Wednesday, October 29, 2014

oh, the writing? it's slow-going, but it's going

Some writing motivation for this week: 

Despair has never achieved anything, and it never will. 
Dream, writerly friend. Dream. Imagine your stories, and your art, out in the world touching the hearts of countless— but do not expect the universe to bring these to you. Pair your hope with your courage, and you will make your dreams a reality.



Off to work! :0)

Monday, October 20, 2014

Book Review: Shadow and Bone

Fair warning: this post contains fangirl moments over Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo, the first of the Grisha trilogy by Leigh Bardugo. If fangirling gives you a massive headache, walk away now.

Otherwise, OMG THIS BOOK!!



The Story

Set in an alternate ancient Russia, in a place called Ravka, the story opens with a boy and a girl, both orphans adopted by Duke Keramsov before being posted to different vocations: Alina a cartographer, Mal a tracker/hunter. They live in a country that is constantly under siege by Fjerdans from the north, and Shu Hans from the south, and there's this thing called the Fold that the Darkling and his men have to cross on their voyage across the Unsea. There, bird-like beasts called the Volcra feast on human flesh. The inciting moment is when Alina is taken across the fold and manages to save those on board with her once-dormant power of light.

The Darkling, by the way, is the leader of the Grisha (the magical elite) who is trying to wrestle for power from the passive king and rule all the land. He finds use for Alina, who is revealed to be the Sun Summoner, the one who can drive the Volcra away and ensure the safe crossing of the Fold. Alina is taken under the Darkling's wing and hailed as the new hope for the people of Ravka.

But as she is taken deeper into the world of the Grisha, Alina uncovers more secrets and is forced to question her loyalties to the Darkling.


The Pacing

The first 60 percent of the book was kind of forgettable, and more than once I questioned where this was all leading up to. The flirty little moments between the Darkling and Alina, where the latter is lured by the promise of power and affection (things that had been denied to her when she was an adopted orphan), the lessons Alina had to go through, the petty politics of the court, where Alina was the subject of gossip and underhanded attacks by a jealous Grisha girl. I was ready for Alina to stop whining about how pathetic she was physically and get on with honing her powers already.

But then: PLOT TWIST PLOT TWIST PLOT FRIGGING TWIST!

Only it came about 100 pages too late. I would've liked things to move a little quicker, especially around the first 60 percent or so of the book. I took three weeks to read this book because I gave up on it halfway and moved on to other books. But once you survive till 65 percent or so, you will be glued to the page. There, I didn't give anything away, did I?


The Writing

I wasn't really a fan of the prose at the beginning. There were just too many I's in the sentences, and after a while I was like, Vary your sentence structure, pleeeease!

Case in point:

And lest you think this is typical of first-person narrative (I know people who scoff at first-person POV), it's not. There are a lot of writers whose writing feels natural even in first-person.

But then you've got moments like these:





And it's just,

 photo fangirling 2_zpsjrqtkyqf.gif

 photo mishaincoherentfangirling_zps1198f4ab.gif

Sentence structure what??


The Romance

Um, need I say more? Malina (Mal + Alina) is endgame. (I peeked at the end of the last book), and that makes me happy *insert cheesy grin*


So I can get past the excessive use of I's and rote reporting of events, because OH YES THIS IS HOW YA FANTASY SHOULD BE DONE.

And the good news is: books two and three await.



Happy Monday! Hope you're lost in a good book too :0)

Friday, October 17, 2014

Fiction Friday - Night Siege




That evening, we knew something was wrong when the night birds didn't fly our way.

It was the third full moon of the year, so Kayla and I joined the older girls in sneaking out to see the night birds, the way we had been doing for three springs now. Parents knew about their girls stealing up to shore to watch the silent beasts sail across the skies, and did all they could to deter us.

"Don’t trust anything with wings," was what our father told us. They were thieves, every one of them. They stole your trust, and then your magic. Finally, they stole you.

Still, the horror stories they told us about the winged creatures couldn't kill their allure.

Besides, the birds – a motley assortment of jays, eagles, hawks, and albatrosses – had never once tried to harm us. Even when they landed on the shore and shook out their wings and transformed into tall, strapping young men with eyes that flashed like lightning under the moonlight.

The older girls would whisper and giggle over the one with the strong jaw, or the one with the dimpled smile, while Kayla and I shared a glance that contained all the words the older girls were saying. At fourteen and sixteen, we still blushed at the sight of the men.

I knew my sister's gaze lingered on one of them in particular: the tawny eagle with driftwood-brown feathers. She would watch it fold its wings around itself before, in a ripple of stardust and moonshine, turning into a young man just slightly older than Kayla.

