Monique Ocampo Writes
My friend and recently published writer Mariella Hunt has nominated me for the Creative Blogger Award!
There are some rules that come with the Creative Blogger Award, rules that need to be passed onto the bloggers I’ll tag at the end of the post.
- Nominate 10-15 blogs and notify all nominees via their blogs/social accounts
- Thank and post the link of the blog who nominated you
- Share 5 facts about yourself to your readers
- Pass these rules onto the nominees
Given that I talk about a lot of Catholic and fandom stuff on this blog already, I’m gonna tell you five things about me that relate to creativity.
1) I find inspiration from things I love. Like many people of my generation, my first taste in writing for a public forum came from fanfiction. I still write fanfiction now. The things I love such as Jane Austen, music, travelling, and Buffy inspire me to write poetry, fanfiction, or even my blog entries. If you want to find inspiration, start with what you love. And yes, I consider fanfiction to be creative.
2)I suck at describing things. I tend to write my fiction as a screenplay, with lots of dialogue. Too bad I don’t live in California! Here’s an example of my usual kind of writing from my fanfic “A Different Kind of Intervention.”
“That overly-gelled, brooding…” Buffy search for a word, but spat out, “jerk!”
“The word you’re looking for is poofter, pet,” a familiar British voice said. Buffy looked up and saw Spike. “I also called him Peaches. Or Liam, when I really wanted to wind him up.”
“Why are you here, Spike?”
“I’m part of this guide thing, luv,” he said. “Remember what I told you? About death being your art?”
“Yeah. You also said that you wanted the honor of killing me yourself.”
“Still do. Vampire nature and all that. But I’m not here to talk about that. You need to know some things about Angel.”
“Like what?”
“Just remember that I’m still the guide here. I’m not going to lie to you.”
Buffy sat down and folded her arms. “Fine. What do I need to know about Angel?”
“Angelus was a big influence in me becoming the man I am today. But he always had to do things a certain way. He acted really weird after eating that gypsy girl in Romania and I never saw him again until the Boxer Rebellion.”
“But he had his soul then…”
“Yeah and all he did was try and save some missionaries. Darla got to them, of course.”
“Wait a minute. He told me that the Powers called upon him to help the Slayer. He could’ve stopped you from killing the Slayer?”
Spike nodded. “Truth was he didn’t know what that loophole was until…”
“Too late,” Buffy said.
“Now let’s imagine for a second if Angel really loved football.*”
“Like the Super Bowl?”
“No no! What you Yanks call soccer. Bloody awful name, if you ask me.”
Buffy rolled her eyes. “Continue.”
“Let’s imagine that Angel is wandering around some alley in Europe, eating rats, and he happens upon a scummy pub. On the telly, the boys in green are taking on Spain in the World Cup. Being Irish, old Angel boy, he holds back his breath as Hamilton passes across the middle. It’s blocked, but oh my God, Armstrong is there to put it in, Angel feels it’s all incredible, and POOF, he loses his soul and everyone in the pub is dead before you can say Bob’s your uncle.”
Buffy couldn’t help but laugh.
But I’ve been making efforts to improve.
3) My poetry comes from emotional experiences. My poetry has been my best outlet for expressing how I feel when my emotions overwhelm me. Each poem carries a memory or a story that can’t be made into a novel.
4) I like knitting. I don’t knit to the point that it has become an addiction, but I do like knitting every now and then. The best thing I’ve ever made so far was a bag!
5) I prefer tea to coffee. I love the process of making tea more than drinking it. I feel like the smell of tea helps me to keep focused.
I will nominate my fellow Patheos bloggers to tell me about their creativity and leave you with this poem.
The Nature of Being a Writer
It starts with a hunger for words
As children, we devour the written word
as if it was our daily bread
We read dictionaries and thesauri
try to use the complex words
in our everyday vocabulary
Then, at some point, we get that spark
We go from devouring stories
to wanting to write our own
Whether it’s inspired by a broken heart
or a poorly written book that sells well,
we start taking our lives
and putting them down on paper
Characters start living inside our heads
In the most sane form of schizophrenia possible
We act like thieves and spies
stealing from the greats and making it our own
gathering information most people don’t care about
Putting it all together like a jumbled collage
like a patchwork quilt made of odds and ends
In the form of poetry or prose
The hardest part of being a writer
is coming out of the shells we hide inside
and showing our creations to the world
We become exposed like naked statues
Subjecting ourselves to be ridiculed
As our work gets torn apart
In spite of the critiques, we pick up the pieces
Putting everything back to make something new
Along the way, people find our creations
Like a song, our words resonate in them
Slowly, the words grow from a quiet hum
into a roar that’s louder than thunder
The world joins in the chorus of the song
And for a moment, we become part of the infinite.
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