Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas everybody!! And if you don't celebrate, then Happy Holidays! :) I hope you have a great time!

I'm off to bake some cookies with my mum!

Keep Writing!

Xx Noortje

Jenny's Letter

Here is a short silly Christmas story I wrote yesterday before bed as a little writing exercise :) Hope you enjoy!

Snow clung to the windows, and the lights, usually so bright from his study, were hardly visible tonight. A warm fire was burning in the hearth and Nicholas had turned his large red velvet chair so that his feet were toasty and his face was pleasantly glowing.

He chuckled and placed another letter on the large pile next to him. A particularly grumpy elf was standing dutifully with a dustpan and a brush to collect any stray letters and to prevent any of them from getting into the fire.

The elves were curious little creatures. Most of them loved working in the workshop, adored the snow but preferred the large, warm halls of Nicholas’ castle and the large hearths. Most of those being so tall, that the elves on cleaning duty had to climb on each other’s shoulders, creating a most precarious tower of ten or eleven elves high, just so that they could dust the top of the enormous construction.

Nobody knew exactly how the elves had ended up on the North Pole, not even the little creatures themselves. The polar bears swore that they had always lived in their snowy land, deep inside the glaciers. One particular bear, G’root Bêr (who everyone except Nicholas called Geebee) claimed that the elves had appeared after it had rained for a whole week straight—which was unheard of at the North Pole which is probably why nobody believed Geebee’s theory—a gigantic rainbow appeared and the elves had simply sled off into the snow. The elves themselves when asked, shrugged and murmured that the North Pole was their home. The arctic hares believed that the elves in fact knew very well where they came from and that they were simply too secretive to share.

Nicholas loved Geebee’s theory best, probably because it helped explain something rather peculiar about the elves: they changed colour according to their mood.

Now this didn’t mean that the little things changed every five minutes or so, just that their overall mood lately was taken into account and it would slowly change the colour of their skin. The sour goblin standing next to Nicholas, picking up another stray letter only a fraction of a second before it would have hit the fire, was a rather dull blue and it had been this colour for as long as anyone could remember.

Elves who are in love turn bright pink—which as caused quite some trouble at times. Elves who are incredibly cheerful and content are red and elves who are playful and happy are green. But what amused Nicholas and his wife the most was when an elf had a very strong emotion. That was the only time they would turn colour in a blink of an eye.

When a elf suddenly felt ashamed they would turn yellow. When an elf would suddenly turn angry they would go entirely orange. When an elf was upset they would turn purple  and when a elf would be so happy they burst out in tears they for some reason turned soft brown. When an elf was cared they turned white. There was one poor little elf who was frightened all the time and stayed a perpetual state of ghost white.

‘Quicky! Open the door man! Quickly! Hurry!’

Nicholas looked up from a particular amusing letter from a little boy in Portsmouth who insisted he had been good all year, even though Nicholas knew for a fact that he had dipped his sister’s long blond curls in ink only the week before.

‘What is it?’ he bellowed good humouredly and the big oaken doors to his study opened. In came a little elf, as white as snow.

‘My good man!’ Nicholas said surprised. He leaped up from his chair and kneeled in front of the shivering elf. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘It’s my sister,’ the elf said shivering and near tears. ‘She was sorting your letters from Germany when suddenly she started to cry and turned so blue and purple that she’s—she’s—she’s nearly black!

The elf who had been attending Nicholas gasped and the little fox that had been sleeping on the pile of unread letters woke up with a start and rolled onto the ground.

‘Where is she now?’

The elf wasted no time but hurried out of the room, leading Nicholas up several stairs and through corridors, down a set of stairs, round a corner, past the dining room and finally to a small door that Nicholas vaguely remembered led to a storage room.

When he opened the door it turned out to be a cupboard and there was the little elf, sobbing and hiding behind a bucket  and several mops.

‘Hello Jenny,’ Nicholas said with a kind smile. Even though there were currently 879 elves living in his castle, Nicholas knew them all by name.

‘S-santa,’ Jenny cried between her tears.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘S-she didn’t—she didn’t write!’ The little elf said and grew an ever darker shade of blue and purple until she was nearly as black as night.

‘It’s that girl from Portsmouth,’ Jenny’s brother quickly said. ‘She didn’t write this year.’

‘I know that we shouldn’t w-w-write them baaaack,’ Jenny sobbed, tears streaming down her little face. ‘But I wrote Jenny Green because we had the same n-name. She was so nice. She said she would write back—why hasn’t she written back. Something is wrong. Something—’ She couldn’t talk anymore, burying her little head in her arms.

‘I remember Jenny Green,’ Nicholas said and chuckled. ‘Delightful girl.’

