neva, miss feva, blogging

In the spirit of The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, here are two memoirs I’ve recently read that focus on determination rather than victimization:

Breaking Night by Liz Murray. Liz’s story is about her drug-addict parents, her life as a homeless teenage runaway in NYC, and her determination to get an education leading to a New York Times scholarship, acceptance to Harvard University, and a Lifetime TV movie based on her life.

Hippie Boy: A Girl’s Story by Ingrid Ricks. (Note: only $2.99 on Kindle). Ingrid’s troubles mainly involve her father’s instability, her mother’s passivity, and her step-father’s exploitation of the male-dominated culture of Mormonism. Fortunately, Ingrid had more common sense than the adults in her life and manages to survive the consequences of her parents’ bad decisions.

Man, I love stories about people overcoming hardships and ‘beating the odds’. Don’t you?

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January 23, 2012
Posted by nevafeva at 9:49 pm
3 Responses
amazon, books, kindle, memoir, reading, recommends

Ten years ago today, I registered the domain nevafeva.com. I didn’t do much with it until the summer, when I first learned what a blog was. I knew I wanted one, so I signed up with Salon Blogs, which eventually died and was reborn as Open Salon. My first blogging software was Radio Userland, which was cumbersome to use. Then I switched to Blogger. I’m pleased with the arrangement I’ve had since April of 2008, which is a WordPress-powered blog that cross-posts to LiveJournal.

Going through old blog posts is like reading a diary. My writing has changed so much in the last ten years, all for the better. Once Facebook and Twitter entered the scene, all my future small posts became status updates or tweets instead. I don’t blog as much because of it, but when I do, it’s because a) I have more than 140 characters to type and b) posting here doesn’t clutter anyone’s timeline on the social networks.

I predict I will be going back to my roots in 2012 and blog more, for reasons I can’t talk about too much yet. I’m hoping to finish a writing project I’ve been working on by the end of this month. When it’s ready to make it’s debut to the world, I will be promoting it here. To be continued…

P.S. Here’s the posts from the first day I blogged, on July 28th, 2002: commentary by miss feva. Oh, on a random note: I did wind up buying an HP laser printer that week and it’s still running strong!

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January 9, 2012
Posted by nevafeva at 4:46 am
6 Responses
blogging, facebook, social media/networking, twitter, writing

I got a Kindle Touch for Christmas last week. I know, I know. I’m sentimental about books made of paper as much as anyone else. However, I’m really enjoying my new e-reader. I still can’t justify buying an e-book for $9.99 when I could find a used copy in print for a fraction of that. However, there are tons of books, short stories, essays, etc, for a lot less, not to mention the ability to borrow e-books from public libraries. There are a lot more perks from a writer’s perspective, but I’ll save that for another post.

I’ve been spending money primarily on Kindle Singles. Here are a few I’ve enjoyed so far:

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January 2, 2012
Posted by nevafeva at 8:13 pm
2 Responses
amazon, kindle, recommends, single

With the new year quickly approaching us, I thought I’d take a look back at the last twelve months. For the first time in a long time, I can honestly say I will end a year in a better place than when I started it. This is what making slow progress feels like and it feels good.

I went back and re-read some end-of-the-year blog posts I wrote over the years. In 2003, I was introduced to The MayFly Project, which invites you to sum up your past year in twenty-four words. Here’s how I summarized that year:

Got sick. Learned how to get better.
Lost job. Still looking.
Lots of sleep and good books ease my pain.

In hindsight, when I wrote that I only thought I had learned how to get better. I had no idea then and I still don’t know how to “get better”. However, I have learned how to take care of myself better since then and that’s half the battle…or something like that. Job hunting hasn’t been an issue for me in years; I’ve been on SSDI since December of 2005. I still have the same hopes and dreams as I did eight years ago, but the game plan has changed, and changed again, and keeps on evolving. This, I think, is a good thing. Bring on the progress! Bring it!

As for 2011? Here’s my summary in twenty-four words:

Right hip replaced, no more limp, a lot less pain.
Too much Internet, not enough writing.
Deleting my online dating profiles:a good decision.

I will list my goals for 2012 at another time in another post…more later…

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Today marks the official end of this year’s NaNoWriMo. Although it ended for me a few weeks ago at approximately ten thousand words, I still feel like I’ve accomplished something as a writer. I didn’t end up with anything worth saving, but I did learn something about my writing process.

This year, I thought I did enough preparation going in. I wrote pages and pages of notes, I tried to organize my stories on index cards. Once I started writing, I discovered my ideas were still not fully realized and I had no idea what I wanted from my characters. I’ve never been an outliner, but I now know I need to become one.

I’m guessing this is one of the reasons why I have a ton of unfinished writing projects. My new game plan for my next writing project is to ouline the shit out it first. It certainly can’t hurt.

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