Hills and Corkscrews

The End of This Blog

2011-10-08T15:56:00.002-04:00

So I've needed to write this post for a while now, and I'm just going to get straight to the point: I'm ending this blog.

I'm not deleting it; I'm just not going to be posting anymore. I put a lot of thought into it first, and I realized that blogging isn't as fun for me as it used to be, and I can't really keep up with blogging along with everything else in my life.

I'm not going to fall of the face of the earth- I'll still be tweeting and reading and commenting on other people's blogs, and you'll still be able to e-mail me at brittany@hillsandcorkscrews.com. I'm also thinking about starting a Tumblr or maybe a YouTube channel or something like that.

And I think that sometime in the future I'll start blogging again (on a new blog which I would link to here). It might be in a couple of months, a year, three years, five years. I'm not sure.

Also, I wanted to thank everyone who has followed and commented and encouraged me. I really appreciate it.

And to the writers who followed me because of the Writers' Platform-Building Campaign- I'm dropping out of the Campaign, and I won't feel bad if you (or any other followers) want to unfollow me to shorten up your blog list.

Also, if a teen writer who participated in the Teen Writers' Summer Blogfest wants to start it up again next summer, that'd be great. Maybe I'll be blogging again by next summer, but if not, feel free to host it (or not, if you don't want to).

If you want to see my blog as a story, this is the end, or maybe...

On Protagonists and Likeability

2011-09-01T16:31:00.000-04:00

What I'm Working On: Getting ready for school to start

What I'm Reading: I finished Wither by Lauren DeStefano in about a day (and I might write a review of it) and now I'm reading an ARC of Darkfall by Janice Hardy that I won.

(Quick note: You can enter to win a copy of Shut Out by Kody Keplinger at Novelteen HERE!)

Today I thought I'd talk about protagonists or main characters or whatever you want to call them. I'll stick with protagonists for this post.

A few of the books that I've read lately have gotten me thinking about how the protagonist is affected by the POV of the story is told in.

On a very basic level, the protagonist of your story is the person who the story is mostly about. They don't necessarily have to be likeable or good or anything. They just have to be a (hopefully) interesting person who is involved in the plot of the story (someone who is against the antagonist), and usually someone you're cheering for.

In Plot and Structure, James Scott Bell talks about the four elements that most protagonists should have (though there are exceptions): identification, sympathy, likeability, and inner conflict. Along with this, I think your protagonist should be proactive, not just someone who sits around and watches things happen. (Note: protagonist and POV character are usually the same, but sometimes they're different. So your POV character can be an entirely different character from your protagonist.)

Like I said, what I've read recently has gotten me thinking about protagonists and their personalities. I think it's important for your protagonist to have a strong personality, and I'm starting to notice that protagonists in first-person stories occasionally seem a bit... flat. I'm not sure if it's because of how close you are to the protagonist, since it's almost like you are the protagonist, or maybe it's just harder to let the personality of a first-person protagonist shine through when they're the one telling the story.

Most of my favorite protagonists were in third-person stories, and I'm kind of curious about this. In third-person, you're seeing the protagonist with at least a little bit of narrative distance. You're not directly in his thoughts, and you get somewhat of a better picture of what he's like (at least for me). Overall, my favorite POV to read and write is third-person.

In first-person stories, it's a bit trickier. You're shown all of the protagonist's emotions and thoughts and feelings a lot closer than in third-person.

Some of my favorite protagonists include:

Harry Potter
Meg from A Wrinkle in Time
Meggie from the Ink Trilogy
Kat from Heist Society
Reynie from The Mysterious Benedict Society
Percy Jackson
Nya from The Healing Wars Trilogy
Artemis Fowl

Looking at this list of protagonists, half are boys, half are girls. All of these are MG novels except for Heist Society. And all of them are from third-person stories except for Percy Jackson and Nya .

Also, some of my favorite books don't have my favorite protagonists. I love the Hunger Games Trilogy, but Katniss is not one of my favorite protagonists. She wasn't really likeable to me for the last half of the trilogy (though that might have been just me), but she was a very compelling protagonist to read about.

What I like about the two first-person protagonists on my list is that you can really tell what their personality is like. Percy is funny and light-hearted, and also very brave. Nya is independent and smart, and both characters have great voices.

So now I'm curious. Who are your favorite protagonists? Do you prefer third-person or first-person protagonists? Why?

(Also, I was originally going to write a post about POV, but Eileen from Speak Coffee to Me already wrote a great post about it HERE, so I thought I'd share the link to it. Also, something like that happened with one of my other posts, How to Overcome Post-Series-Depression. M.J Horton wrote a blog post called First Draft Syndrome Symptoms in the same kind of style on the same day, and I didn't even know about her blog until Rachael linked to it in her Week in Short post. M.J's much funnier than mine, so you should definitely read it. :) Great minds think alike.)

Picture courtesy of Mikleman

The Third Writers' Platform-Building Campaign!

2011-08-22T10:18:00.001-04:00

What I'm Working On: I'm still working on revision. The second draft will be quite a bit different from the first, but hopefully a lot better.

What I'm Reading: Finished Paper Towns (it was amazing) and now I'm rereading Heist Society by Ally Carter

This is going to be a short post today. Rachael Harrie at Rach Writes is holding her Third Writers' Platform-Building Campaign, which I heard about before but only after it was held (this kind of thing seems to happen to me a lot). So now I'm participating in this Campaign. You can read the full post about the Campaign and how to participate HERE.

This is how Rach describes it:

"Basically, the Campaign is a way to link those of us in the writing community together with the aim of helping to build our online platforms. The Campaigners are all bloggers in a similar position, who genuinely want to pay it forward, make connections and friends within the writing community, and help build each others' online platforms while at the same time building theirs."

The Campaign runs from August 22nd to October 31st, but if you're going to participate, you need to sign up by August 31st. Make sure you read the full post before joining (and I hope you do, because it sounds like lots of fun). :)

The Next Harry Potter?

2011-08-20T10:09:00.002-04:00

What I'm Working On: Finally cleaned off my desk and now I'm going to work on the revision, after this post, of course.

What I'm Reading: Paper Towns by John Green

Gracie of I Am Writer… Hear Me Roar!, has extended the deadline of her contest, which is now called the Explore-a-Teen's-Brain-Contest. For more details see her post.

Yesterday, MuggleNet posted a link to a Wall Street Journal article called "Conjuring the Next Harry Potter", and it's mostly about a possible contender. You can find MuggleNet's post HERE and the Wall Street Journal article HERE (which you might want to read).

The article is mostly about the book The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, and how much hype and publicity it's getting before it's published, because everyone (and by everyone I mean publishers and booksellers) thinks it's going to be the "next Harry Potter".

Here's what the article said about it:

"Ms. Morgenstern's novel, set at the turn of the 19th century, tells the story of two young, love-struck magicians who compete in a magical circus."

Before I say anything else I should probably say that I don't have anything against the book or the author. She wrote the novel during NaNo WriMo (at least, the first draft), so I think that's kind of awesome. It sounds like an interesting concept (albeit a bit too similar to Water for Elephants), and the author sounds like all this hype isn't really for her. This is what the article said about it:
"Ms. Morgenstern finds the attention and hype overwhelming and worries about a backlash."

The end of the MuggleNet posting of the article said: "The better question may not be what can fill the void left by Potter, but is there really a void to begin with and if so, can it be filled at all?" So this post is mostly a response to that question.

First off, I don't think there is much of a void left behind Harry Potter. I know people like the media say things like "searching for the next Harry Potter". I don't know about you, but I'm a huge Harry Potter fan, but I'm not searching for a book or series to replace Harry Potter. I still have the Harry Potter books, and I don't need another franchise to take their spot. (Obviously, I can't speak for all of the fans. Some people probably disagree.)

From this article, I can assume that the people searching for the next Harry Potter are booksellers and publishers. If you read the article, you'll notice that there's all this hype created by the publisher and bookstores (which is not a bad thing, it's called publicity), but this book isn't really getting famous because of readers. I don't mean to sound snobby or rude or anything, but when it comes down to it, a book's popularity comes down to the readers, and whether they like the book, and whether they want to pass it on to their friends. *

To quote the article:

"The global, multimedia marketing campaign boosting "The Night Circus" certainly seems better suited to a Hollywood blockbuster release than an unknown author's debut novel."

I was only 4 when the first Harry Potter movie was released, but from what I've read and seen, the books were very popular before then, and it was because of the readers. So I think what will ultimately make a book famous is what the readers think of it.

To summarize so far, I don't think there is a void, at least among most Harry Potter fans, and I think if there is one, it will be filled by a book or series that readers like, not one that's being chosen.

So if there is going to be the "next Harry Potter", what will it be like? I think it will:

Be a YA or possibly adult book series, most likely a genre outside of contemporary (something like dystopian, fantasy, etc.).
Have lots of crossover appeal. People of all ages and both genders will want to read it.
Be made into a series of movies.
Be actually a good series. Well-written, great characters, high-concept plot. Also, it will be a lot deeper than your average book.
Not be predicted by publishers or booksellers. Instead, I think it won't become super-famous until after it's published.
Will be a household name once it's been out for a while.

There was a brief mention in the article of the other contenders for the next HP, including the Percy Jackson series among others. There have been quite a few contenders lately, including (and why they didn't work):

Twilight- It didn't have a wide enough audience. The vast majority of its fans were teenage girls or middle-aged women, while people of all ages (from little kids to elderly people) and both men and women read Harry Potter. Plus, I don't think it was good enough, which resulted in a lot of haters.**
Percy Jackson and the Olympians- I'm not sure about this one. It was big, but not quite big enough. It wasn’t a household name, not everyone knew about the books. I do think it succeeded in appealing to both boys and girls (at least, most of the people I know who read them are boys). They were well-written but the books kind of lacked something, like a deeper meaning (and there are a lot of those in HP).
Water for Elephants- And I'm kind of iffy about even considering this as a contender. I haven't read the book or seen the movie, but I know the basic premise (and it was a NaNo novel). It was also a #1 New York Times Bestseller. The movie had Rob Pattinson in it (which probably appealed to the Twilight fans), and I know a lot of girls my age saw it. Still, it was an adult novel that I think only appealed to older teenagers (like 16+).

All of these books/series were big, and a lot of people say that Twilight was the next HP, though I disagree. While I don't think anything will be quite as successful as HP for a long time, I do think that the Hunger Games trilogy will be big, even bigger than Twilight (but I'm not the first one to think this). Why?

It was already popular before they started making it into a movie.
It's a YA series that both genders like, and I know adults like it, too.
It's one of those series that you can completely obsess over.
It has a love triangle, which will probably appeal to Twilight fans, and I know lots of HP fans already love the series.

So, my predictions? I think the Hunger Games will be huge, between Twilight and Harry Potter's level of success. And as for The Night Circus, I'm not 100% sure. I don't think that just because there's been a lot of hype created (though I hadn't heard of it until the WSJ article), it will be big.

I really do think it sounds too close to Water for Elephants, and even that wasn't quite up there. It's not a series, and it's an adult novel that doesn't really sound like it has crossover appeal. It's not high-concept, not in the way that the Hunger Games or HP or the Percy Jackson series is. I think it will probably do well, it will probably be a bestseller, but I don't think it will come close to being the next HP.

Obviously, these are just my thoughts. I don't work in publishing so I can't be sure.

*I hope I don't sound like I think publishers and booksellers shouldn't promote books before they come out. I think it's great. It's just that the way they're trying to choose the next Harry Potter rubbed me the wrong way, that's all.

**I'm not a Twilight hater, by the way. I read the first 3 books a few years ago, but I don't remember loving them. I've read all of the articles and blog posts and watched all the vlogs about how bad Twilight is, and I agree with those points, but I don't hate it.

Anyway, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this subject. Do you think there's a void left by Harry Potter? If so, what do you think will fill it? And what do you think works better to make a book popular: promotion by the publisher, or word-of-mouth by the readers?

(Also, if you read that whole blog post, you get a cupcake.)

How to Overcome Post-Series-Depression

2011-08-19T14:24:00.002-04:00

What I'm Working On: Catching up with all the Write On Con articles that I haven't read yet. (It was a blast, by the way! If you didn't participate this year, make sure you do next year!) Jess wrote a good recap post HERE.

Also, I've started thinking about revision. I've listed the major problems in my novel and I'm starting to work on how to fix them in Draft 2. It's going… all right.

What I'm Reading: Paper Towns by John Green

First off, I'm really sorry that I didn't blog when I said I would. I'm going to work on blogging more regularly for the rest of the year (at least 2-3 times a week).

Last Tuesday, I finished The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan, which is the last Percy Jackson and the Olympians book. And even though it didn't have a particularly sad ending, I cried.

And I realized that this was the same kind of depression that set in after the last Harry Potter movie came out a while back. Everyone called it Post-Potter-Depression (and everybody had it), but it doesn't just apply to Harry Potter. So I thought I'd write a post about it.

POST-SERIES-DEPRESSION: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

Post-Series-Depression is depression caused by the end of a book series, usually a series with five or more books.

HISTORY

One of the most famous cases of Post-Series-Depression occurred in July of 2011, before, during, and after the July 15 release of the final Harry Potter movie. Bajillions of people from around the world were struck by the condition, and many are still in recovery.

The general public considers Post-Series-Depression to be the stuff of lunacy.* It is not taken seriously among non-reading people, and must be handled without attracting too much attention.

CAUSES

PSD has one main cause: the end of a long book series. This is turn causes many other problems, including:

Nostalgia
Fear of not knowing what to read next
Loneliness caused by not getting to spend any more time with the characters
Anger at the write for not writing more books
Depression because of the fact that the story is over

SYMPTOMS

There are a variety of symptoms of PSD, and they depend on the individual. Some of these include:

Sobbing
Screaming
Inability to let go of the book in question
Blank stares
Insomnia
Sleepwalking
Hyperventilation
Dry eyes caused by lack of blinking
Muteness
Nausea
Headaches
Fainting
Uncontrollable and irrational anger
Carpal Tunnel Syndrome or other RSI caused by cyber-stalking the author for hours on end

TREATMENT

PSD is highly treatable, with a number of steps to return to wellness again:

Let it all out. Cry, scream, yell if you have to. Confide in a trusted family member or friend about your feelings. (Make sure you don't sound like a lunatic.)
Obsess for 1-3 days. Cyber-stalk the author, see if they've written any new books, or reread your favorite scenes from the series. Watch all the movies (if they've made any), blog or tweet about the series, and read everything on every fan site that you can find (Wikipedia works too).
Important Note: Stay away from other human beings during this time. Especially ones who don't like reading. They will think you're crazy (but let's face it, you are) and you don't want them to see you like that.
Step back from the books, slowly. Take a break from them. Read something else. If you're a writer, write something (this helps a lot). Remember, you still have the series, even if it's over.
Remember (in cases of Post-Potter-Depression):

And the final step- Eventually, come back to the series. Maybe you want to reread it, or reminisce on the good times you had reading it. But also, remember that there are other things to read out there.

Anyway, I know that Rick Riordan has started writing a second series in the same world as Percy Jackson and the Olympians, so I'm not too sad anymore. Plus, they still have to make the rest of the movies (I heard they're making the second one!), and I'm excited for that, since maybe I can be an extra in one of the PJ movies (it's a bucket list thing).

What series have you gotten depressed about? Did you get over it?

*It is. But only a little. :)

3 Contests

2011-08-14T19:45:00.003-04:00

What I'm Working On: Hmmm, that just reminded me that I should be working on something...

What I'm Reading: Only the Good Spy Young by Ally Carter

So today I have some contests/competitions/opportunity things that I wanted to blog about:

1. Ask-a-Teen

Gracie from I Am Writer... Hear Me Roar!, a fellow teen writer and TWSB participant, is holding her own Ask-the-Teens Q&A sort of thing. You can find the details of that HERE, but here's the basic information:

Send questions related to teens, writing, or reading, to kazuntai101@gmail.com, with "Ask The Teens Question" in the subject line, or you can just leave a comment on the post I linked to.
Send your question(s) by Friday, August 19th.
Everyone who asks a question will be entered into a drawing to win one of three awesome prizes.
For teenagers and people who didn't ask questions: You can still enter the drawing by sharing about the contest.

These aren't the complete details, so make sure you read the full post before submitting questions. If you're an adult who has any questions for your teen audience, I highly recommend taking advantage of this.

2. 3-Sentence Story Contest

Laura from Laura + the voices is holding a 3-sentence story contest on her blog to celebrate her blog's anniversary and her 1k Twitter followers. You can enter that contest HERE and win a free critique, but today's the last day. (I know I already blogged about this but I thought I'd add a reminder.)

3. Giveaway

Romi of The Dreamy Tree and Where the Writer Comes to Write is giving away a print from the Etsy shop of a blogger she guest-posted for, and you can enter until the 19th of August. You can find the details of the giveaway HERE.

So I guess that's all. This isn't my proper post, but I'm doing a Miscellaneous Monday tomorrow and then a real post on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Hunger Games Movie Poster Winner!

2011-08-13T11:16:00.002-04:00

Today I made all of the slips for all of the entries, put them into a Mickey mouse hat, and drew out one entry. The winner of the Hunger Games movie poster is....

JENNA COOPER!

Congrats, Jenna! Make sure to mail me your mailing information to brittany (at) hillsandcorkscrews (dot) com so I can send it off to you ASAP.

Also, I'm planning on doing a regular post tomorrow (or maybe today), but for now, I've got to go!

Liebster Blog Award!

2011-08-09T12:48:00.000-04:00

What I'm Working On: Just reading today

What I'm Reading: The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan

Today I received the Liebster Blog Award from Chandara/Elizabeth from Chandara Writes. I tried to track down the award to see who started it (don't do this), but I couldn't, even though I found a set of rules along the way, all some version of this:

1. Accept the award and thank the blogger who gave it to you.

2. Pass it to 3-5 blogs with less than 200 followers and tell them that they've received it.

3. Link back to the person who gave it to you.

Also, the blogger who gave the award to Elizabeth said this about it:

"It comes from German and there are multiple translations, ranging from favorite to dearest to sweetheart. This award is meant to give the blogger with less than 200 followers a little spotlight."

Thanks for the award, Elizabeth! I've already linked back to you, so now I have to pass it on. To only 5 people. This is hard!

*tries to narrow it down*

*tries again*

Okay, here it is. And if your name isn't on this list I'll give you an award the next time around (if I get another one).

1. Laura from Laura + the voices- Laura writes hilarious and/or awesome posts about all kinds of things, from writing to Harry Potter to college and all sorts of things. She's also having a blogiversary/1k Twitter followers contest, in which you write a 3 sentence story and could win an awesome critique package! You can find that contest HERE (and I'm going to enter, I'm working on my story today).

2. Rachael from Writers' Chasm- Rachael has a great blog about writing and reading and lots of other cool things- for example, she tallies up the books that she buys each year and analyzes the results. You can find those posts HERE and HERE. Thanks for your awesome blog, Rachael!

3. Kimberly from Jess Free Falcon- Kimberly interviewed me on her lovely blog a while back and I discovered that her blog is quite amazing- she blogs about writing and the writing life and lots more. Her novel, Touching the Surface, is going to be published by Simon Pulse in Fall 2012 (awesome, isn't it!). Her most recent post includes pictures from the SCBWI conference, which you can find HERE.

4. Romi from Where the Writer Comes to Write- I've been following Romi since December or January (I believe) and she's been following me since December, and Romi's blog is absolutely lovely. She blogs about reading and does book reviews and some awesome author interviews- I highly recommend you check her blog out. She also has an Etsy shop and another blog called The Dreamy Tree where she posts pictures and quotes and other cool stuff.

5. Gracie from I Am Writer... Hear Me Roar!- Gracie has a fantastic blog posts that are sometimes thoughtful or sometimes funny. Some of my favorites of her posts include Why Having an Overactive Imagination is Kind of a Problem and How People Think. Definitely go check her blog out- she's written lots of awesome posts!

So I'm going to go tell these people I've given them an award, and I hope everyone has a great week!

Miscellaneous Monday #1

2011-08-08T20:56:00.001-04:00

What I'm Working On: Sort of thinking about the main character of my short story, and how to make her a bit better. (Confession: I haven't actually written the story yet. I'm in the pondering-things-over stage.)

What I'm Reading: Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan (finally finally finally!)

I've realized that sometimes I want to blog about interesting things I've read or watched from the internet, but I don't know how to incorporate them in an interesting way, so I just throw them all together and call it a blog post.

So I decided to make it into a new blog feature, Miscellaneous Monday, where I share links to videos, blogs, blog posts, pictures, articles, songs, etc. that I think are interesting. I know this isn't a great title but I'm working on it, but far now, it's Miscellaneous Monday (or MM for short).

This is basically for anyone who's bored and feels like reading some blog posts or finding new blogs or watching funny videos or anything. A bunch of random links for entertainment.

You should know that I probably won't have one every week (I'll get busier once school starts and I might not always have stuff to blog about), and I might blog about other things on Mondays instead. But for now, here's today's Miscellaneous Monday:

I've been looking at some authors' websites lately and I stumbled across Brenna Yovanoff's (author of The Replacement) wonderful blog, mainly, her high school stories. When she was in high school, Brenna kept a diary, but it wasn't a diary in the sense of her talking about herself and her problems and high school drama and all of that. It was more of a journal of her observations about the people around her. She posts excerpts from this on her blog, along with fuller explanations about what was going on, and it's all very interesting.

All of posts are under the tag "High School" and I recommend you start reading them HERE, at the beginning of the tag. Read the posts in order. They kind of tell the story of Brenna's life in high school, which might sound boring, but it's not. I spent almost my entire yesterday afternoon reading them.

author Brenna Yovanoff

Now for some more blog posts. Laura from Laura + the voices wrote a post on her blog called Sunday Writer Confession #1 about the character development she does, and it's really interesting, and you can find it HERE.

Gracie from I Am Writer... Hear Me Roar! interviewed her dad about his reading habits, and it turned out to be pretty cool, so you can read that HERE.

(Definitely check out both Gracie and Laura's blogs while you're at it- both of them have some excellent posts.)

I found a blog post of conference notes of things that agent Sarah Davies said about writing the breakout novel. They were really some great tips, and you can find that post HERE.

You can visit Mockingjay.net for the latest Hunger Games movie news, including the announcement of the release date of the Catching Fire movie- November 22, 2013 (I'll be 16 then!). There are also some newly-released pictures from the filming of the Hunger Games movie, including Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, and Liam Hemsworth in costume.

One such picture of Jennifer Lawrence and Liam Hemsworth

I can't remember how, but I found out that there is a real life Quidditch World Cup. No joke. I'd heard about real-life Quidditch before but I didn't know they actually had a real World Cup. So click the link and prepare to be amazed.

WriteOnCon is coming up soon (August 16-18), which is also very exciting. I didn't participate in last year's WriteOnCon (though I heard about it and registered for the forums), though I will be this year. I'm not looking for an agent and I probably won't post anything up for critique, though I'll be participating in everything else. I was looking through the WriteOnCon YouTube channel and found a video from last year of my dream agent Mary Kole talking about character stereotypes. It's definitely worth watching, so here it is:

I guess that's all I have to share for today, and I promise I'll do a proper post tomorrow, maybe.

(Shark Week is over but I had to record most of the episodes because I wasn't home to watch them, so I'm going to go watch those.) (Also, I went to WalMart with my older sister and I discovered a thing called $5 movies. And I swear, they had every single movie ever that I want to own. They had The Outsiders, Inkheart, and lots of other ones that I can't remember off the top of my head. So I'm going back to buy those someday.) (Also, at Meijer they had a $40 jumbo special-feature DVD pack of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the only Harry Potter movie that's out that I don't own.)

If you read through all of that... um... yeah.

Book Review: The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman

2011-08-04T16:42:00.002-04:00

What I'm Working On: A short story

What I'm Reading: Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose

Today I finally got registered as an early-access person-thing for Pottermore! :D My username is SkyWizard112- you have to choose one from four options that they give you, but I think mine is pretty cool. :)

If you haven't gotten in yet, keep checking the Pottermore Insider blog for information. According to the blog, tomorrow's clue will be posted between 1:30-4:00 PM BST. Here's a nifty time zone converter for those who don't live in that time zone.

So now I'm alternating between oh-my-gosh-Pottermore moments and ooh-Goodreads-is-so-much-fun moments. And I've realized that I haven't done very many book reviews on this blog and there are a lot of books I'd like to review. I decided that I'm going to post some of the better reviews from my blog onto Goodreads, and all of my Goodreads reviews will eventually be posted here. (I've only done one new one.)

So today I'm reviewing The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman. I read it about 3 weeks ago, but I took notes for each chapter, so it's pretty fresh in my mind.

The First Five Pages is a writing book about the common problems in the first five pages of novels, and how to fix them so that your first five pages shine (and so that you don't get rejected).

The author, agent Noah Lukeman, points out in the introduction that problems found in the first five pages can indicate that the reader (an agent or editor) will find these same problems later in the novel (which is why you need to fix them all). Each chapter covers a different topic, starting with the smallest problems that readers would notice first, then moving into bigger problems that take more reading to notice.

Noah Lukeman manages to cover a wide range of problems, from presentation to characterization to sound. Each chapter includes the mistakes writers make with this writing element, solutions to the problems, examples, and exercises at the end of the chapter.

Overall, I thought The First Five Pages was a very helpful book for polishing your first five pages, but also for showing you that your novel might need more work than you think. I recommend taking notes for each chapter because there's a lot of information packed into each chapter.

It would also be a great book to read before or while revising- it's not a how-to book for revision, but it shows you how to find the problems in your writing and how to fix them.

Noah Lukeman describes each problem and its solution clearly and thoughtfully. Reading this made me reconsider a lot of things about my own WiP, and Noah pointed out many problems that I never even considered before.

The one thing that I didn't like about The First Five Pages was that at some times, it seemed a bit too basic. I know I'm not an especially advanced writer, but some of the problems mentioned would only be done by a very beginning writer. Also, almost all of the examples the author wrote were way too basic- I would have liked to see how to spot problems when they weren't spelled out so easily. At other times, the topics were more advanced- like sound, style, and subtlety.

I'd recommend The First Five Pages to all writers regardless of skill level. Beginning writers will learn a lot from it, but I bet some advanced writers could learn a thing or two from it.

Other Links:

The First Five Pages on Amazon
The First Five Pages at Barnes and Noble
The First Five Pages on Goodreads- (This review will go up there soon.)
Noah Lukeman's website- Turns out he's written a few other books on writing.

Inkpop and Goodreads

2011-08-03T14:42:00.000-04:00

What I'm Working On: A short story

What I'm Reading: The Time Paradox

Today I joined Goodreads and I thought I'd write a blog post about it. I've been thinking about joining Goodreads for a while and I'm still kinda new to it. I'm working on adding books and shelves and fun things right now.

Since I'm under 18 my profile was automatically set to private, but I changed my birth year so now anyone can view my profile, which is here. I'm not sure how the whole friend thing works (if you have to request like Facebook or you can just add people), but I added a few friends that showed in my list from Twitter. So if you have a Goodreads (and if you want to), go ahead and add me as a friend. :)

Also, I found out about the site Inkpop a while ago and I joined it. It's a website for teenage writers created by HarperCollins. You can post your writing, have it critiqued, critique-swap with other teens, and at the end of each month, the 5 projects with the highest ratings in each category (fiction, short writing, poetry) are read and reviewed by HarperCollins editors.

My profile on Inkpop is here, but I'm not sure if non-members can see it or not. I haven't done much of anything yet, but if you're a teen who has an Inkpop account, leave me a link to yours in the comments. (Or if you're a teen who hasn't joined, take a look around.)

So that's all. In other news, I'm trying to get an early access Pottermore account. (Details here), so we'll see how that goes.

(Oh, and this is my 200th post, by the way!)

HG Movie Poster Giveaway Update #2

2011-08-02T15:07:00.000-04:00

What I'm Working On: Writing a short story

What I'm Reading: The Time Paradox by Eoin Colfer

5 people have entered my giveaway, so that's enough for me to run it. But I noticed that a couple of you who've entered said that you follow my blog but I can't find your name on my followers list. If you're not sure how to follow a Blogger blog, here's how:

Method #1-

Go over to the sidebar of the blog and find the subscriber list:

It will either say "Join this site" or "subscribe", so click that or the "Sign in" thing on the bottom (I think).

Method #2-

You can also log into your Blogger account and go to your Dashboard. Then scroll down to the list of blogs you follow:

And click on the "Add" button to follow a new blog.

So that's how to follow a blog, for those who want to follow me to get an extra entry in the giveaway but don't know how. (And if you're following to get an extra entry, make sure you use a similar name in the form to the one you follow under).

Happy birthday to Harry Potter and J.K Rowling!

2011-07-31T16:16:00.003-04:00

What I'm Working On: An idea for a short story, which I will work on right after this post.

What I'm Reading: The Time Paradox and Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose (Is that a pen name or a coincidence? Because if that's a coincidence it's a very cool one. :) )

Happy birthday today to both Harry Potter and J.K Rowling! (By the way, if you think you're ever going to be a ridiculously famous author and you want people to remember your birthday, just give your main character the same birthday as you and make it a plot point. No one will ever forget.)

But honestly I think it's cool that J.K Rowling gave Harry the same birthday as her. :)

It might seem like I forgot since I'm posting this so late in the day, but I didn't. I remembered.

So today Harry Potter is, what, like 31? (I say this as if I came up with that off the top of my head.) But we know he was born in 1980 because his parents died in 1981, when he was one. And J.K Rowling is 46.

Maybe someday I'll bake a Harry Potter cake and we'll have a party or something. :) For now, enjoy a video by one of my favorite YouTube-ers that she made a year ago to celebrate Harry's birthday:

HG Movie Poster Giveaway Update

2011-07-30T21:26:00.003-04:00

What I'm Working On: Writing a short story

What I'm Reading: Artemis Fowl: The Time Paradox by Eoin Colfer

I'm changing the rules for my Hunger Games movie poster giveaway that I posted about. The contest is extended to August 12, so you have longer to enter. If you entered at the previous post, you'll have to re-enter here.

To enter, you just have to do this:

1. Not be a member of my family
2. Enter through the form below (and you can only enter once)
3. Live on Earth (sorry to all my extraterrestrial friends). And yes, that means that this contest is international!

Once again, at least 5 people have to enter for me to hold the contest, because I don't want it coming down between 2 people. Enter through the form below by August 12:

<p>&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Loading...&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;</p>

May the odds be ever in your favor! (And to see the original post, click here.)

(Oh, and since the parts about your blog and Twitter get cut off in the form, here they are:

If you follow me on Twitter (+1) and/or tweeted about the giveaway (+1), leave your Twitter handle below:

If you blogged about the giveaway (+2) or linked to it in your sidebar (+1), leave your blog's URL below:

Update: Also, here are the request pictures of both of the mini-posters together:

Sorry I didn't get both of them completely- one was already up on my wall and I didn't want to take it down, so I just held the other one up next to it.

(Sorry, that one's a bit blurry.)

And here's the picture I posted in the original giveaway post:

The Movie of Your Life

2011-07-27T21:03:00.000-04:00

What I'm Working On: I read Minardus in a day (no, it didn't take me that long, I just read it in a lot of very short periods), and I'm taking a few days off before I really look at it. I hadn't looked at in about a year, so my first impression was: oh-my-gosh-this-is-horrible-why-do-i-write-stuff-that-will-just-embarrass-me-later-why-in-the-name-of-merlin's-left-buttock-did-i-write-this.

So basically it's pretty bad, and I'm not just being too critical of myself. Trust me, it's bad. So I'm going to figure out the major plot and character problems (which I could fill up a whole book with in itself), then I'm going to write a second draft from scratch, then do a line-edit of that draft.

It will be lots of fun. Stay tuned.

What I'm Reading: An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

The other night I watched Magic Beyond Words, an unauthorized biographical documentary movie thing about J.K Rowling's life (actually I watched a recording of it which was about 15 minutes shorter because of commercials). It aired on Lifetime, I think, so if you want to watch it, look there.

And I thought it was pretty good, as good as a movie can get when it's about a person's life who the producers haven't consulted at all (hence the unauthorized). It's a really inspiring movie for writers to watch and I mean it- I got shivers and I felt like happy-crying at the end. It made me want to write and write and write. And I think ordinary non-writing HP fans would like it too.

But I think it would have been infinitely better if the producers had consulted J.K Rowling (yeah, I know this would be a lot harder to do than I can imagine, but still) and made it into a regular movie, not just a TV movie. They got most of the details right (at least from what I know about J.K Rowling's life) but grabbed some stuff out of thin air. Like having J.K Rowling's first husband be abusive to her. Okay, maybe this is on the internet but I've never heard of that, all I've heard is that they got divorced. (If you know a place where this is said to be true, please leave a link in the comments.)

I was thinking about how this is the only movie (as far as I know) made about J.K Rowling's life that I know of (though there's a documentary called A Year in the Life of J.K Rowling). And I was wondering how J.K Rowling feels about the movie. Does she wish it was made differently to reflect her life?

I remembered this blog post by Steph Bowe where she talks about what she would want the movie of her life to be like (it's quite funny by the way). So this post is sort of a response to that.

If my short life were to be made into a movie, it would be a coming of age film. It would also be very loosely based on my life, which means that the only thing my real life would have in common with the movie is that the main character and I would share a name.

It would start off with me in middle school being bored and making fun of my peers and the idiotic things they do in my head (this sounds a lot funnier in my head). Then in high school I would get caught up in the wrong kind of crowd. I'd be in some gangs and I'd get a tattoo and ride on a motorcycle.

My sweet ride, or something (or however gangsters talk, I'm not that cool)

(A note here: This sounds a lot like the said J.K Rowling movie, where they depicted her as a rebellious teenager even though I've never heard her say anything like that.)

Then I'd go to college at an Ivy League college even though I'm not that smart and I go to public schools. After college the main plot of the movie would start.

(By the way it's thunderstorming outside right now and it's VERY loud and a bit scary. I hope the power doesn't go out.)

I would have a lot of money for no apparent reason and my glamorous Ivy League friends and I would decide to travel around the world. We'd have many fun adventures and there'd be lots of montages. We would not go to any beaches because I hate beaches.

Oh, the adventures we'd have...

(I forgot to mention that the movie would have a large budget because it would be expected to do well, and we'd travel to lots of exotic locations.)

But I'd also be writing THE NOVEL (the novel that would get published) along the way. (Yeah, this is starting to sound a lot like J.K Rowling.) I'd meet lots of interesting people and use them as characters. I'd also be an artist. I would draw and paint and I'd be fantastically good at it. It would be very profound.

We'd spend a lot of money on shopping and other things and at the end I would either get published or find something else to do with my life. Something like that. (Or I would have spent my life savings and I'd go bankrupt and live on the streets.)

Oh, and before we leave whatever foreign country we'd be in, there'd be some chase/gun-fight scenes. Some of the gang members from my rebellious-teen past would track me and my friends down because I owed them money or something like that. Once they caught me and my friends they wouldn't know which one was me (they wouldn't recognize me after all these years, even though I'd be the only redhead- ignore the plot holes and inconsistencies). And they'd force me to reveal my tattoo that shows I'm affiliated to the gang. My friends would be shocked about my past life but I'd manage some kind of daring escape and someone would get shot.

The beginning setting of our chase scene.

The main character (me) would have to be a redhead. She would be my height and weight but she'd have longer, curlier hair than me. She'd also be a lot prettier. I don't know what actress would play me (there aren't a lot of redheaded actresses or redheaded people, period). So the actress would have to dye her hair my color and also get contacts if she didn't already have brown eyes like me.

It might be Kate Winslet, even though we look nothing alike, but she was a redhead in Titanic and I think she'd be fine. I've also only seen two of the movies she's been in, one being Titanic:

Anyway, I would be glamorous and smart and funny. I would be fluent in multiple languages and I would have lots of awesome friends. I would still love Harry Potter.

Or maybe Karen Gillan from Doctor Who could play me. I haven't seen her season(s)(?) of Doctor Who but I know she has red hair:

Oh, and in the sequel of the movie I would have a TARDIS and I'd have many great adventures.

The movie would have lots of music and snappy dialogue and it'd be one of those movies that you like at first and then if you watch it again you realize that there was absolutely no substance to it. It'd be a cult classic.

And now I'm really interested to hear what the movie of your life would be. If yours is really long write it in a blog post and please leave a link. I'd love to hear yours!

Bottom Line: (for those who didn't read this far) The movie of my life would be awesome, and I'm about to become best friends with my novel.

Motorcycle Image Source
London Image Source
Alley Image Source

(Off to go watch the J.K Rowling movie again.)

Hunger Games Movie Poster Giveaway!!

2011-07-22T14:57:00.003-04:00

What I'm Working On: I'm actually glad I thought of making this because then every time I write a blog post but I haven't got anything done then I feel guilty. (This is basically my way of not answering.) But I'm going to do some more drawing exercises from Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain today, along with editing a short story so I can submit it to a magazine.

What I'm Reading: I ~~should be reading~~ am going to be rereading Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy (CMH from now on) but I reread the first chapter of The Outsiders last night because I'm a bit obsessed.

(Okay, this is great. I just typed up this whole post but Blogger somehow just lost all of it except the above. Deep breaths. Deep breaths.)

So I'm going to make this quick.

The amazing Kim Sabatini of Jess Free Falcon interviewed me as a part of her Teen Seen feature on her blog. You can read that interview HERE (and check out her awesome blog while you're at it). (Also I'm really excited about it and I hope you like it, I'm just mad because I have to retype the post. Anyway.)

Today my dad drove me to the movie theater and we picked up 2 Hunger Games movie posters. One for me, one for a lucky winner. This is an exclusive poster, which probably doesn't mean anything to you, but you can't buy them, only get them where they're being given away.

Anyway, here's a picture of the poster you could win:

To enter, you just have to do this:

1. Not be a member of my family

2. Leave a comment below with your total number of entries and your e-mail

3. Live on Earth (sorry to all my extraterrestrial friends). And yes, that means that this contest is international!

To get extra entries (you start with 1), you can do these things:

1. Follow my blog (+2)

2. Follow me on Twitter (+1)- include your Twitter username in your comment

3. Blog about the giveaway (+2)- include a link to your blog

4. Link to the giveaway in your blog's sidebar (+1)- include a link to your blog

5. Tweet about the contest (+1)- include your username

Which means you could have a total number of 8 entries. The giveaway will end two weeks from today, on August 5, and at least 5 people must enter the giveaway in order for it to actually happen (because I don't want it to be between 2 people). So make sure you blog and tweet! :)

And then on August 6 or 7, I'll make a bunch of entry slips for everyone and draw one out of a hat and he/she will be the winner!

May the odds be ever in your favor!

Sorry, I just had to.

Update: I'm extending the contest to August 12, and I'm also adding a new rule: besides commenting with your e-mail, you also have to use an account (like a Google account) or a name/URL to comment, no "anonymous" since I can't tell if it's the same person or not. Since people have already entered I'm going to write a new post where you can enter officially, so go check that out before you comment.

Gondolas, South Korea, and Forest Fires

2011-07-21T15:32:00.000-04:00

What I'm Working On: Editing a short story later

What I'm Reading: About to reread Cross My Heart and Hope To Spy by Ally Carter

So Lionsgate has announced on Twitter that certain movie theaters are giving away exclusive Hunger Games movie mini-posters (starting tomorrow). See the official HG movie Twitter for more information. And since one of those theaters is sort of near me, I'm going to go get one tomorrow and I'm really excited. I just wanted to mention this because if I can get two posters, then I'll give one away here.

Today I want to talk about teenagers writing, mostly, and the old advice "write what you know". (Even J.K Rowling gives that advice here!) When authors and agents and bloggers talk about teenage writers, they often mention something about the fact that teenagers don't have enough life experience to write well.

I'm not writing this post because I disagree- I'm actually somewhere in the middle.

Gondola in Italy- a life experience?

I agree that most teenagers don't have a lot of life experience, but I really think it depends on the individual. I think that the teenagers who are published or who are going to be published are the ones who have had eventful lives or just have had interesting things happen to them.

My problem with this is that it's a bit unclear when anyone has enough life experience to write well. When I turn 18, will I have enough experiences? In 10 years? 20 years?

So that's why I think it depends on the person. I have not had many life experiences, partly because I'm only 13 and partly because I just have a sort of average life. Nothing big has happened to me, I don't live anywhere interesting and I haven't gone on any exotic vacations. Nothing horribly bad has ever happened to me. I'm not poor, I've never been in any natural disasters, I have two parents and a (somewhat) functional family, and no one close to me has died yet.

And these are the kinds of things that I think people mean by life experiences- things that have changed you as a person in some way. Obviously I don't know what my future holds. My town could be attacked by terrorists tomorrow (though that's incredibly unlikely). Everyone in my family but me could die in a car accident next week. I might go to South Korea for Spring Break (not likely). I could be attacked by an alligator, or see a forest fire, or befriend a homeless person, or countless other things.

These life experiences are what enrich and fuel your writing- they're part of your voice. This is such a hard-to-pinpoint piece of writing skill that no one really thinks about it (except when we're talking about teenagers). But a sixteen-year-old could have more experiences than a thirty-five-year-old, or they could have different experiences that aren't really comparable.

the Amazon Rainforest

Now back to "write what you know". I mentioned in yesterday's post that S.E Hinton used her own high school experiences to write The Outsiders, and that's probably why it felt so real. She started writing the novel when she was fifteen, and I'm going to take a guess and say that maybe she hadn't had an incredibly exotic life up until then. The experiences that she used might not have seemed incredibly interesting at first- just the fact that she was friends with some Greasers. But she took her experiences and turned them into an amazing novel.

I said that I'm in the middle on whether I disagree or agree with what adults say about teenagers writing and not having enough life experience. I agree a little bit, but I also think it's the kind of thing that there's no rule for, so it's hard. But I think anyone (adults included) can solve this by just using what you have. Not every person is the same- something must have happened to you that's interesting. You shouldn't be writing a slightly fictionalized autobiography and calling it a novel, but you can use things like emotions or people you've met or memories in you writing.

As for me, I know I'm not ready (or even close to being ready) to be published, so I'm not too worried. I'll just live a very exotic life once when I'm out of high school- own a llama or three, climb Mount Everest, swim with sharks. You know, the usual. :)

That is all. (Oh, and I'm going to try and write something shorter tomorrow, maybe a list post.)

What are your opinions on life experience? Do you feel that there's an age where you have enough experience to write well, or does it depend on the individual? Do you think that you have enough life experience to write well?

Gondola image courtesy of Mark Heard
Rainforest image courtesy of Ivan Mlinaric

Book Review: The Outsiders by S.E Hinton

2011-07-20T22:11:00.003-04:00

What I'm Working On: Cleaning off my desk (which basically means throwing everything on the floor until I can find a better place for it)

What I'm Reading: The A.B.C Murders by Agatha Christie

The Outsiders is a young-adult novel by S.E Hinton that was published in 1967, and you've probably heard of it. Many writers say that it was the first young-adult novel ever, and I think it's the bestselling YA novel so far (but I'm not sure). It was made into a movie in the 1980s and it's still popular today.

The Outsiders is about two gangs (actually, more of social groups than gangs): the Greasers and the Socs (short for Socials). These were real social groups when S.E Hinton was a teen (and that's also why she wrote the novel), and I still think they still exist in a way, just under different names. The Greasers are the poor kids who live on the East Side of the town where the novel takes place. The narrator of the novel, Ponyboy (a Greaser), describes them as this: "Greasers are almost like hoods; we steal things and drive old souped-up cars and hold up gas stations and have a gang fight once in a while." He also says this: "I only mean that most greasers do things like that, just like we wear our hair long and dress in blue jeans and T-shirts, or leave our shirttails out and wear leather jackets and tennis shoes or boots."

The Socs, on the other hand, are the rich kids who live on the West Side, who no one really suspects of doing anything wrong. The Outsiders is mostly about the clash between these two groups- basically how groups like these can affect people.

The narrator, Ponyboy, is fourteen and a freshman in high school (he skipped a grade). He's smarter than his fellow Greasers, likes drawing and movies and books, and he's the youngest in his gang. At the beginning of the novel, he's kind of a Greaser just because that's the way things are. His older brothers, Sodapop and Darry, are also Greasers, so you get a sense that that's the way things have always been- the other Greasers are their friends, so this gang just kind of formed.

Ponyboy's parents died in a car accident before the story takes place, and even though he doesn't dwell on their deaths much in the book, it definitely affects his and his brothers' lives. Even though Darry is an adult, they have to worry about whether they'll be split up because of what's happening.

a Greaser

There are four other boys in their gang: Two-Bit, Dally, Johnny, and Steve. I'm not going to get into them right now because I don't want this post to be too long, but anyway.

I don't want to spoil what happens, because the inciting incident of this novel is kind of a shock, so I'll quote the back cover: "At least he (Ponyboy) knows what to expect- until the night someone takes things too far."

After that, there's kind of a domino-effect- one thing leads to another and I can't really talk about it without spoiling the book.

Now, onto my actual opinion of the story:

I absolutely LOVED the novel; it's probably my favorite stand-alone book of all time, and that's saying something. It was intriguing and thought-provoking and always interesting, and I could go on for a really long time about how much I adored it. I'll just say that there's a reason why it's been so popular for so long.

The characters were all interesting and the most important characters- Ponyboy, his brothers, Dally, and Johnny- were three-dimensional and they felt so real. Even the more minor characters, like the other Greasers and the Socs, were interesting. That's one of the reasons why I loved this book- there wasn't a single character who I didn't enjoy reading about.

The main idea of this novel- a clash between two gangs- seems so simple, yet it was well-done and complex. It's the kind of book that I know I'll reread over and over again.

I loved the relationship between Ponyboy and his brothers. I don't have any brothers but it seemed realistic to me- they argued, they didn't always get along, but at times it was very sweet, yet still what I would imagine brothers would be like.

Another one of my favorite parts was the dialogue. There were so many lines that were my favorite lines, and they were spread out well among all of the characters.

It might have seemed like a quick, simple story, but it was very deep and definitely made me think, which is something I love about a novel.

Something interesting about The Outsiders is that S.E Hinton wrote it from ages 15-16. I didn't want to talk about this until the end of the review, because I don't want it to sound like I just think it's good for a teenager. Even if S.E Hinton had been thirty when she wrote it, I would have thought it was amazing and I still would have loved it.

S.E Hinton now

It also surprised me that as a teenage girl, she wrote such convincing male characters (not that other female writers haven't been able to). S.E Hinton said in an interview in the back of my copy that she was a tomboy and friends with Greasers, which is probably part of the reason she could write about teenage boys so well- especially about the two gangs.

A lot of writers say that teens don't have enough life experience to write well, and I mostly agree, but I think it depends on the individual. Some teenagers have had more experiences than some adults- it just depends. And a lot of writers say, "Write what you know." That's exactly what S.E Hinton did- she used her own experiences to write, and it turned out into a fantastic novel.

So I highly highly recommend The Outsiders to EVERYONE. For writers, it's a great novel to study to see how to write great themes without preaching or being too obvious. It's also a great example of how to take your own experiences and turn them into something powerful. (Also a great novel for studying characters and their relationships.)

This post is getting awfully long so I think I'll talk about the movie in another post. If you made it this far, I salute you. For those who didn't:

Bottom Line if you don't have the attention span to read that much:

If you haven't already, go buy and read The Outsiders now. Just do it.

(By the way, sorry if I came across as a little bit, oh, I don't know, obsessive in this post. It's just my personality- when I like things, I REALLY like them. And I really like this book.

Okay, I'll stop talking now.)

Other Links:

The Outsiders Book and Movie website
The Outsiders on Amazon
S.E Hinton's website
An article about S.E Hinton from 2009 and where I got her picture- it includes this great quote from S.E Hinton (on taking a Jane Austen course in college): “It was one of the best things I've done in my life,” she said of that class. “Believe me. I've been hugged by Matt Dillon.”

Greaser image source

Harry Potter, Pottermore, and Other Things

2011-07-19T17:43:00.001-04:00

What I'm Working On: Nothing

What I'm Reading: The A.B.C Murders by Agatha Christie

(Pretend that I'm John Green for a second.) This post comes to you today in three parts.

Part 1- Harry Potter:

I went to the midnight Harry Potter premiere, and I feverishly reread the seventh book before it. Overall, I liked it, but I felt that they changed a lot of things from the book that I think were important. I'm not going to talk about it here, since I know some people haven't seen the movie, but Rachael at Writers' Chasm wrote a great post about the movie here, with a list of things that she liked and disliked that I completely agree with.

I'm not really suffering Post-Potter Depression (at least, not yet). I love Harry Potter and I'm a huge fan (though I know there are bigger fans out there), but Harry Potter is not my life, and it's not my childhood either (seeing as I'm still a child). Sure, I'll definitely miss having new Harry Potter books and movies come out, but they'll still be there to read and watch over and over again. (And now I'm starting to sound like everyone else who's blogged about the "end" of Harry Potter. Time to end this.) There will still be the fandom/community, the Wizarding World of Harry Potter (I haven't been to it yet), and we have Pottermore to look forward to. Which brings me to the next part.

Part 2- Pottermore:

I'm assuming you've heard of Pottermore, which started out as a website that no one knew anything about. Then, a video was posted on the site of J.K Rowling giving some more information, and apparently they talked about it at LeakyCon, and some other stuff. You can read more about it on a few different fan websites, including Harry Potter for Writers.

I'm not really reading much about Pottermore or keeping up to date with all of the new information. I'm excited about it (like the fact that there will be a sorting hat quiz written by J.K Rowling!), and I think it will be fun, but I'm just going to wait for it to come out.

Part 3- Other Things:

Lionsgate made an official website for the Hunger Games movie, which you can find HERE. I'm really really excited, and I would have posted the countdown widget in my sidebar but I realized that it made noise, and that might have been a bit annoying.

Also, don't be mad, but I'm thinking about doing a blog makeover/redesign/thing. Not just changing the theme (though I haven't changed it for seven months now, aren't you proud?) but kind of trying to reshift my blog so it's more focused.

Side note for new followers: I kind of have a blogging ADHD type of thing where I change my blog's theme very frequently. I got it under control last January and I haven't changed it since. This is not a relapse, I swear!

But I'm going to try to redo the pages up above, and the little blog description thing below the title. I was considering changing the title to something else, but that would be too confusing. I just don't want my blog to look like it's all about me, but I'm keeping the title. After the blog remodel thing, I'm going to start writing more focused, more quality posts (which I said was going to do as a New Year's Resolution). But this will be the last time for a long time, I promise.

What Hogwarts House Would You Be In?

2011-07-15T16:18:00.001-04:00

What I'm Working On: I'm going to do a real "End of Harry Potter" type post tomorrow, but I wanted to do a quicker post today.

What I'm Reading: I started rereading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on Wednesday in the evening, and I read all day on Thursday but I didn't finish it in time for the midnight premiere (so I just skimmed the ending battle with Harry and Voldemort to refresh my memory). And I went and saw the movie, and it was wonderful!

I know this was a sample question on the first day of the Teen Writers Summer Blogfest that (I think) pretty much all of the participants answered, but I wanted to see what everyone else had to say.

There are a lot of Hogwarts house quizzes on the internet, some that are pretty bad, likes the ones where you can tell which answers belong to each house- Gryffindor is the most noble or most courageous answer, Ravenclaw is the most clever answer, Hufflepuff's answers are always "the right thing to do", and Slytherin's answers are always mean.

But I've taken a few House quizzes and overall, I'm a Gryffindor, followed closely by Ravenclaw, then Hufflepuff and Slytherin. This House quiz is a lot more detailed and in-depth than any of the others, and I got Gryffindor:

(Click the image to see it larger.)

So what Hogwarts house would you be in? It seems like a lot of people on the internet say they're Ravenclaws (because we're all really intelligent?), bu there are a lot of Gryffindors, too. What's your favorite Hogwarts house, regardless of which one you would belong to?

We know from the first Sorting Hat song a bit about each house:

Gryffindor- "where dwell the brave at heart, their daring, nerve, and chivalry set Gryffindors apart"
Hufflepuff- "where they are just and loyal, those patient Hufflepuffs are true and unafraid of toil"
Ravenclaw- "if you've a ready mind, where those of wit and learning will always find their kind"
Slytherin- "you'll make your real friends, those cunning folk use any means to achieve their ends"

I wish the books had gone a bit deeper with each house, besides that Gryffindors are brave, Hufflepuffs are loyal and hard-working, Ravenclaws are smart, and Slytherins are cunning. I feel like it should be a bit more complicated than that. Everyone assumes that Slytherins are all bad, but who said that ambition is a bad thing? I wish there had been, for example, a Slytherin in the book who was kind, or a Ravenclaw who was manipulative, or something like that.

By the way, Laura from Laura + the voices wrote a great post called In Defense of Slytherin about this.

So I feel kind of neutral to all of the Hogwarts Houses- they all have good and bad traits and I wouldn't really choose one over the other, they're pretty equal to me.

Other House Quizzes:

A Late R.I.P to Brian Jacques

2011-07-12T18:48:00.002-04:00

What I'm Working On: I finally got to watch The Outsiders last night and it was exactly like the book (I think I'll write a post on that later). Since I'm an obsessive fan, I think I'll watch the Special Features DVD tonight and then watch the movie again! :)

What I'm Reading: Only a few more chapters of The First Five Pages left, and I really need to reread Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Yesterday I went to the Redwall website (one of my favorite MG book series), which I hadn't visited in a while. I was stunned to find out that Brian Jacques, the author of the Redwall series, died in February.

So I'm writing this post as a late tribute to Brian Jacques, who wrote 34 books in his lifetime, all Redwall-related. I haven't read all of them, but a few new Redwall books came out recently, and one came out just after he died.

Here's an excerpt from Brian's bio on his website:

Brian wrote Redwall for the children at the Royal Wavertree School for the Blind in Liverpool, where as a truck driver, he delivered milk. Because of the nature of his first audience, he made his style of writing as descriptive as possible, painting pictures with words so that the schoolchildren could see them in their imaginations. He remained a patron of the school until his death.

Jacques' writing gained acclaim when his childhood English teacher, Alan Durband, read Redwall, and showed it to a publisher without telling Brian. This event led to a contract for the first five books in the Redwall series, and a dedication to Alan in the front of several Redwall books.

And here's some more:

Brian lived in Liverpool, where his two grown sons, Marc, a carpenter and bricklayer, and David, a professor of Art and a muralist, still reside. David Jacques' work can be seen in Children's hospitals, soccer stadiums, and trade union offices as far away as Germany, Mexico, and Chile (not to mention Brian's photo featured in most of his books).

Brian also ran a weekly radio show on BBC Radio Merseyside, until October 2006, where he shared his comedy and wit, and played his favourites from the world of opera - he was a veritable expert on The Three Tenors.

When he was wasn't writing, Brian enjoyed walking his dog 'Teddy', a white West Highland Terrier, and completing crossword puzzles. When he found time he read the works of Mario Puzo, Damon Runyon, Richard Condon, Larry McMurty, and P.G. Wodehouse. He was also known to cook an impressive version of his favourite dish, spaghetti and meatballs.

Sadly, Brian passed away on the 5th February 2011.

The Redwall books are excellent, full of action and adventure, and I highly recommend that you read them. You can find a list of the books' chronological and publication order here.

Thanks to Brian for sharing his fantastic stories with the world, and R.I.P.

TWSB- Conclusion

2011-07-11T21:01:00.000-04:00

What I'm Working On: Going to watch the The Outsiders movie in about 20 minutes

What I'm Reading: Finally finishing up The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman

On Saturday, the Teen Writers Summer Blogfest ended, and I think it was wonderful. :) I'm glad that I decided to do it, because when I originally had the idea, I wasn't sure if I would because I didn't think anyone would want to participate. Luckily I did, because there were 6 other teen writers who participated:

Gracie from I Am Writer... Hear Me Roar!- I love the title of Gracie's blog, and she has some great posts like Three Types of Night Readers and a post about a hilarious story she wrote when she was six called Linda and the Dragon.
Laura from Laura + the voices- Laura is a fellow nerdfighter and she's pretty hilarious. :) For a great post of hers check out Ten Most Annoying College Roommates. (And I promise I'll enter your haiku contest, Laura!)
Will from Tales of the Harbingers- Will had some great ideas and opinions that I hadn't thought of on the posts this week, and you should definitely check out his cool excerpt from week. Also, check out What Makes a Character Loveable? and Slang in Dialogue.
Taryn from A Fool's Golden Paradise- Taryn is a great blogger and the excerpts from her novel are fantastic. She's also running an editing service called Teens Eyes that you should check out. (Also check out a funny quiz she wrote called What Genre Should You Write?)
Nick from Writing Fire- Nick's blog is awesome and he has some great posts there that you should definitely read, like Keep Learning, Keep Growing, Keep Writing (I drooled over his collection of writing books) and a guest post he wrote called On Fear and Life.
Rachael at Writers' Chasm- Rachael is also a Doctor Who fan and I love her blog- some of her posts are really worth reading, like: Harry Potter Week: Childhood Stories and Writing is Like a Journey.

If you can, you should follow all six of the participants- they are all awesome for participating in the blogfest. Thank you to all six for signing up and participating! :)

Also, thanks to Jess at Falling Leaflets for promoting the blogfest- without her we probably wouldn't have had any critique submissions or Ask-the-Teens questions.

I'm going to wrap this up since I really want to go watch The Outsiders now, but I think I achieved what I wanted to when I thought of the blogfest- I met some other teen writers and there was a lot of commenting and talking and discussing, and I think everybody got new followers, too! And for adult writers, I hope we answered some of the questions you have about your target audience and helped out a bit.

So, maybe there will another blogfest next summer? We'll see...

Anyway, some upcoming posts for this week:

A Late R.I.P to Brian Jacques
The People Project: My Sister's Blog
Braincrack
Darkness in YA: My Opinions
The Final Harry Potter Movie: The End of the Fandom or Not?

TWSB Day 9- Ask-The-Teens Q&A

2011-07-09T11:12:00.002-04:00

What I'm Working On: Revision

What I'm Reading: The Outsiders by S.E Hinton

Hello everyone! Today is the last day of the blogfest, and I'll write some kind of conclusion post tomorrow or on Monday, but for now, here are the questions and my answers in blue:

Jess asked:

1. Middle grade novels are defined as books for the 8-12 age range. Do teens still read middle grade fiction as they get older (for example, Harry Potter is an example of middle grade that's read by teens and adults) or are they naturally attracted to books with older themes and characters? Is it uncool to still read middle grade as you enter your teens?

This sort of depends on gender. Girls (at least the ones at my school) usually read a mix of MG and YA until high school, when a lot of them start reading YA. There are a lot of YA novels for girls out there: all the paranormal romance and chick lit and stuff like that. (But there are girls like me who read fantasy and dystopian, too.)

Boys don't have many options. There's not much MG and YA for them out there, something I've blogged about before and will blog about in the future (see the PBB tag on the sidebar). So in middle school some boys stick with MG, whatever they can find and a lot of them move up into adult fiction. I think Mary Kole blogged about this once, how middle school and high school boys just read adult fiction, and I didn't realize it until I read the post and looked around at what the boys in my grade read.

Anyway, the average kid who reads doesn't know what the terms "middle-grade" and "young-adult" mean, so it's not really uncool to read MG. I just read whatever I want because I don't care what people think about my books. :)

So yes, girls are usually attracted to more mature themes like romance, and typically boys read YA or adult fiction as they get older.

2. This is arguable, but it's been said that the teen years see a decrease in boy readership. Can you mention some books that you know male teenagers seem to be attracted to? Obviously, this depends on the reader, but are there books/themes that male teens connect to more than others?

I mentioned two types of boy readers above, but there's also a third kind- the avid readers like me. These boys don't move up to adult fiction- they stick with MG and YA because they can always find something to read and they're willing to branch out and read new things.

Boys who love reading are pretty awesome, at least the ones my age. They have fantastic taste in books. I'm probably just saying this because I read more books similar to what boys read than other girls. Other girls my age mostly read chick lit and girly stuff like that, but I like fantasy and dystopian and books with action.

(I'm speaking generally here, obviously. Everyone's different.) Boys like action and adventure. They actually are fine with a female protagonist (as seen in The Hunger Games) as long as she's not too girly. They're also fine with some romance (once again, in The Hunger Games) as long as it's not the main plot of the book. They love humor and great voice and characters who they can relate to. They like contemporary stories but a lot of fantasy and dystopian.

And boy readers (and by boy readers I mean avid male readers) are a lot smarter than we give them credit for. Don't think that they don't need good writing just because the plot is awesome. They do.

Here are some books that are popular with boys my age (and a few years older):

Rick Riordan (all of his books)
Suzanne Collins (all of her books)
Harry Potter
the Warriors series by Erin Hunter
the Redwall series by Brian Jacques
the Chronicles of Narnia
Lord of the Rings (popular among avid boy readers and the cool nerd boys)
Artemis Fowl

Also, this fall when I'm back in school, I'm going to start recommending some good boy books to boy readers I know, like The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie and Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko. I suggest that if you know any boy readers, recommend them some good books, too.

3. So many books and book series are being turned into films for the teen audience. Are you satisfied with the movie versions that you've seen recently? Can you comment on a few, both good and bad?

I'm not very critical of movies- I like almost every movie I watch. That being said, I'm satisfied with the movie adaptations I've seen recently. I can't think of many recent ones off the top of my head, but let's see...

I really loved the HP movies. I like the movie for Inkheart and the Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief movie (my parents also liked those last two so I think they were actually good).

I'm a bit scared of what they're going to do to the Hunger Games movie adaptation. I'm afraid they'll try to focus on the love triangle part in the trailer and throughout the movie to try to appeal to the Twilight crowd. The girls who love Twilight (I don't know any boys that love Twilight) are generally not the same girls who love The Hunger Games.

Also, I've only seen the first Twilight movie (but I've read the first three books). I didn't think much of it at the time except that Bella breathed loudly too much. Then a few months ago I was looking up the baseball scene from the movie (don't ask me why) on YouTube, and when I watched it I thought it was a parody of the original scene since it seemed so ridiculous to me for some reason. I don't know, maybe it's just me.

Okay, I'm going off on a tangent here, but I hope that answered your question. I like the movie adaptations as they long as they don't move the focus of the story too much or cut out the best scenes or get the characters all wrong. And it's pretty rare.

Liz asked:

I would like to know how you go about choosing a book to read. Is it the cover? The title? Word of mouth?

The first thing that catches my eye as I'm walking through a library or bookstore is the cover or title of the book. Then I might pick it up and if the cover is at least somewhat appealing, I'll look at the back cover. If it sounds at least mildly interesting I'll read the first page, and if that doesn't grab me enough then I won't get it.

I don't get a lot of book recommendations from my family or friends. (That's because we don't read the same genres.) About 90% of the books on my TBR list are books that I heard about on the internet, whether through blogs or recommendations.

I'm also a lot more likely to buy or check out a book if the writer has some kind of internet presence- whether they vlog, blog, or tweet. If the author seems like an interesting or funny or sweet or smart or sarcastic (or whatever) kind of person, then I'm a lot more likely to read that person's book.

Taking 5 random books from my TBR list or from my favorite books, here's how I heard about them:

The Shifter by Janice Hardy- Janice is represented by Kristin Nelson, one of my dream agents, and I decided that I should read a few of the books she represents probably a year and a half ago.
The Absolutely True-Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. I was looking at a list of NYT bestsellers and saw this. I read a book review of it and was so intrigued that I bought it at my local indie the next day
The Christopher Killer by Alane Ferguson- I think I was looking up lists of YA mystery novels on Amazon, looking for something to add to my TBR when I found this. I read the first few pages and the blurb and thought it sounded awesome (and it is).
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow- I saw this at my local indie bookstore and picked it up because the spine looked cool. I didn't think much of it and I didn't buy it, but I wrote the title down and later checked it out and read it over Spring Break.
Plain Kate by Erin Bow- I saw a mini-review of this on Mary Kole's blog, read the first few pages on Amazon, and checked it out at the library.

Thanks to Jess and Liz for sending in those great questions! :) (And don't worry, I'll do a proper conclusion post tomorrow.)

The Other Ask-The-Teens Q&A Posts:

TWSB Day 8- First Page Critiques

2011-07-08T11:33:00.001-04:00

What I'm Working On: I'm going to start revision today, I really mean it this time.

What I'm Reading: The Replacement

Yesterday I got one last-minute first page submission, so here is the original first page, without my comments:

Title: The Glass Prince
Genre: YA Magical Realism

Strange images started to pop in front of my face, as if some phantom turned page after page of a photo album too close to my eyes. I shoved my head back into the chair cushion and scanned the room for this personal-space invader. I wanted to see how he managed to juggle those images in one hand, while whacking me senseless with the other. My head ached something fierce. However, I was definitely alone in the room. I still heard my mom tinkering in the kitchen. I tried to blink the images and the pain away.

Blink one. The leather chair I curled up in turned into some gaudy four-poster bed.

Blink two. I sat in my chair again.

Blink three. White-steel front door I recognized. Mom’s ugly dried-flower wreath hung from it.

Blink four. The door changed to a gray plank with a nail sticking out of the middle, and dipped candles on a string hung there.

I clenched my eyes shut and rubbed my temples.

“Mom,” I yelled.

“Honey?” she called back. Her voice sounded small, muffled, as if I had cotton in my ears.
The doorbell rang way too early for a Saturday. The dinging convinced me my ears had traded their drums for wonky xylophones. But, the bell fixed my hearing.

My mom appeared at the kitchen door with a smudge of whipped topping on the corner of her mouth. “Everything okay? Do you want me to get the door?"

I blinked hard and focused on the room. Everything seemed normal now. Couch and flat screen still in the same spot? Check. The curtains were still blue, right? Yep. The pain in my head ebbed and the whole episode stopped as quickly as it had started.

“No, it’s okay. I’ve got it.”

Mom turned to go just as the bell started to ring in mad succession. I jumped up ready to sever someone’s pushy finger on the other side of my front door.

“I’m coming!”

My eyes fixed into a glare as I reached for the doorknob to greet (or strangle) the mad-dinger at my door. I found a random delivery guy standing there. Golden waves of hair stuck out beneath his garish, red hat. He wore sunglasses. His uniform, a red button down and knee shorts, rivaled the worst of UPS or FedEx delivery-guy fashion. A curious tiara-sporting apple emblem stood out on his shirt pocket.

His outfit was head-to-toe crap, but somehow he managed to pull it off. Heck. Who needed Tylenol for a headache? Bring me a cute boy and “Cured!” Did ‘cute’ even do this guy justice, though? The word ‘handsome’ came to mind. A few more words, too, like hot, tempting, delicious, and yummy. The tension in my face melted like ice cream on an oven-warm brownie.

"Can,” I paused to clear my throat. “Sorry. Can I help you?”

The boy chuckled and smiled. Or did he smirk?

“I’m here to wish you a happy seventeenth birthday, Clara.”

Now here it is with my comments in red:

Strange images started to pop in front of my face, as if some phantom turned page after page of a photo album too close to my eyes. I felt like this wasn't a very strong analogy, so instead of making things clearer, it weakens the image. I think the photo album part could work but I'm not so sure about the phantom thing. I shoved Maybe use a different word? "Shove" and "head" don't really go together in my mind. my head back into the chair cushion and scanned the room for this personal-space invader. I wanted to see how he managed to juggle those images in one hand, while whacking me senseless with the other. Unless the MC has experienced something like this before, I'm not sure why she would be wondering this first. My head ached something fierce. Like the bit of voice here. However, I was definitely alone in the room. I still heard my mom tinkering in the kitchen. I tried to blink the images and the pain away. I think this paragraph could be a lot more interesting if you were more specific-what were the pictures of? Who or what was in them? Did they flash by fast or slow? How did they appear?

Blink one. The leather chair I curled up in turned into ~~some~~ a gaudy four-poster bed.

Blink two. I sat in my chair again. Do you mean that the bed turned back into the chair?

Blink three. White-steel front door I recognized. Sometimes sentence fragments are strong by themselves, but I think this is weak. Was the door in front of her? Was she still in the same room? Mom’s ugly dried-flower wreath hung from it.

Blink four. The door changed to a gray plank with a nail sticking out of the middle, and dipped candles on a string hung there.

I clenched my eyes shut and rubbed my temples.

“Mom,” I yelled.

“Honey?” she called back. Her voice sounded small, muffled, as if I had cotton in my ears. Good analogy.

The doorbell rang way too early for a Saturday. The dinging convinced me my ears had traded their drums for wonky xylophones. I'm not sure what this means- is it another analogy for what she was hearing? But, the bell fixed my hearing.

My mom appeared at the kitchen door with a smudge of whipped topping on the corner of her mouth. “Everything okay? Do you want me to get the door?”

I blinked hard and focused on the room. Everything seemed normal now. Couch and flat screen still in the same spot? Check. The curtains were still blue, right? Yep. The pain in my head ebbed and the whole episode stopped as quickly as it had started.

“No, it’s okay. I’ve got it.”

Mom turned to go just as the bell started to ring in mad succession. I jumped up, ready to sever someone’s pushy finger on the other side of my front door.

“I’m coming!”

My eyes fixed into a glare as I reached for the doorknob to greet (or strangle) the mad-dinger at my door. I found a ~~random~~ delivery guy standing there. Golden waves of hair stuck out Waves of hair wouldn't really "stick out", maybe spikes would. beneath his garish, red hat. He wore sunglasses. His uniform, a red button down and knee shorts, rivaled the worst of UPS or FedEx delivery-guy fashion. A curious tiara-sporting apple emblem Was the apple sporting a tiara? Not really sure what this means. stood out on his shirt pocket.

His outfit was head-to-toe crap, but somehow he managed to pull it off. Heck. Who needed Tylenol for a headache? Bring me a cute boy and “Cured!” I thought the voice here was good up to here, but then after this, it started to seem a little forced. Did ‘cute’ even do this guy justice, though? The word ‘handsome’ came to mind. A few more words, too, like hot, tempting, delicious, and yummy. The tension in my face melted like ice cream on an oven-warm brownie.

“Can.” <- use a period there I paused to clear my throat. “Sorry. Can I help you?”

The boy chuckled and smiled. I'm not sure you need both "chuckled" and "smiled"? Maybe one or the other, or just use "smirk"? Or did he smirk?

“I’m here to wish you a happy seventeenth birthday, Clara.”

Overall, I thought the voice was good at parts and a bit forced at others. I'm assuming you (the writer) are an adult, so it's a bit harder to get the voice of a teenage girl just right. Obviously it's not impossible- there are lots and lots of great YA writers who capture teen voices perfectly. I'd suggest that you read some of them and study how they make their voice work.

But luckily you sent your first page here, so it can be critiqued by teens. J I have plenty of problems with my voice in writing, even though I'm a teen. I think voice is less about the words and phrases you use, and more about the narrator's take on the world. I think you're on the right track- there are some really good parts in there where you nailed the voice, but there are parts that need some work.

I think this excerpt needs a bit more clarity, too. I know that since the character doesn't know what's going on at the beginning, neither will the reader, but you should still try to show what the character is seeing and experiencing with as much clarity as possible. Picture the scene in your head before you write it and scribble down a list of the exact details- don't use them all, just the best, most sensory details. (Note: clarity does not = wordiness. Sometimes using more words just makes things muggier.)

My last issue is with the analogies. I think there were only a few here and at least you don't have my problem- I hardly ever use them, which isn't a good thing. Also, your analogies aren't overused or cliché- they're original, which is a great thing. What you want is a balance, and I think you've achieved that. What you want to look at is, once again, the clarity of those analogies and metaphors. You want these analogies and metaphors to enhance your description, to help the reader picture what's going on. I'll give you a quote from The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman on page 56: "Just as there is a world of difference between a word that is right and a word that is perfect, there is likewise a world of difference between a comparison that works and a comparison that brings the reader to a new level of enlightenment."

Now onto the good things. Like I said above, you're nailing the voice in some parts, but it's weak in others. A lot of this is just reading great YA books and writing a lot until you get your voice right. And some of it, beta readers will be able to pick out and show you how to fix, which is great. Also, I think your analogies and metaphors will be fantastic with some editing- that's a great piece of voice, too. I definitely like the situation you've set up, and I'd probably keep reading, but only if something grabbed me right away. So far, the thing with the delivery boy isn't holding my attention well- I'd rather know about the photographs thing, so if the two aren't related, I'd suggest focusing on one or the other to begin with-whatever's more pressing and compelling.

Thanks for submitting this, and good luck with this novel!

Thanks again to the brave writer who submitted her first page (otherwise I would've had nothing to post about today)!

Also, I mentioned the book The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman in my critique. I'm still reading it, but it's a fantastic book that's focused on polishing your first five pages in a way that will grab the reader's attention. I'll write a proper book review of it later, but I highly recommend all writers read it.

One last thing: I haven't gotten any questions for the Ask-The-Teens Q&A tomorrow. If you have any questions you want to ask us about reading or anything else, please e-mail them to brittany (at) hillsandcorkscrews (dot) com. There's no real deadline, but the faster you submit them the more likely it will be that everyone will answer them.

And the links to everyone else's critique posts will go here once they're posted:

TWSB Day 7- On Writing

2011-07-07T17:05:00.001-04:00

What I'm Working On: Watching the live Harry Potter premiere-red-carpet-thing in the UK. Link to it here. Who else is going to the midnight premiere, and are you wearing a costume/a Harry Potter shirt/lightning scar? I'm going to wear a HP t-shirt that I'm ordering tonight (link here).

What I'm Reading: The Replacement by Brenna Yovanoff

Today is Day 7 of the Teen Writers Summer Blogfest, and we're nearing the end! The theme for today is our writing journeys, and I'm kind of stealing this idea from Steph Bowe- she wrote a post called A Complete History of My Writing Failures.

I don't know when I started writing exactly, but I was very young. I wrote stories and drew pictures in composition notebooks that I still have. I didn't finish all of them, but I liked drawing covers for them and making illustrations.

On November 26, 2008, I joined a writing forum (I know the date because it's on my profile, but I won't tell you what forum it is. I haven't been active in a long time since it started changing in a not-so-great way, so I left.). It was a writing forum for teenagers and I quickly wrote the beginnings of some stories that I posted for critique. They got ripped to shreds, of course, so I read some more on the forums.

I found out about NaNo WriMo on the forum and since I'd already missed the whole month, I didn't join in. I found out about the spin-offs and joined JanNo WriMo 2009 (NaNo WriMo in January) a month later.

At the end of the month, I won with a 50k word novel (my first real novel). All I'll tell you is that it was fantasy, it was horrible, and it was a knock-off of every MG fantasy novel you've ever heard of. I didn't realize that at the time, and I spent the next nine months writing bits and pieces of stories. I started a few different novels but didn't finish any.

I posted a lot more on the forum and joined a few others. I learned how to critique well, and I gave and received lots of critiques.

Then in July of 2009 I started a new novel called The Barrons, which is still unfinished. I was aiming for 50k words and abandoned it at about 29k. It was a lot better than my first novel because of all the critiquing I'd done, but it was still pretty bad. :)

In November, I joined the Young Writers Program (NaNo WriMo for kids under 18) since I wasn't old enough to join the real site yet. I won with another 50k word novel called The Fish of Norlee River, and it was horrible, probably worse than The Barrons even though I wrote it afterwards. I set it aside and took a long break from writing.

In May (or June, can't remember) I revised The Fish of Norlee River quickly and ordered a proof copy of the novel as part of the Create Space offer.

That summer, during July and August, I wrote a novel called Minardus. It was definitely an improvement from the last two and a half novels, since I had more time to write it.

In November 2010 I joined the real NaNo site and won NaNo again with a 50k novel called Stardust Lane. I also learned that I write pretty badly during NaNo WriMo. :)

From January-May of 2011 I was really busy with school and an extra-curricular activity, so I didn't write at all. Then in June I wrote a few new short stories and put them together in a collection that I used my proof copy for. (It came in the mail a few days ago and I'll have pictures soon.)

So that's my writing journey up until now.

Here are my overall statistics:

about 240k words written (including novels, short stories, and unfinished novels)
four and a half novels written
two and a half years writing seriously (since January 2009, when I was 11)*

Janice Hardy once wrote a post about the stages of being a writer, starting from beginner and ending with selling your book. I would say that I'm a stage three writer, which is called "Wouldn't It Be Great to Publish Something?" I think that I need a lot more practice and I need to hone my craft more before I try to get published, so that's what I'm working on.

I don't really follow the million word rule (though it is on my bucket list), so I don't think I need to write a certain number of words before pursuing publication. I think that I need at least five years of writing experience (at least, that's the number I'll go by), so I'm going to keep writing until I'm 16 before I start querying. (Maybe more if I don't feel like I'm ready then.)

The reason is that my writing isn't ready yet, and I feel like 13 or 14 is really young (even within the realm of teenage writers) to pursue publication. I mean, even all the other teen writers in this blogfest are older than me! So I'm going write a lot more over the next two and a half years.

What about you? If you read Janice's article, what stage are you at in your writing? Are you pursuing publication?

The links to the other participants' fantastic posts:

*I know that some people think that it doesn't count if you write when you're young like me. In this blog post, Hannah Moskowitz gave a story about a (fake) middle-aged woman who was trying to get published and finally did, years after she first wrote. Then Hannah wrote this:

"Yeah, did you figure out the punchline? Subtract 20 years from all of those ages, and you have my journey.

There's this idea that, because I'm young, this all must have happened very quickly for me. I must have skipped steps, or gotten really lucky, or come out of the womb a perfect writer."

And I agree. Just because I'm younger doesn't mean I'm rushing into getting published. I'm sure there are published adult writers who have five years of writing experience, or even less. I'm just starting out younger, that's all.

TWSB Day 6- Contest

2011-07-06T15:31:00.004-04:00

What I'm Working On: Cleaning my desk off

What I'm Reading: The Replacement by Brenna Yovanoff

Today is Day 6 of the Teen Writers Summer Blogfest, and the theme for today is a contest/giveaway. I decided to have another Harry Potter trivia contest, and the prize is a five-page critique by me. Anyone can enter (including blogfest participants). Here's how it will work:

There will be 5 trivia questions. The first person to comment below this post with at least 3/5 questions answered correctly is the winner.

The Questions:

1. In what book and in what chapter of that book did Harry find out that Dobby and Winky were working at Hogwarts?

2. What book was Hermione reading in the scene where Harry met Colin Creevey? What HP book did this take place in?

3. In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, on Christmas Eve at the Burrow, the song "A Cauldron Full of Hot, Strong Love" was playing on the radio. Who was the singer?

4. What is the name of Voldemort's mother's brother?

5. In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, what was the name of the secret radio station that gave news about what was really going on in the wizarding world? What was Lee Jordan's code name in the station?

So those are the questions, and remember, you only need to get 3 out of the 5 right to win. Ready... set... go!

EDIT: I have two winners: Laura and Emily. Emily e-mailed me with the right answers before Laura commented, but Emily doesn't want the prize, so Laura wins the five-page critique. Congrats to both of you!

The Other Contest Posts:

TWSB Day 5- Blurb Critiques

2011-07-05T19:36:00.002-04:00

What I'm Working On: Uh...

What I'm Reading: The Dying Breath by Alane Ferguson. I was trying to finish it today but then I realized I had to finish this post. But I'm dying to finish it. (Get it? Get it? "Dying" like "The Dying Breath"?)

Sorry if this post doesn't make much sense. It's so hot here that I can't think straight and I've started making bad puns.

Okay, I'm going to get started with the real post. Excuse the above.

We received two blurbs/pitch paragraphs to critique. By blurb, I meant something like the pitch paragraph in a query letter, about 250 words, so that's how I'm treating these. So we'll start with blurb #1:

Title: TRIPP PARKER VS. THE WORLD: THE AFRICAN KIBOKO LEGEND

Genre: Upper Middle Grade Adventure

The Blurb:

Eccentric debate club champ Tripplehorn Parker is certain he’ll be dead by next week, his body rolling around the stomach of an African beastie. He might be right. While his wildlife-researcher parents are thrilled to be entering the field again, Tripp can only mourn the inevitable loss of his limbs. Unfortunately, nobody will listen to reason from a friendless twelve-year-old, even one with a large vocabulary. The night before leaving home, Tripp receives a cryptic message ending with: Only you can stop them.
An eight-fingered woman and her eyepatched sidekick appear to follow the Parkers from America to the Ugandan bush. The guide is a suspicious meanie. The support workers are twitchy. Warnings and symbols continue to appear in Tripp’s backpack, finally prompting him to do a very scary thing. He teams up with a Ugandan girl to determine why hippo territory is so popular. Clues and village folklore point to a hidden hippo shrine containing power and gold galore. Unfortunately, ancient legend calls for a human sacrifice (or three) to access the treasure. If the shrine is found, the research trip may become a rather uncivilized hunting expedition, with the Parkers as prey. With no podium or moderator in sight, Tripp faces the toughest competitive duo he’s ever encountered: Mother Nature and a herd of really, really bad guys.

And here's the blurb with my comments in purple:

I thought about this, and what those 4 sentences were conveying: Tripp is going to Africa, he's certain he'll be eaten, but no one will listen. I'm starting to think that this information isn't really necessary in the pitch paragraph. I'm sure it's important in the story, and it's entirely the writer's decision, but I think the pitch would be a lot cleaner if it just cut straight to the story.

An eight-fingered woman and her eyepatched sidekick appear to follow the Parkers from America to the Ugandan bush. The guide is a suspicious meanie. The support workers are twitchy. Warnings and symbols continue to appear in Tripp’s backpack, finally prompting him to do a very scary thing. He teams up with a Ugandan girl to determine why hippo territory is so popular. This confused me a bit. I wasn't sure why this was scary (maybe add a bit more in there?) and I didn't know what the part about hippo territory meant, since it wasn't mentioned before. Clues and village folklore point to a hidden hippo shrine containing power and gold galore. Unfortunately, ancient legend calls for a human sacrifice (or three) to access the treasure. If the shrine is found, the research trip may become a rather uncivilized hunting expedition, with the Parkers as prey. With no podium or moderator in sight, Tripp faces the toughest competitive duo he’s ever encountered: Mother Nature and a herd of really, really bad guys.

Overall, I think this was a solid pitch. It conveys to the reader what the tone and voice of the novel will be like (even though I haven't read it). And I would read the book, but only if the first few pages really grabbed me.

I didn't really understand why the antagonists want to use Tripp and his family as sacrifices- why not anyone else? I also wasn't sure who the antagonists were. Their guides? The villagers? Maybe this part is a mystery and isn't revealed until the end of the story, so I don't know whether the writer should put this information in the query or not.

But overall, nice job with this. :)

Blurb #2

Title: Bix: Son of a (Hired) Gun

Genre: YA Contemp

The Blurb:

Bix is just like Percy Jackson except:

He doesn’t have godly powers, although he’s a precision sharp-shooter which works well in the paintball league.

He’s shorter and smaller than the rest of the kids at Steroid High. You know the type, Amazons, CroMags, and Titans. Oh never mind, just like Percy.

He gets the girl—but that could be a problem because her mom might be a double-agent mayor.

His best friend is a lesbian pixie—although that could be same. Jury’s out on Annabeth. Just saying she’s kind of butch and kick-ass. I’m not wholly convinced.

His father’s not a god, but as an assassin he decides who lives or dies.

Cypher isn’t Camp Halfblood although they train kids to shoot straight (Target Zone Paintball Park), discourage computers (no internet), and encourage one-on-one combat (Harvest Paintball Challenge).

He doesn’t have daddy issues because he’s never met his dad. Oh yeah, that’s just like Percy. And finally, when he does meet him, its’ a brief—blink and it’s over moment. Oh yeah, that’s like Percy too.
Never mind, Bix is just like Percy minus the demi-god thing.

I don't mean to be harsh, but I probably wouldn't pick up this book. I'm not really sure what the story's about, and I feel like the writer might have written the pitch paragraph this way so that it would seem unique or so it would stand out. I'd suggest sticking with the basic pitch paragraph format: introduce the main character (very briefly!), start with the inciting incident, introduce the conflict, etc.

Comparing a story to another one doesn't really entice me to read it, and I think this story could be very interesting if the pitch paragraph was written in a more compelling way.

I have to go finish The Dying Breath, so here are the links to everyone else's critiques:

Also, thank you to both of our participants for submitting their blurbs!

TWSB Day 4- Interviews

2011-07-04T10:30:00.002-04:00

What I'm Working On: Revision

What I'm Reading: The Replacement by Brenna Yovanoff

Happy 4th of July!

I don't have much time but I interviewed the awesome Mia from My Literary Jam and Toast.

1. What inspired you to write?

But of course! The power of books is what truly inspired me. I've been consoled, challenged, taught, trusted, and confused by many a book. I love the way they're so much more than just a story. Also, very importantly, I like the sound of my keys when I type. Teehee.

2. What are your top 3 favorite books?

Of all time? Rebecca, Harry Potter (I CHEAT, HAHA, IT'S AN ENTIRE SERIES, AHAHAHAHAAA, OH THE POWER), and Alice in Wonderland.

3. Are you an outliner or non-outliner?

Non-outliner, methinks. Although I do leave myself notes in the margins but that's more to remind myself to do things later like go buy some grapes or actually remember the name of a character. Just small things. Haha.

4. What is your favorite genre?

Young Adult, to read and write. Wooohooo! (DO EXCUSE ME, I AM IN A BIT OF A WOOHOO MOOD TODAY).

5. What is your favorite part about writing?

My favourite part is ... wooooooooohooooo! Hahahahaaa, just kidding. Ahem. It is actually discovering something about a character or story for the first time. I never a plan my writing, so it's wonderful to find out all these new things as I go along. A lovely day out!

6. Mac or PC?

So, I have a PC? But I'm totally one of those people who ACTUALLY wants a MAC whilst she is PCing it up. Haha. I kind of have this long standing argument with MS Word 2007 at the moment (revolving around the dictionary of all things) so I am leaning ever more towards MAC and its prettiness.

7. If you could visit anywhere in the world, where would you pick?

I keep thinking I would like to visit some uninhabited place so I could explore like Indiana Jones buuuuut actually if I consider it carefully enough I think I would like to go the Smithsonian. I'm kind of into all that stuff andddd I could hum the Indiana Jones theme tune as I wandered around to make myself feel like an adventurer. Yayyy!

8. What is 1 thing no one knows about you?

Now, you see, the problem with yours truly is that I am AWFUL at keeping my own secrets in their entire secret state. I blurt them out without realising most of the time. Ahem. I did once get stuck in a bucket, there's an interesting feat. As in, I sat down in a bucket andddd you can imagine the rest. Buuuut about a dozen people already know that, haha. Ahem. I guess one thing not many people know about me is that I used to sail as a kid. Like, on boats etc. I didn't wander around with a sheet tied to my arms, thinking I was sailing.

9. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you pick?

Somewhere warm. I'm kind of undecided on where! Somedays I fancy Canada, others Glasgow, others Florida, and others Italy. Sooo, it is possible I will have to stay put until I choose. I also think I might like living in a house that is basically a massive library. Teehee.

10. What is your favorite part about blogging?

The people! Oh the people! I love that the internet brings so many together into this big SUPER COSY conversation and we can all slurp smoothies together. AWESOME. It is the stepping stone for great friendships and interesting debates! I love it. Also I love it when people surprise me.

11. What is your writing process like?

Imagine a room full of penguins who have all been tasked with sorting out an entire library of books into chronological order. Ok. Right. Pretty crazy. So conjure that up. Now imagine a Polar Bear walks in and you watch the pages of a torn book float down as the tension mounts. Ok. Ok. Right. Now imagine that you are the health and safety officer tasked with recording any incidents or accidents that occur. And imagine your hand aching and your pen struggling to keep up with the incident that is now happening all over the library carpet. You are imagining this, yea? Ok, that is absolutely nothing like my writing process but MY WORD I think if it were we'd get places faster. IN TRUTH mine is mainly just me fumbling around in the dark, every now and then I accidentally trip over something useful. Haha. But I can never find it when I want it again.

Here are everyone else's interview posts:

TWSB Day 3- Excerpts

2011-07-03T19:06:00.002-04:00

What I'm Working On: Not much

What I'm Reading: Just finished The Circle of Blood by Alane Ferguson and I'm DYING to read the next in the series.

Sorry for how late this post is, but anyway, the theme for today is to post an excerpt from a completed work or WiP, any length and any genre. I'm posting a short excerpt from an unedited short story tentatively titled "The Witch's House". Yeah, I know that's not the best title but I needed something fast. So here it is:

(And like I said, this is unedited and the first thing that I've written in a while, so it's a bit rusty and not very good.)

They hurried up the two remaining flights of stairs in darkness, holding onto the rails. When they reached the top, Sylvia could make out walls on either side of them, lined with many more closed doors.

Something flickered in the corner of her eyes. Sylvia spun around, facing forward. A green orb of light floated before them, emanating a shaky brightness that lit up the hallway.

Sylvia forced herself to look away from the orb. "I think we should leave now." She spoke quietly, as if the light could hear and understand them.

Marco didn't reply. He reached out hand, palm out, as if trying to touch the orb. His wide eyes reflected the green light.

"Marco…" Sylvia shook his arm. "Marco! Listen to me! We should leave now!" She tried to pull him in the direction they'd come but he wouldn't budge.

"Marco!" she shouted. "Wake up! Snap out of it!" She glanced at the orb. It was floating away, farther down the hall. Just like the story. Marco reached after it and began whispering something that was too quiet to hear.

He took a step down the hall, then another. Sylvia stood in front of him and waved a hand in front of his face. "Listen to me!"

Marco stepped around her and kept walking. Sylvia tried to remember the details of the story- how had the kid gotten away?

She ran in front of Marco and covered his eyes with her hands. If he couldn't see the light, he would be fine, that was it.

Marco shoved her away and she felt to her knees. He kept walking, faster this time. Screams echoed ahead of them and doors swung open by themselves and then slammed shut. Sylvia noticed in horror that one of the doors was covered in a red substance: blood. It dripped down just like Uncle Ted had described.

(By the way I'm NOT looking for critiques right now.) :)

And here are the links to everyone else's excerpts:

Nick from Writing Fire

Will from Tales of the Harbingers

Laura from Laura + the voices

Gracie from I Am Writer... Hear Me Roar!

Taryn from A Fool's Golden Paradise

Have a great 4th of July, everyone!

TWSB Day 2- On Reading

2011-07-02T14:05:00.002-04:00

What I'm Working On: Revision, maybe?

What I'm Reading: The Magician's Elephant by Kate DiCamillo

Today is sort of going to be my personal history of reading, starting in kindergarten.

I wasn't a child prodigy who started reading at age two. In kindergarten when I was six, I started out reading those tiny books with five words on a page that everyone else read, but I got moved up to more advanced books, like Nate the Great and Henry and Mudge. :)

Throughout elementary school, I read a LOT. This was before I started writing seriously. I wrote little stories and poems and drew pictures but I still devoted most of my time to reading. I read most genres but I liked fantasy the most (I think).

In second grade (age 8) I discovered Harry Potter when I found a copy of the first HP book in my house. Apparently my oldest sister had read it but didn't like it, but I quickly read it and loved it. And that's when I became a HP fan.

I borrowed the rest of the books, one at a time, from my mom's friend, and I went to the midnight release party-thingy at my local Barnes and Noble for the seventh book.

Once middle school started I got a bit busier and read less and I started reading mostly fantasy. I read longer books and some YA and lots of series books. I read the first Percy Jackson book last summer and have read all of them but the last because it's always checked out at my library.

Anyway, that concludes my history of reading. (Ugh, this sounds like I'm giving a project for school.) I still read most genres but I don't read much contemporary YA and MG, and I usually stay away from historical fiction (but there are exceptions).

My favorite part about reading is (yeah, this is going to sound cliche) how it can take you to places you wouldn't get to know otherwise. And how a lot of good fiction is really close to life. And how fiction can teach you things about the world, it can enhance your life, and it can allow you to sort of experience new things.

I don't have a lot of pet peeves in fiction other than the usual (sparkly vampires, flat protagonists like Bella). I don't like historical fiction but that's because a lot of it seems to be just infodumps about a certain time period, and I'm not really interested in that. Yeah, I know there's good historical fiction out there. I've read some of it.

I also think there's way too much YA paranormal romance out there. I think everyone needs to lay off the genre for a while (that and YA dystopian). Whenever I go to Barnes and Noble and look at the YA section, all I see is black, vampire-ish covers (usually with a girl on it).

And sometimes teenage characters are a lot more glamorous or dangerous or mean than real teenagers are. Real teenagers are kind of awkward sometimes and we're really not that mean. And not everyone has a bunch of issues (like divorced/dead parents, abusive parents, depression, self-injury). I know some teenagers have these issues but not EVERYONE, and not everyone has all these issues all at once.

Hmmm. I'm trying to read 52 books this year but I'm very behind. If you're one of those people who reads multiple books a week, how do you do it?

I have a long TBR list but I'm always looking for suggestions. So if you know of any books that I should absolutely read leave them in comments.

And here are everyone else's posts for today:

TWSB Day 1- Introductions

2011-07-01T13:39:00.004-04:00

What I'm Working On: Preparing to start revision

What I'm Reading: Finished The Giver by Lois Lowry

Today is the first day of the Teen Writers Summer Blogfest, and the theme for today is Introductions.

And I just realized that I don't know what to talk about, so I'll use some of the sample questions I gave in an e-mail to the other participants:

Favorite TV show? Doctor Who

Person you would most want to meet, alive or dead? This is a really hard question, since I want to meet lots of people. I can't think of any dead people that I'd want to meet off the top of my head. I most want to meet John and Hank Green, but that's two people, but I can't pick one of them. I want to meet them both equally. :)

Favorite candy? Milky Way bars

Mac or PC? I use a PC but if I had the money I'd use a Mac.

3 of your hobbies besides writing? Drawing, piano, tennis

If you were a superhero, what would your powers be? If I could be any superhero, I'd be Spidergirl, but if I had to be my own superhero, I'd be... I don't know. I'll get back to you on that one.

Your Hogwarts house? (or are you not a HP fan?) Gryffindor. I feel more like a Ravenclaw because I don't think I'm especially brave, but all the house quizzes on the internet say I'm Gryffindor. (With Ravenclaw as a close second.)

Now some other stuff:

I'm 13, 14 in the fall.
I get obsessed with books and movies and TV shows really easily, so I like lots of different things.
(I don't like Twilight though.)
I'm a redhead.
I've been writing seriously for about 2 1/2 years, and I've won NaNo WriMo twice.
I sort of have blogging ADD- I used to change my blog's design every month or so but I haven't changed it since (I think) the beginning of the year. And I'm planning to keep it like this, I promise.

Okay, now here are the links to everyone else's introduction posts: (and I'll keep updating the list as everyone posts)

A Quick Note

2011-06-30T18:05:00.000-04:00

The blogfest starts tomorrow, and I haven't gotten any submissions yet for blurb or first page critiques, so the new submission deadline will be July 4th for blurbs and July 7th for first pages.

Blogfest Participants & More Details

2011-06-22T18:59:00.001-04:00

This post will be really fast since I just typed it up but I lost it when I clicked "Publish". (Stupid Blogger!)

Here's the list of the participants so far for the blogfest (sign-up closes tonight but I don't think anyone else will be signing up):

1. Gracie from I Am Writer Hear Me Roar

2. Taryn from A Fool's Golden Paradise

3. Rachael from Writers' Chasm

4. Will from Tales of the Harbingers

5. Nick from Writing Fire

6. Laura from laurathewise

Anyway, I'm working on following everyone's blogs and Twitters right now, and I encourage the participants to check out the other participants' blogs.

Also, I forgot to ask for this on the sign-up form, but I need the e-mails of all the participants so that I can send everyone more details about the blogfest. If you already have your e-mail listed on your blog, then don't worry about it, I'll find it, but if not it'd be nice if you could drop me an e-mail.

All right, here are the guidelines for submitting your blurbs and first pages for critique: (this is the part for adult writers and any non-participants)

1. Send your submissions to brittany (at) hillsandcorkscrews (dot) com with the subject line:

Submission: (insert Blurb or First Page or both)

2. Include the title, specific genre, and your screen name/real name.

3. Submissions should be PG-13 (mild violence and swearing is fine).

4. Submissions must be middle-grade or young-adult fiction (no adult novels or picture books, sorry).

Blurbs:

1. Blurbs should be 250 words or less and should not give away the ending of your novel (this is the same thing as the pitch paragraph of your query letter).

First Pages:

1. First pages should actually be the first page of your novel (500 words or less), but don't end any sentences in the middle, finish the sentence if you have to.

These will not be your typical critiques. For blurbs/pitches, we'll basically be saying whether we'd read the story or not, and why (like the back cover of a novel). For first pages, we'll say what we liked and didn't like, if we'd keep reading, etc. These critiques are to get a teen's perspective on your writing, not just a general critique.

Also, submission starts today and ends in a week: June 22- 29. I'm probably forgetting something but I think I've covered everything important. :)

Edit: I already know what I forgot. Also from June 22-29, you can submit questions for our Ask-The-Teens day of the blogfest. Guidelines:

1. Submit questions to brittany (at) hillsandcorkscrews (dot) com with the subject line:

Ask-The-Teens Question (or something similar)

2. Questions should be about writing or reading or something similar (or anything really, but I don't know what else you'd want to ask)

3. Questions shouldn't be specific to one participant as we might all be answering them separately.

Sample Questions:

*What are your favorite genres to read and why? (for learning what teens like reading most)

*What are your opinions on (insert anything) in YA?

Blogfest Badges!

2011-06-17T17:12:00.003-04:00

What I'm Working On: The blogfest

What I'm Reading: The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman

This afternoon I made some badges for the blogfest. It's been very frustrating, but here they are!

Each badge is also on the sidebar of my blog. You can just copy and paste them but if you use the html code, then it will link to the "Blogfest" page I just made.

The first one is for participants and the second one for non-participants (in case you want to spread the word).

Fame vs. Community: Which Would You Have?

2011-06-16T13:43:00.000-04:00

(By the way, I shamelessly stole this post idea from Casey McCormick's blog post on blog topics for writers.)

Also, this will be the first in a series/tag listing called Both Sides of the Argument, where I'll talk about both sides of something like Mac vs. PC, dogs vs. cats, or hopefully something more important. :)

Here's the original question:

"Would you like to be a bestseller or have a smaller, more manageable following?"

Even though I stole this post idea, I actually have been thinking about the topic lately: being famous vs. having a smaller following. To some people, it might seem obvious to choose bestseller. For me, it was a no-brainer. Who wouldn't want to have millions of people reading your books? But lately, I've started to change my mind.

While it might seem great to be a best-selling author with so many fans, a larger fan base is almost less close. You might argue that with more fans, more people can connect over loving your books. I mean that there's less of a connection between the author and the reader.

Sure, people have connected over and made friends because of the Harry Potter books. But compared to other authors and fan bases, there's less of a personal connection between J.K Rowling and her fans. It's only a fan community, not a fan-and-author community.

But maybe books aren't about establishing a connection between the author and the fans. What are they, then? Is it just about making a personal connection through the novel itself? I don't think there's one right answer, though.

On the other hand, there's a smaller fan base, but more of a connection between the authors and the fans. Less of the author putting out work and the fans admiring it, and more of the readers and the author interacting, since the author can get to know some of the readers.

Of course, this is all hypothetical. You can't really choose if your book will be a bestseller or not once it's published.

I've started to change my mind because I've seen how this is related to social media like blogging. I have a very small number of followers compared to other blogs, and I used to be unhappy with that. I wanted more followers, more comments. I wanted to be more popular.

I started subscribing to more people on YouTube lately, and I've noticed something. The people with less subscribers (say 1,000) often interact more with their subscribers. They reply to comments, make video responses, and make friends. The people who have the most subscribers on YouTube (in the millions) usually don't connect much with their subscribers.

There are some exceptions. The Vlogbrothers, John and Hank Green, have over 500,000 subscribers, yet they've started an entire community: nerdfighteria. They interact with their subscribers, and their subscribers get to participate in the community. The YouTube channel isn't so much about John and Hank, but more about the nerdfighters.

And I'm starting to realize that what I want out of social media is more like that. Something more personal and more social, less about popularity and fame. That's why I'm happy with my 37 followers. I don't mind that I don't have thousands of followers any more. I've made friends with some of my followers, I talk to my followers, and I follow some of their blogs.

So, if you boil down the original question to community vs. fame, I think I'd choose community, which means that I'd choose having a smaller number of readers if I got published.
There's no right or wrong answer, though. It's all about what you want out of social media, out of getting published, even out of life. (And I'm starting to sound cheesy. Think that's my signal to end the post soon.)

But really, there are lots of metaphors for this. Would you rather have lots of friends or a few really close friends? Be liked by lots of people or loved by a few?

I'm not saying you can't have both. The vlogbrothers, among countless others, have proved that you can, if you work hard enough to establish it.

And I'm not saying that I wouldn't want more followers, or that I wouldn't want to write a bestseller. :) I want a balance of both.

What are your thoughts? Would you rather have lots of followers/readers, or fewer but closer followers/readers?

Teen Writers Summer Blogfest: The Details & Sign-up

2011-06-15T13:56:00.002-04:00

What I'm Working On: the blogfest, of course! And watching Doctor Who

What I'm Reading: The Maze Runner by James Dashner

I've decided to do the blogfest, and as you can see from the title of this post, it's going to be a teen writers blogfest. I've figured out most of the details, and at the end of this post, you'll be able to sign-up.

The name of the blogfest is the 2011 Teen Writers Summer Blogfest (or just Teen Writers Blogfest for short). It will run from July 1-9. Each day, there will be a new theme-of-the-day kind of thing, and all the participants will participate/blog about this theme, and I'll link to them all here. Like I said in my earliest post, the purpose is to make friends and for other writers to get a teen's perspective on writing and reading.

Here's the schedule:

July 1, Fri- Introductions
July 2, Sat- On Reading
July 3, Sun- Excerpts
July 4, Mon- Interviews
July 5, Tues- Blurb Critiques
July 6, Wed- Giveaway/contest
July 7, Thur- On Writing
July 8, Fri- First Page critiques
July 9, Sat- Ask the Teens

And here's more details about each day:

Introductions: The teen participants will introduce themselves, and I'll have a list of optional questions if they don't know what to talk about. :)
On Reading: Participants will post about reading: their favorite books, favorite genres, what they like about reading, what they want to see more of, etc.
Excerpts: Participants will post an excerpt from any WiP or finished stories of up to any length. They can post it for critiquing or not.
Interviews: Before the blogfest starts, participants will pick a influential or inspirational person to interview (it can be anyone related to writing, such as an author, fellow blogger, etc.)
Blurb Critiques: Before the blogfest, there will be a submission window (like Miss Snark's First Victim) where writers (of any age) can submit their 250-word-or-less blurb of their novel (hook, whatever you want to call it). Depending on the number of submissions, either all the participants will critique these on their blog, or we'll divide them up. Basically, teens will say whether they'd read the book or not, and why.
Giveaway/Contest: Participants will have a giveaway or a contest on their blog. They don't have to giveaway anything. It could just be a contest. Or they could giveaway something free, like a critique, award, etc. If they want to, they can giveaway a book, gift card, or anything else.
On Writing: Participants talk about where they are in their writing, what they're working on, stuff like that.
First Page Critiques: Same as the blurb critiques, but with the first page. Teens will say where they'd stop reading (or if they'd keep reading) and why.
Ask the Teens: This will either work as a live chat, or with submitted questions. Writers can ask the teen participants any questions they have (such as what they would read)

Note: Each day is optional, so participants don't have to post for every single day if they don't want to or can't.

Now, on to sign-up.

Sign-up Rules:

1. You must be 18 or younger to participate.

2. You must sign-up by June 22 (one week from today).

3. You must sign up using the form below.

And those are the only rules. Also, if you know of any other teen writers, it'd be nice to send them this way so they have the opportunity to participate!

Here's the form: (You have to scroll down to see the whole thing.)

<p>&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;Loading...&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;</p>

I'm not going to make a separate blog for the blogfest, but each day I'll participate and link to all the participants' posts. I'm also going to make badges for participants. And after the deadline, I'll write a post linking to all the participants.

Book Review: Learning to Swim by Sara J. Henry

2011-06-14T09:14:00.001-04:00

What I'm Working On: Cleaning my room

What I'm Reading: The Maze Runner by James Dashner and just finished The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie last night

(Bookshelf image by me)

The first line of Learning to Swim is: "If I'd blinked, I would have missed it." I was hooked right from the start, and I was not disappointed.

Learning to Swim is Sara J. Henry's debut novel. It's an adult novel, though I'm not sure what genre, probably suspense.

Learning to Swim is the story of Troy Chance, a freelance writing living in Lake Placid, New York. Troy is riding on a ferry to Vermont when she sees what she thinks is a child fall from another ferry. She jumps into the water after him, and you'll have to read the book to find out what happens.

One of things I loved about LTS was the first scene, the hook. It felt like a very natural beginning, yet it was unique and intriguing. The rest of the book kept me hooked and turning the pages without being gimmicky or even in present tense.

The novel was perfectly plotted, and the pacing felt right throughout the whole story. There were elements of mystery among others, and I think the novel wrapped those up and ended brilliantly. (Definitely one of the best, twistiest, endings I've read in a while.)

Just like the plot, Troy's voice was intriguing and smooth. The tone matched up flawlessly with what was going on in the story, and that helped make this novel a page-turner.

Troy was complex, likeable, and easy to relate to. It was easy for me to imagine that I was Troy and I was experiencing the story throughout it. There were emotional subpots that Troy had to deal with, and they were interesting and just as page-turning as the main events of the story.

The other characters were all likeable and as developed as secondary characters should be, but I felt like Phillippe Dumond (you'll have to read the book to find out who that is), could have been more three-dimensional, since he was a major character. At times he was a little flat, and it was hard to describe even his personality. I think the book would have been richer with a little more character development.

I loved the different settings of the novel, especially since Lake Placid and the other cities in the novel are real places. In some novels the setting is just a piece of scenery, but in LTS, the setting helped the novel seem more lifelike, and it helped enhance the story.

The writing itself was excellent, and so was Troy's voice. She was funny at times, serious at others, and like I said above, very relatable.

Overall, LTS is a fantastic, compelling novel for both genders, teenagers and adults. I highly recommend it. (And I'm also really excited for the sequel!)

Rating:

Links:

Interview with Monica BW from Love YA

2011-06-11T09:17:00.002-04:00

Microphone picture courtesy of hiddedevries

Please welcome Monica BW from Love YA! In case you haven't read her blog, Monica is a YA writer who got an agent somewhat recently. She does contests and interviews on her blog and all sorts of cool things, so make sure to take a look at her blog through the link above.

1. What initially inspired you to start writing?

First of all, thanks for inviting me to your blog! I feel honored.

I don’t know if I started writing because I was inspired. It just sort of happened unexpectedly. I mean, I studied business—nothing to do with literature. But when I finished my Master’s degree, it was kind of difficult to start working right away because my kids were still too small. I wanted to do something at home—so I started writing. And I realized I loved it much more than my career!

2. You're welcome! How long have you been writing?

I’ve been writing for two lifetimes now (I’m talking about the life of my 2yo, of course… so that’ll be like 5 years now =D).

3. :) Are you a plotter or a pantser?

1000% plotter! You know, I’m sort of an ADD person, so if I don’t know where the story is going, I lose focus.

4. What was the first story you ever wrote?

Ha! I was like 8. And I didn’t know I wanted to be a writer then. The story was about a girl who came from heaven. But she WASN’T an angel… I don’t remember what she was though.

5. I love the story of how you got your agent! How did you feel after you got an offer?

I’m happy that you liked it! YAY. So how did I feel? Relieved. And obviously, I felt ecstatic and my ego soared to the sky!

6. What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

Lawyers and architects take more than 5 years to start working. Doctors take even longer. Then why writers would take just a few months to publish something? So have patience—if you want to learn the craft of writing it *usually* takes time to get it right.

7. Definitely agree. If you could meet anyone in the world (alive or dead), who would you pick?

There’s this Mexican singer, Luis Miguel, who I’d love to meet. I really like his songs and they inspire me. Here’s one of his AWESOME love songs.

8. What is your writing process like?

As I said, I’m a plotter. So first I think about the outline and discuss it with my hubby—he really helps a lot there by listening to my long monologues. Then I write a first draft, which is usually really short, with just the bones of the story. I flesh out in the next drafts until I approximately double the words of the first draft. At last, I revise by myself—nixing scenes, rearranging, etc—and when I feel I’ve done my best, I send the ms to betas.

9. If you could meet any character from any book, who you would you pick?

Gosh, that’s a hard question. I usually fall for the male protagonists if they are interesting. So I’d say I’d like the meet the knight in shining armor of the book I’m reading at the moment.

10. What was the road to getting an agent like for you?

Long and bumpy. I had to learn a lot, but it was—in hindsight—fun.

11. What 3 books do you think everyone should absolutely read?

1- A thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini.
2- Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.
3- Harry Potter!

12. Hmmm, I haven't read the first one, but I'll have to check it out. If you could go back in time to yourself as an aspiring writer, what advice would you give yourself?

The same advice I’d give now to aspiring authors. (Question number 8.) I always tend to be impatient. So that would have helped me, I think.

13. How did you get the idea for your current novel?

I usually get all my ideas when I’m about to go to sleep. And then, obviously, I can’t sleep with this shiny new idea tumbling in my head!

14. The same thing happens to me! What are your plans for the future?

Um, live happily ever after?
Seriously? I don’t know—as much as I like to plot my books, I don’t make plans for the future that way. =)

Thanks, Monica! You can find Monica at her blog, on her website, or on Twitter. And I definitely recommend you check out the story of how she got her agent, which is in three parts: here, here, and here.

I have an idea. Am I crazy?

2011-05-31T21:30:00.001-04:00

Today, I was thinking about blogging and WriteOnCon and guest-posting (more on that in another post). And I had an idea.

I've heard about things like blogfests and the Writer's Platform-Building Crusade and things like that. I'm sure there's a lot more stuff like that out there, just not anything I've heard of.

I decided I want to start a blogfest. (Yes, I'm aware that I'll probably be misusing the word "blogfest" from here on out. Does anyone know the actual definition, by the way?)

The point wouldn't be platform-building or anything really, just so that bloggers can meet other bloggers, make friends, maybe find critique partners and new blogs to follow. (I mean, participants would probably get new followers just through doing all of this anyway.)

I was thinking about how the point of social networking is, obviously, to be social. To make friends. I know this isn't any big epiphany, but it's the basis behind my idea. I want this to be something fun.

There's a few basic things I'm sure of:

It will be a blogfest, or whatever they're called.
It will take place this summer* (see below)
It will involve bloggers from a certain niche** (see below)
Anyone who wants to participate will be able to.
It will involve guest-posting, interviews, giveaways, contests (with cool prizes), memes, and any other fun thing you can think of. I don't want it to be focused on critiquing, but maybe it will include a way for writers to find critique partners.

Who am I to start a blogfest? I've been thinking about this ever since I got the idea. I know I'm not a well-known blogger. I have a tiny number of followers compared to most bloggers. I understand. But I don't think that should really hold me (or anyone) back from starting something like this.

Because of this, I'd need participants and readers to spread the word. Since anyone will be able to participate, this could include bloggers with a thousand followers or bloggers with three. So I'd be relying on you to help make this happen.

Some Elaboration:

*Whenever I think of an idea (for example, an idea to write a new novel), I always think of a random deadline (one that's usually close). So I decided that this blogfest will start on June 21, the first day of summer (if I decide to go through with it). That way, it can summer-themed and all that.

**What I mean is that it wouldn't be just a general 2011 Summer Blogfest. It would be a blogfest for writers who blog, obviously. But I'd want it to be more specific than that, if possible. Here are some ideas:

Teen writers (though this would be very limiting, since there aren't a lot of us, at least that I know of)
MG/YA writers (this is my favorite idea, since the giveaways and guest-posts could be focused on this. Plus, there are a ton of blogs and websites dedicated to MG/YA readers and writers. I mean, look at how popular WriteOnCon is!)
People participating in and preparing for WriteOnCon
Aspiring (unpublished) writers- (this would also be very limiting, since there are a lot of popular blogs by published writers)
If I have no better ideas, just a general blogfest for writers who blog. At least this would be the least limiting.
Anything else creative that I can think of

The point is that there would be a common theme to it. Leave your ideas in the comments!

A few of the finer details that could be worked out later:

The name of the blogfest- I have a few ideas. Since it would start on June 21, it could be the 2011 Summer Solstice Blogfest. Or if it was MG/YA writers only, it could be the 2011 Summer MG/YA Blogfest. Once again, if you have any ideas, please leave them in the comments.
How exactly it would work- Yeah, I know that's important, but I want to know if people would participate before I figure out exactly how it will work. I know that I'd start another blog dedicated to the blogfest where I'd post news and links and information.
Maybe I (or someone talented at this stuff) would create some kind of badge with a link that you could post on your blog to let people know about the blogfest.

I know that this would take quite a bit of time and work, but school's almost out, so I'll have plenty of time to put into this. I think we could arrange some really cool prizes and interviews and stuff, if we have the participation.

So before I go through with this, I need to hear what you guys think. Would you be interested in doing some sort of blogfest? What are your ideas on it? I'll put a poll in the sidebar. Basically, I'm not going to start this unless I know that there would participation. I mean, how disappointing would it be to have an entire blogfest planned out, only to have a few participants?

So if you're interested in this, you can start out by leaving a comment below with your ideas. And it'd be nice if you'd spread the word through Twitter or your blog, if you have time. There are some buttons right below.

EDIT: I really like Jess's ideas about the teen blogfest. If that's what we do, then I have a few ideas for how it could work:

Each day would be a theme that participants would post about, and I'd link to them all here or on the blogfest blog. (I don't like this idea too much, since I want it to be less like a meme and more of a blogfest.)
It could all be hosted on my blog, w/ guest posts, interviews, and giveaways but then there would be less of people meeting other people and finding new blogs.
Each participant would have a different day, where they'd have something like I mentioned in the last point.

However this works, I like Jess's idea and I think we could do something like Miss Snark's First Victim but with teens. Here's how it would work:

Writers would send in their pitch or first 250 words/first few pages to my blog e-mail ahead of time.
We (the teen participants) would critique the writing and say what point we'd stop reading at, if we were reading a book. For pitches, we'd say whether we'd read the book or not, and why.
Maybe people could find longer-term critique partners/betas in the process?

It would be hosted in one of two ways:

We would get all the entries in, then I'd e-mail them to all the teen participants. We'd each add in our thoughts, and then I would gather them up and post them on my blog (or the blogfest blog) over the course of a few days. That way, everybody would get more comments on their excerpts, but it would be more me-focused and less about the main idea of this blogfest. And I don't want that.
I would get all the entries in, and then divide them equally among the participants. They'd critique them and post them on their separate blogs on the same day, then I'd link to it all here. (I like this idea best.)

Also, I think it would be cool to have some kind of Ask-the-Teens session. This could work a few different ways:

Live chat, with all the teens logged on to answer questions
Everybody sends in their questions ahead of time, and the participants and I would answer them in one blog post with all of our separate answers
Q & A session in the comments

For this, I like the second idea best, so that there would be multiple answers for each question and they would be all in one place, but I like the first idea too.

So, once again, what are your thoughts? I'd really like to do this, but only if we have some participation. I'll wait a few days, and maybe I'll e-mail some possible participants to see if they'd be interested.

Back (For Good)

2011-05-29T19:52:00.002-04:00

What I'm Working On: Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (I'm catching up where I left off in the book, and hopefully I have it done in a couple of weeks)

What I'm Reading: Learning to Swim by Sara J. Henry

First of all, I'm sorry for not blogging for so long. I got busy with school and whatnot, but since school ends very soon for me, I'll be back for good!

I have lots of ideas for upcoming posts and blog stuff. On my blogging vacation, I thought about starting a new blog, something with a more focused topic. I've decided not to for now, so I'll be putting my energy into posting here more regularly.

I think I might do a poll of some kind that will be on the sidebar. If I make one you'll find it on the right.

Anyway, I've picked up drawing again (like I said above) and I'm looking forward to finish DRSB and writing a review, with before and after pictures. I still have and about a week and a half of school left but I'm not busy anymore.

In the meantime, here are some entertaining links and things (if you feel like you need to be entertained). Have a great rest of Memorial Day weekend!

1. Vlogbrothers: Thoughts from a Battlefield
2. 20 Insanely Creative Bookshelves- I can't remember where I found this but there's some really awesome bookshelves here. I think I'll put something like this on my bucket list.
3. Check out the latest Hunger Games movie news!- Darn it, I still haven't posted my dream cast video! It's a bit too late, but I'll post it eventually.
4. All the World's a Stage: The Stages of a Writer by Janice Hardy (oh, did you know that she got a Twitter? Or was I the one who didn't know?)- I'm really behind on reading blog posts but I found this great one buried beneath the pile.
5. Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi book trailer- I'm really excited for this to come out!

Happy Easter!

2011-04-24T18:14:00.000-04:00

I know this is late, but I hope you had a happy Easter with lots of Easter egg hunting!

Photo courtesy of FlyNutAA through a Creative Commons License

Analyzing Popular Posts

2011-04-11T20:25:00.001-04:00

What I'm Working: Hopefully I'll get back into Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain sometime this week

What I'm Reading: Reckless

Lately I've been trying to figure out what to blog about. I have a good list of blog post ideas but I want to do a really high-quality post, especially one that will be a popular post. So I took a look at the top five most popular posts on my blog. They are, in order:

1. The Hidden Meaning of Alice in Wonderland
2. 10 Ideas for Notebook Hoarders
3. Book Review: Wait Till Helen Comes by Mary Downing Hahn
4. Book Review: Al Capone Does My Shirts
5. Casting My Characters

I tried to figure out why these posts were the most popular, so that I could write better blog posts in the future. The first one is because, even though I didn't realize it at the time, apparently the hidden meaning of Alice in Wonderland is a hot topic. I probably could have gotten more page views for this post if I had gone more in-depth about the topic.

So, if I want to write a popular post, I should write about viral topics, which is harder than it sounds. What's popular one day is not popular the next. It's the same with trying to write a novel to a trend: assuming you get published, by the time your novel is published, the trend will not be a trend anymore.

The second most popular post is probably popular because I took the time to make it a better, more high-quality post than my usual posts. I followed the rules in this post, and I really spent time on that post. Also, two more popular websites posted the link and got it a lot more page views.

The third and fourth posts are obviously both book reviews of somewhat popular books that people google a lot. More book reviews= more page views.

The fifth post had two links to pictures of people who I would want to play my characters. I guess people google those people a lot and somehow came to that post. There's nothing I can really do but use more pictures of famous people in my posts, I guess. :)

What about you? What can you figure out from the most popular posts on your blog (or other peoples' blogs)?

Google Search Story

2011-04-09T19:32:00.001-04:00

What I'm Working On: Nothing

What I'm Reading: Reckless by Cornelia Funke

I hope everyone had a great Spring Break! A few months ago I found out about Google Search Stories. If you haven't heard of them, they're just what they sound like: stories told through Google searches. I decided to make one about writing and NaNo WriMo. I wanted to make it longer but the Search Story Creator limits you to 7 search terms. So, here it is!

And here's the link to it on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6OKcUAdl3I&feature=channel_video_title

You'll probably want to watch it there because it's kind of small in this post.

Contest Winner

2011-03-31T15:27:00.000-04:00

There were 2 entries in the Christopher Killer giveaway, but since Romi lives in Australia (sorry Romi!), only Jess's entry counts. Jess, if you'll just send me your mailing details at brittany@hillsandcorkscrews.com, I'll send it to you as soon as possible! Congrats :)

Win A Signed Copy of The Christopher Killer!

2011-03-15T16:54:00.000-04:00

What I'm Working On: Nothing

What I'm Reading: Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Battle of the Labyrinth by Rick Riordan

A while back I reviewed The Christopher Killer by Alane Ferguson and I interviewed Alane Ferguson. Alane offered to send me two signed copies of The Christopher Killer (a YA murder mystery), and I'm giving one of them away.

(By the way, I know that sometimes I don't enter giveaways because I haven't read the book and I don't know if it will be any good, but The Christopher Killer is a great book. You can read my review through the link above or you can read the first few pages on Amazon.)

Rules of the Giveaway:

1. You must live in the U.S to enter. Sorry, everybody outside the U.S. :(

2. You must leave a comment below by March 29 11:59 PM to enter (the contest runs for two weeks).

You automatically get one entry, but there are ways you can get multiple entries:

1. Be a follower of my blog- +2 entries

2. Tweet a link to this post- +1 entry (include a link to your Twitter account in your comment)

3. Include a link to this post on your blog sidebar, in a blog post, etc.- +1 entry (include a link to your blog in your comment)

Which means you can get up to 5 entries. After March 29, I'll put all the entries into a hat and pick one winner of a signed paperback copy of The Christopher Killer, and I'll announce the winner.

To enter, leave a comment below totaling up your entries and including the necessary links.

(By the way, I want more than just 5 people to enter this contest. :) Even if you're not entering, it would be nice if you tweet a link or something so that more people will enter.)

How Writers Came Up With Their Ideas

2011-03-05T20:56:00.000-05:00

What I'm Working On: My Hunger Games Dream Cast video

What I'm Reading: Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman

A lot of FAQs on the websites of published writers include, "How did you come up with the idea for (insert name of most famous book)?" This is a pretty interesting question, especially when it comes to books like The Hunger Games or Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. You might already know some of these, but I thought I'd compile a list of answers to this question by published writers, like one big FAQ.

How J.K Rowling came up the idea for Harry Potter:

"It was after a weekend's flat-hunting, when I was travelling back to London on my own on a crowded train, that the idea for Harry Potter simply fell into my head.

I had been writing almost continuously since the age of six but I had never been so excited about an idea before. To my immense frustration, I didn't have a functioning pen with me, and I was too shy to ask anybody if I could borrow one. I think, now, that this was probably a good thing, because I simply sat and thought, for four (delayed train) hours, and all the details bubbled up in my brain, and this scrawny, black-haired, bespectacled boy who didn't know he was a wizard became more and more real to me. I think that perhaps if I had had to slow down the ideas so that I could capture them on paper I might have stifled some of them (although sometimes I do wonder, idly, how much of what I imagined on that journey I had forgotten by the time I actually got my hands on a pen)."

-from her website, in her biography, on the 5th page

How Stephenie Meyer came up with the idea for Twilight:

"I woke up (on that June 2nd) from a very vivid dream. In my dream, two people were having an intense conversation in a meadow in the woods. One of these people was just your average girl. The other person was fantastically beautiful, sparkly, and a vampire. They were discussing the difficulties inherent in the facts that A) they were falling in love with each other while B) the vampire was particularly attracted to the scent of her blood, and was having a difficult time restraining himself from killing her immediately."

-from her website (click here for a more detailed story)

How Rick Riordan came up with the idea for the Percy Jackson series:

"My son Haley asked me to tell him some bedtime stories about the gods and heroes. I had taught Greek myths for many years, so I was glad to comply. When I ran out of myths, he was disappointed and asked me if I could make up something new with the same characters.

I thought about it for a few minutes. Then I remembered a creative writing project I used to do with my sixth graders — I would let them create their own demigod hero, the son or daughter of any god they wanted, and have them describe a Greek-style quest for that hero. Off the top of my head, I made up Percy Jackson and told Haley all about his quest to recover Zeus’ lightning bolt in modern day America. It took about three nights to tell the whole story, and when I was done, Haley told me I should write it out as a book.
I had a lot to do already, but I somehow found the time to write the first Percy Jackson book over the next year. I just really enjoyed writing it. The story was such fun, and so different from my adult fiction, that I found myself spending a lot of time on it. Now, I’m sure glad I did!"

-from the FAQs on his website

How Suzanne Collins came up with the idea for The Hunger Games:

"One night, I was lying in bed, and I was channel surfing between reality TV programs and actual war coverage. On one channel, there’s a group of young people competing for I don’t even know; and on the next, there’s a group of young people fighting in an actual war. I was really tired, and the lines between these stories started to blur in a very unsettling way. That’s the moment when Katniss’s story came to me."

-from an interview with School Library Journal

How Madeleine L'Engle came up with the idea for A Wrinkle in Time:

"We were living in the country with our three kids on this dairy farm. I started reading what Einstein wrote about time. And I used a lot of those principles to make a universe that was creative and yet believable."

-from an interview with the publisher, Square Fish, in the back of my copy of A Wrinkle in Time

How Ingrid Law came up with the idea for Savvy:

"At first I had no idea what I was going to write about. I sat down one day and decided to write the craziest sentence that came to mind, without thinking about it too hard and without judging it too much. I wrote: “When my brother Fish turned thirteen, we moved to the deepest part of inland because of the hurricane and, of course, the fact that he’d caused it.” It’s still the first sentence of the book!

After that, I wanted to create a story that felt a little bit like a modern American tall tale—though, more like American magic! But I didn’t want to use the word ‘magic’ because I wanted readers to get the sense that a ‘savvy’ is something everyone has in them, even though, for the kids in the story, their particular talents are really exaggerated and fantastical."

-from the FAQs on her website

How Cornelia Funke comes up with ideas:

"They come from everywhere and nowhere, from outside and inside. I have so many, I won`t be able to write them down in one lifetime. As for The Thief Lord, I got my inspiration from Venice. I love Venice, especially in fall and winter. Then the city is most bewitching. The Inkheart story originated in a picture that I couldn`t get out of my head: a girl sitting in her bed while outside the house a figure is standing in the rain. This picture got the story going. And I always wanted to write a book about a book from which the characters are brought to life."

-from the FAQs on her website

How do you typically get story ideas?

Cool Links:

Essay by Neil Gaiman on how he gets ideas
A Year in the Life of J.K Rowling Part 1 (Documentary)- I first watched this when it aired on TV a couple years ago. I think it's a pretty inspirational documentary and I think she talks somewhere in it about how she got the idea. The other parts are on Youtube, too.