‘She doesn’t believe in me anymore—in us.’

‘She didn’t write,’ Nicholas corrected her. ‘That doesn’t mean she stopped believing. I always got the impression that Jenny was one who would believe for life.’

‘Then something happened. She would have written.’

 Without a word, Nicholas picked Jenny up and held her warmly in his arms. Jenny hiccupped and already turned a little less black. Her brother sighed with relief. An elf only turned black when they were dying—or dead.

Nicholas made his way up to the tallest tower where he kept a very special telescope. He placed the little elf in front of it and changed several dials and complicated looking levers.

‘This telescope shows only what you most desire to see in the mortal world.’

The elf nodded and put her large blue eye to the lense. First nothing happened. Then the little creature started to shake and shiver more than ever.

Through the lens she could see Jenny, decorating a Christmas tree, singing songs to a small happy baby.  Then she took a picture of the wall and showed it to the child, her lips moving rapidly and a smile spreading on her face. The telescope zoomed in and Jenny could see that it was one of her letters. Framed. The walls were filled with them.

 Jenny smiled and slowly her skin grew soft brown.

Holiday Read Book Review: Holly Claus

It's the Christmas season!! and with my exams finally being over I find myself capable of really enjoying everything I love about this time a year. :) 

Something I've wanted to do for quite a while now but never really found the time to do is book reviews.

And what better way to start then with my favourite holiday read? 

The Legend Of Holly Claus is a book that just screams Christmas and it never fails to bring me in the holiday spirit. I bought it a couple of years back and this year is my third time re-reading it. 



In this wonderful book by Brittney Ryan, Santa Claus is actually the king of Forever, which is the land of the Immortals. Every soul who changed the world in their own way, who selflessly and full of love helped those around them, becomes Immortal and ends up in Nicholas' kingdom. 

One Winter day Nicholas is reading letters from children all over the world and he gets one from a small boy who asks something nobody had ever asked him before: What Santa would like himself for Christmas. A miracle occurs and Nicholas and his wife Viviana are blessed with a child: Holly. 

But the beautiful day of her birth is ruined when an evil being named Herrikhan, who is trapped by the universe because of all the horrible things he has done, hears of Holly and her perfect, loving, selfless heart and puts a curse on her--turning her heart to snow so that it will belong to him alone when she is older. Once he possesses her heart, he will be set free...

The Legend of Holly Claus must by far be the most adorable book I have ever read. It really makes you remember what Christmas used to feel like as a child and reminds you of the wonders if every day things. Holly is a happy innocent and curious child, despite the fact that she has to stay locked up in the castle for most of the year, in her enchanted room where it always snows, so that her cold heart won't melt. 

I would recommend this book to anyone who wishes to curl up with a cup of tea on the couch, snow lazily drifting outside, book in your hands. To anyone who wishes to laugh and cry with joy (yes this book nearly made me cry many times), marvel at the breathtaking illustrations and just escape for a few hours in the wonderful and beautiful world of Holly Claus. 


Do you have a favourite holiday read? A book you simply have to read every year to get a complete Christmas? Please share in the comments!

Also let me know if you think I could improve this review and those to come. I have never really done anything like this before :) 

Now it is time for myself to curl up with Holly and later on write some pages of my own :) 

Keep Writing!

Xx Noortje 

Day 30 - Shooting Stormtroopers

Today is November 30th, which you all know marks the last day of NaNoWriMo. It isn't that surprising (to me at least) that I did not win this year. University is tougher than I realized and although last year I managed to hang on by my finger tips and reached the 50.000 mark just in time, this year it just wasn't meant to be.

Aside from my normal studies which are tough enough I also have a monstrous subject at the moment which requires us to do as much homework for each lesson than most subjects ask for a whole week. Plus we had a performance this month.

Not to make excuses, just so that you know what was going on with my life.

I'm not ashamed to say that this month has been really tough on me both mentally and physically. I have never in my life felt this tired for such a long stretch of time. Because of stress I couldn't sleep, think or function properly. I felt like a thousand voices were talking to me at once while someone was shouting questions at you in a language you didn't know and demanding an answer anyway, all the while you were so tense that you felt you wanted to scream. No wonder it was hard to write (or do anything really).

I am much better now. Once I realized what was happening to me I started to create a list of things that calm me down and started to do this every time I felt anxious again. Normally I would include writing but... the voices...
The list include:

- Shooting stormtroopers (aka play Battlefront and shoot, don't think)
- Painting
- Ink drawings (something about drawing lines really calms me down. Resulting in a lot of trees over the last couple of weeks)
- listening to music (anything from calming to really hyper music which strangely clamed me down as well)
- Singing LOUDLY and without shame
- Taking a walk
- Reading

All this to try and keep my thoughts away from school and everything that was waiting for me. Including the Shakespeare performance we had to do yesterday and prepared for, for nearly two months (a blog post on that later).

