On Being an Artist

What makes you an artist?

This is a question I think about a lot. For a long time, I had this idea I could not be an artist cause I don't really like traditional drawing or painting, or sculpting, or any of the things that I usually think of as art. I am a perfectionist, and that makes it really hard for me sometimes to do things like draw. It is never good enough, and the process is so stressful that I just quit. I just can't get past that wall.

But there are many forms of art that aren't just drawing or painting. While I don't usually think of myself as an artist, there are several ways in which I think I could define myself that way.

I am a writer. That is a huge part of who I am. Art is a way of expressing your emotions in a tangible form. Each type of art does it in a slightly different way, but the purpose, in the end, remains the same. Writing, be it poetry or prose, is something you create from nothing. You are a creator, and that makes a writer an artist.

I am a dancer. If you don't think dancers are artists, go watch this video and then come back. Dancing lives on the line between creativity and structure. It allows you to create something new and express whatever it is you want to express, but it gives you sets of boundaries to work within, if you choose to follow the traditional rules. I'm not a great dancer, but I love doing it. Dance, for me, it amazing, because there are specific rules and constraints. Unlike drawing, where anything goes, when I dance, there is one particular thing I'm trying to do, even if I'm not doing it very well yet. And I also know that if I keep working at it, eventually I will get the results I want.

Here is one simple design.

And in a way, I am a visual artist. I love color and the manipulation of it. I love putting colors together and I love creating dynamics with different shades and combinations. The way I often do this is by using coloring books. Yes, coloring books like little kids do. But not ones that you would give to a little kid. The coloring books I work out of are full of complex and often abstract designs that give the person coloring a lot of power.

A design with a lot of white space.

One of my favorites.

Artistry is a mindset. Am I an artist? I've always wanted to say yes, but I felt like an impostor saying that. But what the heck, maybe it's time to gain some self confidence and say yes, I am an artist. Art is something different to everybody. To me, it's a way of expressing yourself. It's something that takes persistence and effort to master, if mastery is even possible. It's a way of thinking.

In what way are you an artist?

How I Started Writing {Guest Post}

Today, I am very excited to have a guest post from another very talented writer and blogger in which she tells her writing story. I did a post for her blog on the same topic, which you can read here.

Abrielle Lindsay Seattle is a girl with a hunger for a document, a nice, good book, or an excuse to use Pinterest. She writes all kinds of Christian YA books, though all are still being written or are in the first draft stage. She probably reads too much, but, hey, shouldn't everyone?

Abrielle Lindsay blogs at Ravens and Writing Desks (ravensandwriting.blogspot.com) with a couple writing friends and Books, Books, Books! (thebooksbooksbookblog.blogspot.com). She lives in Papua, Indonesia.

   How I started writing? I can remember the day fairly well, though I’m not in love with the years that followed.

    The day that I started writing was when I was in second grade, I believe, and had a journal assignment where I could write anything I wanted. I had been quite excited about the one. I was flipping through a drawing book to see who I was going to write about. (That’s where I always found my “character inspiration”) And I landed on a chimpanzee. Thus Benny and Sandey were born (BTW, that’s Sandy with a ‘E’ added in) and their world .

   I wrote on that over the weekend and was allowed to continue for several weeks. The book ended with five chapters and more pictures than paragraphs. I was proud of it, I admit (though I don’t feel exactly the same way now…) and when typed up it ended up at about 32 pages—with space of course for all of those pictures.

   From that point on, I knew that I was going to be a writer. When I got a journal for Christmas a month or two later, I started to write Benny and Sandey’s background and history (how they met; how lonely they were when vacations took place; etc.). I was very surprised when I drew no pictures in this book—it just seemed better without them (and believe me, they are).

   Then I moved Indonesia four months later, I hadn’t finished the first chapter Benny and Sandey’s second book (and it still lies like that). I have always been in love with reading—as most authors are—and I started to read even more while we were in Java.

   I realized how great and genius these books were. And I decided to copy them. Yeah, copy. I’m pretty ashamed. *ducks head low* I started several—all too numerous to count for even me. None were ever finished (and hopefully never will be), but I still have all those notebooks stuffed on my shelf.

   My writing slowed down for a while with the weight of school and playing outside with my Indonesian friends. But then one day a new idea hit me with, yes, another journal assignment. I think it was called Under My Bed: Where things came alive when they were set under a girl’s bed. I again drew more pictures than writing on the pages—but I liked it.

   I think I might have actually made it to chapter three, and then I got some major writer’s block and put it away. Then I moved to Papua and wasn’t writing.

