Superlatives for the Books I Read this Year

It appears that I’ve reached the end of another year already. Earlier today, I looked back at my yearly book log and was disappointed to discover how I only read 19 books. Nineteen! I understand that, to some people, it’s quite an accomplishment. But not to an avid book reader, like myself.

I’ve been recording all the books I’ve leisurely read since 2012 (I know, I’m weird) and it was so disheartening to see how I only got around to less than twenty books. Last year, I read 34 books. And the year before that were 49. In 2013, it was 39. In 2012, I was a reading machine with a total of 64 books (I had a few nice trips to the library that summer).

Despite my measly amount of books this year, it’s not like I wasn’t doing any kind of reading. I had two semesters of school, so I read: nine novels, three literary magazines, and countless of short stories and manuscript submissions.

But because I read so little for myself this year, I decided to have some fun with it and make some superlatives!

Head’s Up: Sorry there are a few spoilers when I’m talking about the books below. I couldn’t get around it. :/




Most Creative

TALES OF THE PECULIAR by Ransom Riggs

     I was blown away by how dedicated the creative team was at trying to make this look like an antique storybook. It had a felt cover with embedded gold lettering, a bookmark, pictures, and occasional footnotes in the voice of the “author” (a character from the Miss Peregrine series). I even loved the little touch of having the colophon related to the narrator’s world.

     Favorite two short stories from the collection: The Splendid Cannibals and The Girl Who Could Tame Nightmares.





Best Sequel

THE HUNT by Megan Shepherd

     The way the first book ended (their escape plan became ruined), I was really interested in how they were planning on escaping this time. Most of the main characters were thrown into a new environment, one of them dies at the end during their second escape, and they land on a new alien planet. Now I’m left wondering how Shepherd plans on finishing the trilogy with her last book.

Runner-ups for Best Sequel:

     THE ROSE SOCIETY by Marie Lu. I was deeply sadden when Enzo died in the first book, so I was fascinated on how he somewhat came back in its sequel. But most importantly, I loved how Adelina finally got to become queen by the end. You go, girl! (Even if she’s technically the villain.)

     THE RULE OF MIRRORS by Caragh M. O’Brian. Since Rosie’s (the main character) consciousness was split into two by the end of the first book, I loved how I was given alternating chapters of each part of her consciousness in the sequel. To be honest, as I was reading, I was more interested in Althea’s perspective than Rosie’s.



Best Stand-Alone

Strangely, I didn’t read many stand-alone novels this year. They were mainly parts of a duology or trilogy. I did read three short story collections, but I won’t count those.

 WHEN by Victoria Laurie earns this superlative. I read this book in two days because I was so intrigued by the plot. It’s kinda a sci-fi/fantasy (because the main character knows the exact date of when everyone dies based on the set of numbers on your forehead), but it was also a mystery (there’s a murderer out on the loose in the town!). And it earns brownie points because the main character’s best friend is a boy and neither of them have romantic feelings to one another. Yay for platonic friendships!








Longest Book

SIX OF CROWS by Leigh Bardugo

It clocked in at 462 pages. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not really a whole lot compared to other giant books. It’s just the largest book I read this year (the physical book in of itself is also large, but that’s beside the point). But the novel was so good and it was worth every word on its pages.





Best Books I Had to Read for School

What? You didn’t think that I’d actually include the books I was forced to read this year? Ha! I actually enjoyed a few of them, so I decided to share the title between two books:

WHITE TEETH by Zadie Smith. I loved the interconnectivity between the various characters. I also enjoyed the humor.

PARABLE OF THE SOWER by Octavia E. Butler. This dystopian world is right up my alley and I liked how it was written as if the main character was writing in her diary.








So there you have it! Hopefully I can read more than 19 books in the coming year. (The fact that my current tower of books stands at thirteen – thanks to my four new books from Christmas – might motivate me.)

NaNoWriMo '16 (aka: No Sleep For Me)

It has officially been ten days since NaNoWriMo ended. Guess how many words I wrote during the entire month of November?

The grand total was 51,891 words.

That’s right! Third time winner, right here!!

