The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Ancient Greece is an intriguing subject from the present day perspective, but this novel brings their cultural ideals and ethics into knife bright clarity.

Beauty is terror.

Told from the point of view of an outsider, the plot follows a collection of college students and their mission to replicate ancient rituals of transcending everyday life and morals. The protagonist does not hesitate to follow them and their charming professor into oblivion.

Heavily researched, yet the plot and characters are constantly moving. The narrator is also one of the most passive protagonists I’ve read. His journey is fascinating in the way an insect being washed down a drain is, an inevitability to the viewer but not necessarily to the insect. The writing itself is highly detailed while still being readable.

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The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater

raven king

I’ve been waiting for this one.

Maggie Stiefvater is one of my favorite authors, and this was the last book in her Raven Cycle series. Reviews of the first three books can be found just about anywhere on the Internet. Some of these blatantly worship her work, and I’m not sure I disagree.

As the last book in a series that’s been so well received, there was a lot to live up to. A satisfying climax, ending, and all the middle bits, were needed. Let me just say that Maggie Stiefvater delivers.

First, the middle bits.

The characters. Oh my goodness, the characters in this book are real. They were fleshed out and completely believable in the previous books, with bad coping mechanisms and earned relationships, but The Raven King made them real people. Gansey, as one brilliant example of many, has been shown to have many sides to him: Richard Campbell Gansey III, Gansey the scholar, Gansey the boy, Gansey on fire. In the past, he’s been both in control and hopelessly lost, a confident leader and a constant doubter. The Raven King took him to another level. He’s grown as the series has gone on, and he’s real enough to do so while also remaining immature in some ways, a treasure hunter hero that tires of his work and its wonders. He’s a thousand year old teenager.

Gansey is just one example. Not only do we get further characterizations of Blue and her raven boys, we also get perspectives of new characters. These people, particularly Artemis and Gwenllian, make the world real. They make it obvious that Maggie Stiefvater has built a bigger world than can be explored in one series. It is a world full of magic and rules and magical rules that are revealed with mistakes and guesses and last ditch chances. And that world is nothing short of wonder-ful.

Let’s move on to the ending.

Expectations were high. There’s a lot of ways this story could have gone and lots of hints of direction from various readers and even Maggie herself.

Oftentimes, you want closure when a book ends. Maggie delivers that, but it’s also open in a way that lets readers fill in the blanks. It’s less of Maggie telling us where they go from here and more of her asking us. There’s satisfying closure after the climax, followed by the best kind of ending.

And the climax.

We knew this was coming. Whether or not you follow Maggie on social media, picking up all the hints, blatant and otherwise, you knew this was coming. So much so that it seems like foreshadowing was invented for this book series. That, or Maggie Stiefvater has taken it to some other level. Extreme foreshadowing. One of the best part of the Raven Cycle is rereading them. Every plot twist, every relationship, every part of the Raven King was foreshadowed. I can only imagine the amount of planning and outlining and editing that Maggie had to do to pull it all off, and I can only study the series in order to achieve something similar in my own writing. I would encourage any and all writers to read it, to study it, and to take its lessons, content- and structure-wise, to heart.

Too long; didn’t read? It’s so good guys. Read the whole series. Then read it again.

 

 

 

 

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The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

I don’t know why it’s taken so long for me to read this! “The Handmaid’s Tale” is often considered a classic, in dystopian and in feminist literature. Margaret Atwood is a god, as we already know, and this is a fantastic example of her writing prowess. Structured as a sort of diary on past events, we follow a narrator without a true name. Women in her position, Handmaids, are named after their Commanders. This one is called Offred, others bare the names Ofglen and Ofwarren. In a book where women are strictly defined by the men they serve, there are plenty of other examples of dystopian elements. This makes for a fully realized, and fully disturbing, world. Other women serve as Marthas, handling the household, while others are simply Wives, married to Commanders but unable to bare children. They, and their society, rely on the Handmaids for reproduction. And everywhere, are the Eyes.

