This book makes me want to delve into another fantasy project! Leigh Bardugo has a knack for creating vividly imagined worlds, endearing characters with fully fleshed out back-stories, and quiet tension that keeps you flipping the pages way past bedtime. It's not hard to see why she has such a passionate fanbase, or why Six of Crows debuted at number one on the New York Times Bestseller List.
Watching this:
Image from Drama Fever
My Lovely Girl (starring Rain and Krystal) came with mixed reviews. Some said the plot was too slow, and some loved the character development. But it's surprisingly engaging, with the sort of K-drama moments that I love (you know, the ones where the characters don't say a word and the music swells and you just feel all the feels and hear all the unsaid words? It's those moments where you feel yourself falling for a show and start rooting for the characters. Those are the moments I want to create in my stories.)
Plus, Krystal is always a joy to watch.
Girl crush!
Missing this:
Discovering this:
His name is James, and he's the bass guitarist of the Royal Pirates. You're welcome. Listening to this:
It's been two years since they debuted. Can we please start appreciating this under-rated band more already! I've raved about them here on ZALORA Community (yes, unabashed plug here), so I won't say more. Just give them a listen.
Writing this:
Receiving this:
Sigh. Into the Rejection folder this goes. But I am still beyond grateful for the feedback, even if this isn't quite the result I was hoping for.
Nothing like some heartwarming fan mail to lift your spirits and spur you on!
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!
With the preparations for the new house under way, I've been busy packing and getting carried away scrolling through Pinterest for home decor ideas.
You know how you get when you're on Pinterest. You see something pretty, and you pin it, and you find this whole board full of pretty things, and then you follow this board, and pin some other stuff from it, which leads to new boards full of pretty things. Then you pin stuff from that new board, and find more pretty things that lead to new boards. This is how even light gets sucked into black holes.
But look! So much pretty:
Yes, I'm sensing a trend here. But my dad said I'm only allowed to go crazy with the pink for my room. That last one, by the way, is how my room is going to look, except the walls are pinker. And I hope I can find a houndstooth cover seat (how cute is that!).
Excitement over decor choices aside, though, I'm a little bummed about moving out of my grandparents'. I've lived there for practically my whole life, and everything there is familiar to me. The bus routes, the little alleys and shortcuts, how I can just pop downstairs to grab a packet of nuts or batteries or lunch, the lifeguards and old regulars at the pool, the convenience of living so close to town, everything within reach, and how I can walk to the Central Library if I choose to.
Oh, well. This move has been a long time coming, after all. Plus, the new house is really pretty! Guess it'll just take some time to reconfigure my life.
On the writing front, I am miserably behind schedule. I was supposed to finish editing Blood Promise by last Sunday and have my crit partner read it this week. But I'm only at page 280 of 331 (yes, I hacked away 17 ENTIRE PAGES, about 4250 words - I am terrifyingly long-winded). By this week, I promise!
By the way, book review of Fangirl and The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender to come after I'm done with Blood Promise! Meanwhile, here's a dreamy piece from Joe Hisaishi to tide you through the week:
This week's flash fiction is a result of this song - White Doves, by Cider Sky:
and this prompt:
*
Monster Memory
It takes a monster to kill a monster.
But no matter how many monsters she fought, there was one
she could never slay. The one that grew stronger inside her the more kills she
racked up. Monsters came in various forms, but there was none quite as scary as
the one that looked back at her in the mirror.
You mustn't grow a
conscience, was what they said when she decided to join the Creed. It's bad for business.
But she couldn't stop the third party – unwelcome or not –
from settling in her gut. It was an occupant that would turn the house inside
out and leave muddy footprints all over the floor, but even this beat the
emptiness that lived there before.
As she slipped through the desolate night into the target's
house, she wondered if she was right in taking on this assignment.
Stop thinking like
that, she chided herself. She had been a shivering, bloody mess reaching,
grasping for support when they first found her. And it was the killing – the
single-minded focus of ridding the world of evil, evil that she had had to
encounter – that nursed her back to health; it was the killing that made her
stronger than she had ever been before.