   Writing was put at the back of my mind, I wasn’t going to write. I instead fed myself with numerous books, so many I’ve lost count. I mean, my day seemed to be wake up, eat, do school, eat, finish school, read, eat, read, sleep. During that phase of my life I got in trouble for reading too much. Being told that I should do something else.

   Well, I was like that for about a year. Getting in trouble because of the reading habits I had developed. January and February of 2013 went by fast and then two of my friend recommended the books series to me called Pet Trouble (which I totes recommend too).

   After long weeks of being tormented of how good they were and how I should go to the library and check them out, I did.

   And oh my gosh, that was the best choice of my life. After reading Mud-Puddle Poodle, I just knew that I had to write a contemporary book. I just knew it.

   But, I was by then ashamed about copying other books, and so I didn’t know what to write.

   I sat with a new notebook for about an hour with a pen in hand. What was this story supposed to be about? How could I write a book that wasn’t copied?

   It seemed impossible at first, but then it struck me. An unpopular girl who wants friends and the main part in a play.

   Ok, that doesn’t sound brilliant now, but it sure did when I knew nothing about writing. And thus I began writing about Carla Jane and Beth.

   I started writing about Carla Jane every night. Every night. I was probably about *shrugs* 32 pages into the story when something snapped inside of me and sent a message to my brain saying, ‘What am are you doing, TW? This is ridiculous.’ And my writing went downhill—again.

   About two weeks later I was scrolling through Britt’s blog, Daughter of the King (one of the best blogs ever, by the way) and saw a button to Go Teen Writers. I thought, ‘Huh, I should go there,’

   I clicked the link, and that was even better than checking out the Pet Trouble series! The blog was ok and it seemed to have two authors who knew what they were doing. But I wasn’t interested… until I read a post two day later saying they were going to have a writing contest.

   Then I was grinning at the computer. I entered, didn’t win, but entered. Got feedback that only encouraged me to write a little more.

   BUT. That’s not all. They were going to have a WRITING RETREAT about a month later. I was up for that, I started writing again and was surprised at how easy Carla Jane’s flowed.

   The writing retreat proved to be very encouraging. A couple people read the first six or seven chapters of my book and said they liked it. That encouraged me even more.

   (BTW, I totes recommend GTW (Go Teen Writers) for writers, it was no mistake that I was whisked away there ;)

   I finished the first draft about two weeks later, then immediately started book two.

   So. My writing journey is probably different than most, but I lived, but am very glad that I love writing so much now.

   (And for the record, I no longer write in notebooks or at night, I get up at 5 am and write my books on the computer)

   Thank you Monica for having me, and sorry for those who are reading it and thinking that I like to talk too much, because it’s true. ;) Thanks again! You can check out Monica’s post that she did for my blog here: How I Started Writing *By Monica*

Thanks for coming, Abrielle! 

Some Thoughts for 2014

This morning, I wrote this post, and then decided not to publish it. I thought it was too long, too strange, and too philosophical for this blog. But just now, I reread what I had written earlier, and I decided to post it anyway. Yeah, it's long, and confusing, and mainly fueled by sugar and sleep deprivation, but I kind of like it. This blog is many things, but at it's heart, it's a place for me to write. A place to write book reviews, and about my writing, and about what I'm thinking. This is the kind of thing I write, and so it belongs here. If anyone actually reads it all the way through and understands my thought process while writing it, I will be duly impressed. :)

Well, it's 2014 now. I went to a very fun party last night where I ate lots of food, talked a lot, played some poker, played a bunch of various card games (spoons, peanut butter, and more), talked books and movies and was generally nerdy, and just generally had fun with the "Usual Suspects." See my last post for more on that if you're confused.

Right now, I'm about to head out to park day to see if any other Bellingham homeschoolers bothered to come out on New Year's Day, but first I thought I'd try to find something to write about here.

I don't know about you, but when I eat too much sugar, and get too little sleep, I tend to get far too thoughtful and reflective. :)

Today, I've been thinking about something a friend said to me last night.  I was telling two friends about a project I'm thinking about taking on, and I was asking them if they were interested in helping at all. I mentioned that I thought maybe one of them could particularly help with a little writing part, and the other friend said to me, "But you're the writer."

While I didn't think anything of that comment in the moment, other than maybe he was right that it was kind of silly for me to ask people to write things for me, later I thought more about it.

