Soo…I’m going to do this AtoZ Blog challenge thingie. Yep. Probably a dumb move with my killer April, but Roni Loren posted about it and how it might just push her out of her comfort zone and help with the writing. I think she’s right. And I haven’t done any writing exercises in a long time. What the hell…I’ll give it a go. I’m behind a day, so I’m going to combine A and B today.

A

Art has been as central to me as writing. When I went to college I thought for sure that I’d end up illustrating children’s books. I love the look and the feel of a really well done book. My only problem? I’m not really a kid at heart. Even as a kid I wasn’t. So I started moving into a more graphic design based program. The nerd in me was incredibly attracted to the design of menus and logos. The deeper I got into the curriculum, the more I wondered if it was actually for me. Being the superstar of your HS is much different than actually going away and being dropped into the general population of amazing artists. And one place that I saw that I was severely lacking was my 2 dimensional design classes. I caught this picture on Pinterest and it dragged me right back to those days. The lust I have for creating wants to do something like this. The reality of what I got on the page…yep. Not so much. It doesn’t make my love for art any less, it was just a wake up call that my original plan might not be the one for me. Thankfully it seems that words have never failed me. Not as an innocent teen, and not as a life-can-beat-you-down adult.

B

As a writer beauty takes on a lot of different forms in my mind. I like to twist it around and bend it to suit me and sometimes I’m the one that gets educated by my characters. Traditional beauty is fine. I’m as susceptible to it as anyone out there. But when I see a picture like this, it’s the striking dynamics of the subject that make it beautiful. Some people would only see the tats and wonder why someone would do that to their body. Me? I know there has to be a story there. And the story sometimes comes out of me. This is very much like my character, December, from Vintage December. She’s vulnerable and beautiful, distant and hard sometimes. But one thing she never is…boring.