WIPs!!

I'm finally doing it, guys! A list of my WIPs (works in progress) along with my very first aesthetic boards!!!! I am soooo excited. Here goes:

SHADOWS 



This novel is currently a first draft, at a little over 58,000 words. It's a thriller/suspense, set in a futuristic society. The main character is Lila. The buff blonde guy is Jacob, her boyfriend, whom she has known since childhood. The dark-haired man is Kent, the instructor for first year trainees. Her father is in prison. The files are the only way she knows to search for the unknown fate of her mother.

Lila Osweil lives in a city full of shadows, but she has never bothered to learn what they hide. All she can focus on is how to escape her abusive father and run away into the arms of her childhood sweetheart Jacob. When Jacob tells her of the government's offer to give  her freedom if she becomes an agent for them, Lila accepts. But frightening visions that begin after her father nearly has Jacob killed haunt her, and as she begins her training, everything and everyone she knows begins to twist around her until Lila can no longer determine what is real and what isn't.


THE BLOOD OATH 

 This novel is currently a first draft collaboration with my friend Kelton, at not quite 29,000 words. It's a fantasy, set in the world of Miradal.The girl is Esterlyn, and she is from Wata. The man is Hanilov, who is from Hanox. An ancient war has left animosity between the two peoples. The sand is the main characteristic of Wata, as the snowy mountains are of Hanox. And then the weapons of the land.

When Esterlyn runs away from both her home and her past in the country of Wata, she runs to a city full of a people who hate hers: the Hanoxi. In that city, Hanilov is a gang member and aspiring assassin whose initiation mission becomes to kill Esterlyn. After a moment of a desperation causes her to bind them together for eternity, both of them must struggle with the challenges of sharing their life with a person they neither know nor understand. When their journey comes to the point where both their lives and the fate of their countries hang in the balance, what will they choose?


SHATTERED 

 This novel is currently a first draft collaboration with four of my other friends, at about 51,000 words. It's set in modern times, but it has some.....sci-fi elements I guess? The girl is Shara, my character, and the guy is Zayne, one of my friend's characters. The only reason he's on there with her is because they fall in love ;).

Jackson is trying to help his friend Bex keep it together after her parents' divorce. Ash jokes and lives carelessly with his twin brother and younger sister. Shara lives in isolation with her abusive father after her mother's death. Zayne struggles with depression after losing his girlfriend. When all five of them look in the mirror to find they have no reflection, they discover a whole new world. One that has them running for their lives, making them work together and putting aside their differences to save the world. 


Please let me know what you think of my precious novels and my aesthetic boards! Which one is your favorite? Do you want snippets? Hope you enjoyed them!

~Clarissa

Rising Author Tag!

Hey everybody! I got tagged by my friend Eliza from Writing in the Rain to do the "Rising Author" tag. Thanks Eliza! Here were the questions I got:

1) What music do you listen to while writing? I usually just use music when I'm writing sad or intense scenes. I use soundtracks pretty much exclusively. I wrote the last scene of my finished novel to "Rue's Farewell" from The Hunger Games (it was on repeat many times).

2) Do you prefer writing on a computer or writing with a notebook and pen? Definitely notebook and pen. I wrote most of my NaNoWriMo novel on the computer though because there's NO way I would have finished it with handwriting it. But I just really like handwriting for some reason.

3) Do you plan to have your books traditionally published or self published? I go back and forth on this one, but most of the time the answer is traditionally published.

4) Pride and Prejudice or Lord of the Rings? That's really hard....they're so different. I can't pick.

5) Does your faith influence your writing in any specific way? Since I write books where the main character goes through a lot of emotional hardship, I would say that the way my faith influences my writing is that something always gets them through it. I don't necessarily call it God all the time because I want my books to be appealing to non-Christian audiences as a light to them, but you can kinda tell.

6) What books and/or movies would you compare your work in progress to? Oh gosh, that's hard. Shadows is probably like Divergent meets The Illusionist (not the plot of that one though, the concept).

7) What's your favorite part of the writing process? Writing the first draft, editing, letting people read your writing? Um, I send out my first (most unedited) draft to my readers, and hearing their feedback is awesome. Also their groans of not knowing what will happen next.

8) What one word would you use to describe your writing style? That's easy. Dramatic.

9) What do you reward yourself with after meeting a writing goal? Nothing lol I just pat myself on the back

10) When did you decide you wanted to be a writer? Well, I wrote my first story when I was 4, but I guess around twelve was when I decided I wanted it as a career.

11) For you is writing a hobby, ministry or future career? Both a career and a ministry.

Hope you guys enjoyed that!

~Clarissa

Managing Your Commitments

First of all, this is my second time posting this week, which is what I want!