The new year is often a time when people think about who they are and who they want to be. Right now, I often feel like I'm in an odd spot. When you're a teenager, you have every possibility open to you. You make choices that will affect you for the rest of your life. Right now, I'm 15 years old. I still have several years before I have to make the big decisions (college, jobs, etc.) that will change the course of my life. But I'm still at a point in my life where I can decide who I want to be, how I want to be seen, and in what direction I want my life to go.

Who you become is something you can change, but it's also a group project. There are a lot of people in my life, both kids and adults, who I think have a hand in that process. When my friend said to me last night, "You're the writer," while he probably didn't mean that much by it, it showed me part of how he sees me. When my friend's mom asked me how late the library was open on Tuesdays, fully expecting me to know the answer, that showed me part of how she sees me.

To make this even more confusing, I've been realizing that while how other people see me is important, there are sides of me that none of them have ever seen. Parts of me that I'm not sure I want them to see. There are parts of me that are unsure if I'm up to being "the writer" or the responsible person other people seem to think of me as.

But I rise to the occasion when I need to. When I need to be responsible for other people, or when I need to rise above my own fears, I can if other people expect it of me. There have been times when I'm not sure if I can keep it up. I have a reputation for being an overachiever, and for being on top of everything, but the reality isn't really always the same as the reputation. Sometime it's hard because I can't keep up with the way people think of me.

Sometimes I realize that I'm caught between who I want to be, and who I am. Where's the balance? Where do I want the balance to be? Is there even a difference?

What I'm trying to say here is that I'm realizing that how these people see me affects the person that I am, and that I have to decide if that's really the person I want to be. I have the ability right now to be anything. Do I want to be the writer? The booklover? The overachiever? Sometimes I'm not really sure.

Right now, I can decide who I want to be. I will always be "the writer." That's a title I'm proud to have. I'm thrilled to be considered a booklover, especially by my friends who are better read than I am. That's just one side of me, but it's a side I'm happy to let people see. I'm happy with who I am, but I'm also happy to think that that person isn't set in stone.

Thanks to my friend, whose comment sparked this post. If you're still reading at this point, you deserve a prize!

Music in My Novels

I didn't get a post up yesterday. I'm sorry about that. I was busy with Current Events class all afternoon, then our final choir performance for the season that night at the Homeschool Christmas Show.  Anyway, I'm back on for today.

Two of my three NaNoWriMo novels feature a particular song at the very end. This song also lends it's lyrics to the title. While I am quite sure that if I attempted to publish them I could not do that, it is fun now that I am not planning on publishing right now.

The first year I did NaNo, I used the lyric to this song to close out my story:

I love this song. It's a lot more country than most things I like, but Iris DeMent is someone we listened to a lot when I was little, and this one is definitely special to me. I felt like the lyrics really resonated with the story, and it felt like a good ending. I called the book "Nothing Good Ever Lasts."

This year (my third NaNo), I used this song at the end.

This song was so perfect, it was amazing. The song could have been written for my story, that's how well it fit with the characters and the plot. I like this song, and I think it is the perfect mood. I called my book "At the Edge of the Ocean."

While I'm sharing music, here is another song. This one has nothing to do with NaNoWriMo, but it is one of the songs our choir sung this year. This version is a little different than ours (the beat is a little different, and we sing a capella), but it has all the same parts and words.

That's all for today. I'll be back tomorrow.

Life Update {Illness, Dancing, Singing, and Writing}

Hey guys! It is way past time for me to write one of these. The last month was INSANE, and I know that the one coming up won't be much better.

I have been really sick this last week, and in fact had to stay home while my family went to Thanksgiving with relatives. As a result, I did no school, and am quite behind there, and not a lot of writing. In fact, I was pretty sure that this was going to be the year I didn't win NaNoWriMo, but I managed to pull through in the end, which was a bit of a miracle.

Since I know that there are some of you in the Bellingham area who read this (and some family and friends who may be interested in coming), I thought I would post the dates and times of some of my performances for choir and dance over the next week or so.

On Saturday, December 7th, our Scottish Dance group will be performing at the Port Festival at from noon to 1pm. There will also be an Irish Dance or two from those of us who do both types of dance.

On Tuesday, December 10th, our Homeschool Choir will be performing as part of the Whatcom Homeschool Association Annual Christmas program, which begins at 7pm, and includes many performers. This will be at Kulshan Middle School and is open to the public.

There will probably be more choir performances, but they have not been finalized as of right now.

I have a lot of practice for all these, and overall I am swamped. I am really glad that NaNo is over, because if I am this overwhelmed with out writing 2k each day, I would be going crazy trying to fit that in too!