The first person I noticed, though, was the boy. He was barely a man yet the first time I saw him, a wiry stranger significantly younger than the rest. The boy – Eylar was his name – stood out from the rest with his sleek, downy feathers the colour of sun-bleached bones. The sea eagle. Each year, he filled out more and more, body taking on harder, leaner lines. His gaze became keener, as did the planes of his face, and his shock of coppery-red hair darkened into a deep russet tone. But there was wonder in his eyes, and laughter in his voice that made me think of milky skies and jewel waters.

They were soldiers from the north, I gathered, who stopped by the deserted beach on their way to the sea-ravaged eastern islands, which were inhospitable at best and perilous at worst. None of us knew what they did there. They went deep into the dark heart of the forest with their crude metal weaponry (that Father always scoffed at) and disappeared for several moonrises until they took to their wings again and headed back north.

Once, Kayla and I decided to follow them. We stole away from the other girls and tailed the soldiers into the forest, pushing through the wall of trees blackened by night.

They kept a brisk pace, navigating their way through the tangled undergrowth with practiced ease, while Kayla and I stumbled along in their wake, waking the forest with our ungainly steps. But we had gone mostly unheard and ignored.

We traipsed for what seemed like an entire moon cycle, finally coming to a stop in a clearing. There, the soldiers gathered around a pile of rocks as tall as them. Light glowed from the spaces in the rubble like a trapped sun.

It took me a longer time than Kayla to understand what they were doing.

"Thieves," Kayla hissed, sounding very much like Great-Aunt Basil, who had lost her husband in the last border war. "They've been coming here all this time to steal earth magic."

I wanted to tell her that magic didn't belong to anyone, not to the earth creatures or to us, the sea children. But the last time I suggested that to Father, he had laughed in a way that made me feel like I was five years old again.

We never told our parents what we saw in that clearing.


*


Tonight, the birds didn't come. The sky was bruised and barren with wanting.

The girls and I held out out for a break in the clouds, a ripple in the air from their silent wingbeats. When it became increasingly certain that the birds weren't coming, the older girls got bored and slunk back into the inky water, making a grudging splash with their tails.

Kayla tugged on my hand. "Come on, Amber. They’re not coming."

I stayed where I was, half-hidden by a rock on the warm sand. With the other girls gone, the water became black glass again. Water lapped at us, eager to take us home, but all I could think of was that pure white plumage.

Kayla gave my hand another tug, and I almost let her. But as Kayla disappeared beneath the surface with a soft splash, a solitary shadow loomed overhead. It cut through the clouds, a blot in the sky, its wings reflecting the pearly moonlight.

I couldn't move even if I tried.

He was half-human by the time he landed on the beach, his feet slipping onto the sand as though he weighed nothing. He folded his wings behind his back, and I recognised that shock of russet-brown hair.

He was alone tonight. Without the rest, he seemed out of place this close to the sea, like an errant sky creature breaking rank. Maybe he was.

Kayla voice at my ear made me jump. "Why’s he the only one here?"

Before I could tell her to hide, Eylar had spotted us. Maybe he had already found us from afar. But the time he closed the distance between us, he had shifted to human form completely. There was a newfound, inhuman grace that now sat within him. He was no longer the sinewy boy I had first caught sight of among the armoured men, but a man himself.

A chill snaked down my back, and I didn't think it was due to the night breeze. I tried to focus on his gaze, not on the firm set of his shoulders.

"They are coming for you. All of you." His first words to us were as cold as the steel of his eyes.

"We should go," Kayla said. She had on that look when we stumbled into old crone Helgina’s shipwreck house, like we were better off keeping a wide berth from it.

"Yes, go. Take everyone dear to you and leave while you still can."

The end is coming sooner than you think, Helgina had intoned. No one had believed her – Father had almost driven her out of the border in a pique – but after her public proclamation I'd had recurring dreams of giant hook-beaked birds swooping towards the water, their talons grasping for us.

"Is it true?" I said Eylar now. There was no lie in his eyes, but no warmth either, so different from the wide-eyed boy learning how to wield a sword on the beach.

"Come on, Amber." Kayla gave me a sharp tug. "Let's go home."

"Your home is not safe," Eylar said. "Go to dry land, deep into the forest, another island."

"We will perish there," Kayla snapped. I squeezed her hand.

"Your magic can certainly keep you alive." His voice didn't contain the usual bitterness that the sky people had when they spoke of us, the sea children.

Kayla stuck out her chin. "Well, then. Let them come. The sky children are no match for us."

"They are with the Inferno."

"Fire," Kayla scoffed. The sea was our protection, away from the reaches of earthly elements.

"The Inferno," Eylar corrected. "It is far from your regular fire. It can plunge into the depths of the sea and devastate everything in its path in less time than it takes for a sea storm to brew."

