I thought morning pages might be easy to get into, but the process has not been easy. I used to be so eager to write that getting up early in the morning to do it was no big deal.  Now it is a huge effing deal. I am not sure if my reluctance to get up in the morning is because I am getting old, or it's because I don't have the enthusiasm for writing that I used to have. Most likely it is a combination of both things and then some others.

But I want to get back into it, the problem is I cannot guage that want. Writing used to be like an addiction, like if I didn't write, I thought I would explode with all these voices in my head. Have the voices gone silent? Or have I jus stopped listening for them? Where have all my story characters gone? 

I can hear them, but they seemed so far away. They are saying there is too much clutter in my head and the clutter blocks their voices, their sounds. 

I have a theory about story characters which goes something like this.  If you are writer, and I believe anyone can write, so that's everyone, the story characters find you  They inhabit your mind, hoping you can hear them, because all they want to do is to get their story out. And when you write their story down, they are ecstatic because they want their stories to be told. I don't think much care about the story being published, they just want the story out. But if you can't hear them, they will move on the next person and the next person until they get story out.

And even when their story gets out, some of them will go to another writer and have that writer get their story out, because the new writer will tell their story differently.

I wonder if my story charcters have moved on. I hope not. They say they are still around, but I need to get that that clutter out of my head. They say they are attached to me and they want me to tell their story. I'm glad that they are sticking around.   

Morning pages today have become very late evening pages. I am trying to get to work half an hour earlier now, so I get home at a decent time. But I am not used to it so my whole morning routine is still off a bit. I think if I keep at in in 30 days, I wiill get used to it, at least that is the thought.

I've been listening to reviews on the youtube channel "What the Flick" of Netflix's new series called "Sense8", and the reviewers make me laugh so much. They are having such a hard time with the concept that people could be linked telempathically, and are having such a hard time following the story. I did not have this problem. I am not sure if I agree with how the Wachowskis are portraying what it is like to be telempathic, but I applaud them for trying to do it on tv.  

The conspiracy side of me says that the ideas in Sennse8 are exposing people to what it is like to be hive-mind, where you are an individual but still part of the collective. They are outlining the advantages for human beings to come together and link telepathically.

I am reminded of the sci-fi stories of Olivia Butler, who is one of my favorite science fiction writers.  In her books, one person was able to link all the minds in the story telepathically but I believe they were all linked by DNA, by genetics.

In Sense8, the 8 people are all linked by the fact that they all born on same day.  The show was not explicit on whether it was the same time but definitely the same day.

Watching the reviewers of What the Flick trying to dissect Sense8 made me wonder if I am living in the same world as the reviewers since these ideas of linking minds are normal and easy to understand.

On another topic but still somehwat related, I was listening to an interview on the radio and I got the feeling that the woman I was listening to was coming from a deeply negative space. The interview was like an infomercial for a conference where the person being interviewed was going to the featured keynote speaker. I was half a mind to go to this conference, but hearing this woman being interviewed totally turned me off. I feel like this conference is for beginnners on this topic, and I am more advanced. They were talking about all of these break-out sessions that would be held, but none of those senssions appealed to me on any level because they were all for beginners. 

Again, I felt like I am living in such a different space than most people. Or maybe this means progress for me, because I know I am a fairly negative person myself. But that lady who is the featured speaker for this conference was in an even more negative space. It's like there is no room in her reality for people to have a positive experience on this topic, and if people have had a positive experience they need therapy. Which is such a laugh, since the keynote speaker is a therapist herself.

There are other some speakers at this conference that I would love to hear, but I think it is going to look strange if I don't hear the main speaker. I mean what am I going to do with myself during her session? Stay in my room? The conference is a few months away, so I have time to decide if I want to go. I just think it is so awkward if I go to the conference and ditch the mian speaker.  I guess I could always say I wasn't feeilng well, and needed to rest or lie down. Being sick is such a great classic excuse for getting ouf of events that you do want to attend. Normally it would just freak me out to pay for a conference and miss sessions because I paid to attend the whole conference. But now I am like, maybe I need to do it just so I can hear the other speakers. The conference schedule has not been finalized so I am hoping that when the schedule comes out, I will get a better idea of how many sessions I will have to miss.  

Julia Cameron recommended morning pages to be written in the morning before the mind wakes up, to get whatever thoughts are in your head on paper which presumably leaves the mind empty for the creative ideas to come through. Her suggestion was to write the "morning pages" by hand and to choose a limit of the number of pages.  I really must go back and read the book to find out exactly what she said.

