First blog of the new year! I’ve been at this for several months, now, and despite what my recent lack of activity might suggest, I am still interested in keeping this blog going. I do, however, think that this is a good time to reassess some things.

It seems I need to recognize that I’m in a different place in life than I was last February.

I am, for one thing, no longer an Avon lady, per se. I can still order products, but I don’t have the website to allow customers to place orders online, and I don’t order and distribute brochures. What do I do, then, ask my friends and family. Do I go to school? Well, no. I’m not currently going to school, either.

I am an Army wife who is trying to survive her first deployment through the help of God, family, friends, and a regularly-scheduled counseling appointment. Since deployment began, if I’m really honest, I haven’t done much of anything. At all. After deciding to finally give up on Avon (I’m not a sales-person…), I intended to spend “work time” each day doing blogs and working on my novel. But the truth is that I don’t spend my days doing productive things like that. I don’t do the things that are high on my priority list, or the things that are the most fulfilling for me. I do the things that are the easiest, and the things that pass time quickly, the things that take my mind off of reality. And I regret it, and then the next day I do it again.

I’m an Army wife trying to survive her husband’s first deployment. I leave the house a few times a week: to go to counseling, to go grocery shopping, to go to church, and to go to Bible study sometimes. I go walking for thirty minutes about five times a week. I try to read my Bible and pray daily. I write a weekly snail-mail letter to my husband in Iraq, despite the fact that we talk almost daily online. And I watch a *lot* of Netflix. And play Minecraft. And sleep.

But am I still passionate about writing? Yes. And am I still an aspiring novelist, an artist of sorts, a homemaker, a Christian? Yes.

So, what will Ocipura.com look like in 2011?

*More personal. I tried hard in 2010 to keep the blog from becoming a personal journal. And when I say tried hard, I mean hard. It was a lot of effort for me. You can ask Hubby – one of my most frequent complaints was that I couldn’t write about something or didn’t know how to write about something without making it too personal. I’m not too worried about that anymore, and I think that my friends who read won’t be too bothered by the blog becoming more personal.

*More fictitious? I’ve been thinking a lot about trying to post some of my writing on here. I haven’t decided for sure yet. Frankly, I’m worried about my work being stolen. Not that someone would necessarily take my words and pass them off as their own so much as they might take my ideas and write them better. So this isn’t something I’m saying you will see in 2011, but it’s a possibility.

*More pictures. I know I’ve mentioned before that this blog has a severe lack of pictures. I really would like to correct that.

*More interactive. I’ve already talked to my webmaster about the possibility of adding a forum, and I’m really hoping to get more feedback from readers this year. We’ll see. On that note, please, can you tell me what I can do to entice you guys to become more involved? I ask questions frequently and try to open things up for discussion, but that rarely draws a single comment. Any thoughts?

Life during deployment has gotten better in my neck of the woods. I think that nearing the two-month mark is helping. In other words, the further we get into it the more it becomes…somewhat easier to handle. It’s not that I don’t still miss Hubby. I do, sometimes to the point of tears, but the house just doesn’t feel quite as lonely now that I’m a little more used to the idea that I’m here and he’s not. I’m definitely looking forward to the coming R&R (hopefully in the spring) and his homecoming next fall!

It also has made a huge difference to me to have my mom here for a visit. She arrived last week and is staying for just shy of one month. We’re enjoying some mother-daughter time that we really haven’t had in four or five years! The house feels a lot less empty with her here. So I’m keeping busy with that and with other goals I’m working on.

And, of course, it’s NaNoWriMo time! National Novel Writing Month comes every November, and I’m participating for the fourth year in a row. This year, due to marrying into the Army and currently living through my first deployment, I’ve really got military on my mind, and I’m writing a story about the Army. I did some planning and outlining last month so that I could jump right in on November 1st. So far it’s going well!

Expect my updates here to remain somewhat sparse for the time being as I spend time with my mom and with my writing. I will try to continue updating once or twice a week, though, because I know I need to get back in the habit of regular posting!

How does everyone like the new layout? My friend Jester is still working on a few of the kinks, but it’s mostly done! I like it.

Is anyone else participating in NaNoWriMo?

Book writing is definitely on my mind recently. Did you know that I am (or at least I claim to be) an aspiring novelist? Yes, indeed! In hopes of making it easier on me to one day reach the level of Actual Novelist, my husband recently found a great deal and bought me a netbook. Now I can write from wherever I happen to be! The beautiful little computer that I have named Eeeny-Weeeny, since it is, after all, an Eee PC, is just the right size for my hands. Ooooh I can’t wait for NaNoWriMo this year!

Thus Far

Second grade was the first time I got to write complete stories, as far as I remember. My teacher had this bright idea of stapling together a few sheets of unlined paper to make books, and we got to fill in as many as we wanted with stories and illustrations. My stories were all about the Pretty Pretty Princess(es), but I had a lot of them.

I stopped writing for some time after that, perhaps in part due to the dreaded Writing Wednesdays in fourth grade. That was tough. Ugh – writing prompts. My hands would get so sore – my fingers actually developed these hard, raised bumps from holding my pencil all day, and man, I hated Writing Wednesdays. Now, give me a computer and tell me to write all day, and I’d be happy to do my best to comply. But I think doing that in fourth grade was actually a bit of a hindrance to me.

A few years later, I participated in the Young Author competition and wrote/illustrated a story that won some sort of award. A year or two later, I wrote/illustrated another children’s story for school. I still have both of those, in laminated form.

But now writing has become more difficult. It’s not enough for my stories to be 10 pages long with a simple plot. As I’ve aged, I’ve become increasingly critical of my own work. That’s when I started that bad habit of writing a few lines or a few pages of a story, and then putting it aside. I would get stuck, and I couldn’t think of a satisfactory way to continue the story, so I just stopped working on it until the next half-baked idea came along. I guess I just never had the follow-through to finish them on my own.

NaNoWriMo has gotten me over that hump, in a way. I now have two complete drafts to work on.

What’s Coming

The first draft has no working title at all. It’s simply NaNoWriMo 2007. The basic plot and the characters I created are good, but the story itself needs so much work that rather than editing the novel, I’m actually in the process of re-writing it. It’s a fantasy “escapism” novel set in a world of my own creation.

The second draft is on the back-burner, still. When I look at it again I’ll be able to see it with fresh eyes – or so I hope. Its sad working title is Pickles From Space. It has nothing to do with either space or pickles, but there you have it. It is, in a way, kind of science-fictiony, only.. It’s really not science fiction at all. It takes place right here on Earth with regular-old humans.

This year for NaNoWriMo, I plan to write a military-related story, since my Hubby will be deployed, and I’m sure the military will be on my mind a lot. And I also have other ideas in mind for the future. Sequels to the fantasy story, possibly, and some more present-day ideas. I can barely wait to get started!

Unfortunately, thinking of ideas is much easier than sitting down and completing a novel. I just hope that, one day, I can actually call myself a published novelist, rather than just aspiring to be one.

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