"We have no reason to believe a word you say."

"You don’t," he agreed. "But every second you stand here doubting me, the Indigo Army bears closer."

There were many ways I had envisioned my first encounter with Eylar, but none of them turned out like this. I wished I had never come up to shore tonight.

"Why are you helping us?" I managed to ask.

"This war has nothing to do with you. Besides, there is no glory in winning a dirty fight."

A shriek rent the still air, cutting off Kayla's response. From the south, a firestorm rolled towards us. Unlike Eylar's crew, the incoming flock was a uniform army of brown-grey hawks whose wings were alight with immortal flames.

Father had been right. The winged thieves were always going to be our enemies. They would not stop until they had stolen all our magic.

"Go," Eylar roared, shaking me out of my thoughts. "I can stave them off with the fire" – he gestured at the pile of burning rocks behind him – "but only for so long."

Kayla squeezed my hand. We tore down the beach, but there was only flames burning infernal all around us. Sky beasts tore through the skin of the sea, screaming murder.

Thursday, October 16, 2014

you're either writing or you're not



"The writer writes. The writer writes! THE WRITER WRITES.
Hell with aspiring.
To aspire is to expire."

"... rejection is how you know you're doing the work. Rejection means you're putting words to paper and you're throwing them out there for all the world to see. Rejection is your battle scars: proof of your fight in the arena. Nobody wants to fall down and go boom but falling down and going boom is how you learn not to fall next time. Or at least fall differently."

"I want to be a writer, but.
Stop.
Stop there.
And start writing.
You're either writing, or you're not."




This is just the right kick in the butt I need for today.

Wednesday, October 08, 2014

The Way We Are



We are

Crumpled paper,

Smudgy notes scribbled on palms,

Stoic silence that sinks to the bottom of your feet and fossilises there;

We are a word

Caught in your throat.

We are more than that -

And then not at all.



Thursday, October 02, 2014

I hate to call it writer's block, but...

Trying not to be angsty, but lately I'm feeling really trapped. Like I'm going nowhere with my writing, and I can't seem to get into the proper headspace to work on Neverland. So I keep going back to Blood Promise and Until Morning, tweaking and tinkering in the hopes that something will spring out of that parched, barren wasteland of literary desolation.

... See, that's what I'm talking about. Literary desolation? It's like whatever I write comes out looking garbled and over-dramatic and cliched and ugh just altogether trying too hard.

It's just really frustrating when you want something so badly and you keep trying and trying and nothing seems to work. I can understand if it's just a bad day or two. But what if I can never feel that way about writing again? What else can I do?

Came across this little diary entry I scribbled in my notebook not too long ago, and it seems like I've been feeling this way for far too long.



Now you know how ugly my handwriting is when I'm upset, hmm. But if that's too illegible for you, here's a typeset version:


21 June 2014, 10pm:
I want to give up. It seems like everything I try is useless. But I hate having nothing to show for my efforts, if I give up now. Six years of trying to get published, and although I've published one book since, the dismal sales is demoralising. 
I know people keep saying to press on, to keep at it and one day I'll make it. But how many writers have died in obscurity, how many have had to give up their dream because the obstacles are too many and too impossible to scale? 
All those hours slaving away at a book; all that time spent editing, rewriting, querying; all those hundreds and hundreds of rejection letters. What are they all for? Maybe they are telling me something, one thing: that I'm just not good enough and that I should give up, stop wasting my time. I will never be good enough to join the ranks of the writing superstars - Laini Taylor, Sarah Dessen, Maggie Stiefvater... 
I hate that I'm even thinking of giving up, but maybe I have to. But how do you give up something that gives meaning to your life, without giving up on life itself?

I know, I know. I'm being over-dramatic and morose.

Kristen Lamb weighed in on writer's block in her recent blog post:
Creative people are a lot like tigers. We do a lot of what looks like laying around and warming our bellies in the sunshine. Yet, what we're really doing is powering up because, once we go after that first draft, those words can be more elusive than a gazelle that's doping.
Regular folks who clock in and clock out of jobs in cubicles are grazers. They do the same routine day after day. *munch, munch, munch*. I feel this is often why creative people feel so stifled in these environments. We're tigers stuffed in a non-tiger role.

Grazing. That's exactly what I'm doing. Day in, day out, munch munch munch on sad green grass. I need meat. I need a holiday. Ha!

I read somewhere that people listen to sad songs when they're feeling down in order to seek emotional validation, so here's me turning to Kodaline for some of that.


Sorry about the whining and wallowing. I'm just in a weird funk right now. I'm not usually this mopey, I promise!

Hope your week's going better than mine! :0)