My First True Love(s)

From the time I was little I was in love with stories. Movies, plays, books anything that wasn’t kindergarten napping and hopscotch I was into. I desperately wanted something exciting to happen to me, something that happened to characters in books. I wanted to sprout wings, or find out I was a missing princess like Anastasia.

Naturally then, I had my favorite stories, and my favorite characters. I had particularly bad little girl crushes on Peter Pan and Dickon from The Secret Garden.

To This day I’m not sure what the appeal of these two were as compared to the princes of Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. Maybe it was the fact that Peter Pan was utterly wild and incredulous, while the Princes of Disney had little else but their title.

Oh Golly! If you don’t find this adorable you’re on crack!

Peter Pan always held a special place in my heart. He was unruly and lets not forget musical (pan pipes). Not to mention an excellent leader (he could rally 12 boys under the age of 13 and that’s a tough job for anyone). Besides that he was an extraordinary fighter (beating up a  pirate 3 times his age and half his wit). And boy was he witty. Even at 7 years old I  couldn’t help but falling in love with people’s wit and Peter Pan’s was no exception.

Then there was the fact that he was utterly magically, and could freakin’ fly! If that wasn’t reason enough to want to marry him then i don’t know what is. So there is my explanation for being in love with Peter Pan. Makes sense.

Then there was Dickon. Oh Dickon, sweet, adorable, animal charmer Dickon! That should be enough to make any girl swoon right there. Let’s not even MENTION the fact that he has an accent (an adorable little scots-irishaccent)! Plus he’s all in love with animals and the wind in his hair and stuff like that and as a little suburbs

It’s like The Notebook for 10 year olds! 😀 *I’m squealing on the inside*

girl I wanted so badly to run out on the ‘Moore’ with him. Plus, he could tame a WILD PONY. Every little girl wants a pony and if a boy could tame a wild pony and give it to me I’m pretty dang sure I would marry him to this day. Nuff said.

Oh and on top of that he would Push Mary on the swing in the garden and that was just too cute! He was a perfect little gentleman, which is the complete opposite of Peter. Who in retrospect was a total player who flirted with Mermaids, and probably joked around with Wendy way too much. He will just never grow up. So immature (haha)!

What do my fictious love interests have to do with writing.

Well, just recently I realized that right there (those two characters) are excellent examples of how to make love interests interesting. They (even as children) had the makings of great men. And so I will now got pat myself on the back for discovering that I have great taste in fictitious boys. Their characters would be excellent models to form an MC or a secondary character with! Now, don’t you feel like you learned something?

Did anyone else have kiddie crushes?

Sorry this post is late… Microsoft is lame and windows live didn’t post it for me! UGH! Technology 😦

Quotes for Writers

Just got back from a homecoming dance and it’s 11:52  that means I must do a post quickly… so enjoy these lovely quotes about writing and writers! 🙂

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.

– Douglas Adams

It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.

– Robert Benchley

Being a poet is one of the unhealthier jobs–no regular hours, so many temptations!

– Elizabeth Bishop

 

A best seller was a book which somehow sold well simply because it was selling well.

– S. Boorstein

Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.

– Orson Scott Card

I firmly believe every book was meant to be written.

– Marchette Chute

A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.
I say it just begins
to live that day.

– Emily Dickinson

If you start with a bang, you won’t end with a whimper.

– T.S. Eliot

At one time I thought the most important thing was talent. I think now that the young man or the young woman must possess or teach himself, training himself, in infinite patience, which is to try and to try until it comes right. He must train himself in ruthless intolerance–that is to throw away anything that is false no matter how much he might love that page or that paragraph. The most important thing is insight, that is to be–curiosity–to wonder, to mull, and to muse why it is that man does what he does, and if you have that, then I don’t think the talent makes much difference, whether you’ve got it or not.

– William Faulkner

Don’t be dismayed by the opinions of editors, or critics. They are only the traffic cops of the arts.

– Gene Fowler

I try to create sympathy for my characters, then turn the monsters loose.

– Stephen King

 

Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.

– Barbara Kingsolver

What are your favorite writing quotes?

Ally on: Being a Teen Writer

I feel like it’s time for a little heart to heart here guys. I just need to get this situation off my chest, because everyone else seems to have an opinion about it and so here’s my two cents on teen writers, and being one.

First off, we get a bad wrap. At least I thinks so. We can’t write anything ‘good‘, were shut ins, we drink large amounts of tea, and on top of all of this people seem to think that were just writing for fun. FUN? Whomsoever thinks writing is fun has obviously never done it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve talked to people and when I tell them I’m a writer they’ll say over exuberantly  “Oh that’s cute!” or dreadfully, “you aren’t going to college for that are you?”. With either response you might as well of just spit in my tea and walked away.

