Drawing was one of my favorite pastimes, until I met my husband, who never took an art class in his life, but his work is brilliant and beautifully finished, while mine is never finished. Today, Facebook reminded me of something I'd totally forgotten--positive feedback-- and something I didn't know: This 1981 drawing of mine was my most-commented on Facebook photo of 2016 (a whopping 51 comments--LOL!). Not a cat or dog photo, not a nature shot, not something I wrote, but this.

Maybe I should write less.

This one looks pretty good--if you don't compare it too closely to the photo I was working from:

Inaccuracy, in the smallest details, make or break a drawing--or a story.

The same "unfinished" quality (er, problem!)

plagues my drawing and writing, but I didn't quit writing, in part because it's one thing Tim doesn't do better than me--and only because he doesn't write fiction. He has no desire to. His mind doesn't work that way. When I'm doing chores or outside gardening or walking dogs, I'm entertaining scenes in my head with people who do not exist outside my head. I eavesdrop on their conversations. I imagine worst-case scenarios, but more often, I imagine happy scenes. Finales. And most often, I write none of them, and forget 99% of them.

5-Minute Freewrite

is a fantastic way to help me remember. Sometimes I look back on a last-year's freewrite and wonder where that came from and why I would NOT REMEMBER the names or details, AT ALL, had I not written and preserved the vignette.

I couldn't even tell you the names of half these characters. The high-school dropout who drag races in a fictional version of Falls City, Nebraska. The woman whose husband was rear-ended and killed, and the little blonde from Register Six turned out to be someone she'd misjudged. What were any of their names? I have no idea!

Don't take it personally if I can't remember names in your stories. Off the top of my head, I would say Dranuvar was the name of @kaelci's hot-guy protagonist in her NaNoWriMo novel, but no, @dranuvar is a Steemit user, and the name of the guy in Half Past the Moonfall is... starts with a D, I'd swear... Of course I can't remember a name like Katéa; I can't even spell it from memory, and I never remember how to add accents to English keyboard characters. Copy-paste:

é

Sigh

I cannot believe the gaping holes in my memory, especially with names and numbers.

But I remember how much I love this story!

It all began right here at #freewritehouse!

Hop over to Smashwords and pick up Half Past the Moonfall for FREE!

It is said that you should never follow the Min Min Lights; they will lure you away never to be seen again.
So, what does Katéa do? Chase after them of course!
Determined to capture the myth and make her fortune, this young Australian stumbles out of the bush and into a fantastical new world filled with pixies, dragons and perpetually drunk villagers, and even falls in love.

With What's His Name?????

But, not all is ever as it seems. An awakened evil stalks the land and Katéa finds herself in the centre of malevolent misfortune. Can she deafen this disaster she unwittingly helped summon, or will the world be shrouded in darkness forever?
Warning: Contains sexual themes, crude language, and Australian humour.

Freewritehouse, NaNoWriMo, March Madness,

It's all been good, and I am grateful for the encouragement, the positive feedback (which I tend always to forget), and the inspiration. We saw a November novel become a published book!

We've also seen Freewrites collated into an anthology, and published. I posted about @honeydue's book. I reviewed it a Amazon but they flushed every review I ever posted due to some "violation" of their "Family and Friends" policy.

Book Reviews are good for authors, but connecting with readers is drives me, not sales, not critical acclaim. Here at Freewritehouse, I've found a few like-minded writers and readers, and they keep me from giving up. I do have two published stories, both in anthologies that hardly anyone has read, but I need to stop looking at numbers ("My own children can't stand to read my stuff!"), and focus on letting the characters that roam in my head out.

Not in a million years would I have remembered

names in my own stories, which I just looked up out of curiosity. e.g.,

Sarah Savage

was the widow in the story that morphed into a Demolition Derby, and I would never recall the names I came up with for Day 488 - prompt: baby "Junie Unash!" came the voice of her boss, Tammy Bauersox.

You guessed it: I never remember my own passwords, either!

Monstrous Moonshine

is another term I struggled to remember, gave up, and found among my own note for March Madness.

...in addition to monstrous moonshine, there are 23 other moonshines: mysterious correspondences between the dimensions of a symmetry group on the one hand, and the coefficients of a special function on the other.
I hope I didn't put that in the story.
Here is the #unfinished Sara (Sarah?? OMG, I can't remember how I spelled it!!!!) Savage freewrite that morphed into four parts:

Part 1 -In a Pig's Ear - Day 478: 5 Minute Freewrite: Sunday - Prompt: pig's ear
Part 2 - Pineapple Finials- Day 480: 5 Minute Freewrite: Tuesday - Prompt: pineapple
Part 3 - "Live. Love. Smash." - Day 481 - Prompt: sound of sirens
Part 4 - Magic in the Mundane - Day 482 - Prompt: magical realism