This was my second best year in terms of word count. My record was in 2014 with 52,119 words. And, yeah, I was only 228 words from surpassing that record, but whatever. I had finished writing a scene and didn’t want to start a new one. Plus, I didn’t want to write almost 2,000 words on that last day because then it would screw with my monthly average. Especially since I technically hit the 50k mark on the 29th.

But look at how pretty this bar graph is! (No one can say that I'm not a consistent writer.)

I ended up writing a total of six stories this year, which was the same as last year. I didn’t even plan that.

Looking back, Story 1 was a poorly written short story. It was so dialogue heavy (but the concept still interests me). But, hey, it was a good warm-up. When I started writing Story 3, I thought that it would carry me for a majority of the month. Turns out, I only spent five days writing it and then hit a brick wall with it. So I moved on.

On November 9, I had already written five stories (or the beginnings of stories) and I had no idea what to write. So in a fit of panic, I reached for the top book on my pile (see my October blog post for the book tower) and opened it to page 49. I took the first full sentence on that page and it became the very first line of my next story.

I was totally making things up on the spot, but somehow, by the end of the week, I was beginning to see the entire story arc. Eventually, I wrote two charts by hand to organize my ideas. It really didn’t surprise me that I worked on this story all the way up to the end of NaNo.

But guys, despite me winning, this year was tough for me to make time for writing. I had a workshop class, a literary magazine class, and an internship. I already had to do a ton of reading and writing, which is all time consuming. Writing for NaNoWriMo took sometime between 2-2.5 hours daily. During that first week, I think I regularly only got 3-4 hours of sleep because I was trying to cram everything that I needed to get done in a day. My new bedtime is now 4am (which, unfortunately, has stuck since the beginning of November). Luckily, I can sleep in. My whole sleep schedule is terrible, basically.

So when December 1st rolled around, I was relieved. Mainly because I could then concentrate on my final projects for school.

But at least I have something to show for my sleepless nights…

^I feel like I say this every year, but I'm sorry for how grainy the photo is. My webcam is the only thing that can take such a wide shot of myself without having to physically get someone to take a picture.



P.S. Also, as of December 8th, I am officially finished with school! And I don’t mean that I’m finished with the semester (which is true), but I’m done with my second degree. I won’t be attending the graduation ceremony (once was enough), but all I need now is for my actual degree to arrive in the mail.

And a job. I’ll be continuing my internship for another 3-4 months come January (which I’m excited to read more submissions), so I guess that’s something to hold me over in the meantime...

Life Update

Like I predicted, it has been a hectic month for me. I feel like I’m all over the place. And because I like lists, I’m going to use them to explain what I’ve been up to since the last blog post.


1.) I’ve been sick.

I got sick with a bad common cold (as in, I got all those “rarer” symptoms from the common cold virus…like pink eye). I lost my voice for a week and a half. My throat hurt. Half the time, I couldn’t breathe through my nose. I lost my appetite for two days. I’ve been coughing a lot. It was a rough ten days. Thank goodness for Dayquil for keeping me somewhat functioning during the worst of it. The sad part is, I’m still probably only 98% healthy now. (My right tonsil has not been normal for three weeks and I’m still occasionally coughing. Pathetically, I strained my back from all the coughing.)

Much to my family’s dismay, I’ve been stubborn at not seeing a doctor. What’s the point when there is no antibiotic/cure for the common cold? Eventually, the virus will run its course…which is always the hardest part.


2.) My birthday

I turned 24 years old in the middle of the month. Unfortunately, I didn’t do anything fun and exciting that day. It rained all morning and this was the time when my sickness was at its peak (the day after was the pinnacle of my entire common cold suffering).

Although, it made me realize that I’m basically halfway through my twenties. What in the world have I been doing with my life? The answer: Clearly not enough.

Also, look how much my stack of books has grown!

Yes, I did indeed get eight books for my birthday. And look at those pretty red pages of CROOKED KINGDOM! Sadly, I probably won’t read any of those novels until the semester ends.


3.) School

Trying to balance schoolwork while being sick is tough. You just don’t have the energy and would rather sleep. I feel like I’m still trying to play catch-up.

