Category: writing

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Endure. Survive. Endure.

Endure. Survive. Endure.

I looked at the ground, my heart broke. It took a deep breath in and tried to retain all the pieces it seemed to be in now. It didn’t. It couldn’t but be damned it still tried. Sometimes in life you are sitting still as the world rushes by you. Others, you don’t have enough time for all the things you need and want to do. Sometimes you are in motion at a steady speed until something hits you like a boulder knocking your ass back to the start line. Similarly, I had been struck with a still force across my entire being. I mourn the loss of something dear to me and feel as though I always have and will again. So many times I have roared back to life and tried again and again to reach a goal I fear I will never achieve. In this, my illness wreck’s havoc on me as it is the only constant in my life. It is cruel and meticulous. The noise in my skull is chaotic most of the time, especially this moon phase. You fear the darkness but its deep within me and all around me and feels like, home.  Many don’t get it and I didn’t expect you too. Yet, I was hopeful. Something that has never, not one time, ever paid off. Time and time again, the girl who thought Westley and Buttercup’s story was what true love really was or could be, reminds who I am today of the possibility, it could. So incredibly cruel. Another cycle burns through the night and I play a game within myself of Dr. Jekyll and Mrs. Hyde. No matter who wins, this sliver of my heart in my hand cuts me, deeply. A reminder of what happened here as to never forget, as if I could. Another toke, another drink, another pill. Numb. Wanting numbness to take hold, to give ample time to heal before I feel. My will laid at the waste side, unable to help me now. Endure. Survive. Endure. Repeat. As I reach up and feel my wet cheeks I know what I feared all along was true. My soul is in love with the idea of true love and I am far too jaded to play along anymore. As I am now as alone as some days I feel, I have the ability to do as one does when this sort of thing happens. For now I will recoil to the darkness that stalks me as it is always the same, always safe no matter how bad it is for me. Never lost I glide through the darkness until I catch the corner of a dresser. I open the top drawer and slide the shard into it, gently. I close the door and let the darkness absorb me until I am no longer present in this moment.  Silence. Endure. Survive. Repeat.

Ramblings From an Unusual Mind

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Archive: Conversations about writing with youthful ears

Conversation with a small group of youthful ears. “You only know you’ve truly loved someone by the hole it leaves in your heart when they are gone.”

I was standing in front of a small group of youthful ears answering questions about how and why I chose to write. I said, “I didn’t choose to write, it’s something I just have to do.” The teacher smiled and asked if there were any techniques I could share with her students or words of wisdom and I looked around at the room and said this,
~“I want you all to think about the worst day you have ever had. Some might say, you’re worst day…” I pointed at a student. “Was worse than say yours,” I said as I pointed at another student. “This though technically on someone’s scale may be true, it is not. No one has the right to tell you your worst day or any moment is not worth as much as or worth more than someone else’s.
When you write a sad scene in story don’t write careless emotionless words on a page and hope it hits. You need to pour your soul out, pluck your sorrow and bleed on the pages you create. Moments such as those are then directly tied to your work. What you felt that day twists and turns and erupts in the sad moment you create. Experiences in life impact your work as they often do to your own lives.

Let’s say the main character is a young man or a young lady and her best friend or his mother has died and the funeral has just begun. You’re not going to say, “oh mom died, damn.” Perhaps he is being strong for his sister and father, trying with all his might to hold them up. Begging himself not to cry as he watches the box that holds his mother’s shell, lower into the ground. His palms sweat and he tries to force a smile as people in her life pay their respects, numbing him to the core with each empty hug. He waits behind after everyone has left and he curses at the sun to himself, that the world has no right to look happy and joyous when he felt as if something was being ripped out of his insides. Long after the dirt and sod had been thrown onto the casket he remained standing, silently. All day he stood there, late into the nightfall. Staring in such disbelief that it all was real. A middle-aged man with scraggily gray hair approached him. The man said, “You only know you’ve truly loved someone by the hole it leaves in your heart when they are gone.” The young man felt his throat closing up on him, threatening of a possible breakdown. He sighed shakily before leaving on unsteady limbs to his car. He climbed in and as the door slammed shut, he faltered. His eyes rained despite his protest and as he let the loss consume him a new feeling of intense rage began to painfully boil in his blood. Soon guilt of all the things he never had the chance to say or do attacked him relentlessly. His mind was at war with his heart and soul and he was weak from the battle. If you listened quietly, you could actually hear the sound of his heart shattering into tiny pieces, slipping through his hands. A bang on the glass jogged him back to his numb state he had prior to this, grown accustomed to.~

Each student connected with a different aspect of the short story and had a million questions. I smiled as one asked, “Who was at the window?”