In the past week, I also saw Catching Fire (review coming soon) and Ender's Game (read review here). I also watched 5 episodes of Lost on Thanksgiving, and I am finally up to the beginning of Season Five. It's only taken two years. Oh well. At the current rate, it'll take almost another year to finish.

Also, this might sound a little crazy, but I want to try to put up a blog post every day for the rest of December. I really want to see if I can manage it. It will be a mix of holiday stuff, book and movie reviews (I have a ton stacked up waiting to be finished), some school stuff (I haven't done a HF post in weeks!), some other fun things I don't want to talk about yet, and some general chatty life update posts for the days I don't have anything else.

It should be fun, and crazy, and I might not make it, but I also might. I really just want to see if I can manage to do it. On that note, I have some ideas of ways things may be changing a little around here in the new year, but I'm going to wait a little while to talk more about that.

I hope you are all had a good Thanksgiving, and are enjoying the coming holiday season!

Almost there...

Tomorrow, NaNoWriMo begins. That means a variety of things. For my real life friends, it means that they are likely to be updated on my word count far more often then they would like to be. Sorry, guys. For me, it means a lot less free time (which is already some thing I'm low on), and that means less blogging time. 

A couple of weeks ago, I said that I was going to get 8-10 posts written over the course of October, to be published through out November. Great idea, right? Well, I got one post written. I think it's a good one, but it's just one. That means that the blog is going to be pretty quiet for the next thirty days.

There will be a school update every Friday (though they might be a little shorter then usual), and a NaNo update every Saturday. I'm toying with the idea of doing a live blogging week later in the month, to give people an idea of what it's like to be a homeschooled teen trying to write a novel in a month, but that may or may not happen.

School this week hasn't really happened, though I got some done yesterday, and some today. I still have a few hours before Halloween events begin, so I hope to do a bit more. No matter how much I do, it will be no where near what my goals were, but that's just the reality of it.

Okay, this is the last official post until Saturday. Normally, I'd do a post about school tomorrow, but I'm going to skip that this week, and include this week and next week both in the next post.

Are you ready to write a novel?

Freelance Writing Guide by Christine Rice {Book Review}

Today I am reviewing Freelance Writing Guide: What to Expect in Your First Year as a Freelance Writer by Christine Rice. To preface this review, I am not a freelance writer, and I don't think I will be in the future (though I'm not going to close any doors), so my thoughts on this book are from the experience of an uninformed reader.

This book is short, and to the point. It does not mess around with long introductions and personal stories, but instead gets straight to the information promised. For this reason, I think this ebook makes a good reference book. While I did read it straight through, you certainly don't need to. If you want to know more about the details of ghostwriting, or if you want advice on writing a good cover letter for your resume, you could go to that page, and read just that section.

I was impressed with the mixture of practical and personal advice. While I said above that she doesn't spend a lot of time on personal stories, and this is true, she always will say what her personal experience was in the situation she is discussing. For example, when talking about payment types, and levels of pay in various jobs, she discusses each one in an objective, but familiar manner.

My final verdict is that I found many parts of this book to be very useful, and even though I don't see freelance writing in my future at the moment, there are still sections of this book that I found useful, and that I expect I will find myself referring to.

If freelance writing is something you are thinking about delving into, but have not yet made the final decision, this book will be useful in helping you make a smart, informed decision. And, as I said before, even if you are not a freelance writer, but if you would like a good reference material on things like resume writing for the writing industry, or managing and monetizing a professional blog, I would recommend this book.


I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers. 

 *This post contains affiliate links.

My Favorite Things: Blogs

This post is kicking off a series I'm calling "My Favorite Things." Since I already talk a lot about books and stuff on here, this is going to be a chance for me to talk more about some of my favorite things I don't usually discuss. Today, it's blogs, and over the next few weeks I have plans for posts on computer games, YouTube channels, and basically all the other fun stuff I do that takes up too much of my time. :)

Today, I'm going to highlight a few blogs I like to read. Honestly, I have way too many blogs that I check on regularly, and many more then that in my RSS feeder. Because of that, I was pretty worried when Google Reader was retired, but I've since been using Feedly, which works okay, though I don't love it.

I'm going to separate these blogs into categories, since I tend to read blogs for a few reasons: homeschooling blogs, blogs of people I know, and reading or writing blogs. Some of the blogs of homeschool families I follow have very different values and beliefs then my family, which is one reason I find them so interesting to follow. Also, many of the blogs of people I know are actually homeschooling families.

Blogs of People I Know

A Baker's Dozen and Apollo XIV

A Time for Every Purpose

Boots Before Corset

The Smog Blog

Book and Writing Blogs/Websites

The Office of Letters and Light

History of the (Whole) World

Read More! (this one almost fit in the people I know category, but I decided to leave it here.)