As I am typing this, I feel like it is cheating a bit since Julie said to write by hand to connect the mind to the hand. And if I am blogging my morning pages, what will be my limit.  There are no page limits like in writing. Is it going to word count? Is this even going to be a good idea.

The only thing I am liking about doing this right now, is that I am typing on my iPad in bed with my apple keyboard. And I am thinking to myself, I am finally getting use out of that darn apple keyboard that I bought because I haven't been using it for writing like I thought I would.

Truth be told, it's sort of strange to have the keyboard separate from the screen.  Don't get me wrong, because I love  my iPad. I love lying in bed with my iPad and surfing the net before I go to sleep. I love that it is light enough to be carried in my giant handbag that I use for travel. I have even gotten used to watching movies on this smaller screen. But carrying keyboard that I bought for this iPad sometime is not practical.

I keep on thinking it is the fact that the apple keyboard is much longer than the iPad itself, and that it's too long to fit in my giant travel purse. When I went on vacation last May, the keyboard traveled in my backpack. I had the backpack with me the whole time, but it seemed a pain to take it out and use it on the plane. 

The apple keyboard itself works like a dream. Connection to the iPad was easy, and the clunky cover that guy at the apple store recommended actually works quite well. So the two items together fit very well together, and it something I am going to have to get used to unless I want to buy another keyboard  The apple keyboard feels like a real keyboard, and I seem to be able to type my normal speed.

I mean it's not that bad. I listened to a seminar online yesterday, and I was taking notes with the iPad and keyboard and that seemed to work well. I was even thinking of sending the notes to a friend of mine, which will be easy now because the notes are already typed. I just have to go in and delete my comments about the lecture.  When I've done this in the past, I had to type up my handwritten notes which I sometimes couldn't read because i was writing too fast.

So perhaps this is another reason to do morning pages on my iPad; so I can get used to typing on apple keyboard.

Wow, I forgot how mundane morning pages writing is. Julia Cameron said you need to keep writing in morning page, and make sure your hand never stops moving. And never put the pen down. But when you follow her instructions like I am trying to do now, it seems like the most boring crap is filling my brain.

That is sort of sad isn't it? That your all important brain's space is filled with the boring comments and issues of your daily life. But at least now, some of my brain space has been emptied of this morning's inane thoughts and concerns.  

I may write more later, but this feels like a good stopping point.

Blogging used to be such a passion of mine and now it's been forgotten like an old lover. And somehow the thought saddens me greatly.

But for a reason I have yet to discover, I have not been writing anything down anywhere. Not even in my journals. I do keep notes of when odd things happen to me, but I would not call that writing, not really.

But I do really want to get back into writing, so I am thinking of blogging again. Maybe make it like morning pages recommended by Julia Cameron.

Maybe the months of NOT-writing have to come out so the creative stuff can come out.  This technique has worked for me before, so I am going to give it a try again.

So expect more posts ....

Wow, almost a year with no blogging. So as a treat since I am back to writing. Here is something I posted as a note on Facebook on Friday July 25.

My horoscope for the week said that you need to plant the seeds of things that you want to have happen in your future. One day I want to publish a novel and be a writer who makes enough money where I can quit my full time corporate job and be an honest to goodness, decently paid full-time writer. With the new healthcare laws, you don't need a job to get health insurance and this was something I have always worried about if I didn't work for a company.

Anyway, the idea for this novel started back in 2003 and I kept writing about the characters and who they were and what was going to happen, but I didn't  get the inspiration to start writing the story until 2006. I wrote that early first draft in first person, and then changed to third person a year or two later. It was a slog to write, but I finished the whole first draft of the novel in 2012. I kept reading it because I knew I know I needed to edit it and get the novel in better shape, but I don't know, I didn't like reading the story in third person. There something missing from the story, and I think it was the sense of immediacy that writing in person gives me. There is something detached about writing in third person. It's great to look be able to write from another character's point of view, but I had always envisioned this novel as being told from one person's point of view so the reader sees everything from this person's perspective. I see this novel as a historical novel, and history like politics is always local, always personal. So I made the decision to go back to the beginning and start the novel again but this time back to first person. 

So here's my seed planting for my future life of being a decently paid full time writer. I tentatively titled this novel - The Elf Chronicles - Book 1 - The Price of the Future. I see it taking place on earth 150,000 years ago in the mythical land called Lemuria or Mu, which many have said was an island continent located in the Pacific ocean where Hawaii is and which stretched far down the Pacific ocean to Easter Island and far across the Pacific to Japan. A medical intuitive told me I had an incarnation in Lemuria as an elf, which Bashar later confirmed for me when I asked him at one of his sessions. So I was an elf in Mu, and I was born in Hawaii where Lemuria was, and in the heart chakra energy of the planet (since 2012) which is Mt Haleakala. When I heard this story, I thought wouldn't it be fun to write a history of me in that incarnation and what happened. So this is the fictional story of my life in that time in Lemuria / Mu. And I always see the story as starting this way. I've played with starting it at other points in the story, but this point feels the best.