“Well,” I said, “Whoever you want it to be. It could be his father or sister or perhaps a high school sweet heart or new love interest even the old man. Someone who may break his heart far worse or may heal it. Each of us would write the next scene completely different and none of them would be wrong. When you tell a story a piece of you, however small, leaks into your book or story and that is not a bad thing. Your reader wants to feel something and to be taken on a journey. The point here is this, every moment in your life matters. As does every moment in a book. What you have felt, enjoyed, suffered through, its shapes you as a writer and as a human being. Live your life and don’t be afraid to allow your past experiences to linger in your work. The story you have to tell matters and your life is an asset to storytelling. And your life experiences are a part of what makes your own writing style unique. Good luck, keep writing.”

Drea

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Dreams: Crazy portals in our brain

Dreams can be crazy little portals into what the hell is going on in your brain. I just wish I could feel rested the next day instead of exhausted as if I physically endured what unfolded in my mind. It was a wild ride last night and honestly, I’m not sure how I feel about it all.

 

It always feels as if I dozed off and suddenly even violently awoke in my dreams. This was no different. I looked around at a room of family and friends in a strangely large house as it seemed to have many floors. Maybe it was a hotel but it felt more as if it was someone’s home. We were about in the middle on the maybe ten story house watching a movie or something, (which was odd in itself.) A tornado siren wailed outside and everyone jumped up and headed to the stairway.  Someone yelled this stairway only went up so we would all have to go up and then across to another stairway to make it to the basement for safety. I was in the back making sure everyone was there when I couldn’t find my son. Panic raged through me and I called him, searched for him and everyone else was just gone. Saving themselves. I ran up the stair way and checked every floor screaming for him. He’s non-verbal so I don’t know what I was expecting.

On the tenth floor, having trouble breathing I searched the floor and in a bedroom I found him crying holding his blanket and tablet. I couldn’t figure out why he was up there so far away? I scooped him up in my arms and cried with relief that I had found him. My little dog barked at the window. Until I wiped my eyes away and saw outside the tornado nearing us. I slid my boots on, grabbed my large overnight bag and quickly grabbed what I could. I threw my climbing gear on my back, a sling bag over my shoulder with ropes and a grappling hook and a bag that strapped around my waist and thigh. I picked up my son and ran out of the door, the siren screaming or maybe it was the wind? The building shook fighting for its life as well as I ran down a stairwell. My dog followed but was terrified and stopped in a corner. I scooped her up and threw her in my bag, we didn’t have time and I wasn’t leaving her behind. I ran carrying my son, his most precious belongings and my dog down stairs until the ended and into another hallway.

We never made it to the basement. The house was hit by large debris ruining much of it but was still standing. I remember letting my dog out of the bag while clutched on to Aiden, walking up to a nearby window seeing so much destruction. It looked as if everything had dropped ten feet below the house. Out to the left there was a deep crater where a few dogs where attempting to climb out. On the right it now looked like a hill of the transferred soil and debris. People in swat gear were climbing it being led by a handful of german shepherds which made my dog bark relentlessly. At least they knew we were here. I thought knowing the way we came, the stairway was destroyed and the house felt unsteady at this point.

I watched the people working to free the survivors in the basement. I set my son down to pull out my rope and tools and put my dog in their place. I hooked the grappling hook onto something sturdy nearby and attached it to one rope as we were still quite a ways up. The other rope I wrapped around my son and myself, making sure he was secured to me. I dropped the large bag out the window, climbed out and began our descend. My dog barked unhappy about her circumstances but my son smiled at me and enjoyed the ride, holding me tight with so much wonder and life in his eyes and I lowered us to safety like Fessik in reverse.

 

I woke up in the middle of the night. Well it was the middle of the night for me I suppose. It was about five a.m. and my son had woken up and needed to use the bathroom and wanted something to drink. Feeling a little more centered going through the motions of 5 a.m. motherhood. I laid back in bed and surprisingly I quickly fell asleep. Usually I would start the same dream over or perhaps partly through to learn another piece of the puzzle of what happens next. I dreamed, just not the same one. It seems I dream like this most often when I argue with my family or my stress levels increase throughout a single day.

