Finished

So the first draft of First Sight is done. Finally. I feel like it took me forever to finally get it done, but in reality, it took about two months. And I learned something about my writing during that time.

The biggest thing I noticed is that I tend to write short. I wrote the first draft of my other novel almost 10,000 words shorter than the second draft. And I'm pretty sure more words will be added when I finish the third draft.

My draft of First Sight is super, super short. It's 29,000 and change. I know, that's not even half of the average length for a YA fantasy novel, but I was mostly focused on getting the core bits onto paper in some sort of order. So that's what I did. I'm sure that if and when I go back to work it again, it will grow quite a bit.

Another thing I noticed by completing this draft is that my first drafts really, really suck. I'm talking majorly. I know that all first drafts are in need of work and generally suck, I also know that mine are really bad. Granted, this first draft is a little more cohesive than the original first draft of my other novel, but still, it's terrible.

Or maybe I just think that cause I spent the last month hating the whole thing. *shrugs* Who knows. I guess I'll figure that out if I ever rework this story.

Anyway, the draft is done. Now it's time to move on to my next project.

Not Much to Say

I don't really have much to say. I've been having trouble coming up with things to write about on my blog. There's very little of interest going on in my life right now.

I have nine scenes left in my draft of First Sight. I still feel like it utterly sucks, but I'm happy that I'm going to get it finished.

I've been working on world-building for another project, but I'm not sure that the idea I originally had works with the way this world is coming together. I really wanted to write this one particular idea, but the more I develop details about the world, the less it seems to work. At least in the form it's in now. But I love the character, so I may just have to find another way to tell a story for her.

So yeah. That's all I've got. Later.

Titles

So titles. In other words, the things I suck at. Seriously, I'm terrible at titles. They were my bane in college. Usually, I'd just take a line from the paper I was writing and make it the title. And they usually weren't that creative either. I'd prove it, but the flash drive that had all my school papers on it died a while ago, so no proof for you. At least not from school papers.

As for more recent writing, it seems that the stories I like the best, or have the most time invested in, are the ones with crappy titles. Or no titles. Like my first book. The idea for that book came to me in my teens. It had a really bad title for a while, but since then, after many, many revisions, it is sadly lacking in title. I've spent years trying to come up with a good one, to no avail. Here's some of the ideas that have come to mind over the years:

First Impressions

Losing the Familiar

Both Ends out of Sight

A Hero in Her Way

Tangents

The Open Door

Falling Slowly

No Going Back

No Turning Back

Following the Light

Leave the Old World Behind

The Magic all Around Us

Tangled Consequences

The Unmarked Path

Distant Places

From a Distant Place

The Path Home

The Path toward Home

None of them really fit the book though. So I didn't stick with any of them. I have the same problem with another story that I'm prepping to write in the (hopefully) near future. I've had the idea for a really long time, but no good title has presented itself. I tried reading poetry, taking ideas from the book, incorporating the last line, working off of a theme, everything. And still I have nothing.Not the titles above aren't decent. They just don't work with the story.

On the flip side, projects that I don't seem to want to spend much time with or that I feel are just crappy ideas that will never see the light of day (or get published) all suggested their titles rather easily. Some examples:

One of the Guys (Contemporary that I'd like to write, but not sure I should since, I want to get fantasy published)
The Summer Boys (Ditto above)
The Keeper's Daughter (Silly fantasy story that isn't going anywhere anytime soon)
First Sight (I am really starting to dislike this story. It's so uncohesive and just ug. I'm not sure it's gonna be more than a first draft).

See those are great titles. In fact, if you knew the plots, you'd probably like them even more. Okay, maybe not, but still, they just appeared fully formed, ready to be tacked onto their stories.

I guess I'll just have to keep working on it. Perhaps, once all the revisions are complete, a title will appear, fully formed and ready to use. Until then, I'll just stick to calling it the name of the MC. It works.

Tell me about your experiences titling your writing. Do you find it easy, hard, somewhere in the middle? What's the best title you've ever come up with?

Difficult Drafts

My current WIP is being difficult. Again. I don't know what it is, but something about this story just feels off. It feels unnatural and I can't seem to escape it. I'm still writing it, I'm determined to finish this draft, but I just feel like it's crap.