I think taking these little moments and simply doing something for ourselves, just drinking a cup of tea and thinking of nothing, listening to the Lord of the Rings music and imagining yourself to be in the Shire (very relaxing) is extremely important to keep calm and keep sane. I was so focused on everything I had to do that I forgot about the things I could and wanted to do. I forgot about the little things.

All that being said, I am happy to announced that I just spent two hours writing and managed to at least get half the words!

Final NaNo count: 25.114

That is probably about 24.000 words more than I would have writen this month otherwise. Which goes to show, NaNoWriMo is never a waste!

If you participated how did your NaNo go? And remember we're all winners! :)
If you have any more great relaxation idea's please feel free to post them in the comments!

Keep Writing!

xx Noortje
 

Day 20: Need Motivation

OK so today I need some motivation. It is day #20 of NaNoWriMo and my word count is PITYFUL. I don't think I have ever had this low a word count this far in the month.

I can list a ton of excuses, some valid other's ... not so much. Mostly though I just haven't been sleeping well and a random weekday is spend in pretty much the following manner: 


- Wake up at an ungodly hour 
- Start reading a Shakespeare play that you should have finished for today in the train journey to Amsterdam (Really hope my teacher won't read this)
- Have a pretty good time at school, learning stuff, drinking coffee, hanging with friends, wishing for sleep.
- Fight to stay awake on the ride home.
- Wallow in self pity about how tired you are and how much homework is left to do.
- Actually get started on homework
- Eat
- Homework
- Complain you had nothing fun to do and can't think and have a headache and are dead tired but watch 3 episodes in a row of Castle anyway (I'm seriously addicted)
-Go to bed far too late.

Aaaaaaand repeat. 


As you can see, not much time left for writing. Of course there IS always time, you just have to want to make it and lately I haven't had the energy to make time. Which isn't an excuse; it's just something that happened. 

But I'm not going to give up! I still have an impossible amount of writing to do and nearly no time to do it (thanks to a 10 min play we will be staging next Thursday!!) I WILL NOT GIVE UP! 


The words are there hiding somewhere in my mind and I intent to write them. I just have to make time, keep writing, don't give up and maybe forget about sleep this weekend!

How about you? How is your NaNo/writing going? If you have any tips on how I can defeat this monster, this fire breathing dragon, this word shortage of doom, let me know in the comments!

As always: Keep Writing!

Xx Noortje

NaNo count: 17655   --> gonna hide in a corner to cry now. 

Day 10 - Procrastination

This is me right now:

NaNo count: 10.137

How is your writing going? I''ll try to up my nano count this weekend!

Keep Writing!
Xx Noortje

Day 5 -- Freaking Out!

NaNo Tip # 1 : Always carry around a notebook. These might safe your life. 


It's already day five of NaNoWriMo! For those of you who still do not know what it is, check out some of my older blog posts! :) 

So far my word count is alright. Not as good as it should have been (5240 words at the time of writing this) but I believe I have had worse years.

To be honest I did not enter this year with the idea of actually finishing on time and getting those 50,000 words. Realistically speaking I just need too much time for school related activities. And as much as I hate to say it: school comes first. I've also recenlty starting tutoring as a temp job.

But then again--they are all excuses in the end. Even now with loads of homework and a horror-movie-marathon sleepover that lasted nearly two whole days I still found time to write. 

And that is what I love about NaNoWriMo. It makes us realize that if you really want to write, you can. There is ALWAYS time. Five minutes before you go to bed. On the train or bus to school/work. While eating lunch. Wake up 30 minutes early (which I won't be doing tomorrow. Have to wake up at 5:45 as it is haha). 


Still I have already had my fair share of a small panic attack. I am writing this blog post as a break in a crazy homework frenzy to get everything finished before I need to leave for archery practice (What better time to write a blog post?). And honestly, just the simple act of writing right now is calming me down, making me feel productive. 

My plans for tomorrow are to spend my free periods doing homework (need to figure out which lines to include in our upcoming awesome short production of Macbeth) and in the train back writing the entire way! 

How did your first NaNo week go? :) I'm also really curious about the funniest or weirdest places/times you have written. If you have anything to share, leave it in the comments!

I'm not quite sure about mine, but I have written loads during class (oops) and in coffee shops and on the bus the past two years. This year it will probably mostly be on the train and before I go to bed.


Please follow me on twitter as well for random updates, nano stuff and the occational helpful writing site/retweet :) @lordkiwii

Happy writing everyone!

Xx Noortje