Why then was she shuffling her feet around this mark? Was it
the file of sketches she found in his study, the one that called to mind the quiet
melody of a piano filling a room, the low, gentle voice next to her ear, a
warm, dry hand that smoothed the hair off her face? Whatever it was that raked
up these fragmented sensations, it made her inch towards the room at the end of
the hallway with an uncertainty that was as bewildering – disorientating – as it was atypical.
Even monsters had memories. What did it say about her that
she recalled nothing of her life before she joined the Creed?
She shook her head hard, shoving the thoughts back into the
store cupboard of her mind. Memories are
dangerous things, they said. They get
in the way of the job.
The doorknob was loose. It jiggled in her hand. She froze,
not because of her less than perfect entry, but because of the sudden draught.
All the windows were closed.
She had seen things, many things, terrible things, as a
result of this job. The violence she witnessed was what conditioned her hand,
froze her heart, and drew her further and further away from herself. But here
in this sparsely furnished room, where moonlight collected into a concentrated pool
on a mounted canvas in the corner, what greeted her wasn't a sight that made
her killing a gratuitous act.
There was no mark. No ugliness, no violence, nobody. Only the barren shell of a home
abandoned by its occupants, and the pure blank canvas on which the moon made
its art.
She stood in the middle of the room like a soldier stranded
without an order. Memories surged in to
fill the void, seizing her by waves, driving her to her knees. And there she
remained, splayed out. Played out.
When she saw him, a luminous spectre in the moonlight, she got
to her feet and whipped out the knife from her shoe in a practised move. But the
sight of him turned her to sand. Her knees barely supported her; even her voice
came out as a rasp, raw and scraped dry.
"You were dead." She couldn't remember his name. She wouldn't.
Even though everything was starting to come back to her. All
the times she had spent in his room, dreaming and laughing and loving, loving,
loving him. Until one day, there was no one left to love anymore. Her dreams
died along with him that day, and she had never dared to say goodbye or think
of him.
But here he stood now, right before her as though he had
never left. As though he weren't just a faint shadow of himself.
His eyes fell on the knife in her white-knuckled hand, then rose
to meet hers. "What happened to you, Aderyl?' His gaze was an unbearable thing,
heavier than the ravaged world.
The Creed had warned them of a test not too long ago, a test
that many before her had failed because they had let their guard down.
This is not real, she
told herself over and over. She squeezed her eyes shut and told herself that
over and over again. This is just a test.
She had given life to the monster in her, and this was where
it meant to devour her, in a house bursting full of tears and memories, a house
from another life.
"That’s not my name." Her voice cracked like a whip, renting
the tight air in a brazen move. Revenge was her name now. She had liked that,
how she was labelled and known by her purpose only.
"That’s who you’ll always be to me," he said. "Aderyl."
It wasn't a goodbye, this unexpected encounter, but she felt
it as keenly as the cold air brushing against her skin when he reached for her
hand. She gripped her knife tighter, afraid to let go of her weapon, of
herself.
It was only after the night claimed him that she allowed her
knife to clatter to the ground. Her mind, once wired for the kill, now tripped
over itself, and her limbs were clumsy, awkward things, unsuited for wielding
weaponry of any kind.
The Creed was right. Memories were dangerous; they were
monsters. Memories awakened every nerve and pulse, and left her vulnerable.
They became her.
This week's flash fic turned out to be another character study for Indigo Tides. I sure hope I don't end up with more characters than I know what to do with them!
I didn't have a clue what I was setting out to write at first, but as always the story took shape the more I wrote. (Love it when that happens.) Maybe, paradoxical as it might seem, this is the best cure for writer's block: to keep writing.
Also, I discovered this amazing dubstep piano piece, which fit perfectly into the mood/setting for Indigo Tides and this short story.
All that drama! All the imagery! It's impossible not to come up with a story after listening to this.
*
Repair the Dead
His human hands were useless in a fight.
Tight and scarred, the knuckles red and raw with blisters, they were meant for minute, intricate things like mending and tithing. They were hands that gave and gave, hands that healed and paid the currency of magic. His hands were not meant to wield brute force the weight of a machete.
He identified with the sea children, at least where they employed their strength. Magic took a lot more out of one than a physical fight did, but they produced twice the desired results.
If only they had the sea children's knowledge. But for ages, from Halcyon to Desolation, his people had been children borne of the air. They had no advanced knowledge of the magical arts and relied on their rigorous training in the war arts instead. Simply put, his people were fighters. Soldiers. Puppets. Pawn.