I’m not taken seriously, and i know it. Heck, everyone knows it!

If you’re between the ages of say… 13 and 20 and drop the ‘W’ bomb you’re whole ship is sunk. You automatically become the out in space, unrealistic dreamer who obviously doesn’t have his/her head on straight and clearly, ever so clearly needs to be steered in the right direction. I can’t tell you how often my Grandmother has throw out the topic of engineer, or chemist, or (if you absolutely must) biologist when I bring up writing. And it isn’t that those aren’t good jobs, or that I couldn’t do them (or don’t want to) it’s the fact that you don’t even give writing a second thought.

No one has EVER said to me (other than fellow writers) “Why Ally, you should keep writing! You could have a future there.”

And I’m not asking for handouts, or compliments, honestly. If you want to tell me I suck at writing and am a failure and that I’ll never amount to anything in the field… fine. But don’t just skim over it like it isn’t even worth a comment, like since its worthless to you it’s worthless to me, because it’s not.

And i think that’s where the big misconception is. People think this is just something I do. They think that it’s worthless.That it’s all the papers you throw away at the end of the school year (sure you used them once, they meant something once. But no one else will want them, and eventually you’ll realize you don’t need them, and you’ll just toss it out with the trash)

But it ISN”T LIKE THAT.

Writing is something that you have to commit to. ESPECIALLY as a teen! School, sports, friends, family, clubs, a part-time job, applying for college (if your a Jr./Senior), and church (if your into that) is all on a teen’s plate. Add writing to that and, well, you could just about drop dead at the end of the day. At least I could. I suppose this isn’t just teens, but every writer with a life. (haha, what life?). What I’m saying is it’s easy as a teenager to steal every spare moment of  the day to just catch your breath, but teen writers don’t and that’s what people don’t get.

Most of the time writing isn’t fun, and we have to MAKE time to do it. We have to force ourselves to do a lot of days. And anybody who writes will tell you that isn’t easy. You have to take yourself very seriously to do it.

I take myself seriously, and I just wish other people would to. I’m not asking you to tell me I’m amazing. I’m just asking you to give me chance.

A Prompt: Spring has Sprung

Hey all, in preparation for diving back into THE SHADOWS THAT FELL I’ll be doing a series of prompts. Today I’ll be using my MC Violet.

The prompt is:

Write about a special moment in your characters life, their fondest memory. What ever it is they turn to when they are in the worst of things.

Violet sat beneath the shade of the oak tree, flipping through an underwhelming version of “pre-world society and eloquence for the young lady”. Her mother laid humming beside her contentedly flipping pages on a net screen. Violet caught photos of eyelashes, models on the runway below the glare of the sun that filtered through the leaves. Makeup. Something she hated ever since her mother had begun painting her up like a china doll last year. Seven, she was seven, and suffocating under powder and lip shine.  And she hated it, maybe even more than “Soceity” and “Eloquence” smashed into a stuffy old paper brick.

“Mama, I don’t wanna read this…” she tossed the volume into the grass and glanced longingly in the direction of her brother. Wice was sparing in the grass with his swords-play teacher. They used sticks instead of the rubber swords today, and Violet could her the thwack thwack thwack of the collisions in between her brother’s dodges.

“Want to, darling. We don’t say ‘wanna’. You’re a big girl now, aren’t you?” her mother skimmed through another makeup page not lifting her eyes.

Violet sighed, dramatically falling over onto her side in the grass. Her cheek pressed to the cool dew that hadn’t quite burned off in the shade. “I can’t… can not” she corrected herself, ” read another page! Can I please spare with Wice?”

Her mother sighed with a smile and set the net-screen down, “Darling, you’re a pretty little girl not a boy. I shan’t let you do this much longer…”

Violet glowered up at her mother from the ground thinking of smearing her painted face in the grass.

“But I suppose… just one more time won’t hurt…” she smiled. Violet shot up from the grass her hair tangled with grass blades.

“Yes!” She cried, she pushed up off the grass and ran out of the shade into the sunshine.

“Do not mention this to the ladies at circle though!” her mother calls after her, but she didn’t here a thing. She rushed out into the center of the yard,

“Wice, Wice! It’s my turn!”

Wice whipped around from a jab and rolled his eyes, “Violet this is ser-” Wice’s instructor whapped him upside the back, and sent him sprawling into the grass face first. Violet giggled, and yanked the stick from her brothers hand, “Mom said it’s my turn.”

Wice grimaced  and rubbed his back, “Finally, I’m starving!” Wice sprinted across the yard and back into the house in search of food.