Teenagers are some of the busiest people out there. We're often trying to balance school, work, our social life, our spiritual life, and other commitments. It can often become overwhelming and we feel like we're going to crash and break into a gazillion pieces. In addition, the quality of everything that we're juggling decreases because so many other things have our attention. It can be very tempting to add more to our plate by saying yes to things people ask of us, but we have to learn how to manage our time and commitments effectively.

The first step is to prioritize. There are some commitments in life you simply can't ignore or let go. Spiritually, it's your quiet time with God, going to church on Sunday, and probably also youth group. The last one isn't like a must, but in my opinion, it should come before most other things. I personally struggle with prioritizing my quiet time (although I love going to church), but it is probably the most important thing in any Christian's life. Secondly, it's your commitment to your family. However you may feel about your family, being a part of one means you have to contribute to it, ie. by doing chores and such. My mom, although considering me her right hand, is pretty good about letting me have time for other things.

Next comes school and work. Obviously, you need to get your schoolwork done when it's due and you have to work when your boss schedules you to. (side note: don't just take off work suddenly because you got invited to a party. I know it sucks not to be able to go, but it sucks even more for the people who have to pick up your slack, speaking from personal experience.That's another part of prioritizing I guess) And actually, if you learn to manage your time and work steadily without distraction -which is so hard for an online student like me - you'll find that you have more time for other things than you thought.

Then there's the case of doing things you promised you would do. This year, I made the unfortunate mistake of not turning down my role in drama when I had a chance and subsequently, spending a lot of time doing something I don't particularly enjoy (being in drama, not acting. I love acting.) However, I made a commitment to do it, and I have to honor that commitment, even though most of the time I don't want to. That's been a great thing to learn for me.

After all that, you have the commitments that you want to do, like hanging out with your friends or writing part of your novel or singing in choir or whatever. This is the hard part. You enjoy all of those things and you want to cram a bunch of that in because you like it. That's not healthy. You could go home early from the party on Saturday so you won't be falling asleep in church the next morning. You could politely tell the graduation coordinator that you can't do the banquet slideshow because you already have a lot to do being senior leadership secretary. And sometimes, you shouldn't have to feel bad turning someone down or saying you can't do something because you need time to recharge and do something that makes you happy.

Managing your commitments is a combination of prioritizing, honoring your word, being smart, and taking time to make sure you are healthy and happy. Focusing on a few things is better than being all over the place with many.

~Clarissa

"Falling"

As a freshman and sophomore, I went through a season in my life where I really struggled with a lot of things and I would write poetry to express my feelings. It was an outlet and it helped me process my emotions. I didn't realize how messed up I was then until I went back and read it after I had come out on the other side of that season. I wrote a lot, but after that time, I abandoned it.

My poetry is probably the rawest writing I have. It's just pure feeling strung into metaphors and imagery. I have some worship poetry too, and that arose out of times when I felt intense praise and love for God. As such, it's pretty personal but also powerful. Yesterday, I had a rough moment and the words just came to me. That's another aspect of my poetry: it just flows out, unlike a novel, where you have to worry about character arcs and plot twists.

Just as a disclaimer, my poetry does not rhyme and I don't worry about technical aspects most of the time because like I said above, it's raw expression of my feelings. But I'm super excited to share some of my writing with you and I hope you enjoy it!

"Falling"

My hand is slipping
From the ledge above
My fingers scrape the edge
The ground is far away

I let go
And I am falling
Falling, falling

Air rushes by
Scenes blur past
Sound has gone
I am left alone to spin

The ground opens up
It will receive me
I will never return

A flutter of wings
A touch of warmth
A glow of delivery

Angels carry me up
They set me down
My feet turn away
The ledge is behind

I am free

~Clarissa

Productivity

First off, I must apologize for not posting in awhile. I really wish I could post twice a week (#goals), but I don't see that happening in the near future. I know, I'm lazy. Anyway.

This post was inspired by the fact that I had a super productive weekend. I mean, it was really productive. I haven't felt that accomplished in a long time, and let me tell you it was an amazing. My body is tensing with excitement just thinking about it.

Now, I don't know about you, but I LOVE lists. I have so many random ones and half of the ones that I do aren't even necessary. There's just something great to me about them. I don't know why. So, although you probably don't care, I'm going to give you a list of what I completed this weekend.