Dolonit had no idea what to do with a sword when presented with it; he even dropped it when Maldar, his sparring partner in the practice courtyard, delivered a lightning strike to his arm.
The pain that magic required, on the other hand, was visceral - it carved holes in his soul, did damage that was invisible to the naked eye. The pain from an open wound, however, was different from what he was used to. It was present, wicked, and tangible in terms of the blood drawn, the length and depth of the cut, and quantifiable in the number of stitches.
Dolonit scrambled for his sword. His other hand grasped his injured arm, but he was making a mess with his blood all over the concrete stage.
Maldar stooped before him in a display of solidarity meant for their audience, among whom sat the new general, hulking and haw-eyed like a different breed of monster.
"We might have more faith in a pair of hands that can do more than stitching up the weak and repairing the dead," he said, his voice pressed low against Dolonit's ear. "Imagine what might have resulted of sending you to the killing fields."
Dolonit knew the swordsman had never quite forgiven him for being chosen as a Healer, and instead devoted himself to mastering his battle skills so that one day he might prove a more worthy apprentice.
Now's not the time for petty old vendetta or slippery fingers, Dol, he thought, tightening his grip on his sword and getting to his feet. He swung his sword the way Yuzoff taught him and went at Maldar. You have a job. Do it well. For the sake of those who have died, if not for the Empire.
But the more he thought about those who died, the weaker his grasp became. What were they holding on to, when after all this they had lost way more than they gained? The Emperor had promised a brighter future for every citizen of the Empire, and all they needed was to acquire the sea children's magic. But all he saw was devastation at the expense of their own people. He had had to mend comrades who turned pale, sweaty and delirious with pain, patch together limbs that had been ripped apart, remove malicious skeins of magic threaded with veins so that the slightest movement agonising pain -
The shriek of steel against steel, and he snapped to attention ... only to find Maldar's sword scraping past his to find his heart. The tip drew tauntingly close - Dolonit's eyes squeezed shut - before stopping short against him. Dolonit felt the press of ice-cold metal through the fabric, the drumming of his heart, the hungry anticipation of the crowd.
Maldar himself was a terrible picture of malevolence, a sneer of spiteful glee twisting his arrow-like face. "The enemy, my dear Dolonit, has not the same inhibitions as I do now. They will not hesitate to finish off a replacement soldier." He retracted his blade and straightened.
Getting to his feet, the Healer dropped his sword - or rather, he tossed it aside. The clank of steel against concrete rang louder than he expected it to, but rather than wince, he made sure his voice sounded just as strong.
His gaze sought the general's in the crowd. Dolonit launched his words forth like stones right into the stillness of the courtyard. "I am not a fighter. This war brings no victory to me, only death. Find better use for these hands."
At that, the courtyard erupted in sound and fury. Dolonit left it all in his trail and headed back to his chamber, where more dead and ravaged bodies awaited him.
She shed glitter the way people shed tears, and she shed them for the same reason too.
People thought she never cried. Her face was an exquisite slab of polished marble, fair and rouged. But if ever there was a way to fathom what she was feeling, it was by watching for the trail of gold dust she left behind.
No one knew it but me and her mother, who used to dust her skin every night when she settled in the cushy, worn ottoman with a book she wanted her mother to read to her.
I would lean out the window and listen in. It was better than focusing on the conversation going on at home.
The stories were usually about girls with secret identities and abilities - girls who could fly, who turned into swans at night, girls who could speak the language of flowers and stars - and she listened to them with rapt, keen attention, as though she could figure out the answer to her condition in them.
I should have told her that there wasn't an answer to how special she was. But I wasn't any much older than her then and didn't know how to put that into words. By the time she got older, she had stopped believing in fairy tales and their happy endings, and there was nothing more I could say.
*
She bled glitter the way people bled pain, and she bled them for the same reason too.
I watched her roll up her jeans and kick off her shoes by the river the day after her mother's funeral. She stretched out her legs on the grass, the exposed parts of her skin glistening as they caught the late afternoon sunlight. All the while, her face was as smooth as porcelain and just as brittle, her eyes dry as baked earth and just as wanting.