“I see you’re back for more little flower?” Instructor Kunk said smiling. Violet had always loved the old man, who was quick as running water, and just as refreshing.

“Of course!” And with feeble strokes Violet struck and laughed in the afternoon sun, her mother smiling secretly behind her screen, and her brother sneeking brownies beside her. Of course, that was before things changed for good. For worse.

 

hope everyone participates in the prompt!

Genius and Thievery!

Hi everyone! I have been super busy today, and still have a ton of homework to do before I head into school tomorrow. So, for today’s post I’m totally cheating and re-posting an awesome idea from Brigid’s blog My Life as a Teenage Novelist. After you read her awesome advice below go ahead and check out her site!

Fun with Wordle

Howdy, y’all!

So, if you don’t know what Wordle is, let me briefly explain how it works. It’s a nifty little website, where you can enter a bunch of text, and then it creates a “word collage” based on what you enter. The more frequently you use a certain word, the bigger it is in the collage. Fun, right?

But not only is it fun, it’s also a useful tool for writers––because it shows you what words you might be using too much.

For example, here’s what happened when I entered the entirety of my book UNRAVELING:

 

Uh wow, the word “like” is freakin’ HUGE! Same with the word “know” … and there are a lot of other words that are relatively large. 

 

Now, this is what happened when I entered six of my books at once:

 

 

The results are actually pretty much the same. Looks like no matter what I’m writing, I use a lot of the same words. Particularly “like” and “know,” for some reason.

 

Well, I take this as a sign that I should go back through my manuscripts and take out some of those words that I’m using way too much. 

 

So, my question of the day is: What are some words that you use too much? Have you ever used Wordle to find out––and if so, did the results surprise you?

Isn’t she a genius? Check out her site!

http://mylifeasateenagenovelist.blogspot.com/2012/06/fun-with-wordle.html

Re-posted from My Life as a Teenage Novelist

3 Writer’s Essentials

Post: 4/17

I’m so tired from this week, and so I’m just going to be a bum and make a list for today’s post. 3 cheers for my level of motivation! So here are three writer’s essentials.

1.Post it Notes. Why? Because they are genius! You can stick them in your car/bag/locker/notebook/planner and darn near anywhere else and instantly be able to have a place to write down ideas! On top of that they are colorful and who doesn’t like colorful paper squares? Crazies, that’s who.

2. A Fancy Pen. I feel like all writers need at least one fancy pen. It makes you feel all professional, and on-top of that it might make you like editing! (Yeah that’s a lie.) Even if it doesn’t, at least you can carry it around and look like you know what your doing, because honestly I rarely do. It just makes you feel writerly!

3. A Comfortable desk chair. I only say this because my pretty staples desk chair( of 4 years) broke and so I’m using a fold-able right now and my back has no support. This is no condition to sit in folks, especially when you are falling asleep at your desk. I never realized until now how much I desperately need a good chair. Thus, you need one too. If you’re spending hours in that chair it better be good!

That is all. Continue about your day citizens.

 

When You have a Pile of Sawdust: BURN IT.

Day 1/17

The pathetic side of my life exists when I find myself at my desk staring at a color-coded planner and eating whole grain pop tarts. Why I even bother to get the whole grain I don’t know, because there’s no way they actually have nutritional value even with the added saw dust fiber. So, as I pathetically sit at my desk eating pop tarts I have decided to talk about keeping things real up in here, at Novel Ideas. After all, if I can’t be honest with you all who can I be honest with?

Honestly I haven’t written in over a month. Sad. Sad, sadness. *cries* The last thing I worked on was ABLAZE and oh god it’s terrible. It’s really, really ,really abominable and dreadful and.. ugh. Bad. I know I say this every time I write a first draft, but oh god it’s just THAT bad. But since I sad I would finish it, I’m going to, dreadful as it is. Now that I have that slime wiped off my chest we can get on with what to do when you have a large pile of ugh… saw dust (lets go with that since it ties in with my first paragraph which really had nothing to do with anything).

Saw dust is a messy substance. Difficult to create with, usually the product of work that makes you all sweaty, and on top of this it has the annoying tendency to blow up in your face. (Oh gee this is actually a very apt metaphor!) So, at this point I am knee deep in saw dust (ABLAZE) and it’s looking rather like… well saw dust. How do you get through the rest of the saw dust; that  if you see this project through (which you should) will surely bury you? Here are my tips:

1: Expect the Expected

That is to say don’t be surprised at the fact that there is so much terribleness in your novel. Its going to be terrible, and somehow everyone (even me) at the beginning of a new project expects this fundamental truth to suddenly evaporate and that glittery rainbows will ribbon from the skies and your manuscript will be all glittery and fantastic. NO. Don’t kid yourself, no matter how great the idea will seem it will eventually reach suck-age. Thus you will always end up with a pile of sawdust. Granted (depending on the level of planning) sometimes the pile will be smaller than usually, but it will still exist. Expect it.