I was in a building much different from the first. This building was cold. It felt like it was underground of a hospital or something similar. It felt as I was not suppose to be.

I was walking into a door in what looked like white scrubs with a large white hood thinking, almost there. “Almost where?” I mumbled to myself under my breath. I walked into a large room with 30-50 people with my head down as my feet led me (as if they knew where they were going) toward a glass door with a key swipe fab. I waited until someone else exited and squeezed through, locking it behind me. Two girls laid strapped to tables in similar attire. I pulled my hood back recognizing them though I couldn’t say who they were. I grabbed a large silver bed pan nearby and slammed it against the man’s face leaning over the first girl’s bed. He crashed to the floor unconscious causing alarm outside the door’s. Guards were yelling, people were running and lights began to flash wildly. I removed the IV’s and unstrapped each girl. “Can you stand?”

“We will manage. Thank you.”

“Where is she?” I asked looking at the empty third bed.

“They moved her, out of the facility I heard.”

“Time to go.” I said with such sadness as whoever I intended to save was not there. We armed ourselves with nearby items as I stole the man’s swipe card. We unlocked the door surrounded by a few guards, rushing them barely making it passed them. We ran through the screaming people nearby and excited the first door the sunlight came through with the key card.

We ran through woods and walked along a strange deep river filled with strange whales which resembled bass fishing lures with large bumps on the top of them that looked like giant purple carnations in a mass group on the front top of their heads. I thought they looked misplaced but I could feel them traveling with me the way the crows always do on my walks and it felt comforting somehow.

We ended up on a beautiful street in the city on a large from lawn in front of an even bigger house, painted in tans and browns with large pillars in front and a wrap around porch. It felt oddly familiar. I stared for a while until one of the girls brought my attention to a tree on the front yard the furthest from the house. Magnificently gigantic with branches as elegant as a dancer. Balloons were trapped in it all over, their ribbons wrapped around branches and tangled in its leaves. The balloons seemed to have names on the them but I couldn’t make them out. A light breeze rushed me I closed my eyes until I heard a branch snap and watched a balloon begin to fall, catching the breeze. I chased it, tackling it to the ground. I turned it over to find it was my name on, “Happy Birthday, Andrea!” I turned back to the house as two women I recognized with love in my soul echoing back, came walking down the front steps of the house. Except, these women looked to be at least 30 years younger than they are now, rushing to embrace me. We changed into something more comfortable, jeans and black shirts or tanks and boots. I wanted to stay but I couldn’t and i don’t really know why. It felt like home but my mission was to save this girl, I didn’t even remember. We embraced, cried a little and the red head whispered into my ear something and my eyes lit up. I can’t remember what she said but it felt important.

We returned to walk down the path near the river. We came upon a little town and when we saw the words “Bar” and “Food,” the girls insisted we go. Reluctantly I agreed. Inside our eyes met with a man, the same man that had exited the door at the facility where I snuck in to save them. He smirked at me. Floored I launched at him, taking him to the ground. “Where is she?” I demanded.

“She’s gone.” He paused before saying, “They killed her.”

“No!” My soul felt as if it caught its breath for a moment. I grabbed a nearby beer bottle and smashed it against the floor near his face and held it to his throat, “You mean you did?”

“No. I tried to save her. Sure for myself but I did try. The worst part is, they will do it again. They will do it again tomorrow and the day after.” I dropped the bottle. Rocked him in the face as hard as my fist would allow, crumbling onto the ground.

It was in that moment I realized the girl I was searching for, was me.

 

 

 

Thanks for reading my blog! Subscribe if you would like to know when I post another blog post. Check out my website for links for all of my current available novels for sale and other fantastical stuff about me at www.andreadigiglio.com

 

XO

 

Drea

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A dream: Conversation with a small group of youthful ears. “You only know you’ve truly loved someone by the hole it leaves in your heart when they are gone.”

