Friday Freeday: Love Yourself!

Happy Friday!

I was thinking about this today, and another day possibly Sunday. There was a scripture, so it must've been Sunday, about loving others as you love yourself.

My immediate thought was: "But some people don't love themselves, so they can't love others."

And this is recurring problem for me as a writer, and I feel other writers go through this as well. Sometimes, we absolutely HATE ourselves when it comes to our own work. I've gone through many bouts of self-hate and seclusion when I received a harsh critique, especially once I realized it was right. I've had those moments where I thought I'll never make it and my writing isn't as good as I thought. I've also had moments where I thought, "That got published?!" Partially because I thought I could do better, partially because I didn't do better.

And you know what? Most likely, I'll do it again.

BUT, I and you who do it too must remember to try to love yourself and your writing more than you hate it. Remember why you started writing in the first place, remember someone (even if it was your mom) loved it, and someone (probably not your mom) loved it for more valid reasons than your mom because she has to.

Remember that YOU loved it, and compliment yourself on what you've accomplished. Some people will never put pen to paper. Give yourself a pat on the back for doing at least that.

Introducing: Wednesday Words

Hello!

As I said, I wanted to start blogging on Wednesdays, so I figured out what I could do, and it's an easy one. :) Every Wednesday, I'm going to use Random.org to pick a page of the book I'm reading and a line or two and post it. See? Very easy, and you get to see what I'm reading as well.

I'm currently reading the fabulous Mindy McGinnis's Not A Drop to Drink, which you may know by now has a German adaptation AND was picked up for a movie! Add it to your Goodreads, and all that other good stuff!

There are 310 pages, excluding the title pages and such, so from 1 to 310, Random.org has given me...13. And there are about 18 lines on that page, so from 1 to 18...5!

Page 13, Line 5 of Not A Drop to Drink:

"Meat's too tough. You burn up more energy chewing it than you get from eating it."

Coyote meat is what she's talking about. Oddly enough, I reflected back on that sentence just yesterday while reading! I was wondering if I'd go ahead and struggle with the meat anyway or try eating a coyote pup, kind of like a deer vs. veal comparison. Ah well. As far as I know, my civilization's not going to crumble down to that point while I'm alive.

Thanks for stopping by! And see you Friday. :)

Express Yourself: The Last Book

Happy Tuesday! Welcome back to Express Yourself, created by Jackie @ Bouquet of Books and Dani @ Entertaining Interests.

This week they asked what the last book we read was. The title to my post is a not-very-clever play on the last book I read: The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan.

This was actually the first werewolf novel I've ever read. I read The Last Vampire by Christopher Pike back when I was a teenager, then Fledgling by Octavia Butler, both vampire fiction. I happened to pick this up because...I was in the D's in the library? And the cover intrigued me? And I hadn't read a werewolf novel before. I hadn't heard of the author before.

But now that I have, I am in love. And already have the next book from the library.

The Last Werewolf is about (you guessed it) the last living werewolf, Jacob Marlowe, who has actually given up on living and plans to drink and smoke and wait for the hunter, who set out to kill him for eating his father, to come kill him. I'm not going to give anything away, because if you saw me reading it on Twitter, you know there was a twist that I should've seen coming and didn't.

Looking at reviews, some people hated it, and I've no idea why, unless they were looking for Twilight or something. It's very internal--Jacob goes through a lot of reflection--and reeks of the male species, lol. That's not a bad thing; it's a very masculine book to me. I enjoyed the principal characters, Jacob, Harley (who I imagined looks like an older version of Glen by his description), and Ellis (who I couldn't help but imagine looks like James Marsden mixed with Sephiroth). They were all unique and genuine. The dialogue between them was vivid and natural. The action was ACTION. There wasn't anything I didn't like about this book. I gave it 5 stars.

So if weres are your thing, add it to your Goodreads!

Friday Freeday: The Importance of Learning

(Side note before I start: I might add another post on Wednesdays. What will I add is the question.)

Happy Friday!

(Side note after I start: here in Dover, we have a Firefly Music Festival going on, and about 10 people are in each department at my job, so I'm just going to go ahead and blog and read. lol)

But anyway, having had worked on my fantasy novel The Crystal Bearer for close to 11 years now (wow, where'd the time go), I can now say that I've gained enough knowledge about the outs of writing. The ins change depending on you and that particular story. The outs, however, remain the same, and I couldn't say I learned them until maybe last week. Sometimes, things don't make sense until they do.

I was in college for half of the time I was writing my novel, so do you think I had time to network? Find AgentQueryConnect.com? Know there was a...actually, I don't think there even WAS a Twitter yet, so I definitely didn't know there was a writer's community on it! All I knew was that I would finish my novel, then I would send it to publishers.

HA!

Needless to say, that's no longer how it works. First off, no one's first draft is publishable. Geez, when I think back on mine, I shudder. I had TWO major overhauls, one where I cut scenes I loved, and one where I actually added scenes. I had to stop and think about what was important to the big picture, and what was just filler. I had to cut THOUSANDS of words, because I learned there is a desired word count among agents depending on the genre and target age group.

Secondly, if you never let anyone else outside of your house read it, you won't really know if your writing's actually any good. I had friends and family tell me for years that I was a good writer, but when I personally think back on my writing, I KNOW it was bad. lol I mean it could've been worse, but it was definitely eye-roll-worthy. So trying to publish before a stranger reads your work, so you have an idea of how your novel will be received, is testing it a little. The betas/CPs I've gone through were a big help, and the query critiques even more so!

So do what you can to learn any and everything you can about writing before you try to put yourself out there. You'll do better for it!

Express Yourself: Scary Movies

 

Welcome back to Express Yourself! This weekly meme is brought to us by Dani @ Entertaining Interests and Jackie @ Bouquet of Books, fun questions to answer weekly. This week they ask us what was the scariest movie we've seen or book we've read that made us unable to sleep.

Hands down, only one movie has terrified me into insomnia (and all the scary movies I've seen, that's saying a lot), and it was Orphan. For most of the movie, you KNOW something is wrong with this little girl, and when it's finally revealed...It messed me up. lol I was praying for most of the night to have good dreams.

If you haven't seen it and want to, I recommend it. It's an awesome movie.

Stop by the ladies' sites to find the list of other participants, and visit them throughout the week to see what they have to say.