But at least I don’t have to read so much for my internship anymore. We have our own projects now rather than read submissions.

Also, I will have a guest blog post on my university’s literary magazine website! I don’t know when it’s scheduled to go up (if I did the math correctly, it might be late December/early January). I’ll let you know when it happens so you can head on over there and check it out.


4.) NaNoWriMo 2016

Yes, I’m crazy enough to participate once again this year. I literally have no plan of action. (I’ve been too focused on trying to get healthy and dealing with homework.) I guess I’ll resort to my usual…start by writing short stories and once something sticks, I’ll write that story for as long as I can.

Plus, there’s no point in trying to talk myself out of it. I got a taste of being a winner for the last two years and I’m determined to win again. Even at the sake of my own sanity.

At least I can finally stop feeling so guilty in my workshop class. When we meet up every Monday, at some point, my professor wants to hear how our writing has been going this past week. And every time, I tell her how I haven’t been doing much writing except for this class. (I do enough reading and writing for school. If I have any free time, I’d rather watch tv or something to give myself a break.)



I don’t know how some people do it. I’m a young, single person without a full-time job or responsible for kids (or any other big responsibilities). How do you get everything done without permanently raising your blood pressure? Either I need better priorities or I work too hard at being a perfectionist.

And speaking of being busy, don’t be surprised if I don’t post anything on this blog next month. NaNoWriMo will be occupying whatever free time I have. Not like I have a huge following for this blog anyway, so you probably won’t even notice.



P.S. Happy Halloween!

Edit All the Things

I’ve officially been back in school for a month now. And in that month, I’m practically reading or editing something every day.

In my advanced fiction writing class, I get 4-5 days to read six of my classmates’ short stories. You might think oh, that doesn’t sound so bad. But for me, I take my critiquing very seriously and it takes me an hour to read each story. And once I’m done, I have to write my editorial feedback letter to each one.

In addition to that, I also have an internship this semester. I intern for a small, independent book publishing house (I don’t feel comfortable saying the name on a public platform like this blog). For the past three weeks, I’ve been read the beginnings of manuscripts. My task is to explain what’s working and what’s not working within each piece, ultimately voting on whether the story moves onto the next round. So basically, my job is to weed out the poorly written stories.

Yesterday, this internship also started assigning me a novel to read/copyedit on my kindle. With these books, they were published years ago, but the publishing house is trying to convert them digitally. Unfortunately, by doing this, occasional typos pop up, so I have to report them.

Even with all that reading and editing, it’s not including my other class I have this semester. I’m part of the team that is working on my university’s literary magazine (we only accept undergraduate work; no submissions from our university). We’re working on our second issue, so it’s still a new endeavor, but we definitely have our work cut out for us. It’s exciting to see all the submissions piling up in our inbox, but most of it hasn’t been read it.

Basically, I’ll be very busy this semester. (Hopefully it’ll look nice on my resume because I’m graduating in December.) I’m not complaining (especially since I barely did anything in the summer and I felt like I lost some kind of purpose), because I actually enjoy doing all the editing; it’s just very time consuming.

And I feel a twinge of guilt as my pile of leisure books are piling up on my dresser again. There are only three novels right now, but my birthday is in three weeks, so it’s guaranteed to double in size soon.

…But who needs sleep, right?



P.S. Wouldn’t it be ironic if I had some kind of writing error within my post about editing?

Cemetery Adventure

I have lived in the same house for twelve years now. (We’re not going to count the four years I spent in East Lansing for school.) A ten minute walk away from my house is a cemetery. Technically, it’s two separate cemeteries, but you only know that because the iron gates are painted two different colors and there are two unique names next to opposite entrances/exits.

Over the years, I pass by this cemetery countless of times and hardly anyone ever visits. I point it out to whoever I’m driving with whenever I spy a car somewhere in its depths. The pathways are not paved inside these cemeteries. It’s just two parallel lines in the ground, created by car tires, that has been filled with gravel. The grass is somewhat long and patchy, the bushes overgrown. Majority of the flowers placed by the various headstones were artificial.