I was standing in front of a small group of youthful ears answering questions about how and why I chose to write. I said, “I didn’t choose to write, it’s something I just have to do.” The teacher smiled and asked if there were any techniques I could share with her students or words of wisdom and I looked around at the room and said this,

“I want you all to think about the worst day you have ever had. Some might say, you’re worst day…” I pointed at a student, “Was worse than say yours.” I pointed at another student. “This though technically on someone’s scale may be true, it is not. No one has the right to tell you your worst day or any moment is not worth as much as or worth more than someone else’s. When you write a sad scene in story you don’t write careless emotionless words on a page and hope it hits. You pour your soul out and pluck your sorrow and bleed on the pages you create. That moment is directly tied to your worse day. What you felt that day twists and turns and erupts in the sad moment you create. Experiences in life impact your work as they often do to your own lives. Let’s say the main character is a young man or a young lady and her best friend or his mother has died and the funeral has just begun. You’re not going to say, oh mom died, damn. Perhaps he is being strong for his sister and father, trying with all his might to hold them up. Begging himself not to cry as he watches the box that holds his mother’s shell lowering into the ground. His palms sweat and he tries to force a smile as people in her life pay their respects, numbing him to the core with each empty hug. He waits behind after everyone has left while he curses at the sun to himself, that the world has no right to look happy and joyous when he felt as if something was ripping out his insides. Long after the dirt and sod had been thrown onto the casket he stood, silently. All day he stood there, late into the nightfall. Staring in such disbelief that this all was real. A middle-aged man with scraggily gray hair approached him. The man said, “You only know you’ve truly loved someone by the hole it leaves in your heart when they are gone.” The young man felt his throat closing up on him, threatening of a possible breakdown. He sighed shakily before leaving on unsteady limbs to his car. He climbed in and as the door slammed shut, he faltered. His eyes rained despite his protest and as he let the loss consume him rage began to boil in his blood. Soon guilt of all the things he never had the chance to say or do attacked him relentlessly. His mind was at war with his heart and soul and he was weak from the battle. If you listened quietly, you could actually hear the sound of his heart breaking into tiny pieces, slipping through his hands. A bang on the glass jogged him back to his numb state he had prior to this, grown accustomed to.”

Each student connected with a different aspect of the short story and had a million questions. I smiled as one asked, “Who was at the window?”

“Well,” I said, “Whoever you want it to be. It could be his father or sister or perhaps a high school sweet heart or new love interest. Someone who may break his heart far worse or may heal it. Each of us would write the next scene completely different and none of them would be wrong. When you tell a story a piece of you, however small, leaks into your book and that is not a bad thing. Your reader wants to feel something and to be taken on a journey. The point here is this, every moment in your life matters. As does every moment in a book. What you have felt, enjoyed, suffered through, its shapes you as a writer and as a human being. Live your life and don’t be afraid to allow your past experiences to linger in your work. The story you have to tell matters and your life is an asset to storytelling. And your life experiences are a part of what makes your own writing style unique. Good luck, keep writing.”

A

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Cover reveal of Keren Hughes debut novel, Stolen


I’m super excited to be apart of the cover real of Keren Hughes’s book Stolen. She is an amazing woman who I met when I was searching for someone to review my first book Finding Alice. She is a breath of fresh air and I know from speaking to her on many occasions that her book will be outstanding and breathtaking. Yes I do have that much faith as I was able to read a small fraction of the book while she was still writing it! So check out the beautiful cover that I know will make you want to read it as much as I do!

— 

Keren Hughes

Author of Stolen, book one in the Freedom of Souls series.
Owner of ‘Gothic Angel Book Reviews’ book blog.

— 

Keren Hughes

Author of Stolen, book one in the Freedom of Souls series.
Owner of ‘Gothic Angel Book Reviews’ book blog.
There it is folks! Make sure to check out her links and tell her I sent you! 
XO
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Blog about me

It’s been awhile since I just wrote in my blog about the nonsense that is my life. About a week ago a self-portrait photo shoot turned rogue and my mom did the shoot for me, majority excited. I sent the images to my fav photographer Russ Turner and he edited one of the images for me, so far that is. I thought I would share. I know you all will not be surprised at my dark concept, especially if you have read Finding Alice.

Came out pretty badass huh? It was super fun to shoot and I love doing my hair and makeup creative and crazy. This shoot spun my creative mind like no other and I wrote another 2k in Alice’s Sacrifice!! I just got mono too so I’m pretty impressed with my ability to not back down to any cold. Though it is kicking my ass a bit this week. So that is my deal these days, fighting an evil cold, raising a toddler, working on book two and doing random crazy photo shoots. Just an average day in the life of this author.

Till next time.
XO