This book reminded me of two others: “1984” by George Orwell and “The Red Tent” by Anita Diamant. Both of which I would highly recommend. “The Handmaid’s Tale” has a watching government like the former, only it directly adds religion to the ruling party. There’s no separation of Church and State, and there’s no escape when they found out what you’ve done. In a world of restrictions, there’s always something. As for “The Red Tent” relation, this is also a woman’s story, untwisted in a society that usually twists the narrative towards the male viewpoint. Also, both draw from a story in Genesis, of Jacob’s wives and their lives.

“The Handmaid’s Tale” is a classic, exploring these subjects and others within its pages, but what makes it unforgettable is Atwood. Her voice, with a tendency towards poetic prose, is clear and constant throughout. And the ending, a future view of this futuristic view, is both inspired and inspiring. For a writer, this is a must-read for lessons on voice and structure, among most other aspects of writing.

Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.

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The Smell of Other People’s Houses by Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock

I read this book in one sitting, staying up a few extra hours to finish it. It was worth it. Although I’ve never been to Alaska, nor been a teenager in the 1970’s, Hitchcock presented those realities vividly. So much so that I was crying over four fictional teenagers. These characters’ lives are harsh and convoluted, but they are intricately woven together by the end of the novel. (A character list and map before the first chapter both come in handy, but I was often too engrossed in the story to confirm the connections I suspected.) Each one of the characters has something to overcome, to reach for, and those desires are made real for the reader throughout the book. There’s tragedy and love and the tragedy of too much love taken away too soon, as if it’s not always too soon. This book reads like poetry, in concept and conception. And each of the dividing pages, marking the passing seasons, features a poem. Overall, I would recommend this book to everyone I know. It’s short. It’s beautiful. It’s meticulously plotted and written. And I’ll be ordering my own copy as soon as I can.

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Binge Writing

“Binge” is a strange word. It means to indulge in excess and is usually associated with eating disorders. But it’s also become a common phrase to describe how college students watch Netflix. Binge-watching. I think everyone does this to a certain degree (oh for those days before Netflix!), but some people even take excess to the extreme. They watch whole series of shows in two days. They don’t sleep. They don’t eat. And they certainly don’t shower.

But what does this have to do with writing?

Authors are often seen as strange creatures that write at all hours of the night, finishing books in a matter of weeks. But that’s not realistic. And I know I can’t do that.

I can’t focus all my energy on one task for that long. I can’t work until I’m done. This is partly because I need to do some writing in my head. That is, let my  ideas develop over time and solve the inevitable problems that come with novel writing (like when your character would never do the one thing that would move the plot forward; it’s all about believable motivation!)

My other reason for not being a draft-in-a-month writer is because they don’t really exist. No novel is built in a month, not without the author needing triple that time to recover. Novel writing is time consuming and frustrating and practically endless (there’s always something you could change, even after publication). People can binge-watch Netflix because there’s no effort involve. Whereas writing is a whole lot more than putting words on paper (or a Word document).

Still, some people try to write all at once and get discouraged when it doesn’t work. Not only that, but they’re also kind of a wreck. No sleeping, eating, or showering would make a poor writer of anyone. Yes, even Stephen King. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, after all.

So yes, work hard. Try to write every day. But don’t push yourself too hard. Don’t worry about how long it takes. The publishing industry is always slower anyway.

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Characters as Universes

I have a motto in life. It’s an oldy but a goody: Treat everyone the way you’d like to be treated. Variations of this phrase have popped up over time in religious tomes and etsy quote books. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to follow. I struggle, as most people do, with imagining myself as other people. However, this kind of empathy is essential for human interaction, not to mention writing believable characters, and I try to take it a step further too.