Pretentious Title

Forever Young Adult

Go Teen Writers!
 
Homeschool Blogs

Life In a Shoe

Large Families on Purpose


As I said before, I read MANY blogs, but these are some of the highlights. What blogs do you read?

100 for 100

This year, I am participating in Go Teen Writer's 3rd Annual 100 for 100 challenge. My goal is going to be to write at least 100 words a day of something, either fiction or nonfiction, that gets published, a day. That means any posts for this blog will count toward that total. Also, any short fiction I write (I hope to write quite a bit), that gets published within two days, will count.



This is where my brand new blog comes in. I didn't want this blog to become to cluttered, so that is where all random pieces of writing, including poetry and flash fiction, will go. Things will continue as normal on this blog.

Head over there to see my introductory post, where I will be listing out the rules for the 100x100 challenge, and what my game plan is.

Life Update! {John Mayer Concert and A Question for You}

This post may be long, and will probably ramble some. In it, I am going to talk about things going on in my life, and some changes I'm considering for the blog. I'm also going to do a little round up of some other posts that fit here. The first big thing is:

Write On! Teen Writing Conference

I started writing this a a short segment for this post, but it got too long, so I published it in a separate post, which you can read here.


John Mayer Concert

In mid July, I attended a John Mayer concert in Vancouver, WA, not far from Portland, OR. I really enjoyed it, and it was a ton of fun. I'm not a huge John Mayer fan (unlike my mom, which is why we were there), but I really like his Born and Raised album, and he sung a lot of songs from it, since this is the Born and Raised tour.

Other Life Stuff

We are getting ready to start school again in about two weeks.  My mom went back to work (she works at a community college, and gets most of the summer off) today, and that always means that fall will be here soon. After school starts, I'll do a post about all the new curriculum and stuff. On Friday, I'm going to kick off the Homeschool Friday subjects posts with English.

Blog Stuff

I hope to participate in the 100 for 10 challenge put on by Go Teen Writers this year. Instead of writing one big fictional project, I am going to try to write and publish a a blog post every day. Regular blog posts like this one will count, but there will probably be some flash fiction in there, and who knows what else. My question for is is this: Do you think I should do that on this blog, or should I create a separate blog of the purpose of doing this. After this is over, I would hopefully still use that blog for flash fiction, non-fiction pieces, and other non blog postish writing. That's what I'm leaning towards at the moments, but I would like to know what you think. Please, let me know in the comments!

*This post contains affiliate links.

Write On! Teen Writing Conference

Way back in the end of June, I attended the wonderful Write On! Teen Writing Conference at a local bookstore. Here are some of my thoughts on the experience.

First of all, I loved all the sessions I went to. The first one, which was run by a local improv teacher, was not one I was super excited about. I am not a huge fan of doing any acting type stuff (or really even talking) in front of a bunch of people I don't know. It ended up being my favorite break out session of the day however, since that was not how it went at all. She (the woman leading) taught us a bunch of great exercises for coming up with everything from plots to characters to settings. We practiced them as group games, which were very nonthreatening, and then she helped us adapt them for personal use. We then practiced writing using each of those techniques.

The second breakout session I went to was a bunch of short writing exercises. He would give us a prompt to write from for 60 seconds (such as "As a writer, I have learned," or "I noticed"), and then he would ask each of us to read a sentence or two that we wrote. We would then briefly discuss each person's writing, or the idea they were talking about. At first this made me nervous, but everybody did it, and sometimes we would have a wonderful, well written,  very articulate observation on life or writing, and sometimes it would be "I noticed an oddly large quantity of apples on the trees for so late in the year." (That was a real sentence I wrote that hour. :)) He made us all come out of our shells a little, and I wrote some pieces I really liked.

The third breakout session I attended was by Nick James, whose book, Skyship Academy: The Pearl Wars, I reviewed here. It was interesting, and he had some good ideas about how to show and not tell, but there was nothing earth shaking in that session. :)

I'm going to end this post with a quote the second breakout session leader gave us, which I really liked, and found thought provoking. Let me know what you think about it in the comments.

It's better to have failed as a novelist then to have succeeded as anything else.

                                            - George Orwell

*This post contains affiliate links.

More Posts Will Come Soon! Plus, Music I'm Listening To...

