Setting the Mood through Music

   Music. 

   I know we all listen to it when we write. A calming or thrilling thing really, it helps put us in the mood to write. It's a beautiful tool.

  

  But what is it about music that sets the mood, what is it about music that makes us want to write?

  

  I can't tell for everyone, but for me at least my reasoning is that the music travels in to my writing. How boring is it just sitting at a computer typing? Very. Though I love writing, there come a point where I need some motivation and music is my key point.  

  Take for example this song: 

   

  I find this song to be very motivating for me when I'm stuck. The music matches the setting of the book and most everything it stands for. Though I have no idea what they are saying, it makes me feel awesome. When I feel awesome, it translates in to my writing. I write scenes that match up with the song. I would write happy or inspirational scenes when I listen to this.

  Take this song as example as well:

   

   I would listen to this song when writing a sad scene, like the day after their lover broke their heart, or a funeral. It makes me want to cry, and so that also translates in to my writing as well.

  In a literal sense of the saying, your blood sweat and tears go in to your writing when you listen to music while writing. Live emotions bubble inside of you and you sense the urge to write them down. I suggest to anyone wanting to find motivation to listen to music while writing. Do it! It makes it so much more enjoyable.

Strong Characters

  All right guys! Well there's this challenge going around telling everyone to post a teaser to their writing every week, and then somehow relate it to a lesson in writing. So I'm going to take that challenge! So, here's a good topic.

  I hear voices in my head..

  Stop what your thinking right now! I'm not schizophrenic or anything.But yes, it is true, there are people living inside my head, and they speak to me.

  Any writer experiences this, and if you haven't, then the characters in your story probably need some more development. Before you start freaking out about the crap load of work you have to do now because you don't hear voices in your head, don't worry, I was kidding about that. Well... I hope you guys understood that. When you write something the characters come alive and become real to you, if your connected to the story enough.

 At the moment I am in the process of writing the sequel to Manipulated, and also editing Manipulated. It's not healthy to be so in love with a story line when your editing, because you don't want to get rid of stuff, but I can't help it. I love the story and I love writing it! But, how did this happen? Why is it I love this story so much? It's because of the characters.

  In my mind I've grown friendships with these people. I know their quirks, what sets them off, their bonds and ties, how far they would go in a situation, what they consider humorous. I know who they love and how they love, I know their losses, their joys, their heartbreak, what breaks them, what can't break them, because I created it all. My creations have become so real to me, and all these people are my immortal friends who will forever live in my head. Because I created them they way they are, I know how they would react to things, how they would respond, and they tell me what I need to do. If I'm ever stuck in the middle of a situation I think to myself, hmm, what would Kya do, or what would Jet do? And that character comes alive in my head and tells me.

  In the beginning, I felt disconnected with the characters. I didn't exactly know who they were, what their attitude towards life was, how they would react to things. I tried to get inside their heads and find out what they would do, but I couldn't because I couldn't get inside their head because their heads didn't exist. I hadn't created them yet.

  It got to the point that I would go outside in the woods barefoot to try to connect with my inner Kya.

 Trust me... never, and I mean never, walk around the forest barefoot unless you are Kya or Pocahontas, which none of us are. There are pine cones, and thorns, and pointy leaves...

 Once I actually started developing the characters, answers started coming clearly to me.

  
In the story Manipulated, Kya is a water manipulator trapped inside the colonies, villages of manipulators with an island type feel to them, with Chasers, evil soldier type people, guard them and are supposed to bring them food and proper shelter, but don't and abuse them instead. She fends for her brother and mother and day to day living is a struggle. I knew that from the beginning, but I didn't know who she was.

  
So I dug in to her past. Her father was killed by Chasers as punishment for u
sing his manipulating powers. How would that affect a person? Her mother, though willing to work, doesn't know how to use her powers and can't fend for everyone, leaving the family totally dependent on Kya alone. How would that affect a person? She knows that the only way to fend for her family is to use her powers, but in doing so she could be killed just like her father, and where would that leave her family? How would that affect a person?

 I asked myself these questions and as Ignesio from Nacho Libre would say, got down to the nitty-gritty. I developed Kya in a way that would fit her. Headstrong, protective, daring. But what's unique about her? Almost every dystopian or YA novel these days have the same characteristics. That's key, find something that makes your character unique and un-cliched. 
  