Chapter 1 - still very much a draft ...

Our world is so different now. Some things remain the samelike our festivals, our traditions, our gatherings, and our schools. But we area changed community, changed by war and scarred by battles. I am changed. Andas I draw near to the time when I shall one day soon be reunited with myfamily, I find myself drawn back into my memories. Drawn back into the daysbefore it all started. But try as I might those days are hazy even in mymemories. The only memories that are clear are the ones when I think it mayhave all started, and our historians I know still endlessly debate this point.When did it all start? Our histories are being written, written by those who livedthem, so we and our future generations to come remember and will never repeatthe mistakes of the past, our past. And I was there when they say it allstarted.

It was the winter of my 14^th year on the nightbefore Samara, one of the most important festivals of the year. When elvesthroughout Lemuria gathered together to celebrate the shortest day of the year,and the start of the longer days. When all elves would gather at their templesof worship and be led in prayer and remembrance of our beginnings, when thesource of our life created the first elves and allowed them to live in his newland. We had traditions and rules that governed our lives and gave us structureand an order that had allowed us to survive at a time when many of the sourceof our life's creations had died out. And those rules had rarely if ever beenbroken until that fateful night.

I was in my room, up late as usual practicing myclear-seeing. Elves have the gift of clear-seeing, which allows one to see thefuture, but unless inherited or practiced never amounts to more than momentaryvisions before life-threatening events. My gift was inherited. My uncle Shankulwas our kingdom's spirit leader, like many in our family line. One day my unclesaid to me, “Daliana, my child you have a gift, a rare gift. I can see it whenI look into your eyes. I will give you special exercises to develop and honeyour visions, ancient secrets only taught to those who had dedicated their livesto serving in the temple. But you must promise to practice them every nightbefore you go to bed.”  And so I practicedthem every night before I went to bed, but that night my visions were not clear,They were blurry, like I was seeing too many possibilities of the same event.And no matter how many times I tried, the results were the same. In all my sixyears of practices, this had never happened. I should have known then thatsomething was wrong, terribly wrong. But I was but a young elf girl of 14years, who was doing exercises meant for those who had trained for decades tobe able to see the future, so I just stopped and decided to give up for thenight.

But then I heard a commotion at the gates. Since my roomfaced the courtyard of the castle, I decided to peep out the window to see whatwas happening. Any kind of activity was strictly forbidden before Samara, whenthe general accepted practice was to stay at home with your family and pray.

There was an elf dressed in man’s black riding clothestalking to the guards. His horse was lathered with sweat looking as if therider and horse had come a long way. The elf wore a hood and from where I wasstanding I couldn't get a good look at his features, but I could tell from theway he was standing and talking to the guard that he was a man of importance.Part of me was appalled at such a flagrant disregard for our rules andtraditions. I was sure that if my uncle were here he would order the man to beseverely punished for his transgression. A couple more minutes passed when Isaw the captain of the guard approach the gate. When he saw who the strangerwas, the captain immediately bowed and shouted for the gates to be be opened.The stranger walked slowly into the courtyard and took off his hood, and I feltmyself gasp as I saw my uncle Shankul's face under the hood.

No wonder the guards were confused and didn't respond rightaway. Shankul was not wearing his usual priestly robes, which he even wore toride his horse. As if he had read my thoughts, I saw Shankul look up towards mywindow. I crouched even lower fearing that I would be seen. I looked around andsaw that there was only a single candle burning in my room, which I hoped wouldlook like the glow of a fire in my room. I could hear the captain instructingthe guards to take care of my uncle’s horse, but Shankul said he was notplanning to be there for very long. I looked out of the window again and saw myuncle being escorted into the castle.

I grabbed a cloak, put on some shoes, and ran to the stairs.There were usually guards in the hallway, but thankfully they had all gonestairs. Fearful that they would be coming back to their posts, I ran and openeda hidden to one of the secret passageways that my grandmother had shown me whenI was a child of six.  She told me never totell anyone that I knew about these secret doors.  The hidden passageways had been built intothe castle, by one of our ancestors and that their location was handed down toonly certain members of family. I was sure that one day would tell me aboutthese secrets, but that day had not yet come.