Earlier this summer, curiosity got the better of me. How have I lived this long in the area without once checking the place out? How old are the headstones in there? (From what I could tell, it looked pretty antique.)

So last Thursday, I finally walked over there. In the grand scheme of things, the two cemeteries aren’t that large of an area, but I was determined to check out each individual headstone. It took me four days (somewhere between an hour to an hour and a half for each visit), but I did it.

And let me tell you, the place was fascinating.

The oldest headstones are on the far right. As you go further in the back or more to the left (left = the other cemetery; the black-painted fence), the more modern the death dates become.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover there were a few people buried there who were born in the 1770s. Oldest person I stumbled upon was born in 1776 (and he lived to be 85 years old…you go, John).

I also figured out who the “power families” were in the early 1800s. Their surnames popped up quite often on the headstones. I imagined them becoming allies and enemies with each other, Game of Thrones-style. But, you know, as farmers instead of kingdoms.

I found three people who were born in New York in the 1800s, but then obviously died in the metro Detroit area of where I reside. Two more were born in Vermont. Their home state must have been very important to them, to have them engraved on their headstone. So why did they leave? Were they hoping for a better job? Land? Did they journey here with other families who were also buried?

I was also surprised to find two “Amanda’s”. Both were born in the early 1800s, so that shocked me. I thought it was a more contemporary name.

^This particular Amanda was born in 1832 and died in 1915. The main headstone that she shares with her husband is to the left of her individual one. Nice to see that I can still read her name quite distinctly, a century later.

Also, on a sadder note, there were more babies buried there than I expected. They were scattered all over the place. I saw two sisters (6 years old and 4 years old) who died within two weeks of each other in March 1878. I saw a couple of twins buried together. One of them was Brian and Bruce. Poor Brian didn’t make it through the night in September 1945 (stillborn, perhaps?). Bruce only lasted for sixteen days. There was a baby (I think he was two years old?) who died in the 1970s. At his headstone were little plastic baby shoes, faded in color but still fairly in good shape. A sibling (or some other relative) must have placed it there within the year because his mother was buried to the left of him; she died a decade ago.

I also encountered two babies who remained unnamed.

^I felt sorry for Julia. I imagine that she must have died in childbirth, buried with her nameless baby. Poor, too, because this is all that was etched on her headstone. Not even her surname.

I found his/her individual headstone on my first visit. Luckily, he/she was included on the giant family headstone, so I know Baby had born and died in March 1879. I also may have placed a small daylily flower on Baby’s specific headstone two days ago. How sad that Baby didn’t have an actual name. Of course, this was before I found Julia & Baby.

Roaming around the nearly abandoned cemetery by myself (the two men mowing the lawn on the other end of the cemetery doesn’t count), trying to visit every single person buried there, it made me think about what kind of life story each individual person had. Did they reside in the Detroit area all their lives? How did they meet their spouses? What did they do to earn a paycheck?

I was especially curious about what my town must have looked like in the early 1800s with these families. (One of the “power family” must have been the founder of my town – or at least, very important – because the cemetery was his surname + the “ville” suffix.)

I wish I had a flower to place on everyone’s headstone. That they have not been forgotten.

I hope they didn’t mind my presence there for the past few days.



P.S. Through the power of google, I found out that I was correct with my theory. The “power family” was indeed the founder of the local village (now lost in time). The land was purchased from the government in 1826 and they came from New York. Who knew? Yay for history!

P.P.S. Gah! I start my next semester of school in tomorrow. Can you believe it’s already my last semester before I earn my second degree? Crazy.



Note: I am aware that in some cemeteries, you might have to ask for permission to take photographs. And never post headstone photos online of people who are still living. I did a little research on my particular cemetery and it appears that my photos should be okay. (I hope.)

Nature + Goals + Words

Get ready because this post is coming to you in three (!) parts.

Part 1: Pokémon Go and finding inspiration

I know, I know. I can hear you sighing deeply and thinking, “Amanda, why must you talk about that app? Don’t you think the game has saturated the media enough?”