1. All my chores (my least favorite thing, but the most necessary)
2. I made up a Google form and sent it to all 30 of my senior classmates. That required copying all their email addresses down. Kinda fun, cuz I like forms too. I know, I'm so weird.
3. I typed up my senior bio for the yearbook and got my mom to sign off for it. Then I sent it in.
*side note I got a checklist for my senior year and that made me so happy. I GET TO CHECK STUFF OFF. I love doing that!
4. Typed up some eblasts to send out for senior deadlines. As secretary of CHEFA's senior leadership team, I am responsible for sending out all the eblasts for senior stuff.
5. I completed my future plans form for the graduation program. I just turned it in today, so I can check that off!
This last thing surprised me. I agreed to go out shopping with my mom at 3pm. I am a homebody, and I don't like going out very much. Also, I was kinda tired. But I went out!
6. I bought my black tri-fold board for my senior board.
(All this stuff was on Saturday)
7. And finally, I bought my banquet dress yesterday. I still might look around some more, but I really like this one. Maybe you'll get some pictures of me after banquet in March. :)

Ok, I just realized that my list took up wayyy too much of this post, but oh well.

Now, the most important point about all this weekend is that I actually felt like doing everything. I had fun doing it. I wanted to do it. That is a pretty amazing thing because I struggle with productivity. I often don't have motivation for doing things. I go through phases. Sometimes it's intense, where I have to fight apathy and lethargy and other times it's pretty easy to overcome just not wanting to do something. If I'm honest, I am rather weak about stuff. If I don't feel like it, most of the time I don't do it. I do recognize it, however, and I'm working on correcting it.

Productivity is a product of your will. Your want and drive to do something results in something being accomplished. Life isn't filled with stuff that is easy to do or stuff that we are excited to do. But this weekend taught me something. The accomplishment of completing a lot of tasks is a rather awesome high. Even if you don't anticipate it and feel great while you're doing it like I did, you can know that you will have a sense of pride and accomplishment over your work, and then you will make it through the days where you don't want to be productive.

As a last note, sometimes we need a break. Everyone does. Don't push yourself to the breaking point. You will be more productive if you know when you need to take a breather.

~Clarissa

My YouTube Aspirations

Ever since I posted my first video on YouTube for a school assignment, I've entertained dreams of posting videos and having a full channel. At first, I dismissed it as becoming reality because I had no idea what to post about. Now, I have a few ideas, but the dream still refuses to look realistic. My ideas are these:

1. Song covers
2. Dance videos
3. Performance sign language videos

The problems with making this happen are many. The first is that I lack a good camera and knowledge of how to shoot different angles and all that good stuff. Good cameras are expensive, and I don't have money to buy one. If I were to shoot now, it would be using my tablet. The second problem is good lighting/location, for all the ideas, but especially the dance ones. Audio quality would be another, though that pretty much only pertains to if I did covers. I don't own a microphone, and those are also expensive. But that's just the technical stuff.

The second batch of problems don't have to do with equipment. There's the confidence factor. I love singing, and I love dancing, but number one am I confident enough to post myself doing those things on the Internet, and number two, am I confident enough to do it in front of the person that would have to film for me? The answer is an iffy yes to the first, and an iffy no to the second. Also, do I have time? I already struggle with blogging enough and I'm not even in school right now.

Regardless of any of those problems, I probably won't be posting any videos until I'm eighteen. But that's if I decide to post at all and if I'm even able to. I have aspirations and dreams, but will they become reality? I suppose we will just have to wait and see.

~Clarissa

Goals for 2017

It's rather common for people to make "New Year's Resolutions" at the start of a new year. A man at my church informed us today that only eight percent of people keep their resolutions. That is a really low percentage. Around Christmastime, I thought that I wasn't going to make any. I haven't ever really, but if I did, I was part of the ninety-two percent of people who didn't keep them.

But somewhere along the line of  the couple of days before New Year's, I decided that there were some things that I wanted to change about my life this year. They were little things and as such, I wasn't sure if they were even worth making a formal declaration about.

I'm not calling them new year's resolutions, because for some reason that just doesn't sound right. Therefore, I'm calling them new year's goals. I didn't really announce them to the world either, just a couple close friends. One of my friends said that they were quite achievable, but as small as they are, I believe that they will present a challenge. However, that doesn't scare me anymore and I am ready for the challenge.

So here are my goals for 2017!

1. Drink enough water. I've had a problem with staying hydrated this past year, and it's at times gotten so bad that I've gotten pretty intense headaches. It's just a matter of developing a habit and inconveniencing my impatient self to drink the whole bottle.

2. Eat less sugar. I think I may qualify for saying that I have a sugar addiction. I eat way too much of it and I believe that it has become a comfort for me instead of turning to God. Eating sugar is also supposed to contribute to acne, and I am going to clear up my skin this year.

3. Stress less. I have a major problem with stress and I believe that the steps I must take to conquer it will draw me closer to God and address some of the emotional issues that I have with my family, fear, and failure.

4. Write 100,000 words. This was just kinda something that I came up with out of the blue, but if I do NaNoWriMo this year, I should have any easy time with doing 50k during the remaining eleven months of the year. (If I don't, I shall be very mad). But the main purpose of this goal is to get me to write more.

I look forward to what 2017 will bring!
~Clarissa