So Quiet...

Sorry I haven't written lately... I've decided to put my writing projects on the back burner while I work on ME for awhile... I will try to keep up with the blog here, though!

Idea Overkill?

I don't like it when I have zero ideas drummed up to even *think* about writing... but even worse, I think, is having TOO many ideas.

Currently, I have the quirky children's book idea that I will co-write with my daughter (I guess *I* will be the one writing, & she'll help me with the storyline aspects of it).  I have requests to write accounts of my time with my kids, though I will likely turn it into a fictionalized version of my truth... which will be full of humor, love, loss, grief, and triumph, no doubt... and then another idea about another dream I had, full of the paranormal.

I sit back and re-read the above paragraph and say to myself, "Geez, Kass, those are really different ideas. Pick a genre already!"

The truth is, no matter what I write, I have to feel passionate about it.  "Another Eternity," while conceived within a dream, turned into an outpouring of emotion that I had bottled up in me... a plethora of "what-ifs" within my own relationship were exorcised from my soul as I wrote each word of it.  I purged a great deal of things while writing it, and it changed my life profoundly.  I want to feel that way with EACH project I undertake, and am hoping against hope that maybe, just maybe, I can accomplish that goal.

Now, I prepare my heart for the journey... knowing that the best stories are those that are deeply-felt and greatly-admired... by the author first.

The Poet in Me

Poetry is one of the things that I've always had a great love for... not only reading it, but writing it to let the demons out of my soul... there are two poems that I feel like sharing today... they were both written in April (one in April 2001, the other in April 2006)... both are intensely personal.  I hope you enjoy.

Blue (Written by Kassie Ritchie Bennett, April 13, 2006, after the loss of her baby Chance the previous day)

I am blue.
I hate blue.
It rips my heart out--injures my soul...
Reminds of things that are beyond my control.
It makes my head spin, my heart race, my hands shake...
It throbs in my veins and makes my heart ache.


I am blue.
I hate blue.
His blanket was blue... pale & stark.
His skin was paper-thin and remarkably unmarked.
The sight of his face made my heart long to cry out...
Made my legs quiver in sorrow... made my faith fill with doubt.


But blue is the color of his daddy's big eyes...
It's the color of rain & God's enormous sky.
That blankie? I hold it & stroke it... it's salve.
I cannot hate blue--it's all that I have.

Being Me (Written by Kassie Ritchie Bennett, April 11, 2001)

Sometimes it's unbearably overwhelming to be me...
Quiet and reserved, yet loud and brash and fun...
Knowledgeable, yet terribly naive...
Soft-hearted, yet calloused...

Sometimes it hurts to be me...
When people trample on me...
Into the dirt...
Thinking to themselves that I will make it out alive...
Fine... intact... when all I wanna do is crumble to the floor.

Sometimes I don't want to be me...
I want to climb into a darkened attic...
Stay there forever...
Locked up and sheltered from the outside world...

But...
Sometimes I love being me...
When I can jump and dance without fear of judgment...
When I can laugh and love who I want, when I want...
When I can sit quietly and watch the world spinning by with such great satisfaction...

Because, after all, the only thing I really know is being me...

The "Prince Charming" Enigma

I've said it before in other places, but my daughter Hannah had a book "published" (I put it in quotations because her Aunt Ashlea sent her a "get published!" kit for Christmas, wherein she drew her own pictures & wrote her own story, sent it in, & it was printed in hardback, & sent back)... it's about fairies (specifically, a Fairy Queen who gets kidnapped by a gang of dragons, who merely wanted her deejaying services.  LOL)... but I digress.

One day recently, after I picked her up from school, she opened her book (which was in her backpack from book report day) & showed me that she'd stuck Disney Princess stickers on the inside & wrote "princesses with their princeses." I started giggling at her misspelling of "princes," but it spurred a conversation about the different princesses & their men.  She said, "Here's Jasmine with Aladdin, Ariel with Eric, Aurora with Phillip, Snow White with Prince Charming, & Cinderella with... OMG.  PRINCE CHARMING!" 

We giggled & began chattering like little hens about the scandal of it all, wondering why on Earth Prince Charming would double-time the poor princesses... & then, it began...

