Hey Twisters! It is I, Charisma! I know it's been a hot second since we've chatted, but I'm here to do a little pop in update! Bianca and I got to go to Orlando to spend some time with our Aunt! We went to Orlando, which is a 4 hour bus drive from Miami (where we currently reside), and let me tell you, that bus going there was not the most comfortable in the seat department. Like, at all. The headrest was nice, but that was about it. No, I'm no stranger to being in the car for hours on end, that's the joy of roundtripping! But those seats, my goodness, were wildly uncomfortable. I have literally no idea why. MOVING ON. Arrived in Orlando (left Miami at 7 a.m. got there at 11:40 a.m.), saw our lovely Aunt, and we hunted for some food! We stumbled upon Ethos Vegan Kitchen! Bianca and I are pescatarian by choice (the ethics of meat butchering is appalling, but that's another story for another day), but since fish is expensive, we're mostly vegan! And we're lactose intolerant, so... that kinda helps in the "We're vegan!" department. Anyways, this restaurant was literally amazing. Truly. So if you're ever in Winter Park! !! You know where to go!! (I'll probably do a whole blog post about the restaurant at a later time.) We drove around a little bit looking at the sights, we checked into the hotel and relaxed for a moment before we headed to the main event for the day! My Aunt basically works at the Florida NPR, so there was an event that was put together about space! It! Was! So! Cool!! It was specifically about the space rover Perseverance (please look at their cute page :3 @NASAPersevere) and it was just spectacular. DID YOU KNOW? Another space rover, Curiosity, has been there since 2012 AND IS HELPING OUT WITH PERSEVERANCE! Do you know how much I want to cry with that information?? I thought rovers died after so long without maintenance, so I am literally ecstatic! (Go look at Curiosity! @MarsCuriosity) Anyways, I learned so much from that event, more about the surface of Mars, the purpose of those cutie rovers, and the upcoming missions to the forefront of space and to Mars! I think the most fun part was hanging out with our Aunt :3 it's been a whole moment since we've seen her, and she's so much fun! She's such a brilliant and intelligent spirit and it's such an intoxicating time being able to hold such wonderful, insightful conversations? It's honestly so refreshing! SHE'S SO NICE! I honestly want to spend more time with her, hopefully we can before we head out to Japan :) She also suggested to head over to Disney Springs! Bianca and I hadn't gone to Disney since 5 years old? Not too sure, but at an age where it didn't count. SO, we went and it was spectacular?? Actually magical?? And then awesome people alongside it?? It's a fantastic memory that'll last forever! But we returned home on Sunday to resume our busy, busy lives. It was so good to be able to take a break and just take a chance to view the world! I also read an AMAZING book while on the bus ride, but I'll do a whole book review on that soon. :3 Well, that's today's update. Catch ya later, Twisters! Thanks for reading and see you all next week! Charisma
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Hello Twisters! It has been a minute, but that isn't unusual here at the blog. TO BE FAIR, a lot has been happening. A. LOT. So! Here are some frequently asked questions that'll be answered for you all! Are you in Japan? No, no we are not. The State of Emergency has ended, but the borders are still closed to foreign travelers. What's happening in Japan right now? Will you be going to school? A lot is happening, really! Japan is having their fourth wave of Covid-19 cases, the UK variant also being very prevalent there. They're still planning for the Olympics, but I've read that there is a possibility in reconsideration for the games. If you want to read more up on that, I highly recommend checking out NHK World-Japan for any updates. So since you're here, you're not doing that school, right? You'll look for an American school to go to? We will not be going to school in America. We will, however, be taking online through Akamonkai! This is amazing for many reasons! The main one is that we were homeschooled most of our lives, so that'll help us a lot! A fun fact is that it's at 1:20 pm. Japan time. So that means 12:20 am for us! Yes it does mean waking up at 11 pm and yes it does mean that our sleep will be destroyed and rebuilt. What will you be doing if you're taking online classes? Well, since our classes are at midnight, we've switched our schedule around entirely, including with work! We'll still be working, our hours have be adjusted so we get a decent amount of sleep! I heard you had a YouTube channel, where's that? Yes! We do have a YouTube channel! It's called Twisted Two and features a lot of random, but fun things we do! As shown on the top video, we were taste testing peeeeps :3 Any other projects that you're working on? Oh, so many! But I will keep them all a surprise to see if they actually get accomplished. They are, though, very impressive and will excite you all :) That should be all the questions! At least, all the ones I've remembered. If you have any question you want to ask, please comment! I'll be sure to respond! Thanks for reading, Twisters, and talk to you all later! See you next week! CharismaP.S. At midnight tonight, we'll be taking our first online lesson! We've already had orientation, so it'll be right into it on the first day!