And to you, I will admit that even I am growing tired of reading/hearing it everywhere. But give me a chance to explain…

My sister created an account on day one and I officially became her co-pilot when it came to her catching Pokémon. I would accompany her as she would drive around subdivisions and it was my job in the passenger seat to catch any wild Pokémon that jumped out. I joined her on her various walks (partially because it’s probably not healthy how often I don’t leave the house and I could use the exercise).

We explored three different nearby parks and tramped through a trail behind a nature center. The scenery was so pretty I couldn’t help but take some pictures on my phone.

Can you tell I like taking pictures of water?

Discovering new places and visiting nature really gave me some inspiration for my July writing project.

Part 2: July writing project

Remember how in my last post I had promised myself to write every day and obtain at least 31,000 words by the end?

Yeah…

On July 1st, I didn’t know what to write. However, I did have a kernel of an idea and I figured hey, why not? But because I am a planner rather than a pantser when it comes to the writing process, I had to sit down and do a little planning in terms of fleshing out characters and story arcs.

About that…I may have taken the brainstorming step a little too far. I say that because I didn’t actually start writing until July 9th. The ninth! (But on the bright side, I had a great start when it came to the world-building and creating complex characters. Plus, I even drew a map on Paint to help me out.)

I spent the first three days of actual writing by reaching the 1,000 word mark. After realizing that 1,000 words was rather easy to achieve, I increased it to 1,200. At some point during the month, it graduated to at least 1,300 words.

When I woke up this morning, I only had 2,162 words to go. And because I am a stubborn person, I made the decision to reach my 31k goal. Two thousand words are do-able in one day. No way was I going to admit defeat when I was thisclose.

So despite being eight days behind, I officially reached 31,295 words in total.

My adventure/low fantasy story actually worked out very well for me. In June, I was worried that I’d grow bored of my stories and end up creating multiple short stories to try and stretch to the 31k goal.

I need to have more faith in my abilities.

Part 3: Vocab Words

Do you remember a blog post I created last July? You know, the one where I expressed my love for previously unknown words that I came across and try to memorize them? (If you need to revisit this blog post, just find it in the right side bar. Go on. I’ll wait for you.)

I’ve started this practice up again.

While I have been reading books these past couple of months, I’d input these new words into a notepad on my phone and carry on reading, knowing I’d eventually research their definitions at a later time.

These past three days, I have finally researched their meanings. I even made flashcards out of them!

The reason why they are green is simply because that is the only kind of index cards I have laying around in abundance at my house. They remind me of “play” money, much like the version my siblings and I would use as children whenever we needed currency for our many imaginative games, haha.

I’ve also tried to find ways to insert a few of these words into the July writing project. Just because I can. (Additionally, I’m hoping by doing this, I’ll memorize the words quicker.)

Maybe I’m weird for voluntarily creating flashcards to memorize words. But I guess we’re all weird in some way.




P.S. Happy HARRY POTTER AND THE CURSED CHILD book pub day! (Yes, I’m eagerly awaiting my pre-ordered book to arrive in the mail. Just like a bajillion of other people.)

Diving Back In

If you remember in my last post, I mentioned I was trying to ease back into reading books that I wanted to read rather than what was required for my classes. I stated the tower of books on my dresser stretched to ten (plus three books on my Kindle). It was down to seven, I believe, once June hit.

Well. I then added four books to that tower throughout the month of June. It seemed like every time I finished one, another was added.

But! I found that once I started reading these wonderful books, I churned them out quickly. (Not because I needed to shrink my book pile down as quickly as possible, but because the stories drew me in.)

And in the end, I managed to start and complete seven books during the course of June (for a total of 2,398 pages).

So now I’m down to only three books in stack. Hooray!

Are you confused by the math yet?

I feel like June was “Month of Stories” for me. I obviously did a ton of reading and in between that, I took six days off of this activity to binge-watch the first two seasons of The 100 (I need season 3, Netflix!). Also, this past Sunday marked the end of Game of Thrones until next year. (What am I going to do with myself on Sunday nights now? The Walking Dead, which is also on Sundays, doesn’t start up again until October.)

It’s safe to say that I accomplished reading again since school ended. However, I have yet to do any writing.

