Angeliss

I will have my cosmetology license by the time I go, so I'll be professionally trained. I want to cut hair on the streets to pay for things in other countries, like places to sleep, food, etc. I know that sometimes this kind of thing can be frowned on as panhandling or harassment, and the last thing I want to do is get in trouble because of it.

I bought a black and white cow print shirt- a large print. I'm required to wear black and white, and the cut of it is really flattering, but I'm uncertain. Will it say "I'm a redneck fashionista"? I'm not really going for that look...

I have a few concerns.

1. My job is rough on my hands (and nails). Will fake nails work better, or will I hate them in the long run?

2. My nails are really weak. I'm terrified that fake nails will make this worse.

I have to have my nails done because I'm going to cosmetology school and it's required that hair, makeup and nails are always done and always professional. What are my options?

I'm finally starting to turn my life around after spending so long with my depression untreated. I'm finally feeling like I'm beginning to live again, and I want a reminder that I'm not going back to be that person.

I've thought about a phoenix, but that may be a little too... volatile for me- if I had an affinity for an element it would be water, air or earth.

It will be my first, and probably only tattoo, for my upper back (between my shoulder blades) and being the cautious sort I am, I will probably end up carrying the design around with me for a year before I decide it's the one for me.

So, any suggestions?

What is your method of creating names? I suddenly realized that I need a bunch more names than I had planned, and I don't want to spend a ton of time that I should be writing on name-making.

I wear younger styles (although I can't when I'm at work) but if I go too much younger, I'm just afraid I'll look like someone in her thirties who is trying to be a teenager. I have no wrinkles, but I am overweight. Medical problems- can't really do much about that. What else can I do?

Twice in the past month I've dreamed that I or the main character of my dream has sung a song completely of my own invention. I wake up, and I remember bits and pieces. They have meter, they rhyme, they're not too bad either. The first one was a girl singing an emo rock song, which I remembered the chorus for, and the other I dreamed last night, and I remembered the couplet in the bridge and a little of the tune. I looked up the lyrics on the internet- nothing matched up. It was definitely orginal thought.

But why? It's my mind, the same one I use while I'm awake and writing. What's causing the disconnect? And more importantly, how can I get myself to write poetry like that when I'm awake?

I am HORRIBLE with poetry. I can either make word pictures, or I can make it work with a rhythm, or I can put meaning into it, but I cannot do all three at the same time. God help me (or anyone reading over my shoulder) if I'm not just writing freestyle!

I love poetry. I love the freedom of it, the beautiful simplicity of the language that brings meaning and feeling to such a short space.

So, how can I improve? Just continue writing bad poetry until it starts getting better?

I'm working on a plot, and I've got two possible endings. The boy gets the girl, or they go their separate ways. It isn't so much a romance as about people growing and getting over their own personal issues, but there's a romance in there eventually.

What I want to know is, does it matter to the audience that they don't end up together? Does it kill a book for you? Would the book still be something you would enjoy, or would you vow never to read it again and warn all your friends?

All the other pieces seem to represent people or forces of people- the pawns are the infantry, the knights cavalry, bishop is the religious leader, the king and queen individual rulers... So if every piece is anthropomorphic, what is the rook?

I've been having this recurring dream. The only way I've found to stop having them is to turn them into a story. But this one has no ending. I have some vague knowledge- the speaker blames him/herself for whatever occurred, and reverts to first person at the very end. I had the feeling that She dies. But these are just impressions that I had on waking up, and not necessarily what should happen.

I won't blame you if you don't want to read through. I know it's long. (It's a full page on Word.)

Any suggestions?

If you saw them together in a crowd, you would have to look back to make sure that you actually saw them.

He looked like what parents would call "a nice boy". He wore a button-up shirt and faded jeans with the easygoing grace of someone who was comfortable in his skin. His smiles were both frequent and unsettling, because they were signs of genuine contentment, untainted by other emotions.

