MONDAYS.

*stumble stumble stumble*

*plops in seat*

*turns on computer*

*groggily pulls up story document and stares at screen, mesmerized by shiny pixels*

Thirty minutes later...

*groggily shakes from stupor*

Nothing has been written.

*turns off computer*

*gets out of seat*

*stumble stumble stumble*

Okay, how many of us haven't had this kind of day?

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce to you...

MONDAYS.

Anyway, here are some song so emotionally charged, you can't help but writing something after listening to them:

Write on!
Clove

UF...ohhh...

If you all didn't know, for the past few months, I've been attempting to learn how to accurately write like a teenage/young adult male.  In the process of this task, I spent a lot of time talking to Ellen Potter and Anne Mazer (two of the most amazing female authors on the planet due to this) about their strategies, I spent a lot of time talking to my brother about his brain, and above all, I spent a lot, like hours and hours, of time, doing this:

"ULTIMAAATE...FRISBEE!!!"

In conclusion, I have come to learn that the easiest way to write like guys is to hang out with them for a little bit...or a lot, in my case.

But, in case if you, as a female author, don't want to do all that leg-work concerning technique, I'll spare you and just give you, a female author, 3 Tips to Aid Writing Like a Young Man.  (And note well, this is only as best as I have figured it out.  In the end, it's practically impossible for a guy to fully understand a girl and vice versa.)

That said.

Numero Uno.) Quit talking.

Honestly.

When searching for male-esque dialogue, I first tried to talk to guys and see what slang they'd use, if it was any different from us girls, if I could put my girl-to-dude conversation in place of a dude-to-dude conversation.

Yeahhh...no banana.

There's a boatload of difference between a guy/girl conversation and a guy conversation.

Trust me.

So, if you're searching for male-esque dialogue (or any funny dialogue), conveniently stick yourself somewhere behind a dude-conversation with a notebook and pen in hand as if you were doing homework and listen.

Stuff'll come, trust me.

Pro Tip: Bring something with which you can stuff your mouth.  If you pick the right guys, you're going to be snorting and giggling and smirking and making suppressed happy noises.  Young men are just funny people, and you don't want to blow your cover.  ^.^

2.) Don't go to Dad.  Do go to Brother.

I know, the first thing in your head when you're trying to write as a male is, "My Dad's a male.  I'll go ask him."

No, no, no.

If your dad has any sort of job that includes writing, you're going to get a very formal, businesslike voice when you ask for sample text.  That's meh-inspitation if you're shooting for a young man's voice.

On the other hand, if you happen to live in a mutualistic relationship of any sort with your teen male sibling, have at it.  I can't measure the number of things I've learned from Josh when he and I have talked.

Pro Tip: Don't alienate your siblings.  They're sooo useful when it comes to story ideas, especially the young ones.  How many times have I asked Joe or Kait a story question that they answered from an angle I never considered and totally could use?  Countless.

3.) Plaaay Ultimaaate Frisbeeeee!!!

Why?

BECAUSE IT'S FUN.

More specifically, you should play with guys.

Pro Tip: Learn how to throw and catch a frisbee before you begin.  It helps IMMENSELY.  Brownie points if you can do cool tricks with the frisbee as well; that always stands as a good thing.

Pro Tip: Make sure you already have a positive standing relationship with the guys you are playing against/with.  Otherwise...

Eh, just do.

As you play, don't get so sucked into winning that you're not paying attention to the things around you. Watch how guys interact, how they run, when they run, when they don't, and specifically what they say.

I've learned that it's really hard to guess how guys feel, and, the majority of the time, we girls feel things much more intensely.  We're the ones to get hung up over something, have indecisive moments, and cry at anger, sorrow, fear, happiness, envy, success, failure, spilled milk, burnt bread, cry, cry, cry.  Admit it; we cry a lot.

So when writing like guys, I prefer to express their emotions through dialogue, which includes a lot of squabbling when they're angry, quietness when they're sad, and joking when they're happy.  The more time you spend around a male's natural habitat, the easier male dialogue will become.

