I'm Kind Of Back

 

Hi there!

Wow. I can't believe that I'll be visiting this blog and even contemplating about trying my hands on writing again. Hah. Believe me, I have more than 10 writings-in-progress and so far, none of them is going to be completed any time soon. 

Life has caught up with me and given my personality, I just felt the need to explore new interests like going into ornamental planting, experimenting with a new fitness and diet style, and exotic pets. I did not stop reading and playing online games though. But during those times, I just feel like I have to step away from all the writing and limit myself to journal, poem, and musings writings for the day. But beyond this, I often spend my day on work, procrastination, reading and other interests.

It is with wonder that I am writing this post right now because holy cow, I can't believe that I am determined to start writing again even though the amount of my WIPS is unnerving. Hahaha. I may finish some of them and some will be left to the hands of the book gods.  Needless to say that I will be writing a totally new book, the details I have yet to announce in the near future. I just can't jinx it right now. LOL. I already have the crudest outline on mind and will hopefully, put them into writing on my Notion. 

I am also planning to join the Nanowrimo this year and I sincerely hope that the aforementioned novel will be my entry. I'm not sure if I have mentioned somewhere in this blog that I joined Nanowrimo 2015 and that was a total fiasco. Yeah, I know. I will put up another post on what happened, what went wrong, what could have I done about it sometime in the future. But I am really crossing my fingers with this one. 

For now, what I can tell about my novel is that it's definitely intimate in the sense that it's gonna heavily borrow from a real life story. I hope that I can write it with justice. 

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Mustering My Courage

Haha. I didn't know what came over me but I finally got the courage to post my first ever Wattpad story.  I wrote Fire and Water Sonata when I was still in my early twenties and dystopia (thanks to the Hunger Games!) was still all the rage.

Fire and Water Sonata is about a rule-loving girl who grew up in a community called "Sanctuary" wherein the people's lives are dictated by the stars, specifically, their zodiac signs.  Their career options, their spouses, their children choices are basically driven by their astrological signs. I know it sounds crazy but I grew up with my mother telling me that I probably love the sea and has an obsession with mermaids and any sea creatures because I was born a Pisces.  You can bet that I believed such lunacy when I was still in my teens but as I grow older, I realized that I am the sailor of my life and zodiac signs are just there to guide us.   But still, I cannot deny that delving into the world of astrology is such a fun activity and whenever I got hold of a newspaper, I cannot stop myself from visiting the horoscope section first.

Reading about my daily and yearly horoscope is such a deeply ingrained habit that it just makes logical sense to write a story about it. I'm not sure, however, if Fire and Water Sonata is as much as fun as my experience with  learning and understanding the twelve zodiac signs.  So I'm going to leave it to you to do the judging.

If you are interested in reading Fire and Water Sonata, just click on the image above and it should direct you to the story.

Recommended Reading: Pushing The Limits By Katie McGarry

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Lyrics Writing: Super Crazy!

So I'm not really a person who's into music or poetry but with Dark Wave, the first book of the Darkbeat Quintet series, I have to pretend that I'm one or both.  I mean, it kinda defeats the purpose of writing about rock gods and there's not even a single song featured in the story.  Other uninformed people might say that I should have just borrowed some excerpts from famous songs but being sued for stealing of intellectual property is a risk that any writer (aspiring or not) should not take. Besides, I want my characters to have their own identity rather than have them labeled by readers as the book character version of "Beatles" or "Rolling Stone" or "Linkin' Park" or whatever band that they can associate with the lyrics of the song that I've chosen to include in the story.  If I'm going to feature the lyric excerpts of "In The End" in Dark Wave, then what are the chances of my readers immediately saying that the book is a retelling of  Linkin' Park's story or something like that?

Yes, I admit that the characters of Dark Wave or the whole Darkbeat series are inspired from different rockstars but I'm trying very hard to make them as their own person, if that even makes sense. If I'm going to ask you a question right now about what makes you fall in love with a musician, every one of you will have different answers.  But surely, some of you will respond that as long as the lyrics of the song resonate with you, then the singer immediately gets a permanent spot on your "Favorite Singers List." This goes to show that aside from a rockstar's looks, voice, the song's melody, and whatever, the lyrics of his/her songs are equally as important to set him/her apart from other rockstars.  And that's the reason why I'm busting my ass off creating lyrics for Dark Wave so my readers would feel that my rockstar characters really exist.

But writing the lyrics is not the end of my problem.  I'm also apprehensive that the lyrics that I've managed to write are not only incomprehensible but are also cheesy that my readers can't help but gag as they're reading the story. LOL. I'm apologizing in advance if that'll ever happen in the future. I've already tried my best to tone down my tendency to write melodramatic words so that counts for something, right?

So that's my update for today.  What about you? 

Recommended Reading: Ten Tiny Breaths by K.A Tucker

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Finally!

I’ve already lost count of the number of times that I’ve contemplated about starting a “my writing chronicles” blog but finally, here it is.  It really took me a while to think of an appropriate name for it since "http://www.vitajulii.blogspot.com" doesn’t really work for me. And what I really wanted from the start was something that would invoke feelings of curiosity, wonderment, and whimsy in my readers.  Afterall, I am aspiring to write novels that can give the said vibes and more so why not start with my blog’s name? Not really sure though if Stardust Lores accomplished that.  Nonetheless, I’m very happy with the name, I just wish that I was more creative when it came to the blog’s design and layout.  Oh well, my excuse for that would be that Blogger's customizing features are fairly limited (yes, I am blaming Blogger for my lack of web designing skills!) so please bear with the overly simplistic design.  I was really aiming for a whimsical and minimalistic look, I didn’t expect that the blog would turn up like a giant wall of grayness.  But anyway, I’m planning to self-host in the future once I’m 100 percent serious about this writing endeavor.  Of course, I’m serious about writing but it’s not in my top 5 list of priorities right now, if you know what I mean.

I just hope that this new journey in my life would prove to be meaningful and long lasting. Meaningful and long lasting not in the sense of becoming the next JK Rowling or something like that but it’s more of learning from the experience and having the opportunity to put my story out there. And of course, not losing the drive to continue growing as an individual through creative writing.

If you’re curious as to what kind of stories that I will be writing about, then, it’s either contemporary romance or romance loaded with fantasy (paranormal, mythology, gothic, etc.) elements.  Don’t ask me why because I couldn’t answer that as of this time.  All I know is that I’m gravitating towards writing those types of stories.  But I guess that it couldn’t be helped since romance or in a broader perspective, love, is a big part of our lives… like everything has no meaning without it.  I just wish that my way of writing can invoke that wonderful feeling in my readers.  That my stories can resonate with my readers’ experiences in love.  I think that part is the hardest challenge for an aspiring romance novelist. I’m really apprehensive that I may not be able to deliver. Heh.

So let’s see and wait. My first story would be entitled “Dark Wave” and it’s the first of five in the Darkbeat quintet series. It’s a New Adult gothic story inspired from the Little Mermaid.

Xoxo,

Vita Julii

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