We're heading closer and closer to the day of our departure, Twisters! Packing has been happening, and it really is the strangest thing. We've moved a lot before, but this time we will only be able to bring what we can carry in our hands and on our back. No boxes. No bins. No storage (though we have situated a total of three boxes to be stored). We're traveling with a total of two suitcases, and a personal item, which is our school backpacks. (On a very unrelated note, my backpack is an obnoxiously bright pink and I LOVE it! You'll probably see it when we take photos on our Instagram: @twistedtwoofficial) It isn't a whole lot, but we'll definitely be able to pack the essentials! And a bunch of deodorant. Apparently Japanese deodorant doesn't work with our bodies, since they sweat differently, so we've got to hoard that. There's not a whole ton else to update you Twisters on. Thank you for coming around to read and watch! Hope you all stay safe and see you next week! Catch ya later, Twisters! CharismaHi Twisters! So sorry for disappearing again. I don't really have the best reason to offer you other than that BIANCA was supposed to WRITE SOMETHING! But, we've figured out a new system and she won't be writing anymore blog posts for a while. She WILL, however, be making our vlogs! Yup, you heard that right! She's going to be covering our daily life in the form of videos on our YouTube channel: Twisted Two. I'm very excited for what she's going to make and how those are going to turn out, and I hope you Twisters are excited as well! Back to the title at hand, we're so close to going to Japan! We've already been accepted into our school, we've got our tickets, we've reserved our hotel, we've got our suitcases, etc. Definitely we've got more to do, but every step is one step closer! We're actually headed out of the country on March 13th and we'll arrive in Japan the 14th. After that, we'll do our required quarantine for 14 days, then we'll move into our dorms afterwards. After the move in, we'll start school! You know when you're achieving something you only had as a dream and it's actually coming to life? Those imaginations sessions are actually physically happening? Well, that's 100% the high that I'm riding right now. It's honestly so electrifying! Once you're successful in one endeavor, you learn the traits, understand the steps and repeat it until you continue this pattern of success. Japan is literally right around the corner for us and we couldn't be more excited! We'll keep you updated on everything that's happening! If you want to help us, please consider donating to our GoFundMe! See you soon, Twisters! CharismaHello Twisters! It is I, Charisma, that is the one doing a week late blog post! But never fear, my fellows, for I bring news of great joy! Bianca and I have decided to reopen Movie and Show Reviews! I had actually come up with the idea last Friday? Who remembers dates anymore, but that's not the point. Bianca and I SPAM movies when we're not doing anything - Bianca can inhale three in a hour, I don't know how she does it - and we actually have a note on my phone with movies and the star rating we would give it. Currently there are thirty two movies that we need to give a full, fleshed out review to. And trust me, we have a lot to talk about for these movies. We've started being more critical to what we watch, because after watching kid shows and movies, you kind of figure out what kind of execution is necessary and best for a kid. Anyways, it's going to be a fun time and I hope you join us for the ride! Movie and show reviews are going to update every Friday! See you there! Hope you're all safe out there! Talk to ya later, Twisters! CharismaHello Twisters!It's Bianca here. Today's topic that I want to talk about is losing motivation. I love projects. Big. Small. All of them. However, I tend to create an invisible wall of fear or uncertainty whenever there is a task or step in the project that I believe will be difficult to accomplish. This is a mindset that I subconsciously created when I was back in school and it takes a lot of effort to move past it. It's especially awful though whenever there are multiple projects that I have to do. Then it's almost like art or writers block. It is literally a mental wall that I built steadily myself. However, I just recently figured out how to overcome it. Proving someone wrong. Okay, this may not make a lot of sense, but here me out. When someone challenges me and says to me that I cannot complete something (for this example, let's say doing laundry) and it is not on my to do list of things I need to do, then I get this fire inside me where I am going to prove them wrong. But not just with laundry, oh no, I