't have those characters who sound like real people...what are we doing? Don't we want to make our novels/characters/dialogue as believable and realistic as possible? Don't we?

If we do...listen. Listen to those around you and how they speak. There's a lot of people who use cliché phrases...it's common. Don't overuse it in your writing, but don't cut it out either. I think it's a mistake. Using common phrases and dialogue that everyday real people use won't make you or your writing common.

But also don't be afraid to change it up. Mix the phrases up--the words, combine two or three--real people also do that in real dialogue.

So before you completely take advice about avoiding certain things in your writing...just think for a moment. Ask yourself if it's something people will find/hear everyday. If so, don't automatically get rid of it.

But some of the most important things to remember: Test advice and find what works for you. Find your style. Find what you enjoy. Take advice and mold it!

Hopefully this was a bit helpful!
God Bless!
Rachel

How to Write Blacking Out {Or How it Feels}

So, there I was, minding my own business, taking a shower, right? I was in immense physical pain and trying to hurry up the process. And all of a sudden things started getting weird.

The pain increased about times ten--I'm sure it was the most pain I've ever been in. And then...I realized...I was about to black out. Okay. So after a little while of standing there, feeling the symptoms, I was like: I don't know what to do but I should probably sit down.

Let's talk about how this felt. I mean, shoot I've gone through so much these past few days. Almost getting a black eye to almost fainting. Man.

What goes into the sensations of blacking out:

1. Bright colors in vision.
So one of the first things that happened was my vision started to go. At the corners, these brightish flashes like when you stand up too fast started to creep in. It was freaky. And then it was in the middle and I was like, Uh NO. I'm not blacking out in the shower.

2. Ringing in the ears. 
Okay, so my ears always constantly ring anyways, but that's a story for another day. When all this other stuff started happening, the ringing in my ears got immensely louder. Like, almost to the point that the noise of the shower I was in was drowned out. And I knew that wasn't good. I remembered a time when I was little and it was New Year's Eve and my ears were ringing and somebody told me that was a sign you were about to faint. So they had my lay down until it stopped. It didn't stop, but I didn't faint. I guess so started my life living with ringing ears. But I remembered that and I was like: SHOOT. This is BAD.

3. It got hard to breathe real fast.
All of a sudden I was struggling to breathe. Like, I didn't know what to do. I was trying to take deep breaths, but it was so difficult. I don't even know how to explain it. I could hardly speak or anything. I was praying out loud because I was so scared I was going to black out in the shower. I thought maybe it was a mind thing triggered by the pain I was in, so distracting myself would help, but I couldn't even sing. Just so we're clear, it was not a mind thing. Okay, but back to the breathing. It felt like I was breathing in hot air but not able to breathe it in fully.

4. I knew I needed to sit down or something.
I could tell something was wrong--obviously, because it felt so weird--but I knew I needed to sit down or get out of the shower. The problem was I hadn't finished showering and there was still tons of shampoo in my hair and I didn't want to deal with that if I ended up fainting outside of the shower. So I pushed back the shower curtain and sat down at the edge of the tub, not caring if water got all over the floor. Dude, I didn't want to die. Like, it was so scary.

5. Tingling and Trembling.
So my hands and feet were all tingly and stuff and it was real weird. I also couldn't stop trembling. But that lasted for a little while during and after.

6. Exhaustion.
Afterwards, I was exhausted. I got a late start that morning--about eleven thirty--because after I'd gotten the gumption to actually partly get ready, I slept for about an hour. First I'd tried to read my Bible but my eyes kept fluttering closed. I managed to read one chapter of Ezekiel before I was like: Okay, I'm going to sleep. I can't keep my eyes open any longer. (Don't worry I was actually sleeping, I didn't black out). I didn't wake up until Mom came in and checked on me.

7. Fear.
Okay, fear during and after. I was first of all afraid of blacking out and what could happen. I could bump my head, breathe in water, etc. Afterwards, after I sat for a good long time and finally felt it would be okay to finish my shower (it really wasn't but I had to do it. I couldn't sit on the side of the tub forever), I was afraid of standing up again. I didn't want to have the blacking out vision or the ringing ears or the difficulty breathing. So I finished my shower, my mom helped me and gave me pain meds, and I sat on my bed for at least half an hour. I was afraid that if I stood up that the sensations would come back. It had freaked me out! But as I sat there on my bed, I prayed and God's peace washed over me.

God Bless! I hope this is useful! And, no, I don't go around wishing to black out just so I know how to write it. Man, weird stuff just keeps happening to me!

Rachel

Sock It To Me {How Getting Punched in the Eye Feels}

Dearest readers, few and far between...but still there...today we are going to talk about how it feels to play four-way capture the flag and get punched in the face. Ahem, punched in the eye.