Lately, it feels like the majority of my posts on here are about how busy I am, and not about books and writing. Here is another update on my very busy summer! :)

I haven't been posting a lot lately, but I have lots of half written blog posts waiting to be finished. I have numerous book reviews coming with in the next month or two, so look for that. I have a partially written post about the teen writing conference I attended last month, and another about the John Mayer concert I attended last week.

I have some other posts coming too. I have a few more to write about the books and authors that made me a reader, and a more serious one prompted by the death of the actor Cory Montieth. I also have one planned about some of the blogs I've been reading, and websites I've been frequenting.

Also, I'm going to restart Homeschool Friday Posts on August 2nd with a 2012-2013 school year review. I'm not sure if I'm going to post weekly or biweekly yet, but we'll find out soon. :)

And, just for fun, here are some of the songs I've thumbed up on Pandora today:


1. Collide by Howie Day

2. How to Save a Life by The Fray

3. Wonderwall by Oasis

4. If You Could Only See by Tonic

5. All For You by Sister Hazel

6. Roll to Me by Del Amitri

Writing Matters

This is my response to the Office of Letters and Light's #My1stStory campaign. I don't have a Facebook, Twitter, or Tumbler, so I'm posting this here instead.


My first story was about a girl who lived in a magical world who had lots of pretty dresses, and lots of books. I wanted to be her, so I created her. It was the first spark to my creative fire.
                                                         WRITING MATTERS

  http://blog.lettersandlight.org/storiesmatter

Reasons for Writing

1. Things get clearer when I write them down. I don't know about you, but my thoughts make more sense on paper. This is one reason I prefer emails to phone calls. If I have a little time to prepare my thoughts in writing, they will end up much clearer. Sometimes I realize that I want to something totally different when I start writing them down.

2. I learn a lot about myself when I write. I used to write 750 words a day, every day, and it is a great exercise. It never mattered what I wrote about, so long as I wrote. 750 words is a great number, because it is just enough to be hard. Sometimes I would start out with something like a to do list, but that doesn't take up three whole pages. Three pages takes some effort, and by the end, you start really getting into what your own head. It's odd to suddenly realize what it is that has been bothering you for a week when you see it on the page in front of you, but that happens to me a lot. I am not currently writing everyday, but I hope to start up again soon.

3. It's an accomplishment. I have just created something that didn't exist before, whether it is a short story, or a poem, an essay, a to do list, or this blog post. It is a new piece of creativity that wasn't there before, and that's something to be happy about.

4. Somebody (I can't remember who) once said that each year, their NaNoWriMo novel is "less bad" then the one they wrote the year before. I think this is totally true. Every time I write something, even if I don't feel like it is much better then my last thing, is less bad. That one mistake in my last essay isn't in this one. It's not a lot, but it's something. The more I write, the less bad I get. :)

5. I write to learn how. Every time I write something, there is something I don't know. There is a word I can't figure out the plural possessive spelling for, or a compound-complex sentence I can't remember how to punctuate, or a character I can't figure out how to make more empathetic. Each of these is a learning experience, and next time, those won't be problems. I've never taken a creative writing class, and only one on essay writing, but I learn from experience. If I get a bad grade on an essay, I figure out why. Next time, I'll still have problems, but they won't be the same problems. If there is something I really don't like about my story, I read it over and over until I figure out why, and try to fix it.

There are my top five reasons to write. What are yours? Tell me in the comments!

I think everybody can benefit from writing, even if you're not really much of a writer. Write a poem, or a short story, or try free writing. No one has to see it, and I'll bet you'll learn something from it, if you know what to look for.

Write On! Teen Writing Conference, Summer Reading, and School

I'm sorry for the long break on here. It's been a long time since I had the chance to write! Here is an update about what's been going on lately.

First of all, my origional plan to write a full length review of every book I read this summer is very unlikely to happen. While I will try to post as many of them as I can, I won't be able to post everything. The main reason for this is that I have a job editing a book that a friend of my father's is writing, and that will be taking up some time this summer.

I will still be doing as much reading as possible, but writing out the reviews here can't be my priority at the moment. I will still try to post on here two or three times a week, with book reviews, movie reviews, and updates about what I've been doing.

I will have a new tab at the top of my blog where I will list each book that I read this summer, and then I will link either to it's book review (if I have one written), or to it's Amazon page.

I will be pretty busy for the next few weeks, but I'll try to keep up with the blog as much as possible. I am going to a writing conference in my area which is geared for teens on Sunday. For local readers here is the website: http://www.writeonconference.com/. I am really looking forward to this event, since I haven't really gotten into the writing scene around here, though I know it is pretty substantial. We will also have some relatives from out of town staying with us for a few days later in the week.

