Friday Five: Books I'm Taking to College

It's always the most important (and difficult) part of packing to move back to school: what books do I bring? I'm a notorious book overpacker; I always think I'm going to have way more free time than I do and pack a ton of books that I don't wind up reading. I tried to keep it reasonable this year, but I still packed a box full. Here are a few of the ones I picked:

1. Harry Potter series (paperback) - J.K. Rowling: Because I can’t live without their presence. It’s a comfort thing.

2. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy: Because my goal of reading the entire book this summer didn’t work out so well. Plus I want to look classy and educated reading it around campus.

3. Black Tickets – Jayne Anne Phillips: Because I’m more likely to read short stories than novels when I get swamped with work.

4. The Good Girl’s Guide to Getting Lost – Rachel Friedman: Because I’m reading it right now and realizing I love travel memoirs.

5. The Grace that Keeps this World – Tom Bailey: Because he’s on sabbatical this semester. And the cover looks pretty on my bookshelf.

Friday Five: The Best Writing Lessons I've Learned

I've only been a creative writing major for a year, but I've been writing since I was 11. Since coming to Susquehanna, I've been blessed with some amazing professors who have helped improve my writing so much in such a short time. It hasn't all been pretty (I've had some embarrassing story flops), but I've learned so much about the process and what works for me. So here are some of my most important lessons about writing.

1. Don’t be afraid to delete. Your story can always become a thousand times better with revisions. Don’t be scared to change characters/scenes/the entire story. It might take on a whole new life of its own. I have rewritten stories two, three, four times from a blank Word document, and each turned out better than the last. Get rid of the meaningless stuff to find your real story.

2. Know how much information your story can handle. Don’t try to plot a novel and squash it into a short story format. 20 pages is not enough for detailed character arches and a laundry list of secondary characters (see lesson #1).

3. Just because you want something to happen in a story doesn’t mean it fits or makes sense. I can make the characters do anything I want, but that doesn’t mean readers will buy it. It’s so important to ask, “Does this make sense?” before writing anything. If it doesn’t, it’s time to rework it.

4. Write characters you connect with. You need to love your characters in order to stick with them through an entire story. If I don’t click with one of my characters, chances are their story won’t ever be finished.

5. Take risks. Tell a story that’s a little crazy. You’ll stick in readers’ memories, and chances are, they won’t think it’s as out-there as you might. I remember going to workshop terrified after submitting a story I thought no one would believe, but it turns out they all became invested in it. Risks pay off!

What about you? What important writing lessons have you learned?

Friday Five: Writing Goals for Senior Year

I'm very goal-oriented, and I make lists of what I want to accomplish during a certain period of time. Here are my goals for my senior year at Susquehanna:

1. Crank out the short stories. I’m shooting for four a semester. Spring might be tough because I’m planning on taking a novel writing class that will take up a huge chunk of my time, but I need tons of short stories for my senior honors project and Scholars House project.

2. Write every morning. I did this for a while last year, but once I joined my sorority, my early morning writing time turned into my doing-the-homework-I couldn’t-finish-last-night time. I want to keep my writing time purely for writing, even if it’s just for an hour.

3. Make a good impression on the department head, who is also my professor this semester. I’m taking his advanced fiction class, and I’d really love for him to write me a letter of recommendation for grad school. I just need to impress him first.

4. Have one of my pieces published. Somewhere. Anywhere. In an on-campus literary magazine, a website, I don’t care. I just want someone to read my work and like it enough to publish it for other people to see.

5. Get accepted into grad school. I am currently terrified about this. Not only do I want to be accepted into grad school, I want it to be a program I love. So many of them are very competitive and admission is selective, and I’m afraid my writing won’t be what the department is looking for. I just hope someone connects with my stories and style and wants to take me on as a graduate student. Here’s to hoping!

Friday Five: My Top Excuses Not to Write

We all do it. Writers are experts at coming up with every possible reason not to write. I do it more often than I should. I'm trying to be better about it, but sometimes I just cannot keep my butt in the chair with the Word document open. Here are my top five excuses that I need to get rid of:

1. I have no good ideas. I’m a very harsh judge and definitely my toughest critic. What I think is an awful idea probably isn’t that bad. I always think I need to come up with something extraordinary.

2. I just finished a great story. Don’t I deserve a break? No. No, I don’t deserve a break. When I have millions of dollars from my bestselling novel, then I will take a break. But until then, no. I still use this as an excuse, though.

3. But…but…PINTEREST! I always say I’m only going to look on Pinterest for ten minutes, but it turns into two hours so fast. I really need to start disconnecting my internet during writing time.

4. I need to spend time with my family. This has been my main excuse this summer. I have trouble isolating myself and focusing on writing when my family is downstairs. I try to hang out with my family as much as I can when I’m home on vacation, because I know I’ll miss them when I go back to school.