As a writer it's natural to think: "If only I knew how this (insert some random thing here) feels so I can write about it realistically." In fact, we think it a lot. It would be so helpful to have a multitude of life experiences under your belt to utilize in your writing. But just because it'd be nice to know how something feels...does not mean we actually want it to happen to us. Like, you don't go around wishing to get punched in the eye unless you're super hardcore and just like epic and stuff. I, for one, do NOT go around wishing to get punched in the eye. Obviously I'm not super hardcore or epic enough. I'm still working on that...*sigh*.

So...here I am playing defender to my team's flags, right? Waiting to grab flag belts of the attackers (anybody who's ever been in gym class should know what I'm talking about. This did not take place in gym class, however, as I have not been in public school for years. Yay, homeschooling!)

We're in this huge Dystopian/post-apocalyptic looking bunker gym thing called "The Field House". It has a ginormous American flag hanging by some of the doors, basketball hoops suspended from the dome-y ceiling, and various bleachers on the side of the court--which, by the way, is also huge.

I'm trying to grab an eighth grader's flag belt and his hand slips and PHOOMPH, his fist is in my right eye. Can I just say: OUCH.

It didn't feel so great. Believe me, he was not a puny eighth grader. Here's how my experience with pain and the eye and how it felt went:

1. Stunned. Okay, for a very short moment it was kind of like...WHAT? Lift a hand to the eye and be like uhhh did that just happen?

2. It stung. Bad. Think of like a million bees repeatedly stinging the whole area around your eye. And because they stung you so much, it goes numb. You feel it going numb, it kind of spreads in a uhh ripple effect? I can't think of the correct term, but think of when you throw a rock in water and the ripple goes out circularly. That's how it felt numbness wise.

3. It was hot. Where I'd been punched, it felt like I was on fire. Okay maybe not so bad there, but yow.

4. It was wet. Like, I don't know if that's because there were tears building up from the impact or what, but I felt like blood was going to drip out of my eye. If felt so weird, guys.

5. Swelling or something. I was blinking a lot to try and make sure my eye would be okay and there was this weird thing at the bottom of my vision and I don't know what it was but I think the cheekbone thing under my eye swelled a little bit.

6. Bruises. I knew for certain that later my eye was going to be black and blue because it was sore for at least an hour and sometimes a stinging sensation at the corner of my eye would kind of flare up. As I kept on playing, I was absolutely sure I was walking around with a horrid black and blue and purple eye.

Surprisingly I did not have a horrid black and blue and purple bruised eye. I hardly had any bruising, maybe a bit discoloration on my eyelid area. There was a kind of reddish mark at the corner of my eye where I think the most impact occurred, I still have a red mark that reminds me of a little scrape. (I mean, it only happened yesterday.)

7. Tender. After it happened, it was very tender. It still feels a bit strange as I'm typing this. ;)

GIVE IT TO ME {Creating a Fantastic Villain II}

The first installment of this series can be found at this link: Back Story Time (Creating a Fantastic Villain I}

It's been a while since I wrote that first post, but last night something just flew at me. (Youch...it kind of hit me in the face...okay, not really.) 

It was, can you guess? An idea for another villain post! So, if it isn't obvious, this one is about wanting and desire.

One of my favorite writing quotes: "Make your character want something, even if it's only a glass of water." - - Kurt Vonnegut -

If you take a moment to think about it, everything that we, as humans, do is borne from a wanting. A need. A desire. 

Why do we eat food? We want it, we need it to survive. Why do we buy that thirty dollar pair of shoes? We want them, we desire them because they look sure durn good with that one dress we own...

There's always a reason behind what we do. Even the things done on whims have a reason behind it. We want to prove something, we want to be accepted, we want to be fulfilled... There are so many reasons for our wanting. 

So how does this fit in with creating a villain? Ahem, a Fantastic villain? 

Take a look at your villain. What are his motives? Why does he do what he does? 

If he/she is just kind of there, floating around, just hoping to wreak havoc for the hero, you don't have a well-rounded villain. He could be the most interesting conversationalist, but without a driving force...without a want...he's going to be pretty one-dimensional and begin to bore readers. Nobody wants to be bored...or, (horror of horrors) bore others. That's just embarrassing. 

+ What does your villain want? Fame? Money? Peace? Love? To survive? 

MAKE YOUR VILLAIN WANT SOMETHING. ANYTHING. Even if it's crazy, like he wants to own a donut franchise. At least that's interesting. 

Everybody wants something. 

Make that want the driving force behind your villain's actions.

The villain in my series isn't really...a...villain. Uh...ahem. 

No, his motives are pure, as he sees it, anyway. He wants to spare his best friend the pain of life...or of being captured by the villain corporation. 

So, while he still does evil things, his desire to keep his friend out of VICE's grip is his driving force. He wants to protect his friend. 

I'm reminded of kids who see something they want. What do they say? "GIMME GIMME GIMME."

Now, while you shouldn't make your villain a whining three year old (I mean, that'd be an interesting twist to a story, but...I don't know, man...), your villain should still have that mindset. It's human. 

(I guess if your villain is, like, alien or something, though...that might be kind of different. I can't help you there... :P)

Anyway,

Everybody wants something.

Even your villain. 

What does your villain want?