I know that all first drafts suck. I get that. But maybe I don't. See, I have this problem, that maybe I shouldn't admit in a public forum like a blog. But here goes anyway: I've only ever completed a draft of one novel. Now that I think about it, I may have admitted that before, but here it is again. Seriously. One.I realized a while ago that, as a writer, this is a VERY BAD THING.

It's not that I don't have more ideas. I have LOTS of ideas. There are at least six more fantasy worlds that I have stories started in and at least two contemporary stories that I've started. But I've never finished any of those.

Now, with the realization a while ago that I was, in fact, a character-first writer, I might have struck upon why I've never finished another novel length project. I'm not so great in the plot department. I get these great characters and these great worlds, but they don't seem to have plots to match them. It's frustrating, but I'm hoping to fix that in the near future.

Anyway, back to my current problem-child. I really want to finish this story, but there's something about it that feels all disconnected, like the pieces of the world don't quite fit together. Like every time I get to thinking about the way the magic in the world works, or the ins and outs of why my antagonist did the things he did and how my characters figure it out, I get frustrated because the pieces just don't quite fit right. I feel like one of my other stories would work SO much easier. I blame the difficulties I'm having on this being one of my "newest" ideas, telling myself that I haven't spent enough time stewing over the world, but I'm not sure that's true.

Still, I'm writing it. Maybe I'll really love it when I'm done. I hope so. Cause the idea's pretty nifty. I just need the nitty gritty bits to work together.

Progress update: so far I've finished 27 of my 51ish scenes. So I'm over half-way finished with the scenes. Yea!

My Obsession with TV Shows

Here's a secret that you might not know about me: I love television. Love it.

Okay so I don't love it as much as I love reading, and I totally freak out more about not having a book to read more than I do about nothing good being on TV, but still, I love TV.

Let me clear though, I do not like what passes as reality TV. In fact I loathe reality TV. The times I've gotten sucked into a reality TV show have been very few and very far between (it's been two or three years since the last time I watched a full new season of a reality show) and i plan to keep it that way. They are just annoying to me. I don't get reality shows. Now, this could be because they blatantly masquerade as being real when everyone knows they aren't and that rankles my (overly) honest tendencies. Or it could be that I just don't find them entertaining. Or it could be a combination of the two. But all that is beside the point.

To return from the rabbit trail, I love good non-reality TV. You know, the shows that have really good characters, great (or fairly good) writing, quick wit, engaging storylines. And I'm a sucker for a good romantic sub-plot (I've been pulled into more than one not-so-great shows by those). There is something about watching good acting, hearing great dialogue, and seeing intriguing stories unfold that just draws me in and makes me want to watch and rewatch episodes. Good storytelling gets me every time.

Example: recently I discovered Grimm. I didn't watch the first season when it aired last year because it just sounded weird to me, sort of gimmicky. And one thing I really dislike is a gimmick (which may be another reason I eschew reality shows. They're all just big gimmicks). Also I did not realize that it combined two of my favorite things. But I was at the store the other day and the DVD of season one had come out, so I decided, eh why not? My reaction: "Fairy tales and crime solving? Awesome!"

See, I'm a huge fan of fairy tales and of character driven crime solving shows. They are two of my favorite things as far as entertainment goes. I don't know how many re-done fairy tales I've read. Tons. If I find one, I gobble it up. And one of my writing dreams has been to write a re-done fairy tale series. It's one of my many projects in development. And don't get me started on procedurals. For a long time, the only type of TV I watched were procedurals of some kind or another (Now my viewing palate has expanded a bit, but I still love crime shows). So discovering a show that manages to creatively combine those two things was kind of mind blowing.

Overall the storytelling is what really pulled me into the show. It takes a base of fairy tales and twists it and spices it up in such an interesting way that I can't get enough. It doesn't hurt that the acting isn't horrible and the writers have a decent sense of humor. Still, it's the story and the characters that have really pulled me into this show. I can't wait to see what happens next.

So what shows have pulled you in recently (or not so recently)? What's your favorite part of the shows you watch?