2. Wear Goggles

Having things, particularly saw dust or a manuscript blow up in your face is a rather terrible experience. A good way to provent this is to have a fall back (or some goggles) to help you see straight. In other words have another manuscript to refresh your vision when you are are tired of the wind blowing the dust up in your face.  Having another manuscript to work on will keep you fresh. Hacking through parts of a novel will only lead to the accumulation of more saw dust. Take a break, wipe off your goggles and breathe.

3. Burn It

At the end of the novel just burn it. Toss the match over your shoulder and watch it go up. If it’s really that bad at least you learned what NOT to do, and you can just start over. Besides saw dust burning is rather fun. you can laugh manically and roast marshmallows! It’s fantastic and I look forward to doing it when I finish Ablaze.

So, sawdust. opinions? Anyone in the midst of the stuff?

 

Make Me Sway: Emotion on Rails

I think we’ve all heard it. That one piece of music, something about just gets you. A line, a melody, the ache in a singers voice. At some point or another you will find yourself swayed by the power of a song. Your body will automatically initiate a reaction. Swaying, tapping your foot, smiling, and on occasion crying.

Just like music books should sway a readers emotion. SOMETHING about the book needs to be powerful enough to intiate a physical reaction. Who hasn’t found themself laughing, sighing, kicking your feet impatiently, or crying on account of a book? Today I’d like to talk about a scene that caught me off guard and why it’s the perfect example of how to infuse emotion into a scene so deeply that your readers find themselves swaying to your current.

I’m going to be looking at the first chapter of Beth Revis’ novel Across the universe. So no spoilers! Though I do reccommend that you read the first chapter for free HERE to get the most out of his post.

Anyway if you read that or have read the book you know that the first chapter consists of Amy (the MC) getting ready to be chronologically frozen and put onto GODSPEED the spaceship with her parents. And I’m not going to lie to you I started having a minor panic attack during the FIRST CHAPTER! I actually cried a little bit, and this deeply disturbed and stunned me at once. I couldn’t understand why I had been so moved and upset without any back story. After-all, how could I possibly care enough to be crying when I’d only met Amy something like 10 pages ago?

It didn’t make sense. So I read it again. And again… and one for time just to make sure I knew what I was talking about.

And that’s when the light bulb went on.

All my writing life I’ve been told that creating emotional investment in a novel is entirely dependent upon characters. you must make characters we care about, they say. You must make them relate-able, that’s the key!

But reading this scene I realized that characters are just the train on the tracks of making emotional connection. Sure thats the part everyone pays attention to but what about the tracks themselves? The stop lights and stations?

And Beth Revis puts the tracks to the test in this first chapter.

Let me explain.The ‘tracks’ are our basic human fears and feelings. This whole chapter is so full of them that I could just

The rails are deeply grounded in all of us

choke and vomit and they all wouldn’t be able to come up at once! (sorry gross) Anyway, this chapter confronts several fears, some smaller ones being the fear of needles, cold, and small spaces. All of which Amy has  to watch her mother go through as she is put into a tiny freezing box of cryo-liquid, her blood painfully pumped out, KNOWING she will have to do this in a few moments. This anticipatory fear is also a factor in the sheer genius that Revis presents. (As anticipation of pain is often worse than the pain itself, remember shots when you were little? Kicking and screaming for a pinch!)

Basic human fear. Something we can relate to.

Amy also faces the fear on loneliness another ‘track that great emotional characters run on”. Many people are afraid to be alone.  Humans are naturally social creatures (yes even writers we are not a separate species despite some outsiders opinions! haha). Amy is forced with a decision (a stop light) of staying on earth or leaving with her parents her dad telling her before he is frozen that :

“I’m going next. Your mother wouldn’t agree to that—she thoughtyou’d still back down, decide not to come with us. Well, I’m giving youthat option. I’m going next. Then, if you’d like to walk away, not be frozen,that’s okay. I’ve told your aunt and uncle. They’re waiting outside; they’llbe there until I’ve. After they freeze me, you can just walk away. Mom andI won’t know, not for centuries, not till we wake up, and if you do decideto live instead of being frozen, then we’ll be okay.” (Revis, 6)

Not only is there a HUGE decision, but it is riding on the rails of loneliness. Amy must decided if she can live a life without her parents knowing she will die long before the realize she has left them (and live her whole life knowing this) or go with them and leave all her other family and friends behind. leave the safety and comforter of everything she is familiar with behind. She can not avoid an empty loneliness no matter which way she turns. Even if she chooses her parents she is forced to choose the icy slumber of centuries, perhaps a loneliness even worse than a life without her parents. It makes your heart sink doesn’t it?