And when I say that, I mean, other than all the stories I had to write as class assignments, I haven’t written anything for myself since November. November! When I finished and won NaNoWriMo.

It has been seven months.

This is not okay.

I found, in the past, if I go 2-3 months without creatively writing something, I become restless to type something out. But then I freeze up, scared to write again. As if all of my skills could fly out of the window in those short months.

For the past three years, I had a writing project to do in the summer. This year, I got nothing.

So yesterday, I made the decision that I’m going to do my own version of Camp NaNoWriMo (which occurs during the month of July). It’s a good motivator in order to force me to write again.

I have no idea what I’m going to write about, though. I get the feeling that if I tried to focus on one story, I’ll end up repeating what I did last November. You know, start with one story, hit a road block and no longer become interested in it, and then start a new story until I find one that sticks.

My goal is to write at least 1,000 words a day during the month of July (simple math, total end goal for the word count: 31,000). That’s do-able, right?

I guess we’ll have to see what the month of July will bring.




P.S. How in the world is tomorrow July already? Half of the 2016 year is over? Whaaaat??

Randomness 3

Guess who has a blog post of completely random things once again? (It has been an interesting month so far, not being in school and all. But because of that, I feel like my thoughts are all over the place, hence this seemingly aimless list.)

Things that I have been enjoying lately:

1.) Summer weather!

I can just see all of you right now. Rolling your eyes at me. Look at this girl, desperate for a topic to talk about. The weather! C’mon. To you I say, try living in Michigan. The temperature was averaging in the forties about two weeks ago and then – bam! – we hit 70s/80s all at once. What happened to the temperatures in between?

Anyway, because of this, I’ve now begun to do all those fun summery things. Like plant flowers (and unfortunately, pull a ton of weeds). And bike rides. And go to the beach (my sister and I plan on doing this tomorrow).

2.) Commencement Speeches

Okay, I can see those eye rolls again. But seriously, there have been some seriously good commencement speeches this year. Here are my two favorites:

a.) John Green’s Learn to Listen:

“You are about to be a nobody. And that’s important, because when you become a somebody, if you can remember what it was like to be a nobody, you won’t be a jerk.”

b.) Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Speech:

“The simple truth is this: Every story you choose to tell, by necessity, omits others from the larger narrative…This act of choosing—the stories we tell versus the stories we leave out—will reverberate across the rest of your life.”

3.) Books

I’ve slowly been trying to get back into reading. After being forced to read particular books every day for eight months for school, I wanted to take a break. (Although, to be fair, half the time they weren’t all that bad.) I had a stack of ten books sitting on my dresser that I’ve collected since last October (not to mention the three free books on my Kindle). I managed to plow through three of those books, so my pile is finally shrinking…but I’m also anticipating a new book in the mail to arrive sometime this week.

So many books, so little time.

And in case you were curious, I’m currently in the middle of UNBOUND by Neal Shusterman. Gotta love the creepiness of the Unwind world. I’m enjoying the various short stories that go into the backstories of various characters.

Also! I am super pumped for Veronica Roth’s new book that will be published in January (ugh, why so far away?).


4.) Music

During the end of April, my laptop surprised me and went through a mandatory update to Windows 10. In doing so, it downloaded all these songs that I had hidden away and forgotten about on iTunes and reappeared on my computer music file. So now I’ve been listening to all these songs that I had previously brushed aside and it has given me something new to listen to.

Also, I was pretty excited when Skillet released their two new songs last week in order to promote their next album being released in August. I’ve been listening to “Feel Invincible” and “Stars” on repeat since then.



So, yeah, that’s basically what I’ve been up to this past month. (Okay, not really. I do somewhat have a life. Sort of.)

Something Beautiful

First of all, I’m officially on my summer break now! Huzzah! I can’t believe that I’ve already completed an entire year of school. Only one more semester to go…

You know how sometimes you get told certain things over and over again that after a while, they lose their impact? But then one day, it hits you like a train and you rediscover this particular fact/advice all over again like it’s the first time? (I feel like there must be a word for this feeling in the English dictionary…I just don’t know it. If there is, please enlighten me.)

