The concert took place in Andrea Bocelli\'s hometown, Lajatico. The venue was not exactly in the city itself, but in an open air amphitheater in the middle of the Tuscan hills.It looked like it just came straight out of a painting
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Posted by astrid on Feb 22, 2010 in
inspiration,
writing I know it sounded silly, I mean, I LOVE to read. It is my hobby. And as I writer I could even categorize it under research. BUT lately I haven’t been able to do it. I get a somehow guilty feeling when I got lost in a book. Perhaps because I didn’t feel I have done enough work in that day, or perhaps I was thinking that reading is somewhat an indulgence.
It is quite scary for me when I realized that I haven’t been reading that much last year!
Lucky for me, a couple of weeks back, Amle came up with an idea to read a book every week. I’m thinking, this was probably the kind of motivation I have been looking for!!! So I joined her, along with some friends from my Plurk circle, and now I can proudly say: I’m right back on track with my reading *happydance*.
It’s not that hard to do, given that I could actually read the thickest Harry Potter book in a day. It’s just lately I have been hesitating to get immersed in a book. Now I have another reason to do it. A permission, that it was something I had to do, with a deadline set in my head.
Along the way, I also became more motivated to write and edit (even more reason to do a happydance 
). I used to find it funny when someone had to give themselves permission to do ‘fun’ things. But, you know what, sometimes that’s exactly what we need. Not a kick in a back to force me to move forward, but a gentle helping hand to motivate me .
Tags: books, inspiration, reading, writing
Posted by astrid on Feb 1, 2010 in
writing No, I didn’t fully make it. I only made 23 posts out of 31 days in January. And I think some of the 23 posts are completely crap fillers 
. But the experience helped me to be more aware of blogging, keeping my mind open, finding tidbits of stories about things around my life that I thought people might find interesting too.
I also realized I can’t be a proficient blogger in a course of one month, but it was more impossible to do when I blog only once a month for the past two years. At least now I’m learning faster .
I used to want to only wrote a blog post that was spectacular, one that everyone would find useful or interesting. Well… it’s hard to hit a target with a bow and arrow if you never practiced archery before. So here I am, practicing everyday, learning my way to write something that you would find interesting.
Would I do it again in February? I’m still pondering on that… What do you think? Would you keep up with my ramblings for another month 
?
Tags: blogging, daily blog
Posted by astrid on Jan 17, 2010 in
writing I have only been full time writing for a year, and being the geek that I am, I used to try many writing softwares. But softwares comes and goes… and in the end I kept coming back to these three tools (for Windows, as I only own a PC). So I thought I’d mention it:
Microsoft Word
Some people hate it, some people swear by it. Me? I don’t say it’s perfect, but I like it. You have to learn to use it properly, with the document map, headings, and style. Stick to it, and it is a powerful tool. I especially love the grammar check. it’s a good first point of checking IMHO. One possible flaw is that sometimes it couldn’t handle long documents nicely (novels and especially table/graph laden documents like thesis/dissertation). And that’s why the next tool come in handy.
Chapter by chapter (http://pagesperso-orange.fr/sebastien.berthet/cbc/index.html)
It’s a freeware tool for Microsoft Word, and it only work on Windows. It works like a document map, but instead of working in a huge file, it creates a new file for each chapter. You could see the word count of each chapter and the total word count for the novel. You could flag a finished chapter, enter some notes, and create a compiled document where all the separate chapter is merged into a single file -> THE NOVEL .
Celtx (http://celtx.com/)
It’s an open source tool for Windows and Mac, originally designed for media pre-production. The first time I used it is for a scriptwriting – Script Frenzy challenge three years ago. Now I use it to keep track of my characters, plots, and outline. I still wish they would enhance it for novel writing with separate chapters, then it would be my perfect tool. One can only hope .
That’s all the software I need for cranking up that novel 
.
Tags: software, writing
Posted by astrid on Jan 13, 2010 in
inspiration,
writing I read this article today on guardian.co.uk: The myth of the writer’s ‘former life’. It made me think of what would be the most dramatic story of my life.
There will always be a couple of viewpoints you’d want to go with anyone’s life. People has their ups and downs, happy and sad moments, smooth sailings and hardships. One person’s hardship could be considered as another’s smooth sailing.
The thing is, I love my life right now. I wouldn’t want to trade it with anyone else. And most importantly, I don’t like to dwell on the negative things. I believe in accentuating on the positive until it outweighs the negative.
But yeah, okay this post is not about that. So let’s see…
How do I make money right now… Well, I don’t. I live through… being married. I’d like to call it as my husband’s investment on my writing career. I still hate the fact that I couldn’t make money on my own (yet!). But being supported by the husband (which technically means I’m a *gasp* housewife ) doesn’t really qualify as a dramatic job.
We are expats/immigrants in Germany… that always comes with a bit of hardships, right? Although.. my first intention of moving here is to pursue a Master Degree. Not that romantic.
What did I leave to be a novelist? A nice paycheck in an IT job… which could go from 30k to 50k EUR a year here. I still bangs my head from time to time over this.. but you know what? I follow my heart to get here. And following my dream is worth every single lacking penny! (note: someone please reminds me again of this when I whine about not being able to buy that shoes!)
So, I think I’d be a former Software Engineer who follows her heart.
Tags: inspiration, life, writing
Posted by astrid on Jan 10, 2010 in
writing Inspired by this post by Iain Broome. When you’re stuck, do something else:
And if someone questions your commitment because you chose to watch X Factor or American Idol rather than attempt to beat your writer’s block with an hour and a half’s worth of horrible, depressing, turgid, ultimately unusable writing, please tell them to shove their judgemental claptrap right up their bum.
Today I’m sharing some fun procrastinating link. It still is quite useful for writing, not directly, but it’s fun to play around!
Read more…
Tags: Sunday writing links, writing