Weddings and Freedom

So my younger brother got married this past weekend. Actually that's the reason I haven't posted anything since last Monday; I've been crazy busy helping him and the new wife get everything ready for the wedding. I kept up with my writing, mostly. I got a scene done every day except Saturday (thanks to wedding craziness) and Sunday (thanks to exhaustion due to wedding craziness). But I'm back on track now.

It's funny though, I got back online today and saw a post by Veronica Roth (Think Divergent, only one of the best books ever. If I had heroes, she'd probably be near the top of the list.) that made me think about this weekend in a strange way. She wrote about letting go and giving yourself room to mess up and just be free in writing. As I was thinking about her post and how perfectionism is one of my greatest weaknesses, I got to thinking about this weekend and how it was actually kind of fun and how that was possibly the weirdest thing ever.

See, I never think of weddings, or really any large gathering of bunches of people I don't know, as fun. I especially don't think of them as fun when I am part of the wedding party and have to stand in five-inch heels for an hour or walk across gravel to take five or six pictures or talk to strangers who may or may not be drunk or dance in public, or so many other things. To me, weddings and other large gatherings of people are just torturous punishments to be endured until I can finally get away and be by myself again.

But this wedding was different. Maybe it was because it was my brother's and I love him like crazy. I'm sure that was part of it, but looking back on the night, I realized part of the reason this wedding was as close to fun as I get at large gatherings was because I just let myself not care what happened or who was looking. I decided that I was going to do my best to have fun and make it a good night for my brother. And it turns out, it became a good night for me too.

So maybe I'll loosen up more in the future. I hope I do. I'm kind of sick of not having fun at parties. And I'm pretty sure it would help me be a better writer.

Working with a Large Cast

When I was younger, I read lots of books that had large casts of characters. We're talking so many characters that the author provided a list at the end of their books. I don't see as many of those any more, but I still read books with large casts, large enough that other people, or even the author, have devoted portions of websites, blogs, or other media to helping reader keep them all straight. I've also read numerous writing books that suggest keeping a file or binder or some filing system of all of the characters from a particular project. Until recently, I never thought I needed those tools. Oh how wrong I was.

Let me just say that until recently, I'd never worked on a story that had a large cast of characters. Almost all of my ideas involved casts of two or three characters and few supporting roles. The action happened in mostly isolated chunks, in places with only a few hastily sketched extras seen only from a distance. I never thought I'd have to come up with more than five, or seven, or okay maybe 15 character descriptions, personalities, backgrounds, and all that other stuff that you need for good characters (not the in depth stuff for MCs, but the general broad strokes for bit players and extras). Once more, was I ever wrong.

Until this week, I had no idea how hard it is to keep so many characters straight. Now, I'm learning fast that it is really hard. Or rather, it's hard to be original with each one. See, the book I'm working on now has cast that just doesn't stop growing. When I wrote the summaries for each scene, I had no idea that I was going to need so many character descriptions. It's crazy. Here, I'll prove it.

In the first 12 scenes, I've already had 17 characters appear (plus a group of children), 13 of which have names, and only three of which do not have some sort of physical description accompanying them So that's a total of 14 characters that have some sort of description that go with them.

Comparison time. In my other story, in the first 12 scenes, I have eight characters appear (two of which were animals) and two groups of guards/soldiers. All but one of those characters have names and all eight of them are described in some way (I'm excluding the guards cause they didn't get descriptions or names). So that's just over half the number of described characters as my current WIP. See, craziness!

Now let's add some more craziness, cause who doesn't love more insanity. In my other story, their is only really one ethnicity, though there is a kind of separate culture that has a sort of specific physical description that goes along with it. But overall, there isn't too much diversity as far as ethnicity is concerned.

In my current WIP the culture is much, much more diverse. The story is still set in a single country, but it's larger and more geographically and culturally diverse country than my other one. There are at least five distinct geographic regions, each with a distinct ethnicity. Oh yeah, and all of these different groups tend to mix in the city where the story is set, so there's a lot of diversity when it comes to physical traits. See, more craziness!