Kya has become more and more developed as the story moves along. I've put myself in her shoes, and I found that she's one of my best friends.

  
Just to give you a little insight in to Kya's head and how she thinks, here's an excerpt from the book where I think her character shows up a lot.

  It wasn’t until I heard a voice from behind me that my eyes shot away from the sun. “Mind if I join you?”

  I jerked up to find Nalin standing above me, his arms dangling down beside his body, his face contorted. I bit my lip and settled myself back in to sand, keeping my eyes away from his.

  “What do you want, Nalin?” My voice was quiet and the annoyance inside was unmistakable.

  There was silence. “Nothing,” he finally said. His voice was gruff, hard to reach. He seated himself down in the sand and I could feel his eyes on me. I rolled to the side to turn away from his burning stare.

  “I walk two miles to be alone! Can’t I just be alone?!”

  “You don’t need to be alone,” he said. “You need a friend.”

  I let out a groan and then rolled on to my back so I was staring at Nalin’s face, glaring. “How do you know what I need?”

  “I know what you need because you are your father’s daughter.” I harrumphed and then rolled to my side again.

  “My father’s daughter…” I muttered under my breath. “I haven’t seen my father in years…” Nalin sighed in response and rested his hand on my unscarred shoulder.

  “He still has had an influence on you, even when he isn’t around. You remind me a lot of him. Strong headed, caring, able to take a punch…” Nalin then punched me in the stomach in a joking manner. Though it didn’t hurt I groaned.

  “I can think of a couple things my father is that I’m not…”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Protective…” I said silently mustering the pain that word brought. “I can’t protect anyone, two people have already died on my account, and a third is about to. My father, he was different than me. He could have protected Rio and my mother; they could have still been alive. If he had been in my position he would have fought beside Jet, and not let him get injured. I am not a protective person; if I was then I wouldn’t be in this situation!”

  Nalin shook his head and let out a long breath. “You’re wrong about not being like your father.”

  “Wrong?”

  He nodded. “He was always putting unnecessary pressure on himself. He thought anything that went wrong was somehow his fault.” Nalin had walked around so that he was now facing me. “Kya, it isn’t your fault. Things happen and sometimes we can’t control what those things are.”

  “I could have…” Nalin cut me off before I could finish what I was going to say.

  “No you couldn’t have. None of this is your fault. ”

Getting rid of Distractions

  Hello there world!!

  Ok, well today I took a step that I usually take when writing some big project that I want to get done.

  Getting rid of facebook in my life.

  It had to be done. Facebook is a great way to connect with people, but it can easily become a distraction and and addiction... as it has become for me.

  When I wrote the first book in the series I'm writing right now, I deleted facebook out of my life all through winter break. I never realized how much good that did for me. I had been going at an extremely slow pace. Maybe a paragraph here and there, a few lines tossed there when I found the time. I had good intentions, setting up a time for myself to write, but I found that I never met those time limits... well... I did, but the internet was just a click away. What harm could checking up on facebook do? Very much harm indeed. It killed me. I never realized how it did though. I came to realize that while I could have been writing a whole page, I had only written a line, and in time spent on facebook I could have written a whole chapter, I had only written a page. Facebook was my biggest weakness.

  I had told my sister to reset my password and the not tell me what it was for the full winter break, no matter how much I begged her (I ended up not begging her, pretty proud of myself for that...)

  When I started this little faze I was about 150 pages in to it.

  I set up a goal for myself that winter break. I would write at least 2,000 words a day, instead of setting up a time for myself where I would just basically stare at the computer screen for an hour, and if I didn't write that amount I gave permission to either of my sisters to spank me thoroughly  (I asked them to check the word count each day so I wouldn't be tempted to lie.) 

  I finished the dern book three weeks later with 234 pages and a word count of 96,690. That's a LOT of work accomplished. No, that's like Nano writing mode, despite it not being November. I was so proud of myself.

  But alas, my sister gave me the password once winter break had passes, and I succumbed again. Writing wasn't a priority in my life anymore, the computer was, not only facebook, but other things like youtube parody surfing, and Wikipedia article skimming (highly interesting way to pass time by the way.) And so I decided something.

  I would no longer be clutched in to the deep pit of evil that is facebook (at times.) 