5. The story is an unsalvageable train wreck that makes me want to yank fistfuls of my hair out every time I look at it. It’s an unfortunate day in the neighborhood when this happens. I usually power through it, though, with the help of brightly colored pens and coffee.

What's your favorite excuse? And how do you overcome it?

Friday Five! Top Five Books of my Year (so far)

I'm resurrecting the Friday Five, and what better way to start than with some fantastic books? Here are my five favorite books I've read so far this year.

1. Please Ignore Vera Dietz – A.S. King

This is a Printz Award Honor Book, and I usually make a point to read the books associated with this award because they almost always wind up being my favorites (See: Looking for Alaska by John Green). I was not disappointed. Vera Dietz is a high school senior whose best friend, Charlie, has just died under mysterious circumstances. Oh yeah, she was also in love with him, but then he betrayed her and ditched her for the slacker crowd. Vera knows what happened the night Charlie died, more than she told the police, anyway. She spends the story struggling with whether or not to clear his name of the accusation pinned on him after his death. Vera is such a great character, flawed and real, and I love the back-and-forth points of view in the story (Vera, her dad, even some tidbits from Charlie, “The Dead Kid” and the Pagoda, the town’s flashy landmark). Get your hands on this one, people! Sidenote, the author lives in Reading, which is practically right down the road from me!

2. Wanderlove – Kirsten Hubbard

I have a hardcore crush on Kirsten Hubbard’s writing style. I’m a huge fan of her debut, Like Mandarin, and I’d been dying to get my hands on Wanderlove for about a year before it was released in March. It’s a travel story based in Central America (Hubbard is the Central America travel writer for About.com) and stars eighteen-year-old Bria Sandoval, fresh out of high school and searching for adventure. She gave up drawing after her ex-boyfriend Toby criticized her work, and now she’s ready for no-strings travel. After she meets backpacker brother and sister Rowan and Starling, she ditches her travel tour group and heads off on an adventure with them. I read this right before going to Africa, and it was exactly what I needed to start my trip with confidence. Hubbard’s love of travel and Central America shines through; the book is stuffed full of beautiful details that only an experienced traveler would know. Funny, romantic, and adventurous.

3. An Abundance of Katherines – John Green

This book had been sitting on my To Be Read shelf for about a year. I started it last September but had to stop when school got busy, so I picked it up again recently and started over. I flew through it this time! Colin is a former child prodigy/anagram expert who has been dumped by nineteen girls, all named Katherine. When Katherine XIX breaks his heart, he takes off on a road trip with his best friend, Hassan, and winds up in Gutshot, Tennessee, working for a woman named Hollis. Colin begins to put together a mathematical theorem of love, believing relationships can be graphed and predicted, and he starts to fall for Lindsey, Hollis’s daughter (who is not ironically named Katherine). In Green’s signature style, the banter and one-liners are hilarious, nerdy, and awesome. Following behind his debut, Looking for Alaska, Katherines is a Printz Honor book.

4. The Fault in Our Stars – John Green

Yes, two John Green books back to back on this list. I have read The Fault in Our Stars (referred to by Green as TFiOS, pronounced tiffy-ose in common speech) twice. Well, one readthrough and one full listen via special-edition audiobook, narrated by Green himself. Before the book was released, he posted YouTube videos of himself reading chapters one and two, and I watched them four or five times each until I bought the book (and you should, too, he’s hilarious). He also autographed every single copy of the book’s first printing (about 120,000 copies), so I now have his autograph! The story is about two teenagers, Hazel and Augustus, living with cancer. Hazel is obsessed with the book An Imperial Affliction and wants to meet the reclusive author who lives in the Netherlands, so Augustus hatches a wild scheme to make it happen. Don’t be scared about the cancer aspect; it’s not your typical cancer book. It’s about the lives and relationship of two people who just happen to have cancer. Yet another solid book by Green.

5. Insurgent – Veronica Roth

Insurgent is the follow up to the addicting bestseller, Divergent, the story of a dystopian Chicago. The city is divided into five factions (Abnegation, Erudite, Amity, Candor, and Dauntless), and at age sixteen, teenagers get to choose whether to stay in the faction they were born into or switch into another. In Divergent, Tris switches into Dauntless from Abnegation, though she really doesn’t belong in either. She is Divergent, and society’s power players don’t like that. Insurgent finds Tris reeling from the events of the first book and searching for a safe haven in the Amity district. A war is approaching, and it is unclear on which side each district (and the factionless, those who were expelled from their faction) will fall. All the while, Tris is dealing with her guilt over her own actions (I don’t want to post spoilers for those who haven’t read Divergent yet) and the secrets she’s keeping from everyone, including Four (one of my favorite YA boys!). Because of Tris’s guilt, which overwhelmed about two-thirds of the book, I found myself not enjoying Insurgent as much as Divergent, but it’s still a solid follow-up, and the secrets revealed at the end have me counting the days until the next book!


