Classic Stories and Modern Tales
There are days (usually when I’m having a bad or tiring day) that I find updating my blog to be tedious. Do you ever get that way? I’d rather be reading or writing or rewatching Game of Thrones for the 3rd time. But I’ve committed to this blog, and I’m not one to give up on commitment. Maybe I just need a little incentive. So without further ado, I’ve come up with my personal dream blogging incentives.
Okay, so I am currently working on my fourth novel (and am hoping to publish the second soon), so I thought we’d play a game. Based on my three favorite songs on my writing playlist for this novel, what specific genre do you think my WIP falls under?
All right folks. What do you think?
I’ll be MIA for the next week or so while I travel to Los Angeles with my best friend. I’m claiming it’s a research trip (my current WIP is about movie stars), but it’s honestly just going to be a nice time for a little R&R. What should I do and see in LA when I get there?
Here’s a break from your regularly scheduled blogging for you… I don’t check into this site as much as I should, but with summer break on the horizon, I want to turn that around.
So what blogs should I follow? What blogs should I read? I love books, teaching, writing, pop culture, movies, Broadway, adulthood struggles… You name it.
Tell me what to check out. Comment here. Promote yourselves if you want to. Why should I check out your blog? I want to! Here’s me breaking out of my shell.
Did you ever write a diary?
I’ve been thinking about this today. I’m a history teacher, and my students today were examining diaries and accounts from westward pioneers. Did those people realize what it was they were leaving behind? That their words would be studied for hundreds of years? Or did they just do it as therapy?
I wrote in a diary a few times. In my youth, about once a year for about three or four years, I started a diary. I think the most entries I wrote was about five each time. Then I lost the habit. And my entries weren’t any good. No thoughts, no feelings. They were a simple list of every day. What did I do at school? Who did I hang out with?
They hardly leave anything behind. Except embarrassment. And they barely give me enough for that.
I wish that I had written more. I’d have loved that view into my life as a kid. But at the same time, maybe the mystery is a good thing.
Okay, so I came here to write something real. But writer’s block (hooray! How am I going to start my new novel soon?). I’m watching The Martian (just finished the book, yes!) and drinking a glass of wine instead.
So instead, I’ll ask you, my followers, a question.
For you writers, what is your favorite genre to write?
For you readers, what is your favorite genre to read?
Are any of you book snobs? (I am.)
When I read interviews of authors I admire, they always talk about how they “always knew they wanted to be a writer.” They talk about the stories they used to write anywhere and everywhere, ever since they were little. And I love stories like that, I really do.
But I am trying to be a writer, and when I think back on it… It was when I was 13 or 14 that I got the writing bug. THAT’s when I started planning stories and writing with friends and writing on school bus trips by the light of my iPod. I always (and this is where my self-doubt comes in) wondered why I didn’t start sooner. Would I be a better writer if I had started sooner? Can I be considered a writer if I didn’t start sooner?
There was a period of my life where I didn’t write. When I was in the 5th grade, I failed some state standardized writing test we had to take (Have I mentioned I hate standardized tests?). They made my mom do writing workshops with me. They threatened to put me in remedial writing classes, even though I was in advanced reading classes. I remember feeling embarrassed and awful that I wasn’t a good writer. I remember the sick feeling in my stomach that gave me. It wasn’t until 7th or 8th grade that I was able to pick up writing again.
This week (it’s spring break, weeee!), I was helping my mom clean out my old bedroom when I stumbled upon it. The evidence that maybe I have always been a writer. In the top drawer of my old dresser was stowed away autobiographies, reports, silly stories about my friends and made-up characters, and newspapers that I created (about the solar system, about trips to grandma’s house), all written before that terrible 5th grade test. I had forgotten all about them.
And I wish I had taken pictures to post here. My silly stories with my terrible handwriting.
I know it’s dumb, to find this kind of thing validating, but it’s nice. It’s nice to see how far I’ve come and how far I have yet to go.
I’m finally revising my novel. This is a pretty big deal because the only thing I have EVER revised is a story I have been writing with a friend. And even that is just checking for continuity. This time, though, I am trying my hand at actual revision.
Ugh, it’s hard. I mean, not to sound whiny or anything (my last few entries have been incredibly whiny), but it’s sooooo hard. I thought I could get it done in a month, but with the amount of mental energy it’s taking, it’s going to be so much longer.
I’ve never ever been good at the revising. Editing, sure. But once I have written something, it’s written. I don’t like taking scenes apart and rewriting them again. This story, though, needs some plot fixing. It really does. So I am going to need to do that. I wrote this novel two years ago, so getting back into the headset of these characters is difficult. How do I make it work? How do I make it consistent?
I guess it’s just frustrating. At the heart of everything, I am a perfectionist. I want it to be perfect. I know it never will be, at least not with me. I’ll nitpick and nitpick. I just have to figure out where to stop.
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