  And so of now, I have once again restricted myself from facebook and set up the same word limit for whatever I decide to write each day, no matter how late I stayed out because of play practice or youth, or how much homework I had. Those words would be and will be written whether I liked it or not. Well, there are the exceptions to things like midnight premieres to the Hunger Games.... but that is a special case!!! Back on topic...

  I suggest this method to anyone who is struggling to get things done. Whether it be writing, getting homework, doing chores. Trust me it'll do you a lot of good. We may think a harmless check of the facebook or click on the internet browser will be ok, but not really, a second turns in to minutes, and minutes turn in to hours, and hours turn in to days, and days turn in to weeks, and weeks turn in to months, and months turn in to years, and all of these years you could have been writing galore! But no, you waste your time on facebook!

  Trust me, getting rid of distractions will benefit you greatly. It has for me. 

The Temple

  I love to see the temple

  I'm going there someday 

  To feel the holy spirit

  To listen and to pray

  For the temple is a house of God

  A place of love and beauty

  I'll prepare myself while I am young

  This is my sacred duty 

  I love that song. Very much I do. Recently our youth group went on a temple trip. We rarely get to go because the temple is an hour and a half drive away from us. But when we do go... it's the best.

  This is the Raleigh temple, or the temple we went to.

  

  For those who don't know what the temple is, it is a vital part of my religion. It is a place where sacred ordinances are performed. In the temple you can be sealed to the people you love for eternity, in the temple you covenant with our Heavenly Father, in the temple you can do work for others who don't have the means to do what they need to do. Or in other words, baptisms for the dead.

  As youth, that's mostly what we do.

  And please don't think we dig up people out of their graves and then dunk their bones in holy water.

  That would be just plain disgusting.

  What we do is baptize those who have passed on, since they don't have a body to do the work themselves. These are the people who died without knowing the gospel, the people who died and didn't get a chance.

  It's amazing work, I love every time we go. If you see some of the names they use they tell when they were born and when they died. There are people who had been waiting since the 1600's and up. That's centuries and centuries of waiting, and your doing something for them that they had been waiting for.  

  That's one of the reasons why I love going. It's a service, a service to them and to our Heavenly Father.

  Here's a picture of what a baptismal font looks like.

  I love to see the temple. I truly do.

Babies and Books

  Well hey there!

  So, this post is going to be kind of odd, but you'll catch on soon enough.

  Recently my mother gave birth to the sixth edition of our family (excluding parents). His name is Ryker and he is four months old.

  Isn't he adorable?!!! I love him to death! He is the smiliest baby I have ever met!! But sadly, he cries, Ryker cries a lot. All babies do, and my brother is no exception. So, at times my Mom is doing things around the house, and needs our help. We are happy to give it up. Though Ryker can be the sweetest thing on earth, he is still a baby and has needs, and when we have him he can cry.

  Rephrase, he will cry.

  Recently I discovered a trick that helps calm him down when he is crying. For some reason, walking down the stairs with him in your arms shushes him. Not walking around, not cradling him. Walking down the stairs. Emphasis on DOWN. To go down the stairs you need to go up the stairs, but Ryker does not enjoy up, he only enjoys down. So, this puts me in a predicament. While I am walking up the stairs he cries, while I am walking down, he is calm. And in the process I am burning in sheer pain due to my case of authortitise which is a disease that occurs when you spend hours upon hours of sitting on you butt typing.

  I came to a realization when I walked up and down and up and down the stairs with maybe ten pounds slung in my arms.

  Writing is a lot like that process.

  Ryker is your book, you love him with your whole heart, you adore him, he makes you smile and laugh, and you would do anything for it/him.

  Going up the stairs are the bad parts of your book. The parts where you feel like shooting something in the face because your book needs something and won't stop crying. Character development, slower pace, better descriptions, less descriptions, and sometimes over all just better writing. You get overwhelmed at all you need to do, at all the flaws you see. And all the while your legs are burning for going up hill.

  However, going down the stairs are the happy days. The parts that just flow easily, your book is at peace and cooperating. It's the days where you pop out four chapters in just twenty four hours! You felt so excited you couldn't stop your hands from swallowing the keyboard.

  It's an on going process, if you stop your book will continue to cry, cry for need of more writing, cry for need of editing, cry for need fixing errors. And do you want your books crying? Crying out for their parents but no response and they end up dying from exhaustion of screeching so hard, and you have to suffer the pain an guilt of knowing you killed your own child for the rest of your life? I thought not...