need to prove to them that I am far superior than they thought. I am going to exercise, clean my room, clean the kitchen, do the laundry, write my stories, and make dinner. See, if I'm going to watch my mental wall crumble, I better be watching the crumbs drown in lava. And it works! For me that is. So that's how I've gotten out of my slump these past few days. What about you though? How do you gain the motivation to work? Stay Safe, Stay Home and Until Next Time My Friends... Adieu Story time! I was doing who knows what and, since I wanted something to do, I decided to go onto Google Play Games and play some solitaire. It had been a while since I played the game, but I remembered it was fun, so I was quite excited to start. I'm not sure how to describe the game, so here's the best I can think of for a description: Solitaire is a card game where your goal is to try and stack all of the same color and symbol cards together, from ace to king. In order to do that from a shuffled deck, however, you have to lay opposing colors (red over black, black over red) to find the colors and numbers you need. I think it's a really fun game once you get the hang of it. Bianca, on the other hand, thinks it's stressful. Back to the story! I picked it back up and I was having a really fun time! Or as I would like to think of it, too much of a fun time. At any given moment of free time, I would go onto Google Play Games and just zone out. And then I got addicted. So to fuel my addiction I remembered the cute solitaire game that I had wanted a while back. It was created by Devsisters, the lovely South Korean game developers who made Cookie Run (another game I'm obsessed with)! It starts off as the traditional solitaire game, but then, as you continue playing, you collect coins. Those coins can be used to open crates to get themes! And, as someone who loves any and all kinds of customization, I was in love with this. Best of all? It's also an offline game! So I can continue these fun times on the road, in a random location with no internet, literally anywhere I want. The game has no ads, even when you're on internet. Anyways, that's what's been going on over here on my end. I might go back to social media because I miss my friends and I have some work to do over there. It's been very refreshing to just take a step back and breathe, but I've got to get back into the swing of things! Hope you're all safe, Twisters, and catch ya later! CharismaHello Twisters!Bianca here. Today I wanted to talk about my book. This should probably go in 'The Smol Scribble' (my writing section of the blog) but I think what I have to say will interest and benefit everyone. First, this process has been extremely challenging. The first draft of my book was a short story for school. It was meant for a fun, light read for kids. It was short, simple, and educational. But I recognized that I wanted to traditionally publish it (as that was my dream) and that started a battle. So many battles. Battle 1 - Lengthening The BookMy book at the beginning was around 3K words, I think. But I hadn't touched it since 9th grade (it might have been 10th grade, I need to double check), so it needed some major editing, fine-tuning, and developmental edits. It was difficult conveying to my family that I needed to do this step and why I couldn't do a regular edit (proofread = regular edit). It needed much more. The story was off, I discussed with some of the kids that I worked with what they wanted to see in book 2 and 3 and so I needed to add some foreshadowing and plot to help span into the next two books. And a simple edit just wasn't going to do that. But how was I going to edit it? I strongly disliked the editing phase because 1) I didn't know what I was doing, 2) so many people were sharing with me their opinions that I couldn't hear my own, 3) I had an expectation to fulfill and that already creates an unhealthy mindset when you begin a project for fun, and 4) everyone's advice on children books (as my story is for elementary and middle schoolers) are so conflicting. Battle 1 - SolutionSo what could I do to fix this mess I put on myself? I had already messed up but completed somehow a couple of drafts that I was semi-proud of but all of them felt lacking. I was trying to work on a version of the story that would be around 30K words, so a traditional publisher would even take a look at it (30K words is the industry standard for middle grade books). I learned that, as an author, I can't have two audiences, its either elementary schoolers (ages seven to ten) with the word count being either 10K to 12K or middle schoolers (ages twelve and up), with the word count being over 30K to 50K. There was no home for my 3K