In July, we will be taking a few trips to southern Washington, and to Oregon, one for a vacation in Seaside, and one for a John Mayer concert. I'll definitely write a post about that. I also have dance classes starting back up again once we get back. I am hoping to write a little more about dance soon.

And, of course, there is school. I am still not done with school, but I am hoping to do be done in a few weeks. That is the main reason I may be a bit scarce on here in the coming weeks. I am hoping to do as much school as possible so that I can be done for the year!

So, there you go. Expect some book reviews, and make sure to check the Summer Reading 2013 page to see what I've been up to and how many books I've written. My goal is to have the most in the county, in our library's teen summer reading program!

BEA, Blogging, and a Teen Writing Conference!

I'm sorry it's been a bit quite on here lately. I have some fun review posts that I'm working on right now, but today I thought I'd just ramble a bit. Over the next few weeks, look for posts reviewing Eleanor and Park (Rainbow Rowell), Messenger (Lois Lowry), Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury), and Star Trek: Into Darkness, the new Star Trek movie, which I saw yesterday. I'm also working on a post about the Great Gatsby movie.

In the mean time, here is a random list of things I've been doing and thinking about recently.

1. A new dream of mine is to attend Book Expo America someday. While I would love to go to all three days as an "industry professional," just going the one day it is open to the public would be absolutely AMAZING! I would be happy to pay the $49 for a ticket, but I would still need to get to New York City somehow... Someday, this is something I really want to do!

2. I am going to a teen writing conference in a few weeks that is being held locally. I am super excited for the speakers, all the break out sessions to choose from, and advice from actual writers working in the field. It will be awesome to spend a whole day with other teenagers who are as excited about writing as I am!

3. I wanted to talk a little bit about how I blog, and why sometimes there isn't much going on here. I rarely write posts the day they go live, though this one is an exception. As soon as I finish writing it, I will publish it. Usually, I will write up a few posts at a time, and then schedule them to be posted later. With blogger, it does it all for me, and they go live without me doing anything. When I get particularly busy, if I miss one day of writing blog post, that means three or four posts don't get written and scheduled. Then, often a week or so goes by before I really realize how long it has been. It's not the best method of blogging, and I don't like it all the time, but it makes it easier to blog when I am so busy. Hopefully this summer I will have more time to blog once I have less school to do.

That's it for today. I hope to have at least two new posts up next week.

Random Thoughts on Writing

I have struggled for a long time (literally years) to write fiction that I like. It is not the actual writing that's hard, it's liking what I write. I have won NaNoWriMo twice now, but I have never been happy with what I've written.

Today, as I sat down to try to plan out a new novel, I am deciding to take a new approach. In the past, I have always tried to write the type of book I like to read (scifi, dystoian, fantasy, general teen fiction) and it hasn't worked out too well. I'm realizing that maybe I need to take a note from John Steinbeck, who is one of my favorite authors of all time.

A long time ago, I remember reading that his first novels (which I have not yet read), were fantasy, King Arthur type stuff, because he had been told that was what was popular. Those books did terribly, and he realized he had to take a new approach. He decided to scrap everything he had been told and he wrote what he knew. He wrote about the people and places he loved the most, and his readers loved. Books like The Grapes of Wrath, and Of Mice and Men made him famous.

I'm thinking that maybe I need to try the same thing. I've spent two, almost three, years trying to write about things I know very little about. When I think about it, the pieces of my own writing I feel the bast about are my opinion essays and articles about things that matter to me. My two best pieces of writing (in my opinion), are an essay about Great Expectations I wrote last year, and a responsive essay I wrote on Ben Johnson's "On Education and Style." Maybe, someday, I'll share those here.

Both of those are essays on things that I care about and believe in. Maybe I need to take the same approach with my fiction. With all this in mind, I have a new plan, which I am sharing here for accountability.

I am going to try to have a finished novel by the end of 2013 with it's basis in my own experiences. I don't know exactly what I'm going to do yet, but I am going to try to "write what I know." That doesn't mean that it'll be a memoir (I only have 15 years to write about, and it wouldn't be that interesting), but there are many themes in my life that I can pull from. I'm sure homeschooling, which is hugely important in my life, will be one of them. My family has gone through a very tumultuous last few years, and I am sure those experiences, and their effect on me, will be prominent in my story as well.

I am a planner at heart, and I hope to spend the next few months brainstorming for, and eventually outlining, my novel. Maybe it won't go anywhere, or maybe it'll be the best thing I've done so far. We'll have to wait and see. Whatever happens, I'll try to post here about it regularly. At least once a month, I will try to post about how this new project is going, even if it's going nowhere.

