Jacquelyn's Space

It is Somewhere in Time Weekend at the Grand Hotel. The movie “Somewhere in Time” was shot on Mackinac Island, mostly at the Grand, so fans of the movie get together and dress as if they are back in 1912.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081534/

I am a closet fan of the movie– mainly because it was shot on Mackinac though when I was young I had a crush on Christopher Reeve. I think Jane Seymour is beautiful too. The movie itself is quite cheezy though I ate it up when I first saw it…okay the first few times I saw it. I have always been intrigued by time travel. Then there is my passion for all things Mackinac. The movie fed my passion when I was a kid and I couldn’t get to the Island as often as I go now.

Every year when Somewhere in Time Weekend at the Grand comes around I really want to be there yet I feel it is kind of silly. But so what! I am adding ‘Participate in Somewhere in Time Weekend at the Grand Hotel’ to my bucket list. I want to do the whole dress up thing too. That is going to cost a pretty penny. I definitely want to lose weight before go so I can get some really pretty outfits– not anything matronly. Then there is getting my husband on board with the whole idea, haha. He says no way (the hater) but I think I can convince him eventually. If not then I will just take a friend with me.

Favorite scene from the movie:

OMG that always makes me cry! I am silly…but the Island is so beautiful.

Here is a cool website of period clothing:

http://www.recollections.biz/

When the time is right I am going to be ordering my outfit(s), ha. Maybe I’ll even make it next year!

It is so beautiful out tonight. I want to go sit outside but the wind is getting cool now. I did stand out there for a bit, admiring the stars and the three quarter moon  as I listened to the spooky wind blow through the trees and cornfield. It sounded like waves.

I was reminded of a night almost two months ago when I was on Mackinac Island. The moon was full then, or waning just a day shy of the blue moon. The night was gorgeous but cool. My husband and I walked from our inn on Bogan Lane out past Mission Point to the lonely part of the island. The rising moon made a silver path on the water and there was a breeze strong enough to make the waves of Lake Huron beat a steady, rhythmic presence on the shore.

We walked along the pebble pathway close to the shoreline, past people playing neon golf and partying at the resort. The buoy clanged in the Straits as it usually does. I caught a glimpse of it in the silver moonlight as we walked along; I thought about ghost-y things. I tried to capture the moon, the night, the water, with my camera but I wasn’t all that successful.

We stopped and sat on a bench close to the shore where the pathway joins the road, just past the water treatment plant and Small Point Bed and Breakfast. There I was able to drink in the night to its fullest. To my left, looming above Small Point, was a large cliff  — Robinson’s Folly–  illuminated by moonlight, the limestone glowed so bright it seemed to have a silvery blue aura shining back at the stars and the inky night sky. In front of me Lake Huron, in shades of deep blue, silver and white, washed back and forth over the rocky shoreline. The stars winked far above and to the water’s edge–as far as I could see. Other than the rhythm of the waves, the slight rustlings of the breeze across the leaves, and night-birds, that part of the Island was quiet. I wanted to sit on that bench and bask in all that beautiful moonlit glory forever.

It was a gorgeous night, a magical night…one I want to remember forever but I can only try in this paltry attempt in words. I was afraid to put it into words before now but I know I need to get it down before I forget some of the details. The night I will never forget.

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Early yesterday morning was quite lovely too. I had to take my husband to work before the sun came up. I was talking about the future as I drove and on the verge of making a wish when I happened to see a falling star. I love it when that happens! I switched up and changed my wish. I hope it comes true. I dropped my husband off and on the drive back I admired the sky. There was something odd about it– a smoky hue. Perhaps it was fog. I thought about my wish…I thought about all my hopes and dreams. I am going to write them down but not here. I just want to remember these moments.

Damn! I am up to my 588 post or so…that is what WordPress tells me. I seem to be on a writing kick– I have written over 4400 (about 11 single-spaced pages) words over the past 12 hours. I hate to go to sleep and lose this writing fire. Maybe I am starting to perk up. I hope I can keep this up through November. I have to try to write about 1670 words a day or 11670 a week to finish a novel in a month– if it is only going to be 50,000 words long. I think 50,000 words is rather a short novel. I don’t know…

All I know is I want to keep writing and I hope this transfers over to writing my papers for school.

November is National Novel Writing Month– writers aspiring writers attempt to write a novel (50, 000 words– about 1700 a day) in a month. The Writing Center at my school is doing a couple of events and I want to be involved so I was thinking hard on what kind of novel could I write in a month. Something fairly easy that would not require a lot of research. I do have an awesome idea for a novel I thought of months ago (and have done a little work on) but it would require too much research and take longer than a month to write– have to save that one for later.

I was racking my brain at work last night and finally I came up with another idea– a cross between three recent bestselling novels:

Fifty Shades of Twilight Games 

Ha! A hybrid of Fifty Shades of Grey, Twilight, and The Hunger Games. It will be a best seller in no time! Maybe at the adult bookstore, he hee!! If only I could work in Harry Potter somehow…just kidding!

But I really did come up with an idea I think will work. I was talking with a customer (she had been reading a book while she waited for her food, LOL) about NaNoWriMo and I told her I had only written short stories but I was going to attempt a novel if I could come up with an idea that would work. She gave me that old advice, “Write what you know.” Good, solid advice but when I hear that I immediately think of memoir and creative non-fiction. If I write what I know I am going to write about my life and all the BS I have been through; that isn’t a fictional novel and doesn’t really fit with NaNoWriMo. Then a light bulb went off over my head– I could expand on a short story I wrote for a creative writing class a couple of years ago and turn it into a novel! I wrote it from a story prompt but with some tweaking it should work. I was really proud of that story because it kind of read like the first chapter of a book and I wrote it in one day, all 5200 words of it.

So now I have lots of the story planned out (thanks to a slow night), some characterization done, and a small list of easy research to do. I think it will be a pretty good story with strong characters. Nothing to it but to do it! I just hope I have time in November to work it in.

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I published my blog post and quotes pop up to the side once its posted. This is the one I got:

“My ideas usually come not at my desk writing but in the midst of living.” ~ Anais Nin

So true!