little book that both elementary and middle schoolers loved. Then my mother said something that made sense, "Why not work on a version of the book for young kids and then later on make one for the older kids?" That struck a chord with me. It was a great idea. But I took it a step further. Why not just combine the appeal to both? I know it sounds like the same idea before, but what if I make a story that is short that resonates with the younger kids, but is long enough and cool enough for the older kids. I still kept the premise of the appeal the same, I just changed my mindset. And after I created the mindset to run, I closed everyone out and I wrote. Because I could not afford to look or think about other things that would get me distracted. I needed to work. In short, I changed my mindset and I stayed focused. How To Apply The SolutionBut everything is easier said than done. So what if you find yourself in the situation, what should you do? Changing your mindset is hard. I tried to work on it for a month and a half (that's how long I was stuck on the 30K draft before scraping it altogether) and it was agonizing. I didn't like working on it, it was actual work, and it wasn't fun anymore. So I walked away from it. Not forever, no, that's no what you do. I walked away with it in mind. Since I couldn't see clearly where I needed to go, I decided to change the view. Ask people you trust about the situation. But don't blatantly ask them, "I'm stuck at this one part of my story and I don't know where to move, what do I do?" Depending on who you ask, you will get the help/answer you need or you won't. And sometimes, you don't want someone's opinion on your story (especially if you are still editing it, you want people's opinions after you edit), rather you want to know what they would do in your situation. (Or, at least, that's what I wanted to know.) So what I did was create a scenario for them with something they can understand and relate to. That way they could give me a response on what they would do and how they would do it. For me, the hard part came with their response and my response to theirs. What was I hiding from? What are you hiding from? Are you hiding behind favoritism and fear? (I was.) Are you telling people no to their ideas because it didn't fit in your own? (I did.) Are you stopping people in the middle of their sentences stating why that wouldn't work? (I did that too.) But that isn't going to help you at all. I hid behind fear and favoritism for my book because I loved how my book was already, even though I knew it wasn't perfect and ready for publication. However, since I loved it too much, I wasn't willing to hear anyone's critiques on how it could be improved. Other people's ideas are exactly what you want to hear when you're in a rut. You can't tell people 'no that's not going to work' because you don't like the idea. Half of all my good ideas comes from when me and another person expand of those ideas that presumably 'weren't going to work'. And since I felt I knew the industry and my book inside out, I refused to listen to anyone who even shared their opinion about it. Because I believed, that since I spent several hours every day for the past year looking at information, that I knew more than them and that I knew everything that I could know about the industry. In reality, I don't know enough about the industry and I was so scared of people telling me that I was doing it wrong that I became so focused on telling people they were wrong instead of listening to them. What I'm trying to say is, know who you are, where you want to go with your book, and recognize and listen to people. But only for a moment. You need to know and figure out when someone is helping and when someone is hurting you. I'm afraid I'm still working on that part. To Be Continued... Battle 2 - The IndustrySince this post is already so very, very long. I'm going to be splitting this series into sections. Battle 2 is going to be about the industry (and why I dislike it so much), Battle 3 is all about self-publishing (which I may or may not split into two parts), and Battle 4 is about Kickstarter. Looking back on all of this, I recognize how far I am in the process, because right now, I'm on battle 4. There will always be an easy way to do things, but trust me, not all easy ways are the right way. Listen to your heart and if you don't like your options, make a new one. Stay Safe, Stay Home and Until Next Time My Friends... AdieuHello Twisters!Today is all about movies and shows! As I haven't been working these past couple months, I've been cleaning, writing, working on my video game (the outlining parts), and watching YouTube and movies/shows on Netflix and Tubi. Charisma