What are you reading this summer?

Friday Five: A Writer's Confessions

I know I owe you guys a few Fives, so I thought I'd do something special this week. I talk a ton about books on here, but I decided to switch gears into the writing aspect and share some of my writing habits with you. Non-writers, don't judge too harshly; all writers have their quirks/peculiarities/voices in their heads.

A Writer’s Confessions

1.       I’m really weird about my writing. The more time I spend on a project, the less likely I am to let a ton of people read it. 

2.       I write about the most bizarre things. My latest projects include cliff jumping, suicide by lightning, and trailer parks.

3.       I write down notes for stories everywhere. Post-Its, my endless supply of notebooks (I have about six, and I always forget what notes I wrote down in which notebook), the notes app on my phone (although I just found out about Evernote, and it’s my saving grace), my hand, receipts…

4.       I’m more productive in the evening, which usually means I get no sleep. I’m either typing away on my laptop or sitting up in bed every five minutes, jotting down a note in one of my many note-taking accessories (see #3)

5.       I write out of order. It drives me insane and usually makes me want to bash my head into the wall, but I do it anyway. If a scene pops into my mind, I have to write it immediately. This means I usually wind up with gaping holes all through my story, and the process of filling in those holes is akin to pulling out your teeth one by one.

What about you other writers? Any weird habits or methods?

Friday Five...gotta love those YA boys!

Two weeks ago I picked my favorite YA girls, so now it's the boys' turn!

Top Five Favorite YA Boys

1. Wes Baker (The Truth About Forever): He’s my number one Sarah Dessen boy. He’s an artist—making sculptures out of scrap metal—who works at his aunt’s catering company. Wes looks at things differently; he’s super insightful and doesn’t believe in being perfect.
   
   
2. Jace Wayland (The Mortal Instruments series): Perhaps my favorite bad boy in all of YA. He’s sarcastic, gorgeous, AND he hunts demons. Not to mention, he’s a tortured soul. Does it get much better?
   
   
3. Jonah Griggs (Jellicoe Road): He’s the Cadet leader in the territory wars and the boy who Taylor Markham (the MC) ran away from Jellicoe with at age fourteen to try and find her mom. He’s not afraid of a fight and has a tough exterior due to a violent childhood. Everyone says he killed his father, but no one knows the full story.
   
   
4. Eli Stock (Along for the Ride): He used to be a professional BMX biker. Now he’s a loner and insomniac who works at a bike shop but never rides. He helps Auden on her quest to experience everything she missed as a child, all while trying to deal with a tragedy of his own.
   
   
5. Joe Fontaine (The Sky is Everywhere): Joe is literally the sun. He constantly smiles, makes goofy comments, and falls head over heels for Lennie (the MC). He’s a musical genius, able to play the guitar, trumpet, and clarinet. A heart-on-his-sleeve guy is harder and harder to find in YA, and Joe just gives me butterflies!

Friday Five: Spotlight

I decided this Friday Five is going to be my top five books that, when I gush about them to people, they go, "Hmm...I haven't heard of that one." Which is ridiculous, because these five books are AMAZING and give me writer's butterflies. So check out this list, and then check out the books. Over the next week or so, I'll be doing more in-depth reviews of them.

1. The Sky is Everywhere (Jandy Nelson): After the death of her older sister, Bailey, Lennie is torn between two boys. Joe is lighthearted and endlessly optimistic, helping Lennie remember how to be happy. Toby, Bailey’s boyfriend, seems to be the only one who understands her grief. Lennie struggles to choose her path: let her sister’s memory rest and move on, or refuse to pack away any of Bailey’s belongings and feel like she’s—almost—still here.
   
   
2. Like Mandarin (Kirsten Hubbard): Fourteen year old Grace would give anything to be like Mandarin Ramey, the town wild child. When Grace is assigned to assist Mandarin with a school project, they develop a dangerous friendship, complete with skinny-dipping in the canal, stealing the town’s animal head trophies, plotting to run away to California. At first, Grace believes their friendship is magic, but she slowly realizes that Mandarin has an alternate agenda. And Grace just may fall victim to a betrayal.
   
