Category: Other Creative Endeavors

My Studio Tour

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Hi.


Recently I realized that I have never actually shown you guys my writing space. And my writing space is really cool (in my own little personal opinion). So I would love to take you on a little tour by showing you some pictures!


This is my studio.

It’s right off the playroom, so that I can never get a moment’s peace or any actual work done.

Here I have all my witchy pitchies, featuring my favorite photograph of Helen Keller and Norman Rockwell’s depiction of Jo from Little Women. And, of course, my calendar of stickers that I’m always talking about. (Don’t mind the date, I always write my blog posts in advance lol)

Over here I have a big white board, so I can easily jot down different ideas and brainstorm.

These are my lovely, year-round, witchy shelves with all my beautiful little trinkets and things. At least three of the items that I’m showing you in this tour secretly open and have surprises inside, but I’m not going to tell you which ones they are because they are secret.

Fun fact about me is I collect little fabric flowers that mysteriously get lost and find their way to the ground. Whenever I am lucky enough to find one, I put it in a little jar and then label on the bottom where I found it. So every single flower that you see here was found by me in the past five years in a mysterious place.

This is my flip book. I use the calendar design on Canva, but instead of making a calendar I just compile an aesthetic board for each of my book ideas. (Which is a lot, so not even all of them are represented here. This is actually an outdated flip book.) It’s kind of like having a physical Pinterest board on the wall.

My random side wall of pictures. That kissing painting- for some reason everyone in Peru has this painting hanging in their house. I vowed to put it in my own house because I saw it all the time and really liked it. It’s has a very Shakespearean feel to me. Those bells on the wall were actually used in my wedding. Instead of doing like a ‘sparkler send-off’ when the bride and groom leave and get into their cars, we had everyone ring bells. That’s a replica John Lennon jacket. It’s the jacket he wears on the Rubber Soul album. I also have a piano in my studio. I don’t play the piano very well but I really enjoy composing music so that was a HUGE birthday gift one year.

I also have a stage in my studio lol. Being able to teach theater was one of the biggest reasons that we ended up buying the house. My husband saw it on Zillow and was like, “!!! Val this has a little stage! We HAVE to go see it!” You know, to be honest with you, I’m pretty sure this room is supposed to be a media room. Like a “theater” not “theatre” haha. So I kind of stole this room for myself. But it’s got good creative vibes, so it works!

Overall, I just really love my room. It was the one place in the house where I felt like I could just let my quirkiness explode. That I could just go for it and be maximalist, and witchy, and funny and anything creative that I felt like. So that’s it! I really love my studio and I hope you enjoyed the tour!

34 Random Facts About Myself

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Hello. I turned 34 last week. My age feels both accurate and inaccurate. Like I don’t feel 34 while sitting on my office chair with my feet tucked under my butt. But I guess I do feel 34 when I drive my minivan to pick up my kids from school. The heartburn and the back pain screams 34 haha.

Anyways, to celebrate my age I wrote 34 random facts about myself, one for each year I’ve been alive. You’re welcome.

