Trip #1: Feeling welcome in Welkom.

On By Enette VenterIn My journeyLeave a comment

I posted recently about me finishing high school and wanting to travel during my break.
The simplest way for me to travel is to visit family and friends all around my country. Where better to start my break than to go visit my grandparents?

Welcome in Welkom

I haven’t gone to visit my grandparents in over a year so when my mum suggested I go visit them for my first trip I had no objections.
Along with me I took clothes, my laptop and my grandma from the other side of the family. So now I need to clarify some things before things get confusing.
I hung out with both my grandmas that week. The one is grandma N and the other is grandma E.

 

Fun fact is that I’m named after both my grandmothers. My name, Enette, is a mix between theirs and sounds almost exactly like grandma N’s name. So it was a very confusing week cause when I said grandma both grandma’s would answer and when ever grandma E called for either me or grandma N we would both answer.
This is just the the boon of living in an Afrikaans household though so I’m practically used to this confusion. (my grandpa and brother share a name. My brother’s second name is my dad’s name. Me and my sister share a middle name and my name sounds like my mothers. It’s all very confusing.)

 

 

What did I do during this week?

My grandparents live in a small town called Welkom, and when I was little I thought only grandparents lived there. There’s a lot of stores, restaurants and a florist.
Other than that there is my uncle’s factory that I will probably always think of as grandpa’s factory, and of course my cousin’s house.
So my grandmother’s utilized what the town had to offer and so they took me shopping.

What did I buy during this trip?

During this trip I bought way too many things but I’m so thrilled with all of it
Most important on the list is the books I bought.

  • I bought ‘Egg and spoon’ by Gregory Maguire. It’s a children story written by the original writer of Wicked.
  • I bought ‘Kitty and the silver hand,’ written by Carrie Vaughn. It is book five in a series I’m collecting.
  • I bought’ The petrified flesh’ aka the first book in the ‘Reckless’ series. This is written by Cornelia Funke. This is not a romance novel as I expected but it’s still a great read.
  • I got ‘Romeo and Juliet’ by Wilhelm Shakespeare, simply because it’s a classic and I’ve never read it.
  • I bought a book of Afrikaans short stories, written by Leo Tolstoi.
  • I bought ‘Great expectations’ by Dickens. Another classic that I haven’t read yet and wanted to own.
  • And finally I bought ‘J.R.R Tolken  a biography’ which was written by Humphrey Carpenter. I bought this one simply because I’m obsessed with the biographies of writers.

Along with the books I also got/bought.

  • Makeup sponges
  • Highlighter
  • Stockings
  • A scarf
  • Cookies
  • A pen
  • The card game ‘Joking Hazard’ by Cyanide and Happiness.

 
Other than shopping we also ate at some cool places such as the modern panty pantry, where I got juice and cake.

We also went to The green house where I ate some great toast and hot chocolate.

One of the meals that stood out though was when we went to Spur for breakfast on my last day.
I got myself French toast and bacon.
What made this meal stand out is the fact that there were golden syrup practically melted into the french toast, and a piece of bacon for each piece of bread. There were also caramelized banana spread around it but let’s be honest, I loved this meal for it’s combination of syrup and bacon.
With this I got a chocolate milkshake but I think next time I’ll just get juice since both the milkshake and the meal is very filling and I couldn’t finish it all.

 

What did I write while I visited.

Well I wrote two blog posts, on writing which you will be seeing soon, and then I also wrote a lot in one of my stories.
I’m participating in camp NaNoWriMo this month and I was trying to catch up since I am seriously behind.

 

During this visit though, I got to focus a lot on my beauty/hygene routine.

I had just started to wash my face with a honey and lime mix which was honestly something I was sceptical about since my face and it’s breakouts hate me.
The thing is though, it’s only been a week but I’m pretty sure it’s working.
I mention this not to brag about the miracle uses of honey though, but because I don’t normally focus on hygiene and beauty at home. So taking care of myself and playing around with makeup again for the first time in three years actually felt really great. It reminded me that I feel better when I take care of myself.