Applying basic human fears, is the key to making emotionally strong characters.

Because we are all afraid of something and loneliness, Pain, and responsibility are all basic fears that Amy faces in just chapter one of the novel.

Learning how to use the rails of writing great characters is one of the most important tools a writer can have. What do you think? Do you know of a scene that shares rails with this one? What’s your most emotionally moving scene?

20 Things Writers Do

1. Fall asleep thinking about characters and plots, but be too lazy to find a pen and paper and scribble it down because you’re just about to go to sleep. Wake up the next morning and forget about it, and have it haunt you all day.

2. Ease drop on other people’s conversations to get novel research.

3. Keep notebooks with tons of random facts in them. If you’re ever murdered and the police go through your stuff they will think you were crazy. Then someone will tell them you were a writer. OH.

4. smile randomly in public because you’ve just figured out your plot hole!

5.  Jump around the house and dance because you’ve finished your first draft! OMG It’s done!

7. Stare at the computer from across the room, and then never get up.

8. try to flatten dog-eared page in library books.

9. Look at baby names sites for hours and not be pregnant.

10.  Keep checking your word count. No. No, it hasn’t changed

11. Write a sentence. back space. repeat.

12. Kill people frequently… fictional people of course! … O.o

13.Embrace imaginary friends.

14. Space out. A LOT.

15. Let coffee/tea/soup/and food in general go cold if you take it to your desk. The computer is enough to fill anyone up. Not realize it and thirty minutes later take a sip…. ICK!

16. Miss major events in the world. Oh there an African-American president? Oh a guy just shot up the batman movie? Sorry! I was in a writing comma.

17. Yell at inanimate objects. Books, computers, imaginary people in your head.

18.Hoard notebooks.

19. Talk about writing to anyone who will listen. If they don’t who cares! Go on to forcibly tie them to a chair and tell them about writing anyway.

20. Not write,  make a blog post instead. Like this one.

Just Add Water and a Fun House Mirror!

So yep… here is me. Back from my FINAL vacation this summer, I SWEAR! This was the last one. And the last prolonged blogging absence I will have in the coming months! So yeah, vacations over!

Wow… that sounded like an oxymoron.

Anyway, I decided to tell you all that vacation is a good thing for writers. Especially ones who don’t write on vacation (like me). Why? That sounds even more like an oxymoron than the last one.

Because we need brain food. Seriously.

Where do you think you get all your ideas from? They aren’t coming out of thin air despite how it may seem. All ideas come from other ideas. Everything you’ve ever written (and will write) is a collection of every movie you’ve ever seen, every book you’ve ever read, every piece of art you’ve ever seen, and every experience/conversation you’ve ever had.

And since we writers write everyday (ehm. Yes everyday… *cough*) we are constantly pouring out those experiences and taking less of them in by comparison. Things that we do everyday like go to work or school, eating breakfast, or riding a bike, those often times don’t give us any new information. Without new information how can you create anything new? You are drawing from the same stagnant pool of ideas 24/7! Without any new flow of information to mix up the waters (shall we say) you end up with a bunch of new but similar ideas or rewriting old ones.

Not good.

That’s why it’s important (in my opinion at least) for writers to be getting as much new information as possible at all times. And it doesn’t have to be something big. Sure, going on a weeks long vacation to Oregon (a place I’d never been before) that is great! Fantastic! But, you can’t do that all the time. So, getting new information needs to be more accessible, and you can make it that way just by enacting small changes in your life.

For instance:

Instead of watching an old favorite switch on a new movie or show

Likewise for books and music

Take a walk/ride your bike to a neighborhood you haven’t been in before

Try something new: pick up a guitar or play a piano, take some photos,bake something, play a sport, or get your hands on a sketchbook

Re-paint your room to give you a new outlook on your life

Clean out a bookshelf

Try reading a different genre (you might just like it!)

Basically, just do something new, something that will spark new neuron pathways in your brain because it hasn’t experienced it before!

Being creative is about taking in as much of your surroundings as possible and then warping them into something else entirely. Like fun house mirrors! So, there you have it, your job is to become a fun house mirror!

So what have I done in this post? Mostly I’ve made myself feel better about not writing, and you know, maybe I imparted some useful advice. Maybe…