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RTW: What I Love Most About Writing
13
February

Road Trip Wednesday is a blog carnival hosted by YA Highway where bloggers all talk about the same topic. This week’s topic is: It’s (the day before) Valentine’s Day! Let’s jumpstart the lovefest by blogging about what you love most about writing (and/or reading)!

When trying to come up with an answer for this one, my mind becomes filled with these great intangible feelings, nearly impossible to put down into words.

It’s like the mysterious “runner’s high” marathoners are always going on about. I haven’t felt that (EVER!) but I don’t doubt that it exists because writing can do the same thing. The compounded effect of getting lost in a world of your own creation is a powerful drug. A hallucinogen, an upper, and a downer all in one chemical-free dose.

There is nothing in the universe like conversing with characters who sprang from your head like Athena leaping from Zeus’s fully formed, wearing armor and ready to fight. These people whom you know as well as yourself, but can still surprise you when you throw them into the worst of circumstances.

I guess, in one word: creation.

To know that everything has been done before, but you can make something different. To know that you have complete control, but your creation can still somehow become something much more beautiful and terrifying than you ever planned.

Category: RTW, Writing  6 Comments
Learn how to lose
11
June

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar won six NBA championships, along with six regular-season MVP Awards. He still holds the NBA record for all-time points scored.

I promise this will lead back to writing in a big way. Just bear with me a minute.

Abdul-Jabbar played college ball at UCLA when they won three national championships in a row. He was the main reason dunking was banned in college basketball for nine years.

When he retired from the NBA, nobody had ever had more: defensive rebounds, points scored, blocked shots, games played, field goals (made and attempted), minutes played, and personal fouls.

He is widely regarded as one of the best players to ever lay a finger on a basketball.

He’s also a best-selling author, but that’s actually completely irrelevant to this post.


That quote came from one of the winningest people in modern history.

This post is for all my writing friends struggling with rejection. Whether you’re crawling through the query trenches, ducking your head at every rejection letter, or a published author whose last book didn’t receive all the love you hoped it would – keep going. Play through it.

How many hours did Kareem Abdul-Jabbar spend practicing and exercising for every hour he spent in a game? I’m guessing hundreds. How many times did he have to get shot-blocked before developing his crazy (in both appearance and effectiveness) “sky-hook” shot?

“You can’t win unless you learn how to lose.”

How do you “learn how to lose”? Let every rejection, every criticism, make you a better writer. Learn from them. A rejection doesn’t mean “you’re not good.” It means “you can do better.”

You can do better. You can win. But first you’re going to have to lose.

Category: Writing  2 Comments
The Things We Love
05
June

Ask any of my IRL friends or my dog and they’ll tell you: I have been writing like an actual crazy person lately.

I’ve been shunning little annoyances like cooking, cleaning, other people, sleep, and verbal communication involving full sentences while racing toward two deadlines for two very different projects.

These are the times when it’s the hardest, when you see all the things you’re sacrificing for your writing pass you by and you have to re-make that decision to stick with it every single minute, over and over again until it feels like a mantra.

This morning, two quotes came to my attention via two different avenues and I couldn’t help but wonder at the prescient timing. It’s like the universe knew I needed a little rah-rah and sent these to me. I hope they help you too.

 

To succeed you have to believe in something with such a passion that it becomes a reality. -Dame Anita Roddick

We lose ourselves in the things we love. We find ourselves there, too. -Kristin Martz

Category: Writing  Leave a Comment
My Bucket’s Empty
31
May

This week on the YA Rebels we’re talking about our writing-related bucket lists. Kayelee’s sick so I did this on my own. My bucket list is very simple … but very difficult.

Category: Writing, YA Rebels  Leave a Comment
What is a #wordwar?
21
May

I’m a little scared of Blog Me MAYbe Mondays, because I’m not too confident in giving writing advice. But there’s something I am confident in giving advice on: social media.

I’m drafting Dragons Are People, Too so I ran a few sessions on Twitter known to most as “#wordwar”s. It can also be called #writeshove and the NaNoWriMo folks may call them some other things during November. There is something very similar that I mainly see in the Romance Writing community called #1k1hr. Jackson Pearce does something called #writingparty that is kinda similar, as well.

I had a few people ask me, “What is a #wordwar?”

In short, it’s a way to use Twitter to get writers off Twitter for a specified amount of time so we can write with no distractions.

How does it work?

  1. Someone asks if anyone is interested in a #wordwar. Anyone can originate it.


  2. People respond that they are – anyone can join in.
  3. A starting time and duration are chosen, usually by the initiator. (Since people on Twitter are all over the world, the starting time is given in terms of minutes on the hour like this: :00 instead of 8:00 or :45 instead of 11:45.)


  4. When that time arrives, all participants focus on nothing but their WIP for the alotted time. No twitter, no facebook, no youtube, no tv – just write!
  5. At the end of the alotted time, the initiator will usually tweet something like, “Time! How’d everyone do? #wordwar”


  6. Everyone replies back with their word count for the time and congratulates each other.

The word count itself isn’t so important because everybody writes at different speeds. The point is the focus on writing and the comraderie.

So, if you didn’t know what a #wordwar was before now, now you do! And if you already knew, you have somewhere to send someone when they ask you what it is.