She didn't respond when I joined her by the river, just sat watching the stream of water cresting over the ridges in the riverbed. I took her hand, feeling the specks tickling my palm. There was a world of words in that inch of space between us, and I imagined them floating like dust motes, illuminated by the light she gave off.
A while later, she leaned her head against my shoulder. "She said she was glad the last thing she saw was my light." She lifted her head and fixed her wide, heavy gaze on me. "Do you think she believed me when I said I was too?"
I drew a hand across her cheek, collecting her tears on my fingertips, if they could fall. "I think she'll only believe it when she sees it."
*
She walked in stardust the way no one else did, and it was my aim to make her see it as the wonder that it was.
No amount of pricking herself with a needle or watching the sappiest tear-jerkers, letting her heart get broken or trusting in the wrong person could evoke any tears. I would hold her hand and stretch out my legs next to her by the river, watching silently as the water washed away the dust on her feet.
The words finally tumbled out one day, hard as bricks, after I noticed a new bruise the colour of midnight on her pallid skin.
"Stop it. Just stop punishing yourself, will you? When are you going to see that there is more than one way to hurt? Why do you keep putting yourself through all this pain just to be like everyone else?"
Anger was an emotion reserved for normal people - people who could feel pain, who could cry and laugh and feel the burn of emotions. But there were some who couldn't cry, and some who could not feel rage.
She wasn't the only one surprised at my outburst.
She turned and walked away - quickly at first, before slowing to the pace of memories - oblivious to my calls. When I caught up to her, the apology sitting on my lips, she stopped and looked up at me. In her eyes was a telltale glimmer. She blinked, freeing a tear. I caught it with my thumb, then rubbed it away.
We didn't know if this was a fluke - her tears and my anger - or if it would ever happen again. But it was enough for us then, enough for her to feel the release of hurt and enough for me to feel the fire in my chest.
She didn't completely believe it yet that we could feel and cry like everyone else, but maybe she would when she saw it: the light on her skin that shone like tears.
Today, I discovered that the amazing dancing violinist Lindsey Stirling (from America's Got Talent) has a new album out. 'Tis a good day.
This track in particular, Roundtable Rival, stood out as I was wrote today's flash fiction:
Yup. THAT is Lindsey Stirling.
So with that, as well as this writing prompt,
here is this week's short story.
*
Makeshift
It was there in the dusky, dusty chamber of the abandoned building that they made camp. Settling by the missing clock face, where the only shaft of light managed to edge in past the rusted hands, they got to work.
Mietha's soldiers were trained for speed and accuracy, be it in battle or menial tasks like forging weapons. The best of them had had years of training in the sky children's primitive technology. This time, they had one more thing on their side: Earth magic. It was not quite as advanced as that of the sea children, but here on this island in the human world, they were able to acquire what they needed from the black market.
Now, they set up their equipment: glass bowls and tin canisters, sandalwood for accelerated kindling, and rows and rows of bones meant for more meticulous arrangement later.
Their exiled general had been stranded at the island for long enough. In times like this, ranks were a secondary consideration, hierarchy demolished. And if anyone thought it was madness to trust in the two girls who would help conceal them from the rest of the human world, none of them voiced their dissent.
There in the quiet isolation of the abandoned building, with its crumbling walls and splintered roof shutters that let in the faint moonlight, the renegade rebels worked at twice their regular speed, creating more bodies for their disguise, their deception ... never realising how close they came to being discovered by the white-tailed kite circling in the sky.
*
The Raptor, second in command to the missing prince of the renegade army, was having no luck with the bloodstone. After shifting into her human form and settling into a decrepit red-bricked building for more privacy, she had spent the better part of the hour trying to exhume the magic within the stone.
But the stone had a will of its own, and it was not relinquishing its secrets, no matter how she strained over it.
The Raptor -- or Kivyn, as she was more commonly known among her kite family -- flung the bloodstone across the room. It made a resonant clatter in the drafty, hollow quarters. Curse these humans and their crude magic! How barbaric, how elementary -- and not to mention messy -- to use blood for magic.
It struck her as ironic that a Raptor, notorious for her ability to shred her enemies with her claws and blind them with her beak, would find something barbaric.
Time was running out for her. The monarchy was disintegrating back home, and the soldiers were rebelling. If she couldn't find the crown prince, then the very least she could do was restore some order.