~ ~ ~

At a water fountain...

Josh, motioning at Jon: Ladies first.

Jon, going first: Pearls before swine.

Andrew: You're not even using that phrase correctly.

At a water fountain...

Jon, motioning at Josh: Ladies first.

Josh, going first: Beauty before age, ugly.

A: From the way that they run, you'd think that we're offering them as child sacrifices to Molech or something.
B: Just tell them that if they keep running, we will.

Jarod: One word: that hurts.
Josh: That’s two words, you idiot.

Daniel: Hey, Clove, this is my friend, Nathaniel, but feel free to call him Betsy.
Me: Hi, Betsy.
Nathaniel: And you can call him Sally.
Me: Hey, Sally.

A: Oh, there you guys are.  Where’s B?
C: He died of food poisoning.
D: No, he died in China.
E: He’s right behind you.
B: What’d I miss?
A: *facepalm*

E: You look tired.
A: I am.
E: So, how much sleep did you get last night?
A: Last night?  Or this morning?
E: Depending on what time it was when you went to sleep.
A: Then this morning.
E: *facepalm*  So, how much sleep did you get this morning?

Bob: Hey, Jon!

Jon: Yes, ma'am?

~ ~ ~

Write on!
Clove

Masterdom

Scientifically...
*takes out steel-rimmed, bridge-taped glasses and puts them on*
...it takes 10,000 hours of focused, involved practice to become a literal 'master' at something, thus when someone brags that he/she is a 'master commander', I just laugh.  (*pointed glare*  You know who you are.  :D)  10,000 hours of focused, involved practice is necessary to become a master at writing too, and folks, those 10,000 hours are hours I am not bragging.

I'm the person who loves to go back into memories and journal entries and read of all the inane things I did way back.....a few months ago.....
*clears throat*
I also like to do the same thing with my stories, and if you don't, I advise you to do so.  Because you increase in skill for every hour of determined practice you spend, if you wrote two hours every day, you'd knock out 728 hours every year.  At that rate, it'd take you under 14 years to become a master.  Not bad, huh?
By going back and looking at stuff I, currently somewhere around hour 2,184, wrote during hour 573 of my career, I find that I've transcended many, many errors.  Plus, old, unfinished stories tend to contain small flashes of gold that I can use in my current writing.  Very handy, isn't it?

Just a few thoughts for y'all.  What hour are you on, junior-writing-master?

Write on!
Clove

Is two reeeaaally better than one?

I'm about to fulfill my social resume as an author - soon enough, I will be joining a RP co-blog where a group of crazy, maniacal, distinctly-different teenagers group together to role play in a story, one chapter at a time.
It'll be a bla--mUAUAHahhauUauah--
Eh.
I am trying to decide if I want to role play a ninja or an assassin (they're essentially the same thing), and one of my closest friends was saying a vampire might be thrown in.  My brother is going to be a mythical creature called a Dkhotoan (think slate blue, wings, and super agile), and I think we may have some elves/queens.  Oh boyo.  x)
Until then, I thought I would go ahead and mark out the pros and cons of co-writing versus solo-writing:

CO-WRITING
Pros:
   -You don't have to deal with the nitty-gritty of an outline.  Whereas I would get stuck on one idea if I was soloing a story, my fellow author is always there to help me get out of seemingly inescapable plot holes.  As they say - two heads are better than one!
   -Insta-editor!  Just add coffee, generous compliments, and humility.
   -Half the actual writing!  Unless...if you decide to double a normal story's length and each write the length of one story...  ;)
   -Insta-anti-writer's-block!  If you ever hit writer's block, you always have your partner there to bug his/her eyes at you and say, "Why haven't you been writing?  Hm?  Hmhm?  Hmhmhmmm?!"
   -Quality time.  Personally, this is my favorite part of co-writing.  I've only co-written twice, and neither books are finished (though one will be).  Odd as it is, however, I don't mind that I have a half-finished story rotting in the empty corners of my computer.  I learned and am learning a lot about my writing partners; long chats about outlines, plot holes, plot, plot, plot, redoing plot, reworking plot, refilling plot, totally trashing plot, starting plot all over, and PLOT have taught me several skills about communication, empathy, and sincerity.
Cons:
   -Your partner is bound to annoy you.  This ties in with the last point of the above; if you have a writing-partner who agrees with your every word, I'd like to see your cloning machine.
   -Writing is slooow.  You have to agree on a final outline, you have to agree on characters' ages, expressions, and looks, you have to agree on the characters you each will be writing.  That's a TON more red-tape than there is in solo-writing.