I don't want you to get the wrong idea though. I'm not complaining. Really, how could I? I mean this world is a product of my (hyperactive) imagination, so really, I did this to myself. And I'm actually really loving how much more diverse this new group of characters is. It's a lot of fun getting to know them and learning more about their world. It's just complicated.

I'm realizing that I need to use some sort of system to keep track of all of my characters and their descriptions. It's a new feeling for me.Not that I didn't keep track of my characters before. It's just that with so many more, I have to really pay attention to how I describe each one, because it's a lot easier to repeat myself with a bigger group of characters than it is with a smaller one. It's a new challenge, and one I'm learning to embrace.

As far as numbers go, I have 12 scenes typed. I don't have a word count today. Sorry. Maybe next time.

Character First

This probably won't be surprising to anyone else, but it certainly shocked me. I recently discovered that I am, in fact, not a plot-first writer. Instead, I am a character-first writer. How could I possibly not know this? I really don't know.

I made the discovery a couple of months ago when I was revisiting a few of my story ideas. I was doing a kind of inventory while processing what type of writer I was and what theme seemed prevalent in all of my writing. As I flipped through my numerous notebooks and looked at my hastily typed notes of story ideas, I started to notice a trend. Almost every idea that I had done any kind of development on started with a character I couldn't get out of my head. As I did more digging and reminiscing, I realized that much of my notebook space was taken up by various stages of character sketches and character development projects. Almost nothing existed in the way of plot sketches. As I began reviewing how these story ideas had presented themselves to me, I started noticing that pretty much all of them had started with, yup, the main character. And suddenly, I came to the realization that I was a Character-first writer.

It was rather flabergasting actually. See, I've been under the mistaken impression that I was a plot-first writer for most of my life. I always thought I struggled with creating characters. Isn't that insane? I don't know how I missed it for so long.

Of course, once I realized this, some of my writing woes seemed to make a lot more sense. See I've always had a bit of trouble with middles. Okay most people have trouble with middles, but still, I have that. I would get into writing a great story idea with all these great people that I couldn't wait to get to know, and suddenly 10 or 30 or 100 pages in, I'd lose the thread. I had no idea what the point of my story was or how the MC was going to get there. Except that I didn't realize this. I just thought it was a bad idea, or that I was being distracted by an even better idea. Now I realize that it was because I never really had much of a plot. And without a plot, my characters had nothing to do and nowhere to go. Or if they did have somewhere to go, they had no idea what to do once the got there.

After I made this astounding discovery, I was, at first, rather depressed. I thought "All this time I've been worry about the wrong things. If I'd known all of this years ago I could have gotten so much more done." It was a bit disheartening. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that making this discovery was actually one of the best things that could have happened to me. Cause now I know how to fix my petering-out-in-the-middle problem, generally speaking. I've identified the thing that was holding me back; lack of tangible plot lines. Now I can really revisit those old story lines and find the plot that those characters are meant to live out. And that makes me really excited.

So yeah, I thought I was a completely different type of writer for a while, but now I've discovered the truth and I get to start working to develop truly rounded stories. That's exciting to me.

Now an update on how my writing is going.

So far, after seven days, my stats are as follow:
Words: 17,982
Scenes: 8

Currently

I'm writing again. And I don't just mean here on my blog. :)

I mentioned in a previous post that I've been struggling with my writing lately and just wasn't motivated to get anything done. Well, I've moved past that finally and have been writing consistently for a couple of weeks now. It makes me really happy to be writing again.

What have I been writing? Well I finally finished a second draft of Alana (the one I've been working on forever). It is officially in the hands of a couple of critiquers, getting torn to shreds again. It took me a while to get it done (see unmotivated above), but now that I've completed the draft I'm happy. I feel like I'm making progress again.

Now that the second draft is finished, I'm spending the next month to two months focusing on churning out a full first draft of First Sight. I completed scene summaries a while ago, but put working on it on hold until I got Alana done. Now that she is, I'm finally getting back to FS.

Working on a completely new story is a bit nerve-wracking for me. I'm super worried that I'm going to hate how this book turns out. Or that there won't be enough conflict. Or that the story just stinks in general. But I really want to finish it because I really need to finish something new. Plus, I really do like the story idea, and now that I know how each scene is supposed to work, I feel like I know where this is going. At least the first draft. Of course, I may wind up having to completely rewrite it later, but my goal is to get every scene fully written. And I have a plan to do just that.