I can attempt to put myself in other people’s shoes, but I’d still be seeing things from my point of view. This is because it’s impossible to actually be in someone else’s head, to fully understand them and their experiences. Every person on earth is simultaneously fathomable and unfathomable to every other person on earth. The way I understand it is that each individual is their own universe. Humans may be connected through the commonality of being highly intelligent, highly social mammals, but every one of us is different in both major and subtle ways. We each contain vast galaxies, most of them unseeable to the rest of the earth. This is how I try to interact with others. This is how I try to write characters. With individual nuances and stars and quirks and comets.

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How travel improves your writing

There are two ways to know yourself: expression and travel. Introspection can also be helpful, but too much tends to be detrimental. You can never travel too much or express yourself too much. Expression is often easier, cheaper at least, and can vary from writing to painting to flower arranging to designing buildings. Talking is another option, but just about everybody does that. Expression can force you to see the thoughts/feelings you’ve been hiding from yourself. It can also reveal how you see and interact with the world. Travel, on the other hand, is more about testing yourself. Travel forces you to see how others see and interact with the world. And in doing so, can change your thoughts/feelings. Traveling is also about knowing yourself through others. This is possible because of a shared experience, that human condition everyone likes to go on about.

But how are expression and travel connected? Sure, as social creatures, we have to live with others of our species and try not to kill one another (which we’re not great at). But by traveling, we take it one step further. We start gaining empathy. Everyone has at least a little empathy (unless they were raised by wolves…) and that allows us to get along. But to actually know and understand others, we have to work for it. And that is what traveling, being around different people with different customs and views, forces us to do. And because empathy is essential to writing believable characters, traveling can and will improve your writing. (It also doesn’t hurt to write believable settings. Which means of course you have to go to Hawaii in order to write about it. Better stay for a few weeks to really capture that island breeze.)

 

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The Dos and Don’ts of Procrastination

The Dos and Don’ts of Procrastination

It should be noted that most of these will be writing-focused, but feel free to insert your own procrastinated hobbies (uni-cycling, bowling, the possibilities are endless)

Do be aware of when you’re procrastinating. We all know you really didn’t need to clean your room today.

Don’t acknowledge your procrastination so much that you further it by writing about it on your blog. Oops.

Do be productive in other parts of your life while procrastinating your writing. For example, do your homework for once. Better yet, do something to improve your hobby, like reading for writing, or bicycling for uni-cycling (that’s almost the same, right?)

Don’t stop everything. Lying in bed when you should be bowling will only improve your dream team.

Do plan ahead. This goes along with being aware of your procrastination. Plan when you’ll get that writing/homework/uni-cycling done.

Don’t plan every second. If you know it takes you about 3 hours to do a homework assignment, don’t plan to do it exactly 3 hours before it’s due.

Do rely on friends. If their work-in-progress was finished last week, it might force you into rustling up some inspiration.

Don’t rely on the Internet. It will suck you into a black hole from which there is no return. The Internet is the antithesis of productivity.

Do allow yourself to procrastinate. It’s only human, and quality of work is often better than quantity. It’s okay to take a break to recharge your muse/fix your sleeping schedule/inflate your uni-cycle tire.

Don’t whine about how you can’t stop procrastinating. We would all like to watch cat videos on the Internet for all time, but there’s work to be done.

That’s all for now. If you didn’t figure it out, I have some writing to do.

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Being back at Saint Mary’s means that I have to actually write for other people again. Namely, through homework. However, I’ve also been given the chance to write for HerCampus, an international online journal for college women. I’ll be writing for the Saint Mary’s chapter, and I can’t wait to get started. I’ll also be continuing to edit my novel (one day I might even finish it). Both of these will be fun, and I’ll have most, if not all, of the control over them. But I also have a 25 page paper due by the end of the semester.