found Tube first, I just joined the bandwagon, but I've got to say, it's pretty awesome. There's a lot of old shows and movies that are on it for free and there are hardly any ads. I like to watch crazy and not widely known romance movies and they are absolutely crazy. Like. I wish I was kidding. Tubi has those movies that no one wanted to watch but needed a platform and I love them. Some are absolute gems that have horrible covers (I watched a pretty good Christmas Prince one that I have to say is 10/10) and some movies are absolutely awful that they bring me such amusement. :') The good stuff. Have you watched any good movies or shows recently? Let me know down in the comments! I've heard that 'Avatar: The Last Airbender' is finally back on Netflix, so if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. Stay Safe, Stay Home and Until Next Time My Friends... Adieu
Hello Twisters! Sorry for not posting last week. I work on Mondays (Thursdays and Saturdays) and I get really tired when I get back home. As a result, I almost immediately take a nap, then take it chill for the rest of the day. Also! Last week was a complete mesh of days. I had to constantly ask what day it was because time?? And dates?? What's that? Anyways! I'm writing this at midnight to ensure that it gets out on time. :) You're welcome. But during this pandemic, a lot of people are at home and some struggle to think of things to do other than binge Netflix (or any other video service), sleep or just vibe. Now, to be fair, this is what I do for the majority of the time, BUT!! I do a few other things as well! First off! As I like to draw, I've been trying to play around with my art skills. If you're interested in drawing, give it a shot! You've got a lot of time in the day right now. There are a lot of online workshops and videos that you can use to start your art journey! Next, you could start a YouTube channel! Lots of people are on there and it's a great way to show your hobby or work off to the world! You could play games, sit down and talk, do a craft, make a skit, etc.! There's so much that you can do for a YouTube video, it's honestly wild. Another thing you can do is to clean and switch up your room. Sure, that doesn't always sound like the best option right off the top, but hear me out. Cleaning and switching up your room is such a refreshing and satisfying task that it makes you feel super accomplished with your life when it's done. I don't know how, it just days. Not complaining though! Cook! Bake! Experiment in the kitchen! Follow some recipes! Learn how to not burn the house down when boiling water! It's really fun, but only fully works if you make something small and simple, then work your way up. Trust me, from personal experience, it gets really discouraging when you try for the really complicated one first go without previous experience. I tried to make a different version of hash browns. It did not work. But that's besides the point! You've got an imagination! You have some kind of tool/medium: a notebook, computer, your phone. Write! You don't have to go full out, "Let's write a novel!", but there's definitely time in the day to at least pump out 100 - 1000 words a day. If you're like me, you're lucky enough to get 500 words a day, but eh. Again, not the point. (If you need a support group to help you write, then I suggest popping over to NaNoWriMo! They've got a ton to offer when it comes to writing!) And the last one, but is SO SUPER IMPORTANT! Take this time to do as much self care as needed. I know this time is hard, so take this time to take a bath. Do some face masks. Body scrub. Paint your nails. Cut your hair. Refresh your closet. Do the things that make you happy. Do the things that allow you to breathe in a deep breath like you've just inhaled some nice filtered air. Yes, I do like that. And yes, it smells nice. Okay! That's all I've got for you all today. Or tonight. Whichever it is, I suppose. I'm off to bed now, to sleep. Because, as I said earlier, I work on Mondays, so I work in a few hours. Catch ya later, Twisters! P.S. The shop is coming along nicely! It isn't without a few bumps, but that's to be expected. I'll probably give a more in-depth update in my next blog post! Charisma |
Who We Are We are twin sisters who like to do almost anything! Inspiring people to get out their creativity is our forte and we strive to travel on magnificent journey through words on a page. Exploration is the doorway to opportunity and the endless possibilities of helping and reaching out to others is something that we endeavor to create. This crazy blog of ours is one of the many ways we hope to achieve that goal.
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