 
Anyway, the week was fun. I loved hanging out with my grandmothers, and hugging my grandfather.
I was spoiled and taken shopping, which was weird for me, but I loved it.
It was great to return to a town that I hadn’t seen in over a year and to visit family that I missed a lot.
But that’s all I have for now so….
See you soon racoon.

 

To follow my adventures as they happen,  follow me on twitter where I what’s going on in my life and the nonsensical thoughts that go through my head.

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I finished high school!

On By Enette VenterIn My journeyLeave a comment

Done with high school

 

Three weeks ago, I finished high school and let me tell you I am very happy about this. Up until last year I was a pretty decent student, passing with okay grades. Since I home-schooled my high school journey looked a lot different from those of my peers, but I enjoyed it. I liked learning for the first couple of years and I put a lot of work into all kinds of subjects, ranging from Math and business studies to art and languages.
Unfortunately last year threw a wrench into my plans when my back started giving me problems.
I’m going to be honest, I thought I’ll have to stay back a year because of how much work I missed last year. But my parents were patient and we switched plans at the beginning of this year.
Instead of continuing with the British standard and supplier for my school work, we switched to an American one that focuses on helping you finish your GED and be ready for collage.
So I quit my job, and put all my effort into not only doing my schoolwork but doing it well. So here I am, finished with school six months ahead of everyone else my age – and I’m elated about it.

So what am I doing now that I’m done with school?

Well just like any other teenager who just finished school I plan on traveling before I have to start university next year. I don’t have a lot of money, or even a lot of expectation for where I’m going but I am going somewhere beyond my room and that’s enough for me.
The plan is to travel between family friends for the next six months, doing jobs where I can and just enjoying people’s company.

I’m going to admit that I don’t like spending time away from my family. My siblings are my best friends and my parents my rocks so it’s always kind of uncomfortable for me to leave them behind when I go somewhere, but I really do want to get out of my house. I do want to see the friends and family that I haven’t seen in years, and experience new aspects of life.
I’m stepping out of my comfort bubble (aka my room) and I’m planning to see little bits of the world.
It’s just a shame I can’t take my dog with me 🙂

 
Cheers for now I’ll write again later!

The last enigma

On By Enette VenterIn My writingLeave a comment

Author’s note: Story time! I don’t share my writing on here very often (ironic since this blog is about my writing) but I decided that since I’ve been writing a lot I might as well start sharing some of it. So here is a sneak peak into what I wrote last week. It’s currently called “The last enigma” but I’ll probably change that eventually so if you have any name suggestions let me know 🙂

A shadow's enigma

…

Tiana gasped for air as she woke up. She was in a glass tube, liquid draining away past her knees. Her hands reached for the skin tight suit that clung to her body and tried pulling it away from her chest as she gasped for air. It was too tight.
“Good morning,” an old woman asked from were she was standing in front of the glass tube. Tiana recognized the lady’s eyes but wasn’t sure why. Finally breathing became less painful and Tiana let go of her skin tight clothes and instead reached out to put her hands against the glass that separated her from the woman. Behind the woman was a dark room with some green and red lights blinking against the far wall.
The woman smiled at Tiana, a kind warm smile and just like that anger made Tiana go stiff. She glared at the woman, she couldn’t remember this old lady but she knew she hated her.
Tiana formed her hand into a fist and sent it swinging into the glass.
The woman’s smile widened a little.
“I see you are as feisty as ever. I’m glad about that, because it means you and I can play. I hope you don’t mind if I pick the game,” the old lady said taking a step away from the glass. Tiana glared at the lady wondering where Kale was. These people had taken her from him, her brother, but he was on his way to save her. She knew it. She wasn’t sure how she knew it but she did.
“I’m not playing with you,” Tiana growled out, her voice sounded odd to her own ears. Not quite as high pitched as it was supposed to be.
“Oh yes you are,” the old woman said walking over to the far side of the room where a little black box with blinking lights was stuck to the wall. “Before we do, tell me how do you feel?”
Tiana glared at the woman bracing her body inside the glass tube.
“My brother is coming for me,” Tiana said.
The old lady gave light laugh.
“I know, you’ve told me this a hundred times before.”
“You should be scared, he’ll kill you if he finds you.”
”How do you feel Tiana?” she asked leaning against the wall.
“Let me go. I’m not telling you anything.”
The woman pressed a button and Tiana’s eyes went wide as pain ran up her legs and through the rest of her body. She fell forward, her forearms catching her against the glass tube to keep her from hitting the ground. She ground her teeth to keep in her cry.
Just as sudden as it appeared the pain went away and the old lady smiled at her again.
“How do you feel?”
“Oh kick yourself,” Tiana growled out, her gray eyes turning cold. “My brother will murder you.”
”Honey, it’s been ten years, I doubt your brother is still searching,” the woman said with a kind smile before pressing the button again. This time the pain was worse.
Tiana’s knees collapsed beneath her as she screamed.