My plan is this: write at least one scene a day. Pretty simple, right? But so far, it's working great. I've typed up five scenes (I started working last week) so far. Technically I already wrote those scenes, but I wrote them by hand, in a notebook, between projects at my day job. So right now I'm basically typing up what I've already written. And I'm still writing at work, so maybe I'll keep ahead of myself. (Okay probably not, since I only write for five minutes at a time and I only get about two to three of these mini-sessions in per day, but a girl can dream.)

Another part of my plan is to try and post on here how the writing is going. It worked really well when I did BIAM, so I figure, why not try it again. I'm trying to get more focused in this blog thing, especially after reading a couple books about developing an author platform.

So yeah. Writing is going well. Life is interesting. Overall, I'm good.

I'll post stats on First Sight progress another day, since I don't have them in front of me at the moment.

Time Passing

I've been meaning to write a blog for a while. I just . . . haven't. It's probably because I've been having trouble doing much writing lately. I've been slowly working through my draft of my novel, but it's so hard sometimes to motivate myself to write.

Life hasn't been much help. Some really . . . heavy stuff has gone down of late and I'm trying to deal with it all.

I'm also trying to figure out how this blog and my faith fit together. Cause I want to be more open about my beliefs, but I'm not completely sure how to do that. Being a Christian and wanting to publish in the secular market seems to be a tricky thing. Plus, I'm just not good at opening up in general.

So yeah, I'm working through a few things right now. But I have a few ides for some blog posts, and I'm going to try and write them, and publish them. Because the only way I'm going to get anything written if I don't sit down and write it.

What's New or Where I Talk about what I've been Writing Lately

So I thought I'd tell y'all how the writing is going. Ya know, since that's kind of what this blog is supposed to be about.

For the past few months, I've been slowly writing up drafts of each scene in First Sight, my second novel length project. I made myself a promise last October that I would finish some kind of draft of it before I went back and starting editing the latest draft of Alana. I thought I'd get done a bit quicker than I did (clearly I was wrong). But the good news is that I finally finished up the first draft of all of the scenes. Well, all of the scenes that I thought of at this moment. I already know that I need to go back and add in a few more scenes exploring the development of the relationship between my two main characters. And between my main character and her family. And I may need to rework some of the events because the plot points may need some tweaking. But the point is, I finished drafting the first draft of the novel. I at least have the skeleton worked out and an idea of how most of the major scenes are going to work. At this point I need to go back and actually write out the action and description and dialogue, but I know the framework that all has to fall around.

And the best part is, I actually have an ending for the silly thing. See, for a really long time, I had no idea exactly how the story would end. I had vague musings about where I wanted it to end up, but I had no clue what the actual events of the climax and resolution were going be or how they'd work or how I was going to maybe set up for another book, just in case this isn't a one off idea after all (that's how it started. I really have no idea what I would do with the characters next, but maybe that'll come to me later).

Not having an ending was actually kind of a complete switch from Alana's story (my first, and still title-less, novel). With Alana's story, even way back when I first got the idea, I knew how it had to end. I knew that two big things had to happen and I knew pretty much how they were going to happen. It was just the way the story was set up even at the premise stage. The hard part with Alana's story was the middle, the events that got her from the beginning to the end. I only had a vague notion of what those would be. Well, the beginning was also tricky just because getting someone to another world from our world takes a bit of setting up and finessing to make work. But the end, the end was always solid.

Not so with First Sight. I had a really good handle on the beginning of First Sight. It was some of the middle and all of the end that gave me the trouble with that one.

But now I have the end figured out. Which means I may actually be able to put together a coherent story with this idea after all.

The other thing finishing the scene drafts mean is that I get to start making edits to Alana again. I haven't worked on Alana since last August when I did BIAM and rewrote the entire story in first person and moved several major plot points around. Now, after getting feedback from a few critique partners, I get to start tearing into it and hopefully improving it. I'm actually really excited about it because I got really good feedback from the people who read it for me. Good feedback is the best. :)

So that's what's been up with my writing lately. Good things all around.