That would be for my Senior Seminar in Psychology class. I am a psych major, despite my penchant for creative writing, and this class must be completed before I graduate. The problem here isn’t that I don’t have control over it (it can be about anything as long as it draws on psychology, a previous student wrote about King Henry VIII’s Oedipus complex), but that I don’t know what to write about. The class gives me too many options. Now I want to do the research on writing or on authors or on reading. I could use psychology to explore any of these. But if I want to go to grad school, I need to focus on what I would study there, something neuroscience related. It would be easy enough to do it on a mental disorder, or on stress. I could even use what I learned this summer at Mayo. But the professor kept going on about writing what you’re passionate about and being excited enough to even continue the research after the paper is done. And truly, the only thing that I’m passionate enough to write 25 pages about is writing.

Still, I’ll probably end up being a good student and preparing for grad school (if I go) in the right way. And I better decide on that topic now because I have plenty more writing to do this semester. Which isn’t such a bad thing…. 🙂

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Writing before breakfast is something I’ve done since I first started writing. Instead of jump starting my metabolism in the morning, I jump started my brain. I credit it to the Alice in Wonderland quote “Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast”. It’s about waking up and being creative right away, being in the impossible before being in reality.

Another reason to write before breakfast, for me at least, is because I’m not very time-oriented. And the rest of the world is, especially the U.S. Here we keep time on our wrists, instead of having time on our hands. We like to be busy.

I stay busy too. I have to, even if I’m incapable of not being late. So writing before breakfast is saving time away from the rest of my day, when I have to rush along with the rest of the population. It’s good for me, to get started when I’d rather stay in bed. But there’s still no guarantee that my day won’t start until 2 p.m. I’m a night owl, after all. And after being busy all day with everyone else, I don’t have the energy to write all night. Although that does happen.

Occasionally.

…

Okay, often.

…

3 a.m. is still before breakfast.

The point is, my goal is to be motivated to write every day. And to do that, I need to start the day write.

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A Blank Page

I was that girl who read in the back of the class. I didn’t talk to you and you didn’t talk to me. And I liked it that way. I would read through lessons and study halls, even rides to school. When I deserved it, my parents used to punish me by taking away my book, exposing me to the reality of the world and other people. I’ve become slightly more social over the years, but the reading is still stuck fast. I’m certain that it will never go away completely, this scholastic disease of mine.

I didn’t mind being terminal, but a change came when I went to college. I started to write. I’d written a little over the years, trying to keep a diary or compose short stories. I never had the patience for it when I was younger. But in college, I had all this free time. I didn’t need to worry about homework (all the time) or doing chores (most of the time… apologies to my freshman roommate). So, I wrote. I wrote a novel about telepathy and a secret island and a bitter and blonde villain.

It was great.

It also sucked.

Pretty bad.

Oblivious, I sent it to agents anyway, writing my query letter from the point of view of my protagonist (big mistake) and waited for it to be published (bigger mistake). This was during my sophomore year because I had dawdled in writing during that first draft. And it took the three long months of summer to accept defeat. However, I started writing my second novel fall of that year.

I was in Ireland, studying abroad. (You can read about my experiences at irishiwastraveling.wordpress.com) I was distracted by the new culture and my travels and the weeknight bar trips. Still, I wrote and wrote and wrote. I’m about done with that book now, just editing. It’s about murder and guilt and siblings and the CIA. I’ll probably send it to agents sometime this fall after making sure it’s the best it can be.

But, this is also my senior year in college. That means the adult world, the one I’ve wanted to enter since junior high, is calling. I’m not sure how long I can avoid the ringing, but it’ll be deafening by graduation next May. And although I’m majoring in psychology and I just completed a fabulous internship at the Mayo Clinic, I want to be a writer. And this desire has to coexist with reality. And reality, also known as the adult world, is where I have to pay off my student loans, get a proper job, and try not to have existential crises.

It’ll be great.

So, I’m avoiding that for now. If I get published sometime this year, I’ll pursue a writing career as long as I can. This blog is for tracking my progress or failure (we’ll see how it all turns out) and for maybe posting some writing/writing questions/writing whatever. Hope you enjoy!!

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