 

 

 

Author’s note: alright, so this is the introduction to the story. I hope got your interest.

I have only finished the first act of this story, but I will be sharing chapter one next week. This is simply a little teaser. As I said leave name ideas in the bottom, and any comments you make I’ll try to respond to as soon as I can.

Thank you for reading xox

An update

On By Enette VenterIn my experience1 Comment

What’s up buttercup?

I’m back, still alive, still writing and still cute.

 

It’s been really long since I’ve last blogged and a lot of important things have happened since then. I want to give an update that can sum it all up for you but since I haven’t really blogged in a year there is a lot to share.

 

So in advance, sorry if this post is super long, I’m going to try my best to fill you in.

 

My health…

I’ve been pretty open and honest about my physical health problems along with the mental blocks that come with it, but since I’ve been absent in the blogging realm for quite some time now, there’s a big chance a couple of my followers don’t know about it.

So here is a quick recap:

I hurt my back last year. It was the result of scoliosis combined with stress, but the result was chronic pain. So for about nine months I couldn’t sit for longer than forty minutes, spent most of my time in bed (watching youtube) and was constantly on the edge of an emotional breakdown.

It’s better now. I found treatments that work for me in November and have been improving ever since.

For more information about my life with scoliosis (what it was like growing up etc) you can go read these posts on my other blog.

 

 

 

I decided to share about my health first because it was a a big factor in a lot of how I’ve been faring in the other areas of my life.

 

 

School work…

Because I couldn’t sit a lot last year, I fell behind on school work. If I had been going to a normal school instead of homeschooling I’d be forced to redo a year.

As it stands I am currently trying to finish school in the next two or three months because I need to have my matric score before the university that I want to go to close submissions. Normally someone will just use their grade 11 marks to go to university but because I couldn’t work last year I don’t have any.

So I’m doing my GED now and praying that it will be good enough to get me into university.

I want to go study psychology next year, with either a language or education subject as an extra subject.

 

 

Job…

I’ve been providing after school care and tutoring for almost three years – but I recently stopped.

Me general experience in the field involved helping kids who had either been falling behind in school or who have learning disabilities to get back on track by providing one on one tutoring.

At first I thought it would be a simple job where I get to help my little cousin with some math, but I found it to be worth so much more than that – both to me and the kids.

When you help a child with their education, you spend a lot of time with them and have a lot of influence in their life. You are one of the factors that can make or break that child.

I love both the kids that I worked with very much (both little cousins of mine) and I loved to see them grow comfortable with themselves, hard work and me.

Despite the fact that this work was probably one of the reasons my back refused to heal (it’s a very intense job) I wouldn’t trade my time doing it for anything.

Now I don’t do it anymore, because I realized that I have to focus more on school – and I would have had to look after three kids this year, which is simply too much for my body to handle.

 

 

Writing…

This is the topic I think is most relevant to this blog (since it’s about writing) but the whole back problem, school and job topics happen to be really relevant to my writing, which is why I mentioned them first.

