What's Up Wednesday is a weekly meme started by Jaime Morrow and Erin Funk where writers post about what's up by answering four questions. If you want to participate, go here.


WHAT I'M READING

So I made myself promise that I wouldn't buy any more books. I have a buttload of unread eBooks on my Kindle plus around four other books that I haven't gotten around to reading or finishing (This includes The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - I will get back to this book one day. It's just the font is so small and despite my youth I have terrible vision.) Well, anyways, you'll understand why my current predicament is a problem when I tell you that a book I really wanted to read came out and it took a lot of self-restraint for me to not just buy the book and throw all the promises I made out the window.  Yeah, Faking It by Cora Carmack was *this* close to being an exception but then the best thing in the world  EVER happened. I won an e-copy of the book on twitter and...this is amazing because I don't usually win things and so my lucky streak with winning books (I've won quite a few of them lately) has been a little crazy/wonderful. 


I love my Kindle
 I stayed up a little later than usual reading Faking It and let me to tell you it is way better than Losing It.  Cade is so sweet/funny/I think I'm going to add him on to my long list of book boyfriends. So, if you like NA Romances that are well-written and have great characters this book is for you. Plus, the cover looks pretty on a Kindle Fire screen, don't you think? I'm 46% in to this book and at the rate I'm reading, I need to start thinking about what I'm going to read next. And there are so many books to choose from...not that I'm complaining. ;)
 
WHAT I'M WRITING
 
I was *this* close to reaching 10K in my NA Science Fiction wip but instead of  moving on, I decided to start over. No matter how many times I tried to write, there was this nagging voice in the back of my head telling me that this wasn't the right place to start the story, and though I complained for a bit about starting over...I knew that if I didn't do it now, then I would end up doing it farther down the road when I had 50,000 words instead of 10. I like the new beginning a lot better than the old one. I read a blog post about first pages (can't remember where I saw it) but the advice that stuck out to me was this: Start the story when your character's life changes.
 
After reading that, it didn't take long for me to get a sense of when Seren's life changes and what happens when it does. The good thing is...I still get to keep bits and pieces of all the words I wrote, so I don't have to get rid of them completely.
 
I keep all of my notes for Starfall in Scrivener and I'm really excited about writing this because for the first time I have an outline, a plot, and characters that I really want to write about. Since I'm a pantser, I usually only have the characters, and so when I finish writing a wip, there isn't any plot for me to build off of. I don't want to have to trunk another project, so I hope the fact that I outlined this time around will give me better results.
 
I also know how Starfall is going to end which means that I don't have any excuses. I have a Point A and a Point B. Now I just have to fill in all of the parts in-between.
 
 
WHAT INSPIRES ME RIGHT NOW
 
I would have to say that writing in general is inspiring me right now. I read over stuff I have written now, and can't help but think about how much I have grown as a writer. I might just be biased, but my writing has improved a lot since I first started writing almost ten years ago when I was nine.
 
A lot of my progress can be attributed to the books I read/the tv shows I watch. I'm not sure about you guys but whenever I read a book, I analyze how the author writes this or that. I pick apart some of my favorite scenes and ask myself what do I like about this scene? What makes this scene good? What makes it bad?
 
The same goes for the writing on tv shows I watch. Seeing the way different characters interact with each other on screen really helps me to think about my characters and who they are not only as individuals but who they are when they are around other characters. This is all just going back to the saying that if you want to improve at writing you have to read (and in my case: watch tv).
 
WHAT ELSE I'VE BEEN UP TO
 
  • Well, I am trying to dodge spoilers for Game of Thrones because I am so behind and I keep hearing about the Red Wedding and everyone on twitter/other places on the internet have made it sound terrifying which can only mean that someone died. And if it's my luck, then it was a character that I really liked. And...yeah. I'm really scared to start S3 but I must be brave.
  • I'm really horrible at explaining things but I'm looking forward to Ready. Set. Write. which you can find out more about here. Basically, if you're like me and need people to hold you accountable for your writing, then this is for you. I'm really hoping to finish the first draft of Starfall this summer, so this couldn't have come at a better time. It's going to start officially on June 12th so you guys have a little bit of time to figure out what you want to work on (if you want to participate). I'm hoping a lot of people decide to do this because the more people the better.

Enough about me. What are you guys up to?


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