  The process only ends when you've been published, or when you feel that your book is as good as can be. Your children will have grown and would be able to fend for themselves, and you'll look at them and think all those years filled with crying were worth it.

  And then you pop out more babies! And the process keep on going.

  I guess what I'm trying to say is that, you can't just give up on your writing, just like you can't just give up on a crying baby. You have to keep climbing those stairs to get the sweet climbing down the stairs days, and you have to suffer through the tired feeling your getting. Suffer through detachment. Because in the end, your book will be off to college and married, and all grown up. Savor climbing the stairs.

  Besides, were writers, climbing the stairs is what we live for.

Watch me as I shudder *shudders*

  Hello again my beautifuls!

  Ok, so today's post is about something I stumbled upon when looking through random files in my computer, and I found *shudders* an old story. All I have to say about that is... oh my goodness gracious. I wrote it when I was ten. The sad thing is, I remember writing the story, I remember thinking to myself, this is such good writing for my age, I thought I was so deep and emotional.

  Now as I read through this monstrosity I realize how untrue this was. I was terrible (proof that practice makes perfect.) It was like the awkward moment when you see the Wizard of Oz put on by a bunch of fourth graders and Dorothy clicks her toes instead of her heels... Except in my case I wasn't the one watching.... I was the main character..

  Off topic! This is no the time to discuss what a stupid fourth grader I was. Anyways...

  I want to give you a slight teaser in to this extremely "dramatic" story that I wrote when I was ten years old...

My head hurt a little so I decided I would stay in bed. My mom brought me breakfeast in bed, my dad had gone to work. She never questioned why I came home early from the sleep over that night. I was thankful for that. The day dragged on and everything bored me. I tried reading, no help, I tried going to sleep. That definetly didn’t work even though I was exhausted. Finally night came and I  decided I would have to go to sleep sooner or later. I looked at my clock, it said ten thirty. I closed my eyes but as soon as they dropped the same cold but warm feeling that I had neer the gravel road appeared. I opened my eyes and sitting there on my bed was Derek. I gasped. “Don’t be afraid” he whispered. I wasn’t, I was delighted. “I’m sorry for disappering on you back there.” “No, no that’s fine” I lied. “Do you know who I am” he asked me. To think about I really didn’t, but I knew who he was, I could see through him. It’s like from the moment I saw him in my dream he stunned me. Then I suddenly knew everything about him, he was sweet kind, loving, and brave. Just by one look. “No, but I do know how you are” I stated. He laughed. “So do I” he whispered. “ But, you don’t know who I am” and just like that he disappered right before my eyes. “I’m a ghost”. I heard somebody say from no where. “We barely know anything about eachother, yet I know everything abou you, and I love it” went nothing. “I know it sounds complicated, but I love you” he suddenly appeared again and his eyes looked like they were full of sorrow. “I’ve been watching you your whole life, I know who you are I know what you are, and I feel like I need to protect you” derek said so silently. “What are you really?” I questioned him. “My name is Derek Edwards. I was born in 1917 and died in 1933. I’m sixteen and I live in your house.This news surprised me, but I didn’t care he was here with me.

  Like I said, oh my goodness gracious! This is the most terrible piece of writing my eyes have ever beheld! Notice how nothing is indented, the first of many flaws...

  Just from this example you can see how much of a terrible writer I was back then.

  Now, let's fast forward a couple of years. I am twelve, and I think, maybe I could start  actually writing a book, maybe it won't be so bad... And so my first novel exploded in my brain! It was titled A Room For Lost Souls. Oh, how I loved that book, I worked on it hours upon hours upon hours. My writing had improved slightly, but not by much. Here is an excerpt from that book...

   “Kate?” I asked her softly. She looked to me her face ashen.

  “Where are we?” Kate didn’t answer but a different voice echoed off in the distance.

  “I’ll tell you where you are” the voice said. It was a woman’s voice; it rang high and confident in the pearl like room. The voice was sweet, but mysterious and misty at the same time.

  “You’re in a room for lost souls” the voice stated. Suddenly a girl about eighteen was standing in front of us. She had wavy red hair and big brown eyes that stared at us, she looked tough but at the same time she looked nice.

  “Where are we?” Kate asked the girl again puzzled.