So in November of 2016 I wrote a book called Falling for Pink. In 2017, me and a friend of mine worked on ironing out some of the kinks.

Since I could not sit to write last year, I haven’t really created anything new. I also found that the combination of being over emotional because of the chronic pain and the exhaustion from looking after the kids while my body just wanted to lie down caused some writers block. My creativity has been coming in little bouts only to disappear for weeks.

Normally I’d just put my butt in the chair and work despite the emotional drain and lack of creativity, but the physical pain made it literally impossible for me to do that.

Now my back is better and I don’t look after the kids anymore so I’ve been slowly opening myself back up to creativity and writing.

I also signed Falling for Pink up for Kindle scout in April, unfortunately I did not get excepted, but I did wait much longer than the normal two days that they normally respond in and I was on the hot and trendy list for a day – so I honestly don’t think it was a complete loss. (How can I when my book got over 5K views?)

Obviously there are people out there who will want to read my books. This is very inspiring and makes me excited for when I do hit a break through.

For now I have to pursue school first though – but I’m definitely writing some short fiction pieces during the weekends.

 

 

Blogging…

Obviously I haven’t really blogged this past year – and while I can give you a list of excuses, the truth of the matter is that I’m sorry. When I started taking blogging seriously way back when I promised writing advice every week and fiction pieces every month.

I have not been living up to this promise, and I’m sorry. You guys are really great and have been very supportive of my writing over the years. I can’t make a promise that I’ll suddenly be blogging again every second day, because honestly I don’t know how often I’ll be able to blog in the future. I do want to try though.

So thank you for your support and you can expect at least something from me in the months to come.

 

 

 

Other note worthy things…

 

I broke up with my boyfriend of two years in October. I shared very little about my romantic relationships in the past – but I have mentioned it once or twice, so I feel the need to clarify on this. I was the one to break up with him, but at the same time it was pretty mutual. Both walked into that day knowing that we won’t be a couple anymore afterwards. To the people who read my blog and also know my ex – no worries we are still great friends.

 

I got a new laptop, because my old one died on me. I managed to save all my writing and photos because I save almost everything to a cloud. The emergency did eat up most of my savings though so I don’t know if I’ll be able to pay for my blog’s domain name this year.

 

I got another dog! (also why my savings suck right now)

My mum saw photos of puppies on facebook and my dad told her that while we need another guard dog for our yard we can’t afford another dog, specifically the R500 that the pup’s owner was asking.

So I payed for the dog and now we have our little(big) Watson. I’ve got some great stories to share about this do, but I won’t get into it right now.

 

I turned 18 and got my first tattoo.

I got my favorite bible verse tattooed onto my arm along with my birth flower. It covers a scar I got through some medical problems as a baby, and honestly I love it very much. I’m going to go into some extra detail about what the tattoo means along with the scar it covers on my other blog, so if you want to read that you’ll have to go follow that.

 

 

That’s all I have to share about last year for now.

So thank you for sticking with me up to this point. I hope to write more again now that I have a little more time open, and that I can sit properly again.

 

If you really want to keep up with me though I suggest you follow me on twittertwitter because that’s the only place I really ever post to when I’m doing something. Beware though I mostly post silly and sarcastic tweets.

 

With all this said, it’s time for me to close off,

See you soon, racoon!

Five days in

On By Enette VenterIn Fun stuffLeave a comment

It’s been five days since the launch of my kindle scout campaign.
It’s been five days during which you, my supporters, have been voting for my novel Falling for Pink to help me reach my dreams of getting published.

If you are new and you don’t know what I’m talking about then go ahead and read my post from last week where I explained the situation.

If you do know what I’m talking about and you’ve voted for Falling for Pink up on kindle then allow me to say thank you. Thank you very much for all your support.
We’re still only in the beginning phase of my kindle scout campaign and already we’ve excelled past my expectation – I’m so curious to see what will happen during the rest of this month.