But prince or not, she couldn't leave this world without Eylar. She didn't know what he was to her, but she knew he was the only person she had ever trusted and cared for. And she would be damned if she let this world steal him away.
*
The rebel renegades froze at the sound of the clatter, the blood slowing in their veins. They were so close -- it would be a terrible shame if they were forced to abandon their near-complete work now.
With renewed intensity, they completed the ritual. The sisters would be here soon, but first the soldiers had to get used to their new flesh, and learn to shift in and out with relative ease. It was tricky to grasp the intricacies of shifting -- the best of them took weeks -- but now they were to master their new bodies in the space of hours.
This rescue mission was doomed from the start, but they had to take whatever chance they had to steal their general back from the forgotten coast of Bastiron before the new emperor could recruit her -- recruit being a far kinder term than what he would actually do.
This slaughter campaign was not for them, nor was annihilating the sea kingdom. What they would fight for, however, was the restoration of the old civilisation, the one that was now buried under this avalanche of hate and jealousy and fear.
*
When the rebel soldiers each stripped off their worn, battered bodies and stepped into their new flesh, so too did the Raptor shift into her creature self before taking off into the night in search of the blood she needed.
So opposing in their causes, but so similar in their execution. Chance was a concept often scorned by the renegades. But here they were, stepping into a makeshift life and taking all the chances they could to save their mangled home.
This old post from ex literary agent (now author), Nathan Bransford that offers a really useful tip for figuring out your novel: creating one-sentence, one-paragraph, and two-paragraph pitches.
A query is basically a two paragraph pitch with some query-related detail. But sometimes you'll want to use a one sentence pitch (for a bio, if you're into that whole brevity thing), or a one paragraph pitch (for briefly describing in real life conversation when you don't want someone's eyes to glaze over).
My feeling: get it all out of the way at once. Save yourself the headache and come up with a one sentence, one paragraph, and two paragraph pitch before you even start to query. Then: practice and memorize your pitches. You never know when you're going to need them.
Speaking from experience, it really does help to have a pitch ready even before you plunge into the novel. You get a clearer sense of where your story is going, what the conflict is, and what the stakes are. You also get to pare down your character to his/her most basic trait, the one that defines her and her actions, and the one that you as a writer set out to change by the end of the story.
I should have done that for Neverland. (Actually, I should have done that for all my novels.) Maybe then I wouldn't have gotten stuck.
*
Also, I've started blogging for work.
One of the plus points of working for an online fashion retailer is that I get to fangirl over fashion trends and celebrity styles unabashedly in the name of work and write about them. Is this the marrying of two loves?
I've written quite a number of these articles so far, but the team is selective about what goes on the blog, and when. Here is one article I wrote about "must-have tops".
Of course, they're not really must-haves -- people just write that to get you to read the article ;0)
*
Blood Promise, otherwise known as The Manuscript That Will Not Yield, is in the midst of some radical changes right now. I intend to rip out the awful saggy middle and whip it into something that will put Victoria's Secret models to shame ...
Okay, that's quite a mean feat. I mean, it'll be really hard to top this:
Favourite VS angel ever, Doutzen Kroes.
But it's okay. Because I HAVE A PLAN NOW. So let's do this.
Also, I'm really loving D&E's new album. Aside from When You Cry, which I shared in an earlier post, this song, Teenage Queen, is another favourite. So catchy and upbeat!
And on that note, have a great week, everyone! :0)
Terrible, tragic things happened (I can't read an article about the Sewol disaster without fucking crying - why do awful things happen to good people? They were only kids, dammit!), the world is still crazy, and it's already (only?) May. Can 2014 please be kinder?
You’re not actually meant to be good. Not being good is how you get better. Not being good means you’re in that formative, fundamental blobby parthogenesis period where The Authorial You just starts to emerge. Not being good is how we are forced to take the time to not just Get Good, but also Become Us. You’re not yet the Author That You Will Become. This is all normal. Be bold enough to suck with gleeful abandon — but also know that your critical urge to be better-faster-now is a good one. Don’t quit. Don’t rest. Force yourself to improve.