  1. I was born in the same exact hospital that I birthed my first child in.
  2. Dinosaurs have been a special interest of mine ever since I was two.
  3. One of my earliest memories is giving myself the chicken pox. I was jealous that my mom counted all of my sister’s chicken pox and so I snuck into her room when she was asleep and tried to “breathe in her germs” hahaha! Unfortunately, it worked and I got WAY sicker than she had been.
  4. I wrote my first story at three or four. I drew it as a four panel picture on a Mac “Kids Pic” program. And it was about the chicken pox I gave myself lol. (“I got chicken pox”, “Then Mom gave me a bath”, “Then I felt better”, “The End”)
  5. I’m the middle child in my family. I have a sister three years older than me and a brother five years younger than me.
  6. I’ve always held my pencil “weird”. Resting on my middle finger instead of pinching it or whatever. My first grade teacher tried and tried to correct it but I still hold my pencil that way as an adult.
  7. When I was in second grade I was obsessed with Santa’s reindeer. I wrote them each individual letters instead of Santa that year.
  8. In third grade I purposely sat in the back of the class so I could write stories in my blue denim notebook all day instead of pay attention to the teacher. I filled that notebook and I still have it.
  9. At 9, I briefly took acting classes but I couldn’t sing worth a dime so I never got cast in any significant roles
  10. I started directing my own plays and performed them for all the other 5th grade classes. (This was the skit I had my friends do haha: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfLdFZ4my9g )
  11. The only time I got a ticket or a pink slip in school was when I snuck under the fence to play in the creek next to our elementary school. My mom wasn’t even mad about it. She was more mad about the girl who tattled on me.
  12. In Jr. High, I had a red guinea pig named Joe.
  13. At thirteen, I wrote, directed and starred in a play I put on for my local church. It was a comedy called, “The Foot.”
  14. I was obsessed with the original Twilight Zone. I even threw a Twilight Zone party for my friends. That TV show would become a massive influence on my writing.
  15. Took 4 years of French in secondary school because I liked this guy in my class. Can’t remember a single word and speak fluent Spanish now lol.
  16. In high school, I wrote a full-length feature film with my friends. A low-budget student slasher. (What else?) It wasn’t very good or anything lol but it ended up being a creative catalyst for a lot of the kids who worked on that project, including me.
  17. I got shingles my senior year. How does that even happen? Haha. The haunts of giving myself the chicken pox
  18. One year I repeatedly got cast as a monkey in a few different plays. Type casting I guess.
  19. I studied Classical Acting at Southern Utah University until I ran out of money and had to move back home.
  20. One of my favorite hobbies when I was 20 was exploring abandoned buildings. One time the cops came and my friends and I hid ourselves inside an abandoned school. (oops)
  21. I lived in various areas of Peru for a year and a half. Lima, Trujillo, Salaverry, and Neuvo Chimbote.
  22. Twenty-two was one of the worst years of my whole life. Like the entire year. Birthday to birthday. Just horrific. I couldn’t think of a single good fact I wanted to say about this year. So I guess that’s my fact. Unlike the popular song at the time, I was not feeling 22 lol.
  23. Coincidentally, twenty-three was one of the absolute best years of my life. Even at the time I called it “The Golden Year”. I ended up meeting my soul mate when I was 23.
  24. I used to work in Accounts Receivable at a printer company and got in trouble for writing during work (Heh heh heh. It wasn’t funny to me at the time, but now it is.)
  25. I left my job at the printer company and went back to school. In my Intro to Educational Psychology class, the professor said that “the things we chose to do in our free time as children reflects as close to our true selves as possible.” That’s the moment I realized how much story-telling has been a passion throughout my life.
  26. When I was twenty-six, I began writing regularly and have not looked back since!
  27. The first time I had ever set foot in the Phoenix area, was when I stepped off the plane to live here.
  28. I found out my first story was going to be professionally published while I was in active labor with my second child.
  29. At twenty-nine I had this life-changing Beatlemania phase that… never went away lol.
  30. We moved into our first house the exact weekend that everything shut down for the pandemic.
  31. I have three spectacular kids and I’m not just saying that. I really love each of those three people so dang much.
  32. I published my first book on Amazon at thirty-two.
  33. I got my first screen-writing credit at thirty-three.
  34. At thirty-four, I still sit on my office chair with my feet tucked under my butt haha

I Asked AI to Give Me a Writing Routine as a STAHM

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One of my very favorite author tubers is Kate Cavanaugh because she always tries the most interesting writing challenges. And the one that I watched recently was where she asked AI to give her a “crazy” writing routine. Which it definitely delivered. It told her to get up at three or something and eat a handful of chocolate chips for breakfast hahaha.

So I was certainly curious about this. Obviously, I wasn’t going to try to ask it for “something crazy” like Kate did. I am a stay at home mom with three kids. Ages 6, 4 and 1. So when it comes to writing routines… I have to have a regular babysitter or else there just is no routine at all. And that was something that Kate doesn’t have to work around, so I thought I would ask the all-knowing AI and see what kind of advice it would give to a stay at home writer person such as myself.

Basically what Chat GPT came back with was a writing routine where you do thirty minute sessions throughout the day in between caring for your kids. One before they wake up, a mid morning session while they “play quietly”, an afternoon session while they nap or have “quiet time” and an evening session after your kids go to bed.

Seems feasible, but at the same time they’re little kids. Nothing is feasible hahaha.

At the end of the writing routine, the AI told me to be flexible and it’s okay to adjust as necessary. I responded back a thank you and also asked it to please remember me if it ever takes over the world. To which it said this:

Concerning. That little wink. Is that a threat? I can’t tell.

So the next day I set an alarm for an hour earlier than my kids usually get up and got to work. And of course, my four-year-old woke up an hour earlier than he usually wakes up. (How did he know?) I wrote anyway and was okay productive. I did have to stop once or twice because my son asked me to open his yellow popsicle at 6:30 in the morning.

Gosh I hope he naps today.

Mid Morning session turned out to be later than I thought but worked fine. I settled my four year old with Blippi on my phone and gave the baby her favorite puffs in her high chair. I had only gotten a couple of minutes in when my son wanted to play “ghost” with me, so I had to get him a sticker book to entertain him. Then I found myself immediately texting my husband about work and dang. The morning session sure was easier. Sad for me because I don’t like getting up early. But also had I followed Chat GPT’s advice and done a mid-morning session while my baby was asleep instead of almost falling asleep myself I would have been more productive altogether. Oh well. Plan for exhaustion if you’re a parent. Just pencil it into your schedule.

Afternoon session I opted to try to squeeze in while waiting to pick up my son from school. I usually get in the pick up line super early so I thought it would be a nice natural break to try it out. I also slowly drove around the neighborhood so the four year old who woke up ridiculously early would pass out. He did. But then the baby was complaining of course. I brought extra toys. All of which were really loud, so that was dumb of me. I wrote as best as I could in the awkward, hot car. It was okay. So far I had a total of 1400 words by the time I had done the three half hour sessions, so honestly that wasn’t too bad!

During the evening session I put up this blog post. So you’re welcome haha.