SOLO-WRITING
Pros:
   -All decisions are up to you.  If you notice a loophole, you just find the most convenient way to close it.  If a character is inconsistent, you just rewrite as you wish.  If you are sitting down to deal with logistics like time of year, daytime, ages, and other numbers, you don't have to run everything by someone else.
   -You have more control over the characters.  They are your children, and you can make them do whatever horrors that you so desire.
   -You follow your own time schedule.  Frequently in co-writing, you make an outline, your partner finishes the first chapter, and then it's your turn; the pressure of someone standing behind you, waiting for you to finish so that he/she can begin the third chapter is nonexistent in solo-writing.
   -Nobody has to know what you're writing or all the flaws you make in the writing process.  For example, I think the people who got DWBSN after I had taken out Drew (a snooty character who belonged in a first-grade girls' book, not a romance novel) think I'm way better of an author than those who got the version of DWBSN with Drew in it.  We make silly mistakes like adding unnecessary characters and events, and when you write alone, you can make as many silly mistakes as you want, and no one will know.  Not so in co-writing.
Cons:
   -Solo-writing can be rather lonely at times.  When you first stare at a blank document or sheet of paper and take a deep sigh, you can see exactly how everything will transfer from your outline to the story, but it's still hard to take up a pen and write your first words.  (That's what I've been told, anyway...I personally love starting stories.)  At other times, your characters are being jerks, and they refuse to do what you want them to do.  Unlike with co-writing where you have someone else to team up with you against your creations, you're all...alone...
   -You make ten-thousand times more mistakes.  There have been countless times when I've mentioned a seemingly flawless plot idea to Josh (my brother and co-author), and he's deconstructed it and showed me all the flaws.  While that process is painful, it saves a BOATLOAD of rewriting.
   -When you're done with the story, no one else is there to celebrate with you.  You kind of just sit there, stare at the screen, scroll through all 100 pages or so, then do a happy dance in your seat and squeal a little maybe, but that's it.  Very anti-climactic, I found.

Hehehe, so there you have it!  I'll try to get you some material from the co-written story I'm doing (since we officially started writing), plus more of my solo-written story, and if I get permission, I'll also send out the link for the RP co-blog that me and my peeps are doing.

Write on!
Clove

Teardrops

I can honestly boast that I don't cry a bunch over characters from books or movies.  In fact, the number of times I've shed tears for a fictional someone is definitely countable on one hand.  Want the number?

Five times, ladies and gentlemen, five times.

Either I haven't seen enough movies/read enough books or my heart is just that cold.

Or...to avoid the either/or fallacy, I'll offer a third suggestion: after writing for so long, I've learned to look at plots with the eye of an analyst, which means that I rarely connect with the true emotion of a story.  When I do connect, it means the character development was really, really well done.

To share:

5.) Gandalf and Boromir - Fellowship of the Ring.

This is the only one I'm not entirely accrediting to character development.  I'm giving the credit to the music (I cry at music all the time) and to the fact that I was watching this at 3 in the morning after a long day of swimming, tubing, and jet-skiing...and also to the fact that I was watching on a HUGE flat-screen TV with the volume up WAY high.

I totally knew Gandalf was going to try bungee jumping without a cord, and I totally knew Boromir was going to play William Tell.  I had read the book beforehand, but as soon as the music cued in, my eyeballs were melting.