Category: social media, Uncategorized, Writing  2 Comments
A Sexless Succubus and Wizard Rock
11
May

Fridays at Blog Me MAYbe are supposed to be about sharing a laugh! Today, I have two things for you that have a laugh – at the end.

First up: My first ever post on Figment is a short story called “Between Want and Need.” What is it about? Arien is a young succubus with only one friend to her name. When she’s injured and trapped in an elevator with her friend’s boyfriend, will she be able to resist “feeding” on him to heal herself?

I’d love it if y’all read it and comment! Also, it’s for a contest where the top ten most “hearted” entries become finalists. So if you like the story, please click the little heart and turn it red! <3

 

Secondly, a YA Rebels video. In honor of Mother’s Day, we’re talking about the “Parent Problem” in YA lit this week. My sister and I basically say, “Chill out!” Also, at the end of the video, you get K singing and dancing to a Wizard Rock song!

Category: Writing, YA Rebels  One Comment
Hiatus – ish?
24
January

I’ve been fighting doing this for a few weeks, but I’ve decided it’s the only way for me to get everything done. I’m taking a short-term hiatus.

On February 9th, I will be taking a career-related test for which I have months’ worth of studying to do. Yep, do the math on that one.

So for the next two weeks I will be rather scarce around these parts. This includes:

  • Blogging
  • Vlogging
  • Tweeting
  • Reading blogs
  • YouTube watching
  • Writing
  • Sift Book Reviews stuff
  • Reading fiction
  • Real-life socializing

This does not include:

  • Reading for my internship
  • YA Rebels videos
  • My February 7th review at Sift Book Reviews

In the meantime, check out my post at YAtopia today: The Challenges of Being a Writer and an Extrovert. AND make sure to check out the pitch contest at YAtopia tomorrow, where we’ll have EIGHT editors from Entangled Publishing taking your pitches for works of almost any length and for most age groups!

I’ll see you on February 10th!

Category: Sift, social media, vlog, Writing, YA Rebels, YAtopia  One Comment
Teentopia
22
January

I’m sorry to do yet another post that’s just a link to one of my YAtopia posts, but I want to make sure everyone saw the launch of our new feature, Teentopia! On the 18th of every month, we’ll be posting an interview with a casual teen reader – someone who reads regularly but isn’t entrenched in the publishing industry like so many of us are.

This month, I interviewed sisters Amanda and Taylor. Click on the image above to see the post!

An excerpt: “I’ve read an author’s blogs a few times, but I don’t do it often. If a series is really, really good, I’ll read some of its author’s blogs on the book’s website or on blogspot.com. So far, the only two authors whose blogs I have read are DJ Machale (Author of the Pendragon series), and JK Rowling. What I’d like to see in their blogs are…”

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RTW: My Publishing Superpowers
09
November

I’ts Wednesday and, though I haven’t done it in a while, it’s time for Road Trip Wednesday!

This week’s question: What are your writing/publishing superpowers (drafting? plotting? writing queries?) — and what’s your kryptonite?

Superpower: Dialogue. Granted, I spend a lot of time listening to the way people talk, writing down overheard phrases that strike me, studying word usage in teens’ YouTube videos, etc. I took an Honors class in college called “What Words Can Do” and it’s made me very careful when choosing the words my characters say to each other. If only I could be so careful with the rest of the words. Hmm…

Kryptonite: Plotting. I can’t do it before hand; it kills the story for me. I have no idea what I’ll do when publishers want to see a synopsis before I’ve written a book. *bites fingernails*

Superpower: Queries. I don’t know what it is, but I love writing these things! And I get a lot of compliments on them, so I guess I’m good at it. *shrug*

Kryptonite: Description. Especially when it comes to setting. After first-drafting, I have to go back and forcibly insert description of people, places, things. Each piece of description is a conscious effort for me.

 

How about you? What are your publishing/writing superpowers/Kryptonite?

Category: RTW, Writing  6 Comments
RTW: Five Senses? How about a sixth?
03
August

It’s Wednesday so y’all know what that means…

This week’s topic? The Five Senses. How you use them in your writing, how you are inspired by them, pictorial essays, that character with smelly socks, books that have used them well, the ones that are currently missing from your work, etc.

90 % of Americans are visual learners.

So it makes sense that writers use a lot of the visual in their writing and as inspiration. Auditory learners are the second biggest group, so again… makes sense that we use sounds a lot in our writing as well as music to help us write.

The thing I really like though? Is when I get to make up a sense. For THE DEMONS YOU KNOW, Miranda is a Mage and has a magical sense. She can “feel” magic in the world around her. For example:

  • When someone starts using Psychic magic on her: “Miranda felt cold magic creep inside her brain. It reached out icy tendrils of Psychic energy, searching.”
  • And this when she reaches the site of a massacre: “A tangible trembling of magic hung in the air like the sound of a muted television.”
  • And comparing magics: “They felt like demons, the way Gadriel’s magic felt like light and her father’s had felt like fire.”
  • And sensing Gadriel’s magic: “His magic flared subtly and Miranda wondered again at the strangeness of it. It held calm notes of light, music and triumph – so different from the heavy waves of vigor and elemental forces the Mages expelled.”

I used mainly the sense of touch to help create the magical sense, but I also used sight, smell, taste and sound occasionally.

What about you? Do you remember reading a book where the author created a sixth sense? How was it done?

 

Category: Miranda, RTW, Writing  6 Comments
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