The ballots for the 9 Official Entrants in the ‘Who Should Be a Character in TalysMana?’ Contest have been counted. The results follow:

Alexa – 13
Christian Ferguson – 14
Hanna Tetens – 12
Ivye – 11
James Joseph Emerald – 17
Lena Champlin – 5
Ke-Yana Drake – 12
Liz Danzier – 9
Patricia Bujard – 9

So CONGRATULATIONS to James Joseph Emerald. Looks like you’re going to be our newest character in TalysMana!  I hope you’re prepared to enter one of my mother’s worlds!  *gulp*

To everyone that entered the contest: Thank you all so very much for your entries.  I know my mother and I truly enjoyed going through the entries and seeing what contestants came up with.  Everyone that entered – whether you were in the final 9 or not – showed bravery and uniqueness.  More people should have that passion and the strength to take a chance!

It takes courage, creativity and self-esteem to know that you’re ‘fictional character’ worthy  Every single one of you is.

Rebecca

P.S. Picking out five from the amazing assortment of entries was nearly impossible. I know Becky spent ages getting her five. I went through the entries a dozen times before I had mine.

Thank you again, each entrant, for putting your time, effort, thought, and passion into your portrait of yourself. Only one person can win. But each of you is amazing. And it has been a pleasure getting to know you.

The TalynMana project hit a snag a couple weeks ago, when Becky’s day job got slammed with, well, the economy. Not just her job, you see, but the company she worked for, too.

So she’s in the middle of changing everything, and the jewelry part of the TalysMana project is on hiatus until she gets through this particular disaster.

And the contest is on hold until Becky can participate in judging the entries along with me. We’re looking at–realistically–a couple of months for this to happen.

On my end, there’s still a bunch of craziness going on, but it’s winding down. So I should be able to get back to writing TalysMana in another week or two.

It’s in PDF format.  Go check it out:

http://www.hannatetens.com/documents/HTetens_connect_the_dots.pdf

The Road to Writing, Paved with Good Intentions

I’ve always been told that I’m not good enough. I often felt that there are parts of me missing that I can never recover; parts of my early life, bits of myself that should have been, but never were. They were forgotten long before they were created, and I often found myself searching for them in the lives of others.

“This,” I would think, “is who or what I would have been if things had gone differently.”

“This horrible place is where I should have been, except for dumb luck.” I had always considered it lucky that I was alive—not because I was loved or cherished or saved for any purpose. But because whoever it was that wrote my story didn’t care enough to kill me. It would’ve wasted precious ink. Depression took over my entire life. I was a miserable person to be around. I wanted nothing, hoped for nothing, dreamed of nothing.

And then one day, I took up a notebook and a pencil and started to write.

I still can’t remember why I did it, but I did—I took up that pencil and from it sprang an entirely new world, one in which I was valued. Cherished. Loved. And bit by bit the darkness receded and was replaced with handsome princes, dragons, castles, empires and their formidable armies at my bidding.

I created images of myself as I would’ve liked to be: complete, with no parts missing. I was at the center of every intriguing plot. Story after story they came, new nations, new eras, new characters—new people to mingle with. I could see them in my mind’s eye, so clearly in fact, that I saw them in the people I encountered in out in the real world…and so real that they began to take on lives of their own.

I lived in their world for nearly a decade, and I loved it there. But the longer I stayed, the more my real life began to suffer. I failed my classes. I missed events. I didn’t socialize. And you’d smell me coming a mile away because I didn’t take very good care of myself either. There would always come a time at the end of each day when I had to put the pencil down. And when I did, I was faced with the same issues I’d had before I started, if not worse. I had to do something about it.

So I sought help. Psychiatrists, drugs, hospitalizations. I was diagnosed as “Bipolar” and took a vested interest in correcting that and the real life I had neglected. I brought up my average and graduated college with honors. I interacted with the people around me; real people. For the first time in a long time, I was happy.

But with each passing day, it became a little more difficult to pick up that pencil again. That mighty river of thought and creation has dried up and one by one, my worlds are fading away into the old abyss of forgetfulness. Immortalized in print, but rarely read and scarcely thought of. I’ve begun a quest to reclaim these worlds and forge new ones. The old stories fade, but my thoughts are ever-filled with new tales of my old friends. I miss them. They are who I am, and they are the pieces of myself that I was missing before. I will not rest until their voices are heard, and I will never allow the darkness to take them, because to do so would be to lose myself as well. And that will never happen again. I swear it.

http://kimbaxterwhyiwrite.blogspot.com/2010/03/i-know-why-caged-lion-roars.html

It’s a video submission.  View it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLC-K2E5tnc.