It's still a good watch and read.

4.) Up.

HOW DID A DISNEY MOVIE GET ON HERE???

Guys.

Up was awesome.

I don't care if it was Disney.

I'm not going to spoil this one since it's not quite so old, and if you haven't seen it, SEE IT.  However, I will say this: Disney properly portrayed how love shifts and expands from a newly-wed husband and wife to husband and wife and children, and they did it in a spectacularly sweet, but not overly mawkish, manner.  MOVING, PEOPLES, MOVING.

3.) Toy Story 3.

AAAGGGHHH!!!  IT'S ANOTHER DISNEY MOVIE!!!

Sorry.

Disney did it right again.  They worked up your love for the Space Ranger and Cowboy in two previous movies, and just when you sit down to watch a new adventure, you realize...

ANDY'S GOING TO COLLEGE!!!

I have a certain affinity towards my own stuffed animals, so that makes up for some of my tears, but the rest of my tears were due to laughing at this:

2.) Edward Elric - Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood.

My tears for Edward were definitely stemmed in character development.  Edward, the protagonist in the 64 episode series, seems, at first, to be a cocky know-it-all with an aversion to milk.  He seems to be temperamental, whiny, and argumentative with both his younger brother and his friend-who-is-a-girl, Winrey, yet as the story progresses, you get to see his backstory, DUH, and realize that he has had it preeetty rough.

He makes sooo many great quotes, again, DUH, but I think the icing on the cake was Edward's loyalty to his brother.  It made me think of my own bros...hehehe.  And yes, I cried multiple times during the anime, but I feel no compunction for any tear shed.
*quiet fangirldom*

1.) Charlotte A. Cavatica the Spider - from Charlotte's Web.

I WAS SEVEN, OKAY?

But...even then, every time I watch Charlotte die in the 1973 film, I can still bawl like a baby if I let myself.  I think it has something to do with the theme of compassion.  Wilbur definitely does not deserve to live, he does not deserve to go to the fair, and he does not deserve the kindness of the farm animals, but out of the love of her heart, Charlotte spends full nights weaving words for Wilbur and making certain that he will live and avoid slaughter.  Even in her pregnancy, she cares for the undeserving.

Story of my life - I've been loved way more than I deserve.

Any sob-stories of your own?

Comment box is below!

Write on!

Clove

P.S. Sorry for the sporadic posts, guys...life has been absolutely crazy recently...

Between a constant headache due to a pinched nerve and PSAT studying, I've been fighting to just stay alive, nonetheless find time to write.  ;)

DWBSN

Death Would Be So Near.
I think I had as many fans for that book as I had haters.  I'm also pretty sure all of my fans were haters and all of my haters were fans.
Ladies and gents...

ROMANCE.

I've had a few of you - not too many, but enough to make me want to post this - come and ask me what exactly is DWBSN and what exactly Deidre is doing in the propter (prologue/chapter) of my new book.

Synopsis:
DWBSN is a romance book.  I wrote the book when I was 12-13, and I had no idea what on earth love was except that I felt little kicks in my chest every time a special someone (STOP LAUGHING) showed up at church.  Yupp.  That was basically the premise for this story.
Deidre Keane, typical female teenager, lives in a flooding, glacier-less world where the single "President" called the "Baradon" is killing off people randomly to preserve the limited amount of resources...you know, it's the typical "we've hit a logistic rate and now we kill you" type plot.
Except there's SKAIN.
Long ebony hair, pale skin, frequently clothed in black, wielding wicked daggers, totally lithe and solid as stone, charming, seductive, and just plain masculine.
Skain Wolfe, less typical male teenager, is hired as Caretaker (synonymous with "babysitter-who-can-handle-weapons-like-a-beast")  for the Keane's because Deidre's old Caretaker was MURDERED.  In the first chapter.  Yupp.
The same government soldiers who killed Deidre's old Caretaker come to her town and end up killing her parents.  (Don't ask how...my 12 year old brain didn't think that far.)  Skain, in a heroic attempt to save Deidre and Diane (Deidre's younger sister), whisks them away into a forest where they meet *gasp* an insurrection base which is *gasp* based in a CAVE.