Camp NaNoWriMo Week One Update, plus Random Blog Stuff

I'm sorry this post is a day late, but life is CRAZY. For Camp NaNo, I am currently coming in at 5000 words, which is half of what my goal was to be at by this point. There are numerous reasons for this, the biggest one being that my life got a whole lot busier this week. Two stained glass classes and a print making class are all starting and they all mean several hours out of the house. That cuts in to my school time, and the end result is that I have less time to do things like write and play games and stuff like that. Another reason is that NaNoWriMo takes a LOT of self discipline, even with a smaller word count goal. I am realizing that while one month is a stretch, two might just not be possible.

Now, don't get me wrong here, I have by no means given up on Camp NaNoWriMo this month. I hope to get as close to my goal as possible, but I am realizing that that might not be something that happens, and that is okay. I am the kind of person who gets stressed out by things like this that are not getting done the way I want them to, so I am having to let go of this a bit, and make it less of a priority.


Moving on the "Random Blog Stuff," I have several updates about the blog. First of all, I have added my Shelfari book shelf to the right side bar. It has the books that I am currently reading on it, which will mean that it will probably have two or three most of the time. If you keep track of it, you will likely see a book show up on there, and then the review of the book will get posted a few weeks later, or maybe sooner.

Also, I have been pretty bad about making sure all the book titles in my posts link to their Amazon pages, so I hope to spend a few hours going through and updating my old posts soon. I also hope to get the pages along the top updated, and have my "Writing in Books" post up there, since I refer to it so often.

That's it for today. Just a basic update. :)

Camp NaNoWriMo April 2013: Week 0 Update

It is Tuesday, April 2nd, which means that it is time for my Camp NaNoWriMo update for the week. Really, I do not have a whole lot to say. My goal for the month is 30,000 words, and I am currently on track to meet that goal. I have not yet written anything today, and my word count is 1,042 words.

I did no planning at all before yesterday morning, and so far the story is going fine. I have a few ideas, and a few characters, and we will have to see what happens from there. Maybe it will go off in some crazy direction and end up being nearly plotless. That would be fine. I am not doing this to have a great story at the end. I am doing it to have some story and the end, and some more writing experience under my belt.

I am not sure what my posts will look like for the rest of the month, but I can promise that there will be a Camp NaNoWriMo update every Tuesday. I will try to keep up with Homeschool Fridays, but with writing and school, I can not promise that they will happen for the next few weeks. I will try to review books and movies as I watch or read them, but those reviews will probably be pretty short.

I do have some posts already written, mostly the Banned Books series that I am transferring from my other blog, so that is mostly what will be going up this month. 

So, expect one or two posts a week, and come back in May for a real blog again. :)

Do I Like to Write?

This is another installment in my "Why Do I Write" series. This post really questions if me liking is any part of it.

Do I Like to Write? This morning, I wasn't so sure I did. I hadn't really written anything meaningful in months, and I was questioning why I even bothered. I decided it was time to go over my various writing projects, and think about why I did them, and if I liked it. This was what I came up with.

My first serious writing project began when I was seven years old. I decided that I wanted to publish a "newspaper" for my family and friends. I went around collecting money from people, and then I went to my mom for help. She, understandably  was a little hesitant at first. She realized that she would be doing most of the work, but she still agreed. I am so grateful to her for that. For two years, I wrote articles about school, and field trips, and holidays, and books, and everything else I could think of. When I was done, I gave them all to her, and she typed them up, printed them out, and once a month, we sent out the Classical Academy News. When I was about ten, I took over the typing. I emailed the articles to her, and she formatted them and printed them out. By that time, CAN was a very different thing than when we started out.

Did I like it? Not always. I often had unmet deadlines, stuck printers, and unpaid subscriptions. So, why did I keep doing it for nearly four years? I did it for that feeling that came when I held the printed newsletter in my hands each month. It was only four pages long, and I only had fifteen subscribers, but for me, it was amazing. One time, I wrote a review of a field trip to a small, local book binding company we went on. The mom who organized the field trips was one of the subscribers, and she emailed me after she read it. She liked it so much that she wanted to know if she could send it to the book binding company to read! The feeling I got right then is why I write.

Maybe that is not really an answer to the question, "Do I like to write?" So, I'll answer it with another question, "Does it really matter if I like writing while I am doing it? Or is the feeling of success afterwards enough?"

Fellow writers, what do you think? Do you like the act of writing? Do you think it matters? Let me know in the comments!