Contest Entry #1: http://an-san.deviantart.com/art/Night-of-the-Masks-72058157
Contest Entry #2: http://an-san.deviantart.com/art/Superimposition-of-a-Compass-158975278
Contest Entry #3: http://an-san.deviantart.com/art/Beach-158978655
Contest Entry #4: http://an-san.deviantart.com/art/After-Reading-Amiri-Baraka-158978386
Contest Entry #5: http://an-san.deviantart.com/art/A-Very-Important-Guest-158979627
Contest Entry #6: http://an-san.deviantart.com/art/Locked-Inside-158976077
Contest Entry #7: http://an-san.deviantart.com/art/Graveyard-in-Autumn-158975828
Contest Entry #8: http://an-san.deviantart.com/art/Butterfly-158975633
Contest Entry #9: http://an-san.deviantart.com/art/Maine-Sunset-147891819
Contest Entry #10: http://an-san.deviantart.com/art/Fractal-Cloth-72285073

Four separate text entries:

http://slivshiv264.livejournal.com/

Please follow the link to see all the images that correspond with the text portions included here:

So you want to know me, huh? Well. It’s been a while since I’ve really thought about who I am, but here goes. I’m me. In all my unfiltered, unedited, untouched glory. I simply am who I am. I am not physically fit, or active, or attractive in most ways, though like anyone I have my moments of vanity. I am not overly talented at any one thing, something that continues to be a source of consternation for me, when just once I would like to truly shine at something; though that is likely because I don’t always have the drive, dedication, and determination that are needed to excel at something. I can understand that. Until I polish my own burnished edges, how can I ever expect to shine? I’m not well-known, or wealthy, or socially active, and I certainly don’t have the confidence and self-esteem that I know I should. But enough of what I am not. I think it is time to tell you who and what I am.

I am 27 years old. I am a sister, daughter, granddaughter, niece, and friend. I am single. I am well-educated. I am a teacher. I am loyal and kind, empathetic and wise, impulsive and thoughtful. I am fun and sometimes funny, crazy and kooky and everything in between. I am a myriad of good qualities and faults. I am moral, but not hypocritical in that morality. I believe in what I believe whole heartedly, yet I see the need for free will and individual choice, even if it is not what I would choose. I look in the mirror and see nothing but faults, feel vanity, want to be pretty, and some days I actually feel pretty. I say harsh things, but I always regret them. I make mistakes, but I try to fix them, and even when I can’t, I always learn from them. I have bad days, when all I want to do is cry and it is so hard to see the dawn in the darkness that precedes it, but I try. I make a game of finding the silver linings in life, for how can you be poor and unhappy when surrounded by silver. I have many interests, punctuated by long periods of attention or inattention, from the stars to the depths of the ocean, I enjoy so many things. I sing, sometimes well, sometimes not. I inhale books. I breathe in the words and stories, content to bring other worlds alive in my head. When I tire of the movie theatre in my mind I absorb TV and movies, loving the movie-going experience in someone else’s head. I write, though I often have ideas that are bigger than my talent. My imagination truly has no boundaries. From moment to moment I could be exploring the depths of the ocean, romancing a white knight, or delving into the mysteries of Ireland. I explore the internet, not for news and world understanding as perhaps I should, but for things and ways to teach, learn, and enjoy life. I laugh, as often as possible. I smile at perfect strangers. I thank others for the efforts they exert on my behalf. I hang out with friends, to laugh, listen, and cry. I keep my family as close to my heart as possible. I love my home and my heritage and my history.

But there is one thing about me, one thing that I both love and hate equally, and that is how I feel simply everything. I feel for the animals left in the cold, in the slaughterhouses, in the streets. I feel for the children with no food, no homes, no clean water to drink. I cry at commercials and stories, jokes and movies, and anything else with some sort of sentiment. I feel strongly about everything, often when I likely shouldn’t. This bugs me to no end. But I also love, fiercely, whole-heartedly, and with every inch of my being. I laugh and cry and love like it’s the air I breathe, the water I drink, the food I eat. If I love someone or something I never let it go. I never back down or look away. My family, my friends, they never doubt how I feel about them, and I never want them to. I love with my whole being and though I don’t always appreciate my sensitivity and sentimentality, I would never change it, for it is a key component of me and who I am.

http://jennhillier.weebly.com/

Video entry.