I Googled (or more specifically Wiki-ied) "Prince Charming" to see just how many fairy tales &/or stories he appears in, & since he's quite generic, he appears in several, including but not limited to Cinderella,Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Shrek movies, etc.  Since she's mostly just familiar with those first three (with the exception of Shrek, but we all know what a jerk THAT Charming is), we started compiling a "what-if" scenario... 

Here's what we determined.  Prince Charming isn't 1 prince, but 3 separate princes.  They're brothers, of course, but their parents gave them horrendously embarrassing first names (e.g. Eggbert, Percival, Myron, Virgil, Otis, Horace, Rufus, Rupert, etc.).  While the princes were exceedingly handsome &, for the lack of a better term, CHARMING, the local girls were awfully giggly about their given names & the boys decide to leave home in search of love, each going in a separate direction as individual "Prince Charmings."

Charming # 1 meets Cinderella at a local dance... Charming # 2 meets Snow White in the dwarves' woods... Charming # 3 meets Aurora near her sleeping chamber or whatever... little do the princes know, they've circled around & wound up in very close proximity to one another... and the girls, who don't know each other but, say, have the same hairdresser (LOL--Hannah's suggestion), start gushing about their love interests... and go bat-crazy when they discover they are ALL dating "Prince Charming." The girls decide to set "Prince Charming" up for failure, only to discover through hilarity & hijinks that the joke's on them.  We might even complicate matters by making the princes identical triplets... :)

We had the BEST time coming up with the plot, & Hannah said, "Mommy, we've GOT to write that!!!" SO... I think we will!!!!  :D

But if any of you freaks steal our ideas before we get a chance to get that down on paper, a plague on your house... ;)

Copyright (C) 2011, Kassie Bennett.  Ha.  One can't be too careful. ;)

'Til next time, friends!

Rainy Days & Mondays...

Nothing squelches my level of creativity MORE than rainy days (or Mondays? Not really, but... Karen Carpenter was a genius, so...).  I know a great deal of people who will argue that point... that it is so much easier to get moving on creative things when you have no excuse to be outdoors, enjoying the sun.  Not this girl.  I've always had a tendency to do things differently than everyone else, so... why not this lil bothersome thing, too?

That being said, I want to go punch Punxsutawny Phil in his buck-toothed lil face. Early spring, my hind-end.  It's freezing up here in Maryland. Tomorrow is April 1st! Joke's on us!

I'm going to be in the corner, grumbling about the frigid temperatures & doing the one thing that DOES appeal to me on days like today... READING.

'Til next time, dear readers!

Swimming in Ideas

Almost as frustrating as hitting a brick wall during the book-writing process is the pre-writing inability to nail down a concrete idea.  My first novel almost wrote itself... but now that I'm in the pre-stages of starting a new one, I find myself unable to nail down an idea.

This is why I know I'm not "there" yet... not ready to put pen to paper (or in my case, finger to key--thank goodness for technology!).  Because the subject matter of the first book was so touchy-feely, drenched with emotion and sprinkled with humor and what-not, I kind of want to go to something a little less so. People have encouraged me to write what I know... to share my parenting experiences, silliness from my children, etc. and Lord knows I have humor to spare, so... I hope so.

The Brick Wall Phenomenon

I am all-too-acquainted with what I like to call the "brick wall phenomenon." I'm sure I'm not the only one, as I've heard other writers complain about "hitting the wall." I assume, maybe incorrectly, that the wall they speak of is brick or some other hard surface... or maybe it's padded?  But, I digress.

It's my biggest hurdle when I start to write, and the chief reason I didn't write my first novel, despite a world of experiences and ideas and abilities at my fingertips, 'til I was 31.  I might have a grand idea, start trying to hammer it out into a feasible storyline, then get lost in the mix and hit that dreaded wall.

The ONLY reason "Another Eternity" exists is because I dreamed the entire story.  Yeah, the details were tweaked as I wrote, but I didn't have to wonder why character 1 was doing this because I'd already dreamed it up!

Now, as I face novel # 2, the brick wall is inches from my nose.  I have two or three ideas, and don't know which way to go.  I know I'll find a way, somehow, some time... but in the meantime, I'm searching for my proverbial pick-axe, so I can chip this wall away.

And We're Off!

Hello, dear readers!  Kassie here, ready to embark on what I HOPE to be a journey of self-discovery, creativity, and networking to rival that of no other author who has ever lived.  Lofty dreams, huh?  My mama always told me to dream big, so why not reach for the stars?

