Interlochen School of Creative Arts

Back a while, in the first week of December, right after the madness that was NaNoWriMo, I was still typing like a mad man. For the first couple of days, I was fervently trying to finish the Night Stalker. But, a week before December the 15th, I was killing myself. During NaNoWriMo, I had decided to enter the Virginia B. Ball Contest. The winner would get a 30,000 dollar scholarship to Interlochen.

I just barely managed to enter myself on time.

And I waited and waited and waited some more for that email or that phone call.

The email came yesterday. And I..... Wasn't a finalist.

Oh well. There are plenty more contests and a whole lot of writing to do.

If you would like to read it, click here. I let my English teacher read it, and she left a lot of notes, but I haven't gotten around to actually editing the thing yet. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoy it!

In other news, the Night Stalker is nearly finished. I am currently working on Chapter Seventeen out of Nineteen. I'm getting to the really good part after bawling over a really sad part. I cry every time.

I am working feverishly on Loving Amelia Perfect. Last night, I did a complete read through and now have a list of things to fix on the over all plot. Tonight, I will be working on the outline and hopefully character dynamics. Fun stuff!

For a while, I have been thinking about writing a book called something a long the lines of Diary of an Atheist Christian. It will follow the life of a Atheist who is raised in a Christian family and the hardships he/she went through. It might also follow two or three other people. I was hoping to do this for Camp NaNoWriMo, but I feel like starting it earlier... Hmm...

That's all for now!

Best of Writings,
~Snowie

July 19th WSEIJM

IN THE LAND OF LIGHT AND STONE

In the Land

Of Light and Stone

Sun beats down

Cooking the Earth to the core.

A blistering cold

When in the depth

Of a cold white.

To the nonobservant

A desolate wasteland

And to the observant

Blooming with life

Soaring ashen mountains

Layered in reds and whites

Hold keys to the past

A time long gone

Uncovered inch by inch

By never ceasing winds

Over the past

Walk the creatures

Of the present

The strong will they hold

Carries them

Through long winters

Raging fires

And Summer’s heat

The Land of Light and Stone

Withholds for no man

As it barrels forward 

Towards a certain fate

As the ashen mountains fade

Into the meadows that surround them. 

The Land of Light and Stone

Speaks of the Earth’s power

How a single drop of water

A single gust of wind

Changes the land forever

How with time

Comes change

As the Earth spins

The world’s cycles 

Shift and Rotate

In to a new era of history

The Land of Light and Stone

Is more than it seems

It’s more than Light

And Stone.

~Snowie

Breakups, Makeups, and Anniversaries

A Cactus Patch... At Night... Sort of.
By smackbabe on Deviant

April 26th, 2012 marked the First Anniversary of finishing the first draft of the Night Stalker. Can I get a what, what?! Okay... Maybe not. And, since I cannot remember when I actually started writing the Night Stalker, I am also calling April 26th the day I started writing TNS. So, April 26th is both a First Anniversary and an Eighth Anniversary for me. Since April 26th, 2012, I have rewritten the Night Stalker once and I am working on my Third Draft. I think that the Third Draft might be the one! In this year, I have learned that there is no one way to revise 400 pages of awesomeness, that revising is a messy and complicated process, and that revising is like trying to find your way through a cactus patch... In the dark... Without a flashlight. 

This whole thing has gotten me thinking about breakups and makeups.

My Plot Board
The Whole Plot for the Night Stalker Laid
Out On Pretty Notecards

Eight years ago, roughly, I sat down and wrote the first fifty pages of the Night Stalker. Everything was going great until I hit page fifty. Things started falling apart and all of the excitement from starting out vanished. The Night Stalker and I happily broke up. I respectfully put the Night Stalker behind me in a dusty drawer for five years. In May of 2009, if I remember correctly, I went searching through my thirty plus notebooks of old, unfinished stories, just looking for something to work on. Something that might be salvageable. What I found was the Night Stalker. And, TNS was brilliant. The Night Stalker and I made up and started racing for The End. Over the next two years (Minus two NