When I was in High School, I hated to read. No, wait, let me correct that, I hated being forced to read. I in fact loved to read, only, I wanted to read what I wanted to read. I believe that at some point I picked up the novel Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson...all I remember thinking is that this girl's life sucks, and so does her dad. (This was the scene where Melinda comes home from school and disappears into her room). I picked the book up at Good Will about a week ago, thinking I'd give it a chance. WOW. I can't believe I missed out on this. Where was I three or four years ago? This book simply is amazing.
For those who don't know, Speak is about a girl who is raped before starting her ninth grade year. Everyone hates her because she busted up a party by calling the cops...no one knows she was raped, except for Andy Evens, who manages to haunt her every single day.
I love to write, and I even try to write with meaning, but after reading this book...my writing, I hope, will never be the same. Laurie Halse Anderson has encouraged and inspired me to be a better writer. My writing has new meaning now. Not only that, but I really enjoyed her book so much, that I felt like crying. Yes, it makes sense to enjoy a book so much that you could even cry over it. Not many books can make me do that.
I picked up Anderson's other books, which, though I haven't read them yet, in themselves inspire me. She writes Historical thriller fiction as well as contemporary YA. I can't wait to get started on these. Anderson is my writing hero. And I know that to many other readers out there, that her work has helped them tremendously. Awesome. Here's her picture and a picture of her book, Speak.
So I'm currently revising my work and I am halfway through. The path that I took for this journey was to first read my book, mark it up, then go through and fix the documents page by page. Surprisingly, it is coming along fairly quickly, but I must say that since all that I am doing is correcting mistakes...is that it's kind of boring. I'd much rather be plotting or writing. It's like math, once you know how to do it, it's just time consuming work. I know I will feel so accomplished once I finish this revision because it's a new step for me. All I've ever done is write a book, then rewrite it, maybe two or three times. This is actual editing...almost, rather than revision. Once this draft is through, I really will have made an accomplishment. I just wish I was done. Anyway, I hope everyone is having a blessed day.
Many writers either have finished a novel, or hope to. One thing that is good to know, before or after finishing, is what lies in the future. Yes, my friend, that is research. I watched a really neat interview the other day that basically said that writing is one thing, and that publishing is another...it's a job. One thing that I remembered being said is that when we go interview for a job, we don't go in knowing zip about the company, instead, we do our research.
It's the same thing with publishing. We need to know how the publishing world works, what all does an agent do? What are our responsibilities? Oh, and we need to research how to actually submit our work in a proper way. There is a book by Moira Allen that you might find helpful. There's a picture of it below. There are also really good websites. One website I recommend is Query Tracker. This will lead you to thousands of agents, in which you can usually find websites concerning them and what they've represented. The internet really is a good resource.
Hello everyone! Okay, it would be totally cool to sit down around a camp fire at night, listening as people told story after story. Well, I thought about the idea of recording a manuscript on a tape recorder...just for fun! Granted, not after having written it, but in the process of actually writing it - no computer! It would be pretty neat to play it back once the book was finished...kind of like hearing someone tell it to you! There are all kinds of different tape recorders out there. Now I know some of you are completely repulsed by the idea. There's no way you could write a good book like that. Well, think of it as telling a story...um, to a tape recorder. And if you made a mistake, all you'd have to do is say, "No, wait, scratch that..." just like you would at an actual camp setting...have fun with it. See what you can come up with! I bought one a week or so back and started recording ideas on it so I wouldn't forget them. It has been so neat to play myself back and listen to what I had to say. Really comes in handy, even for grocery shopping. Some tape recorders will upload your voice onto the computer, but I stuck with the cheap one that simply just played back and deleted...LOVE IT!!! If any of you have any different ideas on how to write a novel, let me know! Happy recording! Or just writing on the comp.
Hello Cyberworld! I just finished the second draft of my novel yesterday at 4:45! I've begun reading it already, determined to meet my self imposed deadline. I've experienced major doubts already, but hey, that happened in the process of finish the book, too. I was arguing with myself earlier. I said, this is wretched! And then another part of me said, relax, it's not bad, you just wrote the thing...it's fresh...very fresh to you. No, I'm not quite like Gollum on the Lord of the Rings, although that does spark some creativity in me! How fun would it be to write a character like Gollum?
I must admit, upon the near end of finishing my book, I started sweating...not literally. I was dreading reading my book! In truth, I was afraid I wouldn't like what I read, and then, because I had it set in my mind already that I wouldn't like it, I haven't liked it. However, I think the writing is winning out over my preconceived notion of not liking the book. The more I read, the more hopeful I'm starting to feel and the more I find that I do like it. I'm 2/3 done reading it, but decided to move on to something else for the evening.
I truly do think that if I hadn't made myself a deadline, that I would put it off for a while, despite how painful that might be...I could do research...BTW, I've found some really good blogs out there. Some such blogs are Confessions with Suzie Townsend, Rachelle Gardner, oh, and Brodi Ashton. There are lots more, and each of these, especially Confessions, has much on the blogs to help writers out with things like queries and the publishing process.
I was hoping I'd find a blog on self doubt after finishing a novel. Though I've found blogs on self doubt, it wasn't quite specific to the finishing a novel doubt, in that is this good or bad. Anyway, if you happen upon this blog and have any advice or feelings towards any of this, I'd love to hear from you, just drop a comment!
