Month: June 2025

Posted in Life, Writing

What Are Your Daily Habits?

Posted on by jennrae

Well, there are the boring ones, getting out of bed, brushing my teeth, brewing a pot of coffee if I have the day off. If I work I just use a Keurig pod and take a cup to go. I started taking a liquid vitamin to see if it helps with my hair. It appears to be working. My hair is amazing today. Of course, I brush my hair. I use a Waterpik flosser on my teeth.

I sometimes shower in the morning but I am more likely to shower in the evening before bed. I have to feed my Cat KitKat treats in her Kong ball before I go to work. She looks like a tiny kitten but is actually five years old. I feed them a can of meat around lunchtime which for me is eleven-ish most of the time, unless I am working out of town, in which case I can’t go home for lunch.

I also feed them a can of meat in the evening around 7pm. I usually make a sandwich for my lunch and brew another cup of coffee if I am going to work.

In the evening I either cook dinner or get something quick depending on the situation. Mondays are especially hectic, as my son is still in Scouts, and he sometimes has other commitments to his band, or football or now his own work since he is old enough.

Brush and floss teeth before bed, after a shower, brush my hair again. I brush my hair around lunch time too before going back to work, it can get frizzy, especially if it is humid.

At least once a week I go for a walk. Typically I go to the gym Tuesday through Friday for about an hour. I sometimes skip Friday. I’d say, I go Fri only half the time if I am being honest.

I also try to put moisturizer on my face in the morning, I have pm stuff I use if I shower at night. I try to post a video or post a blog at least once a day, although I have been failing the poor blog.

I want to get back to writing daily but I haven’t been the best at that. Working out of town threw my routine off and It is hard to get back to it.

I usually watch something in the evening that I end up recording a video on. Definitely on the weekends. I need to schedule something fun, or different.

I have plans to rearrange my room to make it feel more cozy. If I have a good place to write I think I would write more. If I am being honest, I probably read garbage on my phone way too much. If I wasted less time, I could get a lot more done.

Daily writing prompt
What are your daily habits?
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Posted in Fiction, Life, Writing

List 3 Books That Have Had An Impact On You..Why?

Posted on by jennrae

To choose only three makes this a challenge. I would probably have to go with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis for the first one. A teacher read it aloud to us in the fifth grade I believe and I think it was the first fantasy book I was exposed to unless you count television where I had seen cartoons of The Hobbit and The Last Unicorn. And a cartoon of The Swan Princess that made me fall in love with Tchaikovsky. I haven’t been able to find this cartoon, there is a newer version that isn’t it, but this one had a haunting melody of Swan Lake, which also reminds me of The Last Unicorn, it wouldn’t surprise me if my mind didn’t combine the two to create a cartoon that never existed, because my memories as a child were very fluid and were rarely accurate. I seemed to live in a fantasy most of the time so telling what was real and what wasn’t is hard for me.

The second book would have to be Dragonriders of Pern my Anne McCaffery. I got it in the library when I ran out of Margaret Henry horse books to read, I loved Misty of Chincoteague, so that would have been my first foray into science fiction. Following that I would go on to discover Andre Norton and Ursula K LeGuin, and eventually, Jack Vance and a whole bunch of amazing writers.

The third book I am going to go with Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, because it made me feel like I could read anything, it was the unabridged edition. It was a very thick volume, and ignited a love for classical literature and a fortitude to read to the end no matter the size of the book. It also taught me what not to do, because there are spots where it is difficult for a modern reader, and I know what doesn’t work and what does. Even great writers can make mistakes.

This was a tough call, because a lot of books have influenced me greatly. Jack Vance’s Lyonesse, George RR Martin’s A Game of Thrones, Ursula K LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which I read also in the fifth grade and did a book report on, Sir Thomas Mallory’s Le Morte D’Arthur, my love for Arthurian legends, and Roger Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber. Cj Cherryh’s Cyteen. And many, many more. I could keep going.

I used to peruse thrift stores for old sci-fi fantasy books, anything with Del Rey, or Ballantine, or DAW, or Fawcett, or Tor. I had old editions of the Lord of the Rings from the 60s, a copy of 1984 from the 50s and Dune by Frank Herbert from the 70s. All of these are gone because I couldn’t go through my books when I moved and had to get rid of them in a hurry.

I still have my 60s copy of the Silmarillion because it was in my purse at the time. But that is it. I feel the loss everyday, wish I could have planned more and panicked less. But the past is the past, and I have the memories and can find the stories easily enough.

Daily writing prompt
List three books that have had an impact on you. Why?
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