  “I said you’re in a room for lost souls” the girl stated a little harsher.  A room for lost souls, what did that mean? The girl must have understood our confused faces because she continued.

  “Basically, your dead” she stated with no emotion in her voice, and no sympathy. Dead, but that couldn’t be true. The word dead rang in my ears. Death was something that I expected to come when I was much older. I didn’t expect for someone to come along and murder me. I felt a sinking sensation enter me. I couldn’t breathe; it felt as if somebody had just punched me straight in the stomach. I couldn’t be dead. My life couldn’t just be over like that. My face fell to the white floor and I tried to hold back tears. Kate’s face was also staring at the bottom cloud we were standing on. She looked like she did the time I found her in my room crying after the water slide accident, torn apart, though she wasn’t crying her face was sunken. Her eyes were squinted shut, she held her hands behind her back trying to look brave and her mouth was pressed in a thin straight line. 

  As you can see; better. Notice there's no, I've been stalking you my entire life, oh and by the way, I'm in love with you, scenario. So, that's got to be and improvement for something!

  But alas, more years rolled by, and I grew, my writing grew, and I looked at this and (appropriate play on words for title) shuddered. I moved on to bigger and better fish, leaving lost souls unfinished, and now fourteen, I began Manipulated. Everything just seemed to flow naturally with that book, I loved it so much, still do, and I feel that novel shows my strongest writing yet, I've grown... here is an excerpt. 

 

  Just like that they were on me.

  Thrashers.

  Pain hit, an intense blinding pain. I keeled over from the impact and crashed to the ground in a heap, the pain even more intense as the dirt smeared my bloody back.

  I had never felt anything so torturous. It was like being lashed with fire, my flesh burning on the surface, and then the fire doubled as the thrashers looped around my arms and legs and then tightened.

  The hidden Chasers stepped out of the mist then. My eyes were blurred with tears and my vision was foggy from the night spent having my brains battered against a cliff, but I could see their boots shuffling towards me, crunching the ground underneath them. I wanted to scream, but when I opened my mouth I could feel the thrashers tearing in to my skin, deeper and deeper.

  “Don’t try struggling; it’ll just increase the pain.”

  You see? Not perfect, but pretty good, at least I think.

  So, the point of this blog post you may ask? Well, it's to show how much we grow. We start out as cheesy fifth graders who want to write stories about stalker ghosts! And then we evolve, we transform, and most importantly, we learn. We learn from our mistakes, what to do better next time and what to add and what no to.

  You may be saying to yourself, I want to be the best writer I can be! And that's great, I do to, but you don't have to be the best writer you can be, now. I mean, if you were a superfantabulous writer right now and you were so good you could never get any better, what would that say about you when your thirty and your writing the same old stuff.

  So, what I'm trying to say is that it's OK to inexperienced, I mean, just look at me when I was ten, and look at me now, four years later! I'm a completely different writer. Though I still have a lot of learning to do, and I probably won't become a best selling author before I leave high school, I've improved, and that's something significant.

  Keep faith in your writing, you'll get there someday!

Catching Up

  Well hey there!... Yeah, I know, I should be shoved in to a wall and then kicked repeatedly in the stomach, then slashed upon with a whip, then brutally stabbed in every visible part of my body until I'm close to death, but not complete death, and then left bleeding in the corner for the crows to come and eat my eyeballs out. Well, maybe a little less gory punishment would work, but that still doesn't excuse that I haven't blogged in forever. Anyways...

  So, you may be saying yourself. What has Giselle been up to? Well... I recently printed off my first draft for my newly named novel Manipulated. Love that name by the way... off topic! Trust me, there is no better feeling in the world than feeling your hands, gently placed under the monolithic stack of papers, your eyes darting down towards the word scrawled out on the pages, and the warming feeling you get when you realize, hey I wrote a book.

  And then you start reading it.

  Your life is screwed by then, you catch mistake after mistake after mistake after mistake until you feel like you want to shoot yourself in the face! It's not necessarily that the writing isn't good... it's just... yeah, the writings bad. I don't know, there's something about seeing the words printed on the page that can bring a tumultuous whirlwind of emotions, happiness, excitement... depression, anxiety... you see the range?  

  At the moment, I'm waiting on more feedback from friends and family about the book so when I actually go and sit down and start editing I'll have things in mind to change and fix. So, the printed manuscript has been shoved in a drawer, (open, upon request of my family) and never sees the light of day.