Degrees of Literature

When I started college, I had no intention of getting a degree in literature. Actually my first choice was youth ministry. Then it changed to early childhood education. Finally, I settled on English, though I thought I was going to get a creative writing degree. When a rather impressive bout of inattention on the part of my advisor resulted in me having taken all the prerequisite classes for a lit degree instead of a creative writing degree, you can understand why I might have been a bit upset. (To be fair, I probably should have seen it myself, but I have a nasty habit of trying to give people the benefit of the doubt. I have since learned to stop doing that.) With this lovely mishap, I wound up making the choice to get a degree in literature instead of a degree in creative writing. I didn't know it at the time, but this would wind up being quite helpful to my writing career. It's only been in the past few years that I've begun to realize just how helpful all those literature classes were.

The most obvious benefit is that getting a literature degree exposed me to large amounts of classic and varied writings that I would never have read on my own. I had the chance to study writers like Shakespeare and Chaucer in depth, giving me an appreciation of their work that I didn't have before those classes. I took multiple classes on American, English, and world literature.

These classes exposed me to some things that most people read in high school, but I had not because I was homeschooled. I also got the chance to take more specialized classes, like an entire class about fairy tales and folk lore, or the class I took that was all about C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien (can you say awesome?). I also took classes on plays, poetry, research methods, the history of the English language, and the history of the English novel.

Overall, I was exposed to more great literature than I ever would have had the inclination to read had I studied strictly creative writing or any other subject. And every writer knows that one of the keys to being a good writer is being a good reader (okay, I did just use that cliche. But it is true).

The second, and probably less obvious benefit is that having a degree in literature gave me the ability to look past my own feelings about a piece of writing and simply look at its strengths and weaknesses.

Here comes a shocking revelation: I really can't stand literature, for the most part. All those classic authors and masters that we have to read as a part of our education are some of the most boring reads I've ever read. Most of the classics are depressing and or leave me feeling, well, icky after reading them. They hold little to no interest for me. (I realize that I am severely offending all of you classic literature lovers out there, but it's how I feel.)

Yet, I had to sit down and read hundreds of pieces of writing that I really didn't want to. And more than that, I had to be able to understand it and give intelligent answers to the questions my professors asked. I had to know their strengths and weaknesses, to be able to see the good in the pieces even when I couldn't stand reading them. It was incredibly frustrating at first. I've never liked being told what to read (who does?) and having to spend four years doing just that annoyed me.

But I did it. I wanted to earn my degree and I wanted decent grades. So I read, and processed, and learned to put my own dislike of the style or subject matter aside and simply evaluate the writing apart from those things. It wasn't easy. It's hard to put yourself aside and just look at things for their own value. But I got better at it. And by my last year, I was starting to actually kind of enjoy reading all that literature. Well, as much as someone who doesn't really care for literature can enjoy something like that.

So what does all this have to do with writing? Reading good writing, classic writing of master storyteller, adds depth and breadth to my own knowledge of writing. And that gave me more material to draw from for my own writing.

The other thing it gave me was the ability to critique pretty much any type of writing out there. I have particular reading tastes (most people do). I like YA fantasy, sci-fi, and an occasional contemporary story. I read very little outside of those genres. But that's reading for pleasure. What my five years in college gave me was the ability to set my preferences aside (to a point) and read other writer's stories effectively even if they don't fall into my preferred genres.

So there are advantages to that lit degree after all.

Besides, I can always get an MFA in Creative Writing. :)

Books that Have Made a Difference: Part II

Last time, I wrote about the effect C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia had on me (well, more specifically The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe). Today, I thought I'd write about Tamora Pierce's books, since they were another set of books that had a somewhat profound effect on my writing.

I don't remember exactly how old I was when I first stumbled upon Ms. Pierce's books on my libraries shelves. I do know that I was in late elementary or early middle school when I finally started reading them. And when I did, I loved them. Until I read her books, I hadn't really read any fantasy that featured girls as the main characters. Until then, I'd been mostly reading those horse books that most little girls seem to love. I also read a few other things, but very little fantasy.