   
3. Jellicoe Road (Melina Marchetta): For as long as anyone can remember, the students at the Jellicoe boarding school have engaged in a territory war with the Townies and the Cadets (city boys in a summer exercise training program). Taylor Greer is the reluctant leader of the Jellicoe school. She’s erratic, with minimal people skills and little desire for friends. She’s more preoccupied with the mysterious dreams she’s having about a boy in a tree, and the not-so-fictional story her guardian, Hannah, wrote about five kids in Jellicoe. The last thing she needs is to negotiate with the leaders of the other territory war factions, especially since the Cadet leader is Jonah Griggs, the boy she ran away with at age fourteen in search of the mother who abandoned her at a 7-11 years earlier. The boy who betrayed her trust. And on top of everything else, Hannah has disappeared, leaving Taylor to unravel her past alone. 
4. Fall For Anything (Courtney Summers): Eddie Reeves wants to know why her photographer father committed suicide. No one wants to talk about it—her mother is borderline catatonic; her mother’s annoying friend, Beth, has moved in to take care of her; and her best friend Milo refuses to tell her what he remembers about the night her father died. Then she meets Culler Evans, one of her father’s photography students who seems to have the answers she seeks. She and Culler embark on a wild scavenger hunt, searching for the scenes in her father’s photographs, hoping to learn the truth.
   
   
5. Shine (Lauren Myracle): Cat comes out of her self-imposed exile after her former best friend, Patrick, is the victim of a vicious hate crime. She takes it upon herself to fill in the holes that the police don’t seem to care about and begins interrogating townsfolk. She winds up discovering more than she bargains for, from crystal meth labs to secrets about her own brother and his friends. The town—intolerant and gossipy—is a character in itself, almost working against Cat as she tries to unravel the truth.
   *I already reviewed Shine, so click here if you want to learn more.

The Friday Five!

Top Five Favorite YA Girls

1.   Alaska Young (Looking for Alaska): The girl down the hall who makes Pudge fall in love. She’s vibrant, free-spirited, hilarious and self-destructive. She breaks stereotypes, a party girl who loves books and deep conversations. Mood swingy, raw, edgy, and real. I’m pretty sure everyone who reads this book has a crush on her and/or wants to be her.
   
   
2. Taylor Markham (Jellicoe Road): The reluctant leader of her boarding school in the territory wars, Taylor has battled all sorts of demons since her mother abandoned her at a 7-11 at age eleven. She puts up walls and a tough exterior, when inside, all she wants is to piece together the novel—which may turn out to be more reality than fiction—that Hannah, her guardian, wrote before disappearing.
   
   
3. Hannah Baker (Thirteen Reasons Why): She commits suicide before the beginning of the novel, but she leaves cassette tapes behind, each side designated to one person—one reason why she was driven to suicide. These tapes make their way to each of the thirteen people. Hannah’s narration, while sad, is witty, sarcastic, and blunt, as real as it gets.
   
   
4. Auden West (Along for the Ride): She quit sleeping because her parents wouldn’t fight if they knew she was awaken. Now, even after their divorce, she can’t shake the insomnia. So she launches herself into this quest to do all the things she missed out on during her childhood and teen  years—grocery shopping at night, going to a club, learning to ride a bike. She’s book smart and practical, and throughout her quest she learns to have fun and be a teenager.
   
   
5. Mandarin Ramey (Like Mandarin): The “town slut” that fourteen-year-old Grace desperately wants to be like. Carefree and wild, Mandarin wants to escape Washokey, Wyoming, and passes the time by tossing animal-head trophies into the river and skinny dipping in the canal. Though she does poorly in school, she is street smart and manipulative, convincing Grace to accompany her on all her crazy schemes.

The Friday Five!

It's Friday! To celebrate, I'm starting a new series on this blog: The Friday Five (a la Sarah Dessen). Every Friday, I'll post a fun list of top fives relating to books/writing/random things if I can't think of anything better.

So here's the kickoff post: Top Five Fictional Characters I'd Love To Live Next Door To

1. Alaska Young (Looking for Alaska): Truthfully, I’d probably be a little terrified of her, since she’s impulsive and self-destructive and a full-time smoker (aka everything I’m not). But she’d drag me out of my dorm to find some mischief, which I need more of. Plus we could swap books since we both have massive collections. I would insist on driving everywhere, though; her “breaks optional” mentality would send me into heart failure.
   
   
2. Magnus Bane (The Mortal Instruments): A sarcastic warlock with the most ostentatious wardrobe choices ever. He’s been throwing the greatest parties for the past few hundred years, which would probably keep me up all night since I’d be living next door. So of course I’d have to attend them! Although I’m not sure what I’d wear. Maybe he’d let me borrow his glitter…
   
   
3. Wes Baker (The Truth About Forever): Because I’m convinced he’s perfect.
   
   
4. Mia Thermopolis (The Princess Diaries series): She’s funny and slightly awkward (my type of friend). Plus she’s a princess and could give me rides to the mall in a limo and invite me to VIP functions like the next Royal Wedding. And no one would ever mess with us because her bodyguard would break their faces.
   
   
5. The Weasleys (Harry Potter series): Okay, so this is technically more than one person, but I don’t care. The Weasleys just give off this cozy vibe (maybe it’s the red hair and homemade sweaters), and I just want to eat dinner at the Burrow every night. And to have my own Weasley sweater.