First, it started with the happiest new year! Then a blessed birthday followed by our sweet monthsary!

It’s really nice to celebrate things! Especially if there are lots of food…

Triple chocolate cake and peanut butter ice cream were simply the best!

love them!

What’s more to look forward to?

Well, it would be the Dark Ascension prerelease later and I am so excited about it! Gotta get cool new cards! The best part of it is that we’ll be playing for free since I’ve won PR passes from the previous weekend MTG tournament.

So, that’s it for now! I have to prep up and leave shortly.

My blogs are still alive and so do I!

SWORD just transferred to a new host, that’s big thanks to Sam! Painless! Haha. At least for me.

Since I have access to this blog now, I am revamping the sidebar content. The recent changes in the blogosphere also call for bloggers action. Adgitize just closed down and Shoutmix free plan is no longer available. With this, I have to remove Adgitize and Shoutmix widgets from my blogs. I am also looking for a chat box alternative.

I have so much to blog here but I have to save some for my other blogs. LOL. Anyway, please stay tuned for more helpful posts. Aside from being online most of the time, I am also busy reading books and watching anime. I wish I can do book and anime reviews soon.

P.S.

My birthday is coming up…

After having a good sleep and prepping up for a while, my boyfriend and I went to SM Centerpoint to meet up with Kuya ST for the MTG cards. It was supposed to be quick and smooth but we ended up with a long and entertaining conversation. Haha. Why not? We were discussing some Magic: The Gathering stuff – strategies, latest craze and what not. Kuya ST and Babu were having a serious talk. Kidding!

While listening to the two guys who were busy exchanging ideas, I saw MJ passed by so I called him out. Lol. He was my officemate and its been a while since I last saw him. After exchanging some belated greetings, he headed to where he was supposed to be going.

When we finally wrapped up things with Kuya ST, we headed to SM Department store to buy gifts for the kids – Lucian and Selphie. Thanks goodness! We didn’t spend much time in shopping. We’ve found the ideal gifts for them! McQueen for Lucian and Hello Kitty for Selphie. Easy!

We were late for the kiddie program at Lucian’s Lightning Mcqueen themed party. It’s just for the kids, anyway. Lol. We still made it for early dinner.

Once there were only few visitors left, we had the time to bond with Rei & KC’s family. Lucian just turned four and he’s still cute and polite. Such a nice kid.

We had another round of spaghetti plus coffee before we left.

Happy day!

Have a blessed celebration!

I got so bored while I was in Batangas because our computer wasn’t working and I didn’t have my laptop with me. I have to content myself with the television and some old magazines. And when I was supposed to watch “No Other Woman” with my sisters, I just decided to browse old stuff until I stumbled upon a very old issue of Writer’s Digest – dated March 2004.

Wow! What could I learn from an outdated magazine? I felt that I need some refresher course about writing so I braved flipping through the pages. For a start, the Insider’s Stories caught my attention. Lines like “Bring Your Characters to Life” and “The 5 Worst Story Leads” are effective teasers that worked for me.

When I was in college, I dream of publishing my own book and I found the magazine to be really interesting. It is full of tips about getting self-published along with inspiring stories. I wish I could find my three notebooks of unpublished Tagalog romance novels. I’ve written them while I was in high school. Hopeless romantic, as you may say. I wish to find them right now and start revising. I mean, when I wrote those novels I still lacked experience, purely imagination and so little drama. My readers who were my sisters and classmates used to say that I’m good at writing because I made them “so kilig” and in-love. But things are different now. And I think, I have to edit a lot of corny/super cheesy lines. But how do I start if I don’t have the old copies with me? Writing is an art, and I can’t write the same story again… ever. Each masterpiece is so unique that you can’t make an exact replica of your previous creations… just like in drawing and painting. Maybe, I have to go back to square one… create and define new characters, outline events, review storyline and more! I have all the experiences and thoughts that I might need, but the luxury of time… not yet.

Write and write and when you are done, revise, edit and rewrite.

Let me share you what I’ve found out and relearned from what I’ve read:

1. Debut authors have highly successful habits such as:

a. Discipline. Writing is terrifying because it’s solitary while you do it and so public when you think you finally made it. With discipline, you will continue to write and accept feedback. It is about being less defensive and neurotic about what you are trying to accomplish.
b. Patience. Never refuse work and grab every opportunity that comes your way.
c. Consistency. Keep writing. Write and write and when you are done, revise, edit and rewrite.

2. Every character you create on your story will be yourself. Bring characters to life by taking the right approach – create characters who are composites of more than one person. Real life people make colorful fictional characters and you can customize them effectively by taking traits from two or more people.

3. The best story beginnings grab reader from the first sentence. You don’t need gimmicks or tricks to hook readers. The best openings (ledes) spring naturally from your material and you should avoid these too familiar openings:
- Dictionary Dodge (“The dictionary defines…”)
- Stating the obvious (“Let’s face it, pollution…”)
- The “insider” cliché (“Play it as it lays, golfers say…”)
- John Lennon lede (“Imagine…”)
- First-person superfluous (“I want to tell you a story…”)