Not that I hadn't wanted to read fantasy. Ever since I read The Chronicles of Narnia I had wanted to read more fantasy, but I had a lot of trouble finding what I was looking for. Which was fantasy featuring girls like me having adventures. I couldn't find much.

And then I stumbled upon Ms. Pierce's books. I started with First Test and loved it. That sent me scrambling to find the other Tortall books, which I pretty much devoured. I waited somewhat impatiently for the rest of the Protector quartet to be published, rereading the books more times than I could count. I had finally found girls that I could connect with, that were having the kinds of adventures I'd always dreamed of.

Reading those books made me realize that I wanted more of those stories. It was this want of more stories that helped lead to me wanting to write. Where Narnia made me love creating worlds, Tortall showed me that girls could be heroes.

Books That Have Made a Difference: Part I

I've been talking about books a lot lately, so I thought I'd continue on that theme.

I've been thinking about the books that have made an impact on my writing. Over the years I've read a lot of books. I was trying to come up with something close to a number the other night, but after just a few minutes I realized that the number is probably over 1,000. Maybe more. (What can I say; I like to read.) Anyway, during all this thinking, I also realized that despite the ridiculous number of books I've read, there are still only a few that I know had a large impact on me and my writing.

The first of those books was The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis (well really, the whole Narnia series, but that one was my favorite). It was my first experience with fantasy and, because of that, I'll never forget it. Reading about the adventures of kids my age who found a secret portal to another world was the most exciting thing I'd ever heard of. I was an imaginative child, and Narnia was a whole new way to look at things.

Reading about Narnia was my first real inkling that I wanted to create worlds the way Mr. Lewis did. It was my first experience with someone creating a whole new world. After I read the Narnia books, I wanted to create worlds too. And so I did.

But the Chronicles of Narnia had another effect on my writing. After reading it, I became kind of obsessed with the idea of people finding ways to another world, somewhere fantastic. After I read it, I wanted to write about the same kinds of things, about kids like me finding their way into amazing places and having great adventures there. The idea of our ordinary world being connected to somewhere like that has stayed with me ever since then. It effected much of my imaginings, and it eventually led me to writing my first book (The untitled one listed on my Projects page).

Narnia was an eye-opening experience for me. It changed the way I looked and the world and made me start thinking about creating the same type of fantasy I'd read. But it was just the first step in my road to deciding to write fantasy. I'll talk about the others another day.

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Growing Up without YA

I know that this being Sunday means this post technically isn't within the past week, but I'm still gonna post it, 'cause I haven't posted anything all week. :)

So I read a blog post by Natalie Whipple over on her blog (click here) about why she's glad YA is girl-centric and the types of books she read when she was growing up, and it got me thinking about my own experience with YA fiction growing up. I've only been out of high school for six years (though sometimes it seems a lot longer), so I had a few more options when it came to YA than some other, more experienced writers and bloggers. And yet, there wasn't a lot of strong writing in the genre, even then.

Harry Potter was published when I was in middle school, but I didn't read it until I was almost finished with college. Twilight was published in my second year in college, though I avoided it until I had graduated. When I was younger, in early middle school and into high school, there just wasn't a lot of good YA writing out there. I stumbled across Tamora Pierce's writing in middle school and ate it up. It was exactly the type of writing I'd been looking for since I read The Chronicles of Narnia. She gave me a strong fantasy with a strong female protagonist. After I read all of her books, I went searching for more; I was a voracious reader after all, and I had to feed my habit.

The problem was that, growing up, there just wasn't much good writing for teenagers then. It wasn't until I got into college that YA really began to take off. Then, there was this explosion and now, there's more YA than I know what to do with. Which is a lovely problem to have for a person who reads as much as I do. There is an abundance of strong girls in great books. There are a few middle school girls that I talk with at my church and I'm always so happy when I can recommend some good YA books to them, because when I was their age, there weren't really any. And I love giving book recommendations, so having books to recommend is wonderful.

So yeah, that's my thoughts on the whole YA thing. I love that there are strong females in abundance now, and I hope that one day my own leading ladies will be counted among them.