*headdesk*
*headdesk*
*headdesk*

Look.
I stole SOOO much out of the Hunger Games for this story that it's not even funny.  Basically, I had my Katniss figure (Deidre) and paired her up with a Gale figure (Skain) instead of a Peeta figure.
Why Gale?

BECAUSE
NO ONE LIKES YOU, PEETA.  JUST...
...just...go bake bread or something.  x)

The story continues in a mess of nonsensical jibberish about Skain acting like he's fallen in love with another girl in order to save Deidre's life.  Yupp.  Skain also kills Diane and nearly kills Deidre to save his OWN sister, but he doesn't because he loves her, and then, after the insurrection base kills the Baradon, there turns out to be an even badder bad guy named Rassc who captures Deidre to get Skain to do what he wants and.....

YEAH.

IT WAS HORRIBLE.
I really missed out on the motives bit of my story.  My bad guys were just BAD, and my romance was just ROMANCE.  I had a blast writing it, but I doubt if I ever should have peer-published it.  There was no reason for it, so I quit working on the story and have the pieces saved in the dark, dusty corners of my internet space.

Now what on earth do I plan to do with it?

Well...
Like I said, I had a blast writing it, and I think that was because my characters were so dang cool.  I intend to rewrite a plot that better befits my characters and sequel my current story.  A few ideas have popped in my head, but I'm not thinking too hard about it.
If you have any ideas or any thoughts of what you WISHED had happened in DWBSN, do tell, and I'll file them away to be considered more deeply.  :)

Write on!
Clove

Coffee Break

I took my first practice PSAT...my brain is fuzz and hairballs.
Time for a coffee break.


Quick announcement:

One dark day in the middle of the night,
Two dead boys got up to fight,
Round and round, they faced each other,
Drew their swords and shot each other...

17.15 cool beans to the person who can tell me the title of the above poem...I've been searching for never.

Heheh.

Have you guys been taking my advice and using music as you write?  Found any good ones?  Another 15.17 cool beans if you post your favorite writing song in the comments box below.
Just as quick warning for when you use music to write, I've noticed that there are a lot of authors...like...countless...who have used music so heavily to feel emotion that their writing is absolutely bone dry of the stuff.  You know what I mean...

It was dawn.  Cloudy.  Dead.
Eriana paced the length of her castle gardens wearily.  After a moment, she turned, pacing again in the opposite direction.  As she walked, she felt her heart tremor in a combination of anger and sorrow.
Fymorn... 

You can be dead. 

But he was, and nothing she could do, no number of steps that she made, would change that.

Mahhh...the feeling is still there, one of numbness.  However, it doesn't read right.  There's not enough information, and it's far too broken.  Notice how many verbs are emphasizing the "walking" that she does - "paced", "pacing", "walked", "number of steps".  That's because I, when I wrote it, was listening to the most gut-wrenchingly sad music that exists.  It seemed fine when I wrote it, but now that I've come back and am not listening to music, it looks...well...pathetic.
If I were to revise it, it would probably look more like...ehhh...this:

It was a gray dawn.  Cloudy.  Dead.
Weary and too numb to cry any longer, Eriana paced the length of her castle gardens like a specter.  Her castle gardens.  Just twelve hours ago, they had been Fymorn's, but now...all Jayal Hrion and its massive burden had been bequeathed to her shoulders by the power of a yellowed sheet of paper that contained Fymorn's will.
Having reached the end of the path, Eriana turned, pacing again in the opposite direction.  Her heart was tremoring with every step in a combination of anger and sorrow.
Fymorn... 

You can be dead. 

But her father was gone.  She was powerless to change that fact.

There's a little more information, which means a little more work was required, but it's definitely worth the editing, agreed?

Write on!
Clove