Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts

Monday, December 28, 2015

Article Archive & Christmas Update

Just thought I'd share the articles I've written for other websites since July. These websites include College Fashion, Every College Girl, and The Odyssey.

It would mean a lot to me if you would read, give feedback, share, etc. I love knowing people read my articles! 

College Fashion


Every College Girl 


The Odyssey


As you can hopefully tell I've been hard at work. My internship at College Fashion just ended so I have a little bit more free time. 

I got a makeup palette for Christmas that I want to write a quick review on at some point soon.


 I have a camera that takes passable pictures, but I cannot for the life of me decide if I want to spend my Christmas money on a new camera or on some other things I've had my eye on. It's not like I do super in-depth beauty reviews all the time so I don't need a crazy expensive camera. Oh, decisions. 

Christmas was kind of low key this year. John had some horrible tooth problems that were so bad he/I couldn't sleep. Apparently he grinds his teeth during the night and has caused some nerve damage that is unbearably painful, if I remember correctly? He didn't know what was going on and called his dentist the day after Christmas and they met in his office. Dentist did some grinding down on his teeth (ow). 

I don't remember all the details, but the bottom line: if you grind your teeth at night, get a mouth guard or you will want to fling yourself off a building eventually. 

But the food and wine was good. My mom's dog that we were dog-sitting was good. All around a good Christmas! 

How was your Christmas? 





Sunday, December 20, 2015

Personalized Stationary


Hey hey! I'm taking a break from cleaning right now and it's absolutely freezing in my room right now. I have no idea why it's not warming up.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned it before, but I geek out over pens. Fountain pens in particular, though I don't own one of my own. I enjoy writing, and by writing I mean physical writing. I enjoy looking at people's handwriting, I like old script, I like writing by hand over typing (except when writing articles, writing by hand is just not practical since I edit so much).

I don't mean to be, but I'm kind of a bad family member in that I don't make phone calls just to say "hello" and all that stuff that good family members do. It's that that I don't care, I love my family! I don't have a phone, which is of course a problem. But I just don't think to do it. I prefer to write, but I don't really think to do that either!

I'm on the hunt for some personalized stationary to write thank you letters, happy birthday cards, hello notes, and all that jazz. I bought this set of 20 note cards from Papyrus last year and they've lasted me a while because I haven't thought to use them very much, but I plan on writing more notes and letters this year. Resolution maybe?

We have a Papyrus store here in Charleston so I might go browse. I like these.


Set of 16 notecards for $14.95 is not bad at all! I still think I'd prefer some monogrammed or personalized stationary though. I don't think Papyrus does that. They have some writing paper with single letters so I could get paper with a "G" on it, but the styles are very limited. 

These note cards are cute and simple but expensive. $20 for a set of 6. There isn't an option to customize them but the website (Sugar Paper) has a "custom" section of the website that doesn't show options - rather you give your name, email, and a message and I'm assuming they will email you and go from there. Since these non-customized cards are so expensive I'm not going to bother, but if they weren't so expensive I'd be all over it!

They are also pretty small - 4.25 x 5.5 inches

I've found a lot of the stationary I like has been around that size and I'd like some a little bigger, but if I can't find any then I'll at least try to get one with a blank back so I can write on the back if I need to. 



I think I prefer the non-obnoxious customization options like this one. My name on the bottom or just initials at the top would be enough. Nothing too huge. This is a serious consideration - $25 for a set of 20. The only thing I don't like is the size. You can tell by the picture comparison to the pen how small it is. These are from Curio Press on Etsy. 


Perhaps? I swear if I ever get married I'm going to take a year just to pick out invitations. These are from Modern Pink Paper on Etsy. The size of the notecards wouldn't be a problem if I didn't write so big, maybe I should start practicing my handwriting. These are $18 for a set of 10. 




No matter what I decide on, I'm 100% getting a wax seal stamp. Now I'm not sure if I should get one with my initials or one with a shark, because that's my House sigil I have decided. I have also decided that there is something wrong with me, heh. Really though, I'm getting one. This is from Back to Zero on Etsy. 

Well now you know all of my current stationary struggles. 

Let me know which stationary you like, or if you have any other stationary stores you'd like to suggest! 



Tuesday, December 8, 2015

The Struggles of Being a Young Writer


The title is way more dramatic than this post, haha.

After taking my internship with College Fashion, I realized how much I enjoyed it so I started taking on a few more writing jobs. I'll be posting a collection of my posts soon in case you want to read any of them. Anyway, I got a little in over my head and between school and all of the deadlines so my personal blog got a little neglected. My internship with College Fashion ends at the end of this month (so sad!) so hopefully I'll have a little more time to devote to my baby.

Writing wasn't really something I ever imagined doing as a career, and I still don't see myself turning it into a career. I love doing it though. I get asked a lot why I don't want to be a writer when I "grow up", whatever the hell that means. If I had to depend on writing for my main source of income, I imagine I would end up hating it. As you can imagine, and know if you are a writer yourself, coming up with content (especially with deadlines) is stressful.

Sometimes you just have to force yourself to come up with something, kind of like writing a paper for one of your professors. Even if you know it's not your best work, it's ok, everyone has those kinds of days and moments no matter what industry you're in. But when you write, it's published online for everyone to read, forever. I will do this for my good pieces as well, but sometimes I go back and read my "fluff" articles and become displeased with myself. I feel a bit like a failure, even though I know everybody has those days.


Another slight annoyance is censorship. Writing for likes and shares over what I really want to talk about or what should be talked about, but that's partially why I have this blog! This is a huge problem for a lot of writers that actually do depend on getting published for money. In order to get hired, they need to write about what the newspaper/magazine/blog wants them to write about, not what they want to write about. Which is all part of the job of course. After a while your creativity just becomes stunted and you begin to hate something you once loved.

So the point of all that was just summing up why I don't want to write for a living, just to keep it as a hobby. I want to be able to stop whenever I'd like. And I've never tried writing fiction and I'm not sure if that would be my cup of tea, so I'm not even sure what that's like. Let me know if that's your thing though, I'm curious!

Talking to people at parties about it is fun though. They ask what I do and I'm in school but I'm not working so I say "I'm a writer I guess" in hopes that someone will reply "You guess, don't you know?" so that I'll have a new best friend, but nobody is worthy yet...le sigh.

To sum up the post:
1. I'm bad at balancing deadlines
2. Forcing content sometimes must be done but ends in disappointment
3. I don't want to write for a living because I will start to hate it
4. Censorship sucks
5. Nobody is worthy to be my new best friend yet

What have you all been up to lately? I have a lot of catching up to do, yeesh.