Jennifer Valk's Online Mastery Journal

I am Jennifer Valk. I served in the U.S. Army for eight years and then moved on to bigger and brighter things. I live in Colorado with my husband and our three children. After I got out of the army, I decided to stay home and take on the noble...

[writeaboutlifestuff]

[wnq-writers]

“The darkest demons roam among us wearing the white cloak of saints.”

Umar Nadeem (via wnq-writers)

[writeaboutlifestuff]

Effective Branding...

...is a logo that doesn’t have its brand name stamped on it, but you know exactly which brand it is.

Everybody recognizes the boy on the moon from the Dreamworks logo.  This company stands next to Disney as one of the best animation studios.  They have interchanged their typical boy with many characters from their movies.  For example in How to Train Your Dragon, Toothless the Dragon became the half moon, while Hiccup sat on Toothless’ lap. 

In Rise of the Guardians, Jack Frost sits on the moon and jumps up to blow snowflakes as the Dreamworks name comes up. 

This is a fun and effective way to change the logo and also make people remember who made the film. 

Everybody knows the checkmark for the Nike logo.  The question is, however, is the logo really a checkmark, or is it supposed to be a symbol for the Goddess, Nike’s wings?  (After all, Nike was the Goddess of victory.). 

Whichever it is, the logo stands out for athletic footwear and clothing more than any other athletic company.

This logo stands out nationally and internationally more than any other.  In times of chaos and devastation, many injured people will flock to a place that has a red cross to get the help that they need.

[wnq-writers]

You’re the person behind this smile.
You’re the bittersweet name upon my lips.
You are the reason why my heart tries to pickup words just to patch up its broken pieces. While I try my best to make sense of my own heart at its easiest.

It’s Just You //Conee Berdera (via wnq-writers)

[writeaboutlifestuff]

The Adventures of Jason and Melly: “Cocoa the Cat”

Melly and her fairy friend, Wit scare Cocoa the cat out of the house.  Now they have to save him from a breaking tree branch before Melly’s grandmother finds out that he is missing.

[writeaboutlifestuff]

Media Convergence and Gamification

Ingress, like Pokemon Go, is a game that allows a person to find portals and check in at them, have battles, and gets people outside and walking around.  This was my son’s favorite game before Pokemon Go was created.

I think all rewards programs are a type of gamification in real life, because the more you spend in a store, the more rewards you rack up, gaining discounts and freebies along the way.  Starbucks rewards just happens to be one of my favorites.

Social media gamifys your relationships with your friends and family.  Facebook allows people to like or react to things that you post, tumblr with re-blogs and replies, and twitter with keeping running statistics. 

[writeaboutlifestuff]

My Experience with Episodic and Serial Writing

This past month I got to work as part of an “ad-hoc” writing staff in my Episodic and Serial Writing class. It was an interesting experience and not one that I can say I am used to doing.  I have recently found that I am better at working semi-independently than on a team.  However, having the feedback of my peers, along with seeing and hearing their ideas, and getting their help on my project was a lovely change from working solely by myself. 

It was fun to be able to step into someone else’s creation and work on it.  Since the world has already been created, there are already rules and parameters that have been set up.  For new writers being brought onto a show, these parameters serve as good guidelines for their own episodes. 

This was a completely new experience for me as a writer since I have never worked on something like this before.  Everything I have ever written in the past has been done independently with minimal feedback.  I have always had to rely on spellcheck and my own knowledge of grammar for editing. There were, of course, the essays and the like that I had to write for classes, but not necessarily for creative writing.

Writing episodes for television was not something that I ever really saw myself doing for a living, but it is not a possibility that I would rule out either.  I think one of the biggest things that I would need to do to make this possibility a truth would be to move somewhere closer to where television shows are made.  My current location would not make it easy to work in an office with other writers.  I would also need to write a spec script and my design my own original story.      

[writeaboutlifestuff]

Reading Materials of Greyson North

If you want to read this, you can get it here. Noble Beginnings

The Wall Street Journal keeps me up to date on many issues within the country and the world.

I enjoy going on the CIA website and reading old intelligence journals. 

[writeaboutlifestuff]

Reading Materials of Caiomhe Ceallach

The Registry at Amazon

I love having hard copies of my magazines lying around, but you can always find articles from this magazine online at juxtapoz.com.

My favorite website is The Vigilant Citizen.  I can always find out what is going on around the world and right in my own backyard!

[writerswritecompany]

Find out more about the author here

[writeaboutlifestuff]

Antagonist: Greyson North

Greyson is a bit edgy and he doesn’t like people all that much. (Except for his Mama.  He like her).

[writeaboutlifestuff]

Protagonist: Caiomhe Ceallach

Just another new class, but in this one we’re building characters.  I’m having so much fun with this.  Meet Caiomhe (pronounced “Ke-VA”). She’s still a work in progress, but I am having a blast getting to know her!

[writeaboutlifestuff]

Anything can be done, if you just work for it.

[writeaboutlifestuff]

We equate horses with spirit, so why would we want to allow horses to be broken?

~Spirit Keeper Equine Sanctuary

[writeaboutlifestuff]

Here’s a picture of two friends discussing their upcoming classes and what they will be doing after school.

[writeaboutlifestuff]

The photo is my own.

The quote is by Helen Blavatsky and found at www.brainyquotes.com/quotes/keywords/fire.html

[wnq-writers]

I am an entire galaxy and I was settled with being looked at, I had no idea that I deserve to be admired.

exxspes, self-love (via wnq-writers)