I just want you to know that a man doesn’t have to dictate your life. When I was 17 I had thought I had met the man made for me even though, in the back of my head, I could hear God say “NO!”
I told myself it was nothing and went on feeling that way anyways. I convinced myself that since we had…
How our world should look like.
WHERE’S FORKS WASHINGTON!!!
I kid…
(via randomawesometime)
As a massive fan of both the book and the movie, I love this!
This is why we have the internet.
(Source: theamericankid, via randomawesometime)
Sometimes we get emails that are so good we just can’t keep them to ourselves. This email from Jonny in Brighton is one of those. We post it here with his kind permission.
Dear all at the Office of Letters and Light,
In 2009, prompted by a customer at Borders in Leeds, UK, where I worked at the time, I signed up to NaNoWriMo.org for the first time. Not four days into my time looking around the forums, gathering ideas for my first novel and checking out other people’s synopses, I received some NaNoMail from a Bay Area, CA resident named Kristina Casto who was looking for overseas writing buddies and a chance to share her previous three years’ NaNo experience. We got talking on MSN messenger and shortly after on Skype, and soon realised we had much more in common than we thought. By the time NaNoWriMo 2009 was over, Kristina already had plans to visit me in the UK, and we knew we were looking at something special. (Incidentally, I still want to finish my novel from that year, which involved a religion based around the music of David Bowie. It’ll happen one of these days.)
I am not saying this because I write, I am saying this because I have met so many unique, talented and warm authors through writing.
Smart people say that writing, specifically getting published, is all about promoting yourself. So this means that no doubt, there’s a good bit of competition.
I go onto the NaNoWriMo forums and there is a section where you can promote yourself. So I decide that it’s a good place to start, and what I see isn’t a bunch of “BUY MY STUFF MY BOOK GOT MORE REVIEWS THAN YOURS AND ONLY 26% WERE NEGATIVE YOU DO THE MATH!!” but it’s a ton of “Hey! Come here and swap twitter feeds” or “Have a facebook like page for your writing? Come here and share it so that we can help each other!”
The whole entire thing. Sure there’s the “My NaNo is out!” posts but those are all worded excitedly and politely. And then what people post in responce to that is “OMG! Really? That is so awesome, I’m totally going to check that book out! Congrats!” or “OMG!! You were the one who wrote that? I have that book and love it!” The whole thing is encouragement.
And you know those horror stories about the Editor from Hell? well there’s a bunch of topics related on how to avoid that kind of editor, what you can do to prevent your editor from turning nasty, and different signs of a bad editor. And this isn’t just on the NaNoWriMo forums. This is pretty much every place I’ve been and I’ve been on a lot of websites.
Then there are the author’s personal websites.
Words cannot describe it so I will do my best to find the words to attempt to describe it! Let me just show you examples and hopefully you’ll be able to discover for yourself.
You know that New York Times bestseller “Across the Universe”? If you don’t that’s ok.
I saw it in the book stores a million times and although I enjoy a romance book once in a while, romance in space? Honey, have you seen my book collection? I have no sci-fi books, I’ve tried reading them over and over again but I…just…can’t! It’s the one genera that I usually cannot get through. I only remember two sci-fi books I read all the way through and enjoyed.
So when I saw “Across the Universe” on the bookshelf, with beautiful colors fit for a nebula, and stars glimmering, and two people about to kiss…I passed it over thinking “bummer, the colors are so pretty.”
Then I came across a website. Beth Revis’ website to be exact. (Unless it’s an author I’ve read before, I don’t care who wrote what, if it’s good I’ll read it.) So I go onto http://www.bethrevis.com/ and l just fall in love. Beth (as she likes to be called) is passionate, funny, kind, and willingly shares her world, free stuff, and samples with her readers. And not only that, she just pours resources for aspiring authors on her website. I have favorited pretty much every link she has posted in the “for writers” section.
And so I fell in love with the kind and creative writer behind “Across the Universe”. then I found out she had written “Across the Universe”. I was totally floored. This amazing woman had written a book, to be exact the book I kept on passing over?! I went back and re-read every sample on the website and DANG the woman can write!
So now I’m hoarding my money and spending my computer life on Word and a few websites, bethrevis.com being one of them.
I love writing, and I am constantly encouraged by Beth to keep doing it, and I’ve never met her! Sure the whole “have a good website” moral is there too but I don’t care about that, writers are human! They have such beauty and depth in them! And I am so, so proud to call myself an aspiring author because of men and women like Beth.
And of course there’s the very interactive website of J.K. Rowling. But even on her site the creative human side is radiant. The website is designed after her desk, so you get to rummage through and be a nosy little person and read hilarious things, interesting things and behind the scenes Harry Potter things. And it’s just so much fun!