Fivedaysin

This campaign is not about winning for me. Although if I win it would be awesome.
This campaign to me is about sharing my work and seeing how people respond. I wanted to see if there is a space for my writing in this world.
Well I got my answer.
It’s only been five days and so far Falling for Pink has been on Kindle scout’s hot and trending list for 16 hours. In fact it’s had 860 views so far.
I don’t know if this is a lot by most people’s standards but I’m ecstatic about it.
I’ve also received emails, blog followers, direct messages in twitter and more since launching.
So if ever the world was gathering to tell me that yes there is a space for my writing then I guess it’s now.

 

A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit – Richard Bach.

Right now I’m very hopeful for this campaign but even if I don’t end up winning, I will keep writing and keep trying to share my work – because there is no way I’m giving up before I reach my dreams.

 

So thank you very much for supporting me and my writing, it’s an honor to share this journey with you.

If I can ask one more favor from you though. Please share Falling for Pink and help me get more eyes on it. Vote for it if you haven’t yet because there is no way I’m reaching my dreams without you.

My Kindle scout campaign is launched

On By Enette VenterIn My writing, NaNoWriMo, Pink1 Comment

I’ve got news!

I was watching YouTube videos on my phone when a email notification popped up. When I opened it it spoke about Kindle Scout which I did not know was a thing (if you don’t know don’t worry I’ll tell you in a minute) and it highlighted how you can sign up for it.
It’s a great opportunity for writers to get a publishing contract with kindle so I signed up.  But now I need your help to succeed.

Kindle scout launch

First, what exactly is Kindle Scout?

Kindle Scout is an opportunity for writers to get a publishing contract from kindle (as already stated)
It works on a reader driven system which means that you the readers get to vote for your favorite books – and then they are considered for publication by kindle.
I got to upload the first couple of chapters from my novel onto kindle scout so now you can go read it. If you like it, you vote for it and increase my chances of getting chosen by Kindle.

 

To vote for me you can go through this link to find “Falling for Pink” and then click on the vote button beneath the excerpt.

 

What is falling for Pink about?

Well here’s my little blurb.

The monster in this story has pink hair and lots of anxiety.
Peggy McCarthy is a monster straight out of mythology.
Used to being hated and hunted she avoids people – or at least everyone except Benjamin, the boy who works in the coffee shop down the block.
When an accident strikes Benjamin gets hurt and Peggy is faced with a choice, either she stays with the boy who makes her happy or run away like her instincts tell her to.
But is she ready for the consequences of her decision?

By Benjamin’s side Peggy is invited to join his family for Christmas on the farm. It’s a warm South-African December in a big family house and very very different from what Peggy is used to.
By meeting his parents, sister, aunt and cousin – Peggy is forced to practice her social skills. She hopes that by doing so she can become someone worthy of the title girlfriend.
But will her being a monster effect the holiday?
With Benjamin’s aunt close to figuring out what she is and a mysterious person looking for her, it seems as if the holiday will come crashing down around her. But at least she has a little bit of time and she plans to make the most of it.

So picture a girl with bright pink hair clinging to the one person in the world who doesn’t make her feel like a monster, because that’s what Peggy is doing.
Despite the problems and the odds she and Benjamin start a relationship – and hold on to each other through it all.

 

Falling for Pink

Are you interested? I hope so since I loved writing it!

 

 

Your reward for voting

If you vote for me then you will receive an email at the end of the month to tell you if I’ve been chose to by published by kindle or not. If they do choose me you will get a free advanced reader copy (e-book) of Falling for Pink.

 

Now that I have all the details out of the way I want to ask you person to person to please go vote for “Falling for Pink” and support my career by doing so.

Vote for falling for pink.

Life Lesson #6

On By Enette VenterIn life lessonsLeave a comment

Be creative for you.

In a world set up for result we often forget that there are some things we can do without seeking validation through it. Creativity is one of those things you really should only be doing for you. So try to take a moment every now and then to be creative with no ulterior motive then to simply be creative.

It’s good for you and it’s something fun.

You’d be surprised how creativity can help you work through things you didn’t even know where bugging you. I call this the process of de-cluttering your soul. Being creative de-clutters your soul.