A little about me for those not in "the know:" First and foremost, I am a mommy to two inspiring, creative, and hopelessly hilarious children.  Miss Hannah, at the ripe old age of 9, is the drama queen in the family, happy to sing and dance and draw her way into the future, and Mr. Ian... oh, Mr. Ian... at almost 4, he's single-handedly changed my life in more ways than one.  People on my personal Facebook frequently check in just to see what Ian antics I have shared today (because let's face it... it's better to laugh than to cry, right?  Right?  What?  You're like me and tend to do both?  Yay!  I don't feel so alone now!)

I'm also a wife.  Marriage is... a challenge.  I'm a bit of a control freak, and have a very hard time letting go enough to just enjoy it.  I have to second-guess everything, feel the need to defend my every action pertaining to the house and finances and what-not, and ... it's just a burden most days.  BUT, my man is a decent human being.  Yes, he has his faults, and yes, we fight, and yes, we will likely continue 'til we self-destruct or survive... either way.  Eleven years of marriage can't be considered a failure by any stretch.  Just sayin'.

So, onto the project.  I plan to use this blog to chronicle my journey to a hopeful career in writing.  My first novel, written over the course of two measly weeks during my husband's deployment to Afghanistan, was inspired by a dream.  I know, that sounds cheesy, but I woke up so enamoured with the story as it unfolded in Dream Land that I couldn't resist.  I jotted down the outline, opened Word, and started typing.  I wrote probably 10 hours a day (thank goodness for my in-laws, who I was staying with at the time, who helped with childcare).  The words flowed and I was so excited.

Then came the reality.  Once I was all finished, I tentatively sent the file to my cousin, an avid reader and intellectual whose opinion I regard like I imagine I'd regard Mother Theresa's... Her initial feedback was very positive (which, I admit, I suspected was due to our being cousins, but later, I accepted with great fervor).  Unfortunately, having written a children's book and sent out a million query letters to publishers before, I knew that getting noticed would be difficult, if not downright impossible.

So I sat on the project.  I refined it.  I read and re-read it.  I edited.  I added details.  I fixed words that weren't quite right.  Then I sat on it some more.  The fact is, I was nervous.  I was nervous about rejection and nervous about having to pour money into it just to MAKE money, etc.  We're a single income family, on a modest Army salary... yes, it's my dream, but... I like feeding my kids, ya know?

My best friend's husband, Scott, encouraged me to check out the Amazon Kindle store, having noticed that one could publish one's material on there.  By this time, I'd branched out and let my mother, best friend Tyffanne, and Scott read it as well, and they were more than impressed.  The fact that Scott, a man's man, was so moved by the story (which I consider to be chick lit in every sense of the term) spoke volumes to me. So I did it.  Within a few days, "Another Eternity" was available on Amazon for Kindle.

Sales were modest... at best.  The only people buying were people I knew... which isn't a bad thing.  I knew it wouldn't be instant success and notoriety.  I had a slew of people who didn't have Kindles or didn't want to read it on their PC, so... I felt like I was at square one again.

That's when I found smashwords.com.  It was like the clouds opened up and sun beamed down on my face.  I heard birds and angel choirs... okay, so that's an exaggeration, but it felt so good, so liberating, to get my book out there, even if "just" in e-book format.  I loved how Smashwords marketed my book FOR me... suddenly, "Another Eternity" was available on Barnes & Noble's website for the Nook... available for Sony e-readers, and Kobo, and Apple... I just sat back and watched as... 3 copies were sold.

Hey.  It's more than I could've done... I think we're up to maybe 30 copies total sold (of course, I don't have the tracking power to know how many were sold via other portals).  My dream, though, is to be discovered, like Amanda Hocking.  Granted, it's one novel.  I have ideas for others swimming around in my brain.  I've been encouraged to write about my experiences with my kids, and that's the latest obsession... trying to decide how to go about that.  But we'll see how it goes.

In the meantime, I'm just plugging away, trying to get noticed via Facebook... trying to get positive reviews that will, hopefully, pay off in the end.  The mere fact that I've already gotten to cross "write and publish a novel" off my bucket list is *almost* enough for me.

'Til next time, friends!