There are so many others out there but those are the two that I just adore.
Writers are human, and usually find the most beautiful ways to display it. I just love thinking that I’m a part of a group that is so beautiful and so diverse. Sure I’m not published, but heaven knows, the encouragement, imagination and passion that aspiring and published authors is the same. It is just as deep and beautiful no matter how experienced or inexperienced you are.
I just love it, how writers are so willing to open their minds, and take down the walls to their hearts and share them with people. It’s wonderful and nothing less than magical.
NaNoWriMo is going lovely, and weather or not you’re joining the hoards of NaNo-ers I hope that you’re having a lovely start to your November.
I now have a lovely little website that you can check out and join if you want and over run the forums! Woo! Check it out here: http://annamwrites.webs.com/
And while you’re checking out websites check out this amazing contest by the amazing Beth Revis (author of Across the Universe)! http://bethrevis.blogspot.com/2011/10/show-gratitude-for-booksand-win-19.html
That’s pretty much it hahaha.
Ooooh the memories this brings back! Hahah!
(via bethrevis)
Happy Halloween, and Happy Harry Potter day! Let’s raise our glasses to the magic of begging for treats from strangers, and the wonderful world of Harry Potter!
Which brings me to my topic. Harry Potter. No, I don’t really give a crap about Halloween, I care much more about fictional characters, that changed my life and have changed the world.
The book I am indebted to, the book I am most grateful for, hands down is Harry Potter. More specifically, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Especially the start of it. Pure magic.
“Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn’t hold with such nonsense.”
When Harry Potter first came out I wasn’t allowed to read them. Eventually my parents let me watch the movies and then they realized “It’s a book, she’s not going to do anything stupid.”
At this point in time, I was discovering writing and I thought to myself “What if I could write books that could reach people like that?”
And so I kept reading the Harry Potter books. I followed Harry through his first year of Hogwarts, and loyally followed him back for his second, third, fourth and fifth years.
I was thrilled when Harry slipped that sock into the book that Mr. Malfoy gave to Dobby. What a trick! I felt like I won something when Harry discovered that he had some sort of loving family left in Sirius. I was horrified when Voldemort made his most shocking appearance in the end of the fourth book. I cried when Sirius died in the fifth book and congratulated Dobby for his immense loyalty. In the sixth, oooh man, that was a hard one to get through, it really was one of the darkest hours for Harry, and for his readers too. And words can’t touch the adventure that the seventh book took me on! It was….like I said, no words!
After reading or re-reading a Harry Potter adventure, I would do chores around my house pretending that I was earning points for Gryffindor, or suffering detention with Ron and Harry. When I had to study, I would buckle down and in a way that would make Hermione proud.When suffering from a problem I would think back to the books and remind myself that even people like Ron and Harry and Hermione had similar problems too.
Sure they’re just book characters, and sure, I’ll never get my acceptance letter to Hogwarts. But for me, the magic of Harry Potter is real. I carry a bit of it with me wherever I go.
J. K. Rowling is my hero, as a writer and as a human being. She shared the life and magic of Harry with the world.
Although all the Harry Potter books have deeply affected me, I keep on going back to the start of it. My favorite ones are the first and last one, but it’s the Sorcerer’s Stone I keep going back to.
The magic started there. My life changed at the start of that book. The way I write, the way I think, the way I love and laugh, my passions and imagination, all of it gets a fresh breath of air when I open that book.
I feel completely content to say that I’m indebted to J. K. Rowling and the first Harry Potter book. I’m so thankful for the magic that it brought into my life, and for the journey that it’s taken me on.
So happy Halloween. And Happy Harry Potter day all you fellow Potterheads. For us, it’s real.
A quick update!
I’m participating in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month-aka NaNo) this November! I am overly excited about this, and I have a huge adrenaline rush just from thinking about it.
For those of you that don’t know, NaNoWriMo is a free, non-profit event that challenges writers of all sorts to write 50,000 words in a month! I highly recommend this to any writer!
I think that one of the most important things for a writer to learn is how to work under pressure and meet personal and “professional” goals. Also, NaNo is a great time to learn how to take yourself less seriously, and look at writing as enjoyable instead of as a chore.
Every week a pep-talk or two (written by a published author, Brian Jaques, Meg Cabbot are just a few of the many talented people who write the pep-talks) is sent out to encourage writers and to give some tips. You can learn a lot about writing just from those!
Not to mention, the community is fantastic, and really encouraging. You can find people from your area and go to meet-ups and write-ins with them. More often than not, writers come out with some tips, a story and a handful of new friends.
I strongly recommend NaNoWriMo! Check it out and get writing!
(Source: nanowrimo.org)