The passageways led to every room in the castle, which I hadhappily spent my childhood exploring, so I knew exactly where to go even in thedark. I knew the guards would probably take my uncle to my father’s waitingroom, so I made my way there. Sure enough as I got closer to the room, I couldhear my uncle’s voice talking to the captain and telling him what to say to hismen about his appearance.

“Please reassure your men that I am here under the mostextreme circumstances and that I seek the counsel of my brother, their king. Butthat there is no need to worry. You must do your best to impress on them thatthere is no need to worry.” I could hear the captain murmuring somethingalthough I couldn’t quite catch what he saying,

“But worry they will in any case.” My father said fromfarther away, which meant he must have just entered the room. “Please do as thespirit leader has asked, and leave us now”. The captain asked if my fatherrequired any type of food or drink, but my father said no and asked that aguard be posted outside the waiting room door. I could hear the captain shoutfor a guard, and then the sound of the door closing which I took as anopportunity to move and to sit down so I could be comfortable for however longthey were going to be there.

“Your highness, forgive my intrusion on this most blessednight.” Shankul said in an even tone. “I would not have come unless there wasan urgent need for your counsel.”

“Brother, you surprise me with your formality. Are we notfamily?” My father asked with a laugh.

“In this instance your highness, I feel that I come here asyour kingdom’s spirit leader and not your brother. Perhaps it would be betterif we sit down before I tell you of my news.”

“As you wish.” My father said and I could hear them walkingover to where the chairs were in the room. My uncle then told my father, thathe had a nightmare a couple of night ago which he did not think much of untilhe received messages from other spirit leaders in other kingdoms that they toohad had almost the same nightmare. He had met with the other leaders of theSpirit Council, and found out that all spirit leaders in every elf kingdom haddreamt the same nightmare. Everyone agreed that this was was an omen that mustbe discussed as one body, so they had decided to hold the yearly gathering ofall leaders be held three weeks from now. He had received confirmation from theElders at the Misty Isles late this evening that they had agreed with theSpirit Council’s decision. And what was more, the Spirit Council had alsodecided that all spirit leaders talk about what had transpired in the last fewdays, and meet with their kings tonight.

“So tradition is being broken throughout elfin kingdoms.” Myfather said simply. “This will cause chaos.”

“It doesn’t have to, if every spirit leader can explain whathappened and calm everyone.” Shankul said softly.

“The streets are rampant with rumors of the disappearancesthat are happening in the outer lands. Does this nightmare have anything towith the elves that have gone missing?” I could hear worry in my father’svoice. While no one had gone missing in our kingdom, the stories coming fromthe outer lands had made it even to our small kingdom by the sea.

“I don’t know, but everything inside me is screaming yeseven though my dream was inconclusive But we must, I must be careful to notjump to conclusions until I meet with the council.” There was a long silence inthe room, and I wished I could see both their faces.

“I assume you have a plan, you always had a plan even whenwere kids.” My father said at last.

“Yes, there must be no surprise from the family. We mustpresent a united front. This is what I advised the Spirit Council and theyagreed with my decision.”

“So what do I tell my family?” My father said without anyemotion in his voice.

“The Queen will have been told I am here, and I could havesworn I saw Daliana watching me from her window, so they know I am here andwill not be shocked.” I felt my cheeks burning because I was sure I had notbeen seen. “Tell them what I have told you. They will understand. And now Imust go. There is much to prepare.”

“And the guests in this morning’s party? Do I tell them aswell? I am sure they will talk of nothing else but your appearance here thismorning.”

“You may tell them what I told your captain, and that allwill be revealed at tonight’s celebration.”

“Tell me honestly brother, are we in danger?” my father saidin a soft voice and which I detected a little fear.

“We have not survived this long, outlasted so many others,without our elfen unity. It is the only thing that has kept us, our kingdom,and the whole country together and alive and thriving. We must preserve it atall costs, and I mean at all costs. If we can do that, then we can survive anydanger.”

I heard the door open and my uncle call for his horse. I wassure my father would come up to see me, so as soon as I heard him leave theroom I stood up and ran to my room, opened the secret door and dove into the mybed and pretended to be asleep. A few minutes later the door to my room opened,and my father walked into the room. I had forgotten to blow the candle out, andwhen the room went dark I knew my father had blown out the candle. There wassilence in the room and I was almost ready to burst out of bed, when I heardthe door close. Breathing a sigh of relief, I felt my body relax. It mustnearly be morning, but I fell asleep and didn’t wake up until I felt and heardmy servant Letinas trying to wake me up.