Writing Contest

I didn't win the contest but it was a great challenge for me.

Wow

Yesterday I basically spent all day writing and researching my book the Hidden Magic. First time I did that. I was really amazed!!!

The Hidden Magic

I started typing up my new book The Hidden Magic. Things are coming together great. This book is written in pieces though not like my other book where I start from the beginning and go chapter to chapter. This book I am not sure what order I am heading in yet.

Cave Scene

Fixed the cave scene in the Hottie Next Door. It's funny that a Junior Ranger helped me out with it. But I got the scenes in my head perfectly and it flows much better there.

Made Progress

I didn't write anything new today for my novel Hottie Next Door but I did type up my chapter 4. Then I did editing. It's coming along nice. I now have 34 pages double spaced size 16.

Meeting Authors

Teen Book Fest 2017. I met some amazing authors like Ellen Hopkins, A.G Howard, and Sara Sheppard. Meeting these authors really inspired me to continue my writing and inspire me for great things.

The More You Read Poem

The more you read, the more you will know.
The more you know, the smarter you will grow.
The smarter you grow, the stronger your voice.
When speaking your mind or making your choice.

Stages of a Reader

Bookaholic

Kate Dicamillo

Hospital for the Mind

Book Collecting

Write Like a Painter by Veronica Rossi

On May 16th, Seeker, the sequel to Riders, will release. I’m really proud of it, but for part of the riting process, I felt utterly lost in the woods. I wanted to bring sword fights and swoons to the story, but deep themes like forgiveness and redemption kept showing up instead. Not what I wanted. Clearly, I’d gone wrong somewhere. Then I remembered: there are no mistakes in art. There is only process.

We writers think we have control over our creative process, but the best we can really do is coax it along. We read books that teach us how to structure scenes and how to create characters. We attend conferences and join critique groups. But in the end, the book has its own ideas about what it wants to be. More and more, I believe we’re simply the vessel, holding the story inside us. If we’re clumsy, hasty, disrespectful, we make a mess as we spill our tale. But if we take our time, the pour is clean.

Before I officially and wholeheartedly became a writer, I was a painter. I attended the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, and I painted every day, and dealt with the struggles of working in that art form how to stay inspired, how to paint with skill, how to marry inspiration with skill to produce something true. Sound familiar? It is, very much so. Creativity is a journey with many roads leading to the same place Art. Here are a few of the similarities I’ve discovered between writing and painting:

Art is Work – Part of being a creative person is committing to the work involved in discovering your style, your voice. How do you do this? Devour the things you love. If you love a book, let that love be an obsession. Dig in. Read the book again and again. Buy the audio. Transcribe a chapter. Study. Highlight. If it’s a painting, try some sketches inspired by the piece. Your job is to figure out why you love it. Internalize the art until it’s inside you. Your internal artist has an incredible storage system called the subconscious. Nothing ever gets lost or wasted. Just get the good stuff in there. The rest is not really up to you.

Watch Out for Mud – Part of trusting the process is not forcing the process. In painting with oils, you can overwork a canvas to the point that paints blend together, creating an awful muddy color. It’s actually worse than mud it’s the color of a cadaver. Usually this happens when you’re overthinking it. You’re creating with your head, not your heart. You’re saying, “It could be a little more this, or a little more that,” instead of asking, “how can I make this truer, more honest?” I do this all the time. I think it comes from wanting so badly to create something great. But greatness cannot be rushed or forced. Greatness requires patience. It requires trust and confidence. So, slow down. If you think you’re making mud, back off. Take some time to meditate on the piece, or the scene. Wrong turns are part of the process. It’s up to you to see them, and to correct your course.

Turn Your Canvas – One of the earliest tricks I learned in art school was to flip the canvas by 90 degrees and step back. This simple trick allows you to see the composition in a new way, giving you a fresh perspective. I use several methods to achieve this “turn of the canvas” in my writing; some are incredibly simple and effective:

1. ·         Change the font
2. ·         Open your document on an e-reader or in another program
3. ·         Print and bind your pages
4. ·         Send your scene to an audio program and listen to your writing
5. ·         Read your writing out loud, or have a friend read it to you 

Learn the Rules So You Can Break Them – I loved this rule in art school. We embraced it. We copied the masters. Renaissance painters like Michelangelo and Da Vinci. We copied Picasso, Dali, Monet, Matisse. We fell incredibly short most of the time, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to learn the strokes, the colors. By learning the language of art, you can play with it. Defy it, bend it, stretch it. In writing, you read to learn the art of language. So, read broadly. Read everything things you hate, things you love, things you never thought you’d ever read. Just read. Then forget the rules and have some fun.

Trust the Process – Such a cliché, isn’t it? Yet, after half a dozen books written, I have to remind myself of this all the time. Trust the process. Trust. The Process. And remember that it will never be the same process twice. You’re never writing the same book, or painting the same painting. Even if you’re rewriting or repainting something, you are not the same the second or third or fourth or hundredth time. You’ve had new experiences. You’ve learned something even if you don’t know it. Trust the process. Do it.

Once, in art school, I was trying to forcibly squeeze oil paint from a tube that had coagulated. I was standing in front of a painting that was almost done when I did this. You know what’s coming, right? A geyser of paint exploded across a piece I’d spent all day perfecting. Raw Sienna. A beautiful color. Like dirt that’s alive dirt that has the ruddy life of blood in it. Beautiful, but not when it’s everywhere. After this materials eruption, I didn’t know if I wanted to laugh or cry. I think I did both. But then it was time to adapt. I could’ve tried to scoop the paint away with a palette knife and likely ruined the entire canvas. Instead, I took a brush and got to work and got exactly the painting that was asking to be made, a painting rich with earth tones. A piece with a pulse, bolder than it would’ve ever been had I not trusted the process.

Art loves mistakes, they say. Knowing that, why not create full-throttle?

Writing Contest Part 2

Finished my piece for the writing contest. It took me a few days to make sure I had all the information I wanted. Then a few revisions. But I will submit it after coming up with a description of myself. Don't care about winning just wanted the challenge. But if I do win that's ok. 250 words on what I wanted to write was harder than I thought. My first draft was 650 or something. I went a little over but no too bad.