She looked like the kind of girl that parents told you to stay away from. Her hair was dyed black except for bright multicolored streaks. When she moved, the edges of a tattoo were visible on the back of her neck, her waist, and her arms. Every step she took was a step in a dance, a wild, barely contained energy coursing through her.

They didn't look like two people who should be holding hands in a crowd. But when they looked at each other, you knew it was love.

They had a band. They called themselves "Beauty and Beast." We laughed at that. It was too easy, with them standing there in front of us, to see him as the beauty and her as the untamed beast.

They said it was a work in progress. They smiled secret smiles at each other, as if they knew something we did not.

In retrospect, they always seemed to be laughing at us, and never with us.

We found out where they rehearsed. At night, with nothing to do, we walked around the empty streets, laughing and talking. We almost missed it. The rundown theatre downtown, now little more than a stage and rows of ripped seats, had lights on, and very faintly, we could hear the music.

That was enough. We snuck in the back door that never latched completely. It flapped open in the wind.

The laughing and talking stopped. It was as though we were under a spell.

The theatre was beautiful once. The wood paneling held carvings in both the walls and the supports, with high arched ceilings the light couldn’t reach. Atmosphere, we said to ourselves, and smiled uneasily.

The stage lights were on, leaving the audience in darkness. Against the glare, we would not be seen. We walked silently, one by one, finding our seats.

They stood on the stage. His head was bowed over his guitar as he picked out an intricate melody. She sat before an old piano, nodding her head in time. It was as if they were waiting for something. And then she began to sing.

The lyrics were mostly sad. They sang of broken dreams, broken hearts, and future paths that could never be walked. They sang of the shadow who wondered what the light was like, but could never see it. They sang of the desire that pulls and tears at you until you have no choice but to follow where it leads. They sang of monsters and angels, of regret and longing, and of hope.

I

n his hands, the guitar was no longer an instrument but something that lived and breathed and created music for the sheer joy of it. Underneath her fingertips, the piano keys rippled like wind through trees. We listened to their voices, his warm and low, hers sad and soaring.

We hadn’t known what music was before. We never will again.

I tend to be the usual reader- I don't peek at endings, and I usually finish books unless they're really awful. But sometimes when I'm rereading books, certain things happen that either I don't like, or they're hard to read, and I skip.

What about you? Do you skip ahead? Or do you continue reading?

Same goes for a certain book in a series. Do you skip the book and keep going? Or do read all the way through?

I've heard authors talk about characters talking to them, like they're real people who just appeared in their heads fully formed. I've never experienced it for myself until this year.

Those characters are so much more rounded and real than any characters I build from the ground up. It feels like I throw a bunch of traits at them and hope something sticks, or like making a tower of Jenga blocks and then pulling out the wrong traits one by one until I'm left with a fragile one-dimensional character.

I've done the character building sheets, the interviews, the little index cards with things written on them to keep my characters straight... Nothing is quite as good as when the characters just "appear". I may have to learn more about them, but it seems as if I'm learning about them and their personalities are already solidly in place, like I'm cleaning my glasses off in order to see the person in front of me more clearly.

I know it sounds totally crazy and schizophrenic, but I have a theory that muses and talking characters are just the way the left and right brain communicate to each other during the writing process. And most author interviews I've read talk about that kind of thing (muses and talking characters, not the theory) so it isn't just me.

I DO NOT like vampires. Just saying. No Twilight for me, either. I'm not interested in stories that are stuffed with romance, whether or not it's believable. In my mind, Romeo and Juliet were two teenagers so overwhelmed by hormones that it never occurred to them to check for a pulse.

I've read the Kim Harrison Hollows books, but I'm also discovering YA Urban Fantasy, Holly Black's Tithe and Valiant, the Wicked Lovely series, etc. I would love to hear what your favorites are in this genre.

I just got into nail stamping- Konad stamps? And they don't have nearly enough selection in their polish colors.