I’ve read plenty of online articles and author opinions over the years that mention how all writing is never wasted. Even bad writing. Because you can learn something from every piece that you write.

But for some reason, this idea popped into my head last night and I’ve been mulling it over ever since. Maybe because I’ve been reflecting about these past few months? (Does anyone else think back to what they’ve learned after a semester of school? No? What about the kind of people that you met while meeting in the same room multiple times in a week? Anyone?)

At any rate, I thought back to the stories (and poems) that I wrote this past semester and there are few of them where I scratch my head and wonder, “Why did I write that? That’s not a good reflection of the work I can do.” But at that time, I must have, because I wouldn’t have turned it in as an assignment otherwise.

It made me wonder about what I saw in those pieces. What was it that made me cringe? It’s usually different for each work, so I can’t make a sweeping statement about them for you, but it’s interesting to think about.

And I definitely have to get better at not feeling embarrassed about my “bad” pieces.

Because, yeah, you can argue about what is considered “good” writing and you can point out story inconsistencies and grammatical errors and the list goes on and on. (The trick is to just have as little amount of faults as possible. Yes, all first drafts are pretty terrible. But some written work is more likely to be published than others. Why am I getting ANIMAL FARM flashbacks??)

However, I believe that there is a nugget of goodness in all writing. The act of writing takes work and there’s a part of your soul that you inserted into the piece that made it yours. And that is beautiful.

This doesn’t simply apply to writing. Basically any craft can have this viewpoint.

I’m trying to remind myself that, no matter what I write, I make beautiful things. I have something to learn with even the stories I would rather lock inside my laptop forever.

So my advice: Make something beautiful!

The Inner Turmoil of a Writer

My screenwriting professor last semester once made a comparison between a particular scene in Disney’s Tangled and being a writer. You know what scene I’m talking about? It’s the one where, upon leaving the castle for the first time, Rapunzel goes back and forth on deciding whether to continue on her journey or head back for home before her mother notices her disappearance.

Quotes from Rapunzel in this segment of the movie:

“I can’t believe I did this!”

“Oh my gosh. This would kill her.”

“This is so fun!”

“I. Am. A horrible daughter. I’m going back.”

“I’m never going back!”

“I am a despicable human being.”

Yeah, us writers feel this bipolar-ness when it comes to our own work.

I have been swinging from one side to another about my craft for years, so that’s nothing new. However, I feel like I’ve been all over the place lately. Someone will compliment my writing and it’ll make me feel great, but then a particular feedback comment will make me feel like I have a long way to go still. (Why is it that some days I love feedback and other days absolutely detest it?)

For example, I had another short story of mine workshopped in class last week. I was already nervous about it because it had a different format than my last one and I was worried that my classmates wouldn’t “get” a few things that were going on within it.

For the most part, my classmates said good things about it (and that’s always nice to hear). But then people started to get super picky about certain lines that weren’t working. Part of me goes, “Great! That’s an easy fix. I can do that.” And then another part of me goes, “Is the writing/story really that bad?”

Of course, it didn’t help that my professor decided to sit next to me. I kept glancing at all the marks and final feedback notes that he’d do for me and my other two classmates that also had their stories read. My biggest competitor in the class happened to have his story read on the same day as mine, so guess who fell down the rabbit hole for the rest of the class?

Statements/Questions that entered my mind during this time:

“All these nitpicky notes on my story must be a good thing, right? Because my professor did this to my other story, too (the one that he loved). He doesn’t really go into this much depth with other people’s stories.”

“Who am I kidding? Look at the detail that my rival did with his story!”

“Why do my professor’s final notes for my story look different than my competitor’s? Mine consist of four small paragraphs and the other guy has one huge paragraph? Maybe it’s just because his story was eleven more pages than mine? And am I really analyzing the format of feedback?”

“It looks like there are more slashes on my draft than on my rival’s. That can’t be good, right?”

…

“What if everyone is just lying to me?”

You’d think that all this paranoia would remain in my workshops. (I’m not going to count my poetry workshop because I don’t really care much about my poems. Sorry.) But it doesn’t.

