Beautiful People hosted by Sky @ Further Up and Further In and Cait @ Paper Fury is an awesome monthly linkup to help writers get to know their books and character. This month's linkup is a little different, because it's all about moi.

1. How many years have you been writing? When did you officially consider yourself a ‘writer’?

I've been "writing" for about six years, but I don't think I actually considered myself a real writer until two years or so ago.

2. How/why did you start writing?

FANFICTION BRUH. I use to read so much Harry Potter fanfiction that I wanted to give it a shot too. Unfortunately, I'm really bad at fanfiction, but I eventually took an interest in writing original stories. All of my first stories were Grey's Anatomy-rip offs.

3. What’s your favorite part of writing?

Coming up with the idea and building the world. I could sit around for hours daydreaming/writing extreme plots and stuffs. Also, I love it when people read my writing and it actually disturbs them on an emotional level and they don't know how to react afterwards.

4. What’s your biggest writing struggle?

Actually writing. And descriptions. I swear, most of my stories consist of characters standing around in a white room talking.

5. Do you write best at night or day?

I think I'm a night owl. During the day I get too distracted by the internet, so I never get any writing down, but by nighttime everything's kind of dead, so then I have nothing else to be distracted by.

6. What does your writing space look like? (Feel free to show us pictures!)

I create on nothing less than a throne of wood-stuffs!
My writing space is anywhere I rest my posterior. I'm not one of those writers who needs a specific "creative" spot to create. As long as I have my laptop my throne and it's semi-quiet, I'm good.

7. How long does it typically take you to write a complete draft?

Still haven't gotten there, unfortunately.

8. How many projects do you work on at once?

One. . . two . . . four. . . a lot? Jk, at most I work on two at once. I might do a few short stories in between when I lose inspiration.

9. Do you prefer writing happy endings, sad ones, or somewhere in between?

I'm a depressing writer, so all of my endings either end up sad or in between. No one's feels are safe.

10. List a few authors who’ve influenced your writing journey.

JK Rowling: This is an obvious one. If it weren't for Rowling and her fantastic series I don't know if I would have ever actually gotten up the nerve to write anything.

Christopher Pike: A lot of people might have spent their childhood reading RL Stine (I did too), I spent it reading Christopher Pike. His book, The Starlight Crystal, is still one of my favorite books of all time. I can reread it thirty times a year and never get bored of the story. Also, he deserves credit for helping me develop an interest in horror.

Stephen King: He also got me interested in the creepy and horrific, even if some of his books are a hit or miss.

Gary Paulsen: I haven't read any of his other books, but I'm going to put The Transall Saga next to Pike's book as one of my favorite of all time. I haven't read it that much (because I don't own a copy), but this story has stuck with me since elementary school, and very rarely do I remember that many books. How could I not love such a unique concept? I think this was one of the books that told me it's completely okay to have the bizzare happen.

Cassandra Clare: Yeah, I'm no longer a CC fan, but I got to give credit where credit is due. A lot of my earlier writing was influenced by Clare's in The Mortal Instruments. I developed my own comedic style thanks to her.

11. Do you let people read your writing? Why or why not?

Yeah, I'm not really that shy anymore. I've taken creative writing classes and workshopped my pieces with twenty others. I'll let my writer friends read my writing and I post some of it on wattpad.

12. What’s your ultimate writing goal or dream?

Publish a book that doesn't make people's eyes bleed.

13. If you didn’t write, what would you want to do?

Well, even though I want to be a fulltime writer, that's unlikely to happen, to I want to be an editor. Either freelance or with a publishing house.

14. Do you have a book you’d like to write one day but don’t feel you’re ready to attempt it yet?

Yes. I have a sci-fi/time travel story I came up with two years ago, and I always think about it, but I don't think I have the skill to pull it off. Tentative title is Dawn before Dusk and here's a rough pitch:
It's gonna feature time travel and war and betrayal and romance spread across time and ugh I just wanna write it so bad.

15. Which story has your heart and won’t let go?

Well, besides Dawn before Dusk, there's my NaNo story Half Full of Water that I'm in love with as well as a story I middle-grade paranormal ghost story I started writing when I was fourteen called Flicker.

Pitches for both:

Half Full of Water

Thousands of years ago, the very fabric of reality was fractured as another reality collided with ours. The result? Entire countries wiped off the map, millions dead, and a brand new system of magic users in a previously magic-less world.

Nineteen-year-old Lire is a Guardian; meaning she’s a glorified slave to a psychopathic witch with an inferiority complex. Lire would do anything for her witch – has to do anything – including sacrifice her life. But when thieves stab the Witch during a robbery, Lire breaks the rules and watches her die.

The thieves kidnap Lire, sure that her magical abilities will come in handy. Lire is thrown into a wide, tumultuous world, ravaged by disease and poison. A world she’s never known and one she’s afraid of knowing too well.