I know OPI and Nicole (by OPI) tend to need only one coat. But what others are out there?

You don't have to read the who excerpt, just enough to get a feel.

If you saw them together in a crowd, you would have to look back to make sure that you actually saw them.

He looked like what parents would call "a nice boy". He wore a button-up shirt and faded jeans with the easygoing grace of someone who was comfortable in his skin.

She looked like the kind of girl that parents told you to stay away from. Her hair was dyed black except for the multicolored streaks. When she moved, the edges of a tattoo were visible on the back of her neck, her waist, and her arms. Every step she took was a step in a dance, a wild, barely contained energy coursing through her.

They didn't look like two people who should be holding hands in a crowd. But when they looked at each other, you knew it was love.

They had a band. They called themselves "Beauty and Beast." We laughed at that. It was too easy, with them standing there in front of us, to see him as the beauty and her as the untamed beast.

They said it was a work in progress. They smiled secret smiles at each other, as if they knew something we did not.

In retrospect, they always seemed to be laughing at us, and never with us.

Okay, so my question is: Does the POV feel like it's working? Or is this a complete no-no for authors? I'd like to get a basic feel for the reception of something this... odd, before I completely commit.

This is a short story, so I understand that creatively, more rules can be bent than in a longer piece of fiction. Also, this is a paranormal story. I swore I would never write one, and then I dreamed one. Go figure.

All I remember is two sisters arguing (I think it's in first person, but it could be a very limited third) and the main character taking a walk when she's stopped by an old woman who offers her any rose out of her garden. But every rose she looks at reveals a scene from her life. The full blooms show that she and her sister never make up, and are estranged, and the buds show hope for both of them. But instead of taking a rose, she says she's going to make her own path, and returns to (I believe) make up with her sister.

I read this several years ago, but I can't remember who wrote it, or other stories in the collection, or what the book even looked like. I think it's safe to say it was by either an author who writes fantasy, or it was an anthology of fantasy short stories.

I'm writing a short story, and I just need some books listed for this character. Books his mom would bring home from the library, and books that he would enjoy. He's very into adventure stories.

Also, this would help me determine his reading level, and therefore, how complicated his voice is. He sounds, right now, like a teenager without hormones, so I need to tone it down a little more. The question is, how much more?

I know that funerals are usually supposed to be about letting go of something in your life, or a need to let go of something in your life. And while I was feeling sad in the dream, I was also angry and confused because no one else was feeling that way.

The other people there were sneaking off to make out in corners and stairways, laughing and telling jokes, playing charades, and no one seemed to know the person who had died- they were just having a grand old time. There was something about someone jumping in out of the snow, and a sign hanging from the ceiling.

The only times I interacted with everyone else were when I was still grieving, but I pretended to be acting just like them, even though I didn't feel that way. I felt like I was a puppet, or a ventriloquist's dummy with a smile painted on and being overly light and pleasant.

I don't know whose wake it was; at one point I told myself it was my grandmother, but I think I was lucid dreaming at that point.

Can anyone give me some insights?

My sister is getting married and asked me to sing a song for her wedding. I know that she is going to have Death Cab for Cutie's Follow You Into the Dark, and Take Me As I Am from Jekyll and Hyde.

Follow you into the dark: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6XZsau7CSk

Take me as I am: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZbVsekX2xs

I'm a mezzo soprano, but I sing a lot of alto (I was a tenor in choir) so range isn't a problem. My sister is 21 and likes rock, pop, hip-hop(though I can't sing hip-hop so please none of those) broadway... pretty much everything but country, and I'm sure there are a couple of those she likes.

Here are some of my tentative songs.

At Last by Etta James http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZXvLsltu2A

The Golden Floor by Snow Patrol http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x57s1EPfwFI

Like A Star by Corinne Bailey Rae http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8oS1SHjhPU

My Idea of Heaven by Leigh Nash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZLSurBwnMg

Please just list your favorite love songs, odd or mainstream, current or older.