I get told by the Creative Writing director that I have “excellent writing skills” (all I did was send her an e-mail…), but then later deflate upon realizing that I didn’t win anything in a particular writing contest.

Up. Down. Left. Right. Forward. Back.

Writing is hard.

The trick is to find your own Flynn Rider from Tangled. You know, someone who will walk with you on your journey toward your dreams. Even if it involves reverse psychology.

Everything and Nothing

I did not think that it’d take me this long to write my first blog post of the year.

I spent all of January trying to figure out what exactly I wanted to write for January’s post. I mean, it’s the first blog of the 2016 year. I better make it interesting and thoughtful and fun and all the good things.

Note to future self: Don’t think too hard about these things, trying to make it perfect, because otherwise I will continue to push it off and not do anything about it.

So now here I am, the 21st of February, finally writing something. Although, to be fair, I’ve had a busy (with schoolwork) and rough (because of health issues) month.

Guess who still doesn’t quite have a particular blog topic? This girl! So instead, you get a list of things that I’ve been pondering this year.

1.) Prose poems

So I currently have a poetry class this semester. It has been an interesting experience so far, mainly because I knew going into the class that I wasn’t much of a poet. (I can appreciate poetry, but I can’t write it well.)

Anyway, I was introduced to prose poems and they confuse the heck out of me. They look like any other paragraph to me, whether that means a short story condensed into a paragraph or a paragraph extracted from an essay.

Just tell me what you are! You are like the chimera of the poetry world to me.

2.) Short-short stories (otherwise known as “micro-short” stories, in Amanda terminology)

I also have a Creative Writing workshop this semester. On your designated week, you must pass out copies of your story for it to be workshopped the following week. In order to save my classmates the pain of reading a 7+ page story (and because I also don’t want to read out loud to the class that much), I’ve had to resort back to writing micro-short stories (stories that are 1000 words or less).

Back in 2012, that’s pretty much the format that I wrote all my stories. However, after that, I started to write lengthier pieces and I haven’t really gone back. Now I’m forced to do it and it’s harder than I remembered. I mean, how do I find the balance of creating enough details for the story without weighing it down within its small body?

I guess I found a way after all, judging by the positive feedback that I got from my first story three days ago. Let’s just hope that I can repeat it.

3.) Why does literary fiction constantly get re-made?

I’m just thinking out loud here.

But seriously, how many remakes or spin-offs can you think of that is based off of a Jane Austen novel? (I’ve always wondered what she’d think about it. For me, personally, I’d be flattered.)

At first I thought that maybe it was because, even though the actual story is great, it leaves room for other creative ideas to merge into the story since it’s literary fiction. (I’m looking at you, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.)

However, you could make the argument that Shakespeare has undergone so many remakes too, but his stories always have some kind of fantastical elements to them (ghosts, witches, fairies).

On the flip side, does anyone know of any books that were originally set in fantasy/sci-fi/whatever and remade into literary fiction?

I mean, can you imagine the Harry Potter series being literary fiction? No magic at all, just an outcast boy that attends a public school with his annoying cousin. (That actually sounds interesting now…if anyone pursues this idea and makes it entertaining, I want to read it.)

4.) Hair

Yeah, this is totally random.

But seriously, I keep feeling like I need to do something different with my hair.

As you can tell by my new profile picture, my bangs have grown out. They’re not officially side bangs, but they’re getting there.

I was thinking of letting them become side bangs, but a small part of me still wants to have the straight-cut bangs.

I’ve also contemplated on trying to curl my hair more often, but then I remembered that I don’t know how to properly curl my hair.

And now I’m entertaining the idea of possibly cutting my hair up to my shoulders. Will I be brave enough to do it in the summer? (I haven’t had my hair that short since 3rd grade.) Do I do it after I graduate with my B.A. as a kind of “onto the next stage of my life”? Will this kind of hair-cut actually compliment my face? And if I actually go through with this, do I keep the side bangs or go back to straight-cut?

So many options. I’m so confused.

Side note: I don’t plan on dyeing my hair.



Huh. I guess most of my topics listed above are somewhat related to one another. What are your thoughts on any of the four subjects?