  So, where does this leave Giselle? What adds meaning to her life now that what was once the sole purpose in it has been shut from her vision, leaving her with the absence of her one true love?! Well, between schoolwork, church, and play practice what else could I be doing, uh... Writing! Duh!

  I started working on two new novels, which both have completed first chapters, and I write whichever I feel like when I find the time. One is called Fading. It's set in a dystopian society (I don't know why I love to write about dystopia so much) and it's about this girl named Rayn. In her world, seers are the rulers, or men who can see the future. Whenever a child is born, that child is given an aura, a prophecy telling that person exactly what is going to happen in said person's life. For those LDS/ Mormon people out there, it's basically has the same set up as a patriarchal blessing, very discreet. This story was actually inspired through a patriarchal blessing (not mine.) But, it's not like a patriarchal blessing because auras are bad (and patriarchal blessings obviously, aren't) Crap! I don't want to give too much away so that's all I can tell you about that for now, but it turns in to the whole, my whole life is a lie kind of thing, and now I have to tell everyone I know, but none of them will believe me scenario, sooo, I'll see how that works out.

  My second book is titled Daughters of the Ocean. It takes mermaids to the next level. In a way it's kind of dystopian (what's wrong with me?!) But I really like the premise. Under the ocean, mythical creatures have existed, but not only do they exists, an oppressive society is developed between the creatures living there, otherwise known as the daughters of the ocean. Syrians (or sea witches) have taken control over all living things under the ocean, including the daughters of the ocean, the mermaids, sirens, and nymphs. A human scientist finds out about this and is like, guys I found out mermaids, sirens, naiads, and sea witches exist! They of course, shun him and a ton of other stuff happens.

  I'm hoping to get somewhere with these two blooming ideas, but I know they'll be destroyed with plot holes and grammatical errors soon enough and I'll want to rip both of them in half. BUT, for now, I love both ideas and I am perfectly content with writing both whenever I can. So, to end this catching up post, I'll leave a little teaser for you on the book that I consider my favorite of the two, Daughters of the Ocean. And don't worry, I promise from now on I'll be a good little blogger and update when I find time between schoolwork, church, play practice, and writing. So, without further ado, here is the teaser:

The light of the world above reflected in the clear water beautifully, beams of sunlight splashing our world below, dancing in the deep blue waves above us.

  I almost felt happy.

  But today wasn’t a day to be happy.

  I had heard myths about creatures that, when they were sad, had water drip from their faces, like they were leaking. It was called crying.

  Though I could not cry I imagined that I would if I could have.

  The aching feeling in my chest gnawed at me and the sunlight streaming down from the surface wasn’t even something that could cheer me up, like it normally did.

  I glanced down, the body laying there, curled up inside of herself like she was still trying to protect her life with feeble attempts.

  Her ebony hair still flowed around her head, the wreath tangled with seaweed and colorful flowers decorated the top of it. Her eyes were closed, never to reopen and see the light shimmering from the world above and create pillars for us that reflected beautifully in the water. Her emerald green tail was still blood stained; the water around us couldn’t bring out the red liquid tinted on her scales.

  I had to look away and choke down the lump in my throat that wouldn’t go.

  Mele.

  My sister, not yet thirteen.

  She was everyone’s sister, but mine especially.

  The others hadn’t shared their entire life with her, they hadn’t had her by their sides wherever they went, they hadn’t shared the many laughs that only Mele and I could muster, they hadn’t had Mele as a best friend.

  Yet, they weren’t with Mele when the terror hit, they hadn’t witnessed the attack.

  And they hadn’t let her go.

  I thought of tears again, what they would feel like, streaming down your cheeks, stinging your eyes. I wanted to feel them, to know what it would be like to let out all the emotions I felt in a flurry of sorrow.

  The voices began then, the high soprano voices lifted high in to the air, melodic and serene. Everyone around me was singing, their mouths opened in O formations, beautiful notes ringing through the water. They were hypnotic, capable to put anything at ease.

  Except for me.

  I opened my mouth as well, ready to hum a quiet lullaby as farewell for Mele, but when I opened my mouth no sound escaped, I couldn’t do it.

  I watched as her fragile body was dropped, and the waves dragged her away, her dark hair still flowing behind of her like a stream of night.