You find your voice by doing. And by rewriting. You won’t want to rewrite now. You won’t want to edit. Edits feel like you’re not good, like you’re being insulted, like having to fix it means it was broken to begin with. But recognizing broken things is a value. A skill. You get as many shots at the goal as you want. Let that be freeing, not punishing.
In writing a lot and rewriting a lot, your voice will find you.
I've grown to kind of dislike the "Never Give Up" advice. Sometimes you gotta give up on something to move forward. Maybe not on writing as a whole, but on a story idea that is not strong enough to hold its own. Or on a novel that's been on sub two years. Or on that first novel you ever wrote that has seen 200 rejections. Moving on can open up a new world. I've done it a lot. Never regretted it. If you find yourself pining over something from the past, you can always go back, too.
So here's to rewrites and new beginnings, the pain of letting go and moving on.
*
And because I really don't want this post to end on such a heavy note, here are some happy things for a Monday:
So I was video-surfing on YouTube yesterday and chanced upon this lovely artiste: Laurel.
That's it. Laurel. I have no idea who she is - Google doesn't even know her by her mononym yet. She is that new.
But a deeper search provided some answers: Laurel Arnell-Cullen, a 19-year-old British girl who's been writing songs since she was 12. This instills a deep sense of shame in me. What was I doing when I was 19 - or 12, for that matter - instead of writing gorgeous songs like hers?
But I'll stop talking now and let her music speak for itself.
This one's called Fire Breather. It was used in episode 16 of The Vampire Diaries season 5. I haven't watched it yet, but apparently it was used for some Delena scene (meh, whatevs).
That voice! That beat! Excuse me while I punch the crap out of the Replay button.
This one is called To the Hills:
Oh. My. Gosh. I DIE. Can we just pause whatever we're doing and LISTEN to her?
Those words! Those imagery! Can't you just imagine a scene already? SO dramatic. I filled 6 pages of my notebook just listening to her - wrote a short story too, although that could be attributed to re-reading Days of Blood and Starlight by Laini Taylor.
I NEED MORE!
Her songs are like a delicious mix of Lorde and Lana Del Rey, perfect for writing some sweeping fantasy story - which, I admit, is an idea I'm kind of toying with. I PROMISE I'll come back to Neverland ... someday. For now, I don't want to pin myself to a story that's not working and restrict myself from working on anything else.
Speaking of a story that's not working, I just received my first non-form rejection letter - i.e. a personal rejection letter, which is what you get after a literary agent decides to look at your manuscript - for Until Morning.
A form rejection letter goes like this:
Dear author, I apologise for the impersonal nature of this letter, but after careful consideration I have decided to pass on your manuscript blabbity blah blah more depressing blah.
So a personal rejection letter is a tiny step up - still depressing because it's like having your crush lead you on before telling you he's not into you after all.
Wait, where did THAT analogy come from?
Anyway, here's the first heartbreak for Until Morning:
Dear Joyce,
Thank you so much for allowing us to read the first 50 pages of UNTIL MORNING. Catherine and I were very drawn in by your expert use of lyrical language and cleverly imagined scenes. Unfortunately, I think we will have to pass on the project, as it's just not quite right for us. The work is of such high quality that it deserves an agent who will be able to grant it his or her full attention.
I do regret that we have to pass on this, but I am confident that you will find an excited agent soon. I wish you the best of luck in your continuing search for representation and publication.
All best,
Andrew
Office of Catherine Drayton
Sigh. So close. So damn close.
Happy things? Much needed.
I'm weirdly obsessed with deer art these days:
by AnnyaKaiArt on Etsy
Deer cookies
by CirqueDeArt on Etsy
And this boy:
And adorable babies:
Speaking of babies, isn't this picture of Prince George so darn adorable?
Image from Elle.com
Awwww! Those cheeks!
Also, in a bout of Harry Potter nostalgia, I found an article listing out 6 possible spinoffs and oh yes please to all of them!
I've been going on for ages about a Marauders spinoff (more James Potter and Sirius Black bromance; more James Potter, period):
The Marauders Art Print by sevillaseas on society6.com
but a Founders spinoff and Auror spinoff sound intriguing too. See what happens when you write a richly imagined series? SO much room for potential spinoffs!
Also, if you haven't already seen this, you should. Gorgeous photography by Katerina Plotnikova. So many story ideas zinging around. I mean, look!