In a crowded bar, a man approaches them with a proposition for the ultimate heist: Steal into the Kings labs and revive the murdered God of Wisdom and Justice. The dead God has the ability to travel through different realities, and will be a guide for the millions of Witches and Guardians persecuted every day. The other reality is a place Lire always dreamed of going. Now she must team up and help the thieves pull off the ultimate heist, so she can find a way out of the wretched world she refuses to call home.  

Flicker

When his imaginary childhood friend appears in his bedroom, fourteen-year-old Avery Slater learns that getting rid of the dead is harder than he thought.

Ever since childhood, Avery has been forced to listen to the whining of the dead. Crazy dead cat ladies and angry hit-and-run victims just love to tell him about their undead problems. After moving to the dinky town of Gravenhague, he thought he'd finally be able to leave all of that ghostly nonsense behind. Sebastian was never one for following plans.

Fifty years old with the temper of a raging third grader, Sebastian has a task only Avery can complete: Find his killer and set his soul free. Not an easy thing when the only clues are a broken violin, a feather, and the faint smell of lilac before death.

All Avery wants is to get this mystery over with, but with a seedy cult called Blacklight working to cover up the strange happenings of Gravenhague, it's more than a headache. As he descends deeper into the mystery, he discovers this isn't your average sleuthing case. Blacklight's spies are watching, and the town's occupants are less than hospitable. With disappearances and death shadowing him, Avery has to wonder if getting rid of Sebastian is worth the hassle.

If being haunted by ghosts has taught him anything, it’s that he never wants to be one.

And that's it. Bye y'all!

 

Author: Rainbow Rowell
Published: September 10th 2013
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Genre: YA/NA, Contemporary, Romance

A coming-of-age tale of fan fiction, family and first love.

Cath is a Simon Snow fan.
Okay, the whole world is a Simon Snow fan...

But for Cath, being a fan is her life—and she’s really good at it. She and her twin sister, Wren, ensconced themselves in the Simon Snow series when they were just kids; it’s what got them through their mother leaving.

Reading. Rereading. Hanging out in Simon Snow forums, writing Simon Snow fan fiction, dressing up like the characters for every movie premiere.
Cath’s sister has mostly grown away from fandom, but Cath can’t let go. She doesn’t want to.

Now that they’re going to college, Wren has told Cath she doesn’t want to be roommates. Cath is on her own, completely outside of her comfort zone. She’s got a surly roommate with a charming, always-around boyfriend, a fiction-writing professor who thinks fan fiction is the end of the civilized world, a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words... And she can’t stop worrying about her dad, who’s loving and fragile and has never really been alone.

For Cath, the question is: Can she do this?

Can she make it without Wren holding her hand? Is she ready to start living her own life? Writing her own stories?

And does she even want to move on if it means leaving Simon Snow behind?

I bought the Exclusive Collector's edition as a birthday present to myself, and since this is the second time I've read it, I thought it was time to do proper review.

Fangirl is the socially awkward teen girl anthem. The entire time reading it, I kept thinking, "This is me. This is so me. Guys, Rowell stole my life and put it in book form, but with a lot more attractive people and romance." If you

A) are a fangirl

B) suffer from social anxiety

C) have just started or have ever attended a college in your life

D) All of the above

you will probably relate a lot to this book. This isn't the most accurate portrayal of fandoms, but I think it's pretty darn close for many young girls who decide to be a part of such a wonderful section of the internet.

Fangirl follows Cath's first year of college as she learns to juggle the booming popularity of her Simon Snow fanfic, her crippling social anxiety, her (lack) of romance, and a slew of family drama. Cath is a witty, but her social anxiety causes her to avoid people. She feels much more at home talking to online friends and writing Simon and Baz stories. Until a few months before college, she thought the same was true for her twin sister Wren. Unfortunately for Cath, Wren wants to mature and become a real college student, which apparently means leaving Simon Snow and Cath behind.

My heart ached when Cath described, "breaking up" with her sister. It's hard enough losing friends, so I can't imagine how much it would suck to drift away from your built-in-best friend. Plus, Cath isn't as outgoing as her sister, so she ends up spending most of the first semester trapped in her room eating protein bars and trying to become friends with her intimidating roommate and her roommate's not-boyfriend.

Cath's is a great main character, though there were a couple of moments where I wanted to strangle her with her own Simon Snow shirt. Mostly the scene where Cath is confronted by her fiction professor for turning in a Simon/Baz story for a writing assignment. Obviously the professor thinks it's plagiarism, but Cath doesn't understand why she shouldn't turn in other people's characters for an academic assignment.

Verdict

Bonus: Here's some pics of the collector's edition. 

I'm back and talking about my NaNo novel! Joining in on Beautiful Books, a three-month long blog event about the terrifying craft of writing. If  you're curious about what I'm writing, come take a look!


So about that blogging. . .


Beautiful Books is hosted by Cait @ Notebook Sisters and Sky @Further Up and Further In

So NaNoWriMo's come and passed. Now you're sitting there staring at your manuscript in abject horror. Do you really have to edit it? The answer to that is yes, yes you do, but first you have to get rid of the troll lurking in your mind.



I think most of us writers have that pesky thing called an inner editor. You know, that evil, high-pitched and raspy voice in our minds that whispers, "This sucks, why are you writing?" At every word we type? Yeah, that dude is kind of annoying, and I'm going to offer some helpful tips on how to shut him up.

1. Punch him and tell him no one's first draft is perfect

If you think that you've just thrown up a 100k monstrosity that not even Van Gogh could save, you're probably right-and that's okay! You don't have to get it right on the first draft. The fist draft is pretty much your permission to suck and not give a flying fudge about it. Editor-Dude can take a chill pill while you word vomit away.

2. Read him your old writing

It's no secret that a lot of our beginning writing isn't the best. We're beginners, what do people expect? Sometimes taking a break from your writing and reading something you wrote when you were ten can be the first motivator. You'll feel good about the improvements you made. Trust me, you have improved.

3.Make fun of him

This ties back to the read your old writing. Sometimes us writers make hilarious mistakes. Sometimes a sentence goes so wrong, we can't tell the original meaning, or there's a plot hole the size of the Mariana Trench. Laugh at that! Mistakes like that are often funny and you should never feel embarrassed by them.

Two nights ago, my roommate and I were sitting around reading our old writing, laughing at the silly things we wrote. It actually made me feel more inspired towards the current story I'm working on. The ability to laugh at yourself in any situation is always a good skill to have.

And if you want a snippet of how bad fourteen-year-old me was, here ya go:




Yes, I had a kitty named Charles Montgomery. No I'm not ashamed.

Do you have any tips for squishing that pesky editor?

It's five days into 2015, and I thought it was better late than never to do a resolution post. I debated for a while on what I should post about. Blogging goals? Writing goals? Both at the same time? But what if that ended up too long? Yeah, I'm a worrywart. I finally decided on doing separate posts, so be on the look at for a writing resolutions post in the near future!

2015 Blogging Goals

Beautiful Books is hosted by Cait @ Paper Fury and Sky @Further Up and Further In

 

1. On a scale of 1 (worst) to 10 (best) how well do you think this book turned out?

2. Have you ever rewritten or edited one of your books before? If so, what do you do to prepare yourself? If not, what’s your plan?

3. What’s your final word count? Do you plan to lengthen or trim your book?

4. What’s are you most proud of? Plot, characters, or pacing?

5. What’s your favorite bit of prose or line from this novel?

Once, when I was smaller—humans called it young, but I called it the years before I turned pimply and gross—the Witch fell down a well. She was too young, and I could remember the sound of her grubby hands scratching at the well’s walls. I leaned over the edge, just enough so that I could see the top of her blonde head. It was matted with blood.
 
“Lire!” she screamed. I looked around. The park surrounding the well had been deserted as soon as the Witch and I had shown up. Anyone who could be considered “adult” had vanished with their child. I couldn’t blame them. Even at that age, I knew the Witch was a forbidden B-word.
* * *

When I presented the Witch with the heart, she was thoroughly disgusted and delighted. Her parents were out for dinner, and my parents were out avoiding me.

* * *
His face remains doubtful and unconvinced. “And you’re not worried her Witch will come and kill us all?” He directs this question at Charlie and Rise.
“Pretty not worried,” says Rise.
Either Sijak buys the half-truth we told him, or he sees no point in arguing further, but he switches the subject. I’m betting on the latter. “Do you have any useful skills?”
“She can take control of people’s bodies and scramble their brains. Don’t tell me that’s not useful,” Charlie answers. I’m grateful that I don’t have to speak for myself.

Sijak has the same expression on his face that Charlie did when I told him the news. “Don’t worry about that. She said the process was quite painful for her as well, and she doesn’t do it frequently.”

“I’m not worried about that. I’m worried about the state of your intelligence. Kidnapping a Witch’s Guardian? Are you both insane?”
Rise and Charlie shrink under the reprimand. “It’s not kidnapping. She came along willingly.” Rise says.

“That’s even worse.” Sijak rubs his temple. “Are you sure this Witch isn’t a danger.”

“Dead sure.” Sijak’s eyes widen a small fraction at Rise’s choice of words. Luckily, he doesn’t push it.
“Why do you always pick up the worst strays?” he groans.
“Like you?” Charlie says wryly. Rise snickers.

6. What aspect of your book needs the most work?

7. What aspect of your book is your favorite?

8. How are your characters? Well-rounded, or do they still need to be fleshed-out?

9. If you had to do it over again, what would you change about the whole process?

10. Did anything happen in your book that completely surprised you? Have any scenes or characters turned out differently to what you planned? Good or bad?

11. What was the theme and message? Do you think it came across? If not, is there anything you could do to bring it out more?

12. Do you like writing with a deadline (like NaNoWriMo) or do you prefer to write-as-it-comes?

 13. Comparative title time! What published books, movies, or TV shows are like your book? (Ex: Inkheart meets X-Men, etc.)

14. How do you celebrate a finished novel?! 

I haven't finished one, but I imagine it'll be something like this


Then I'd be like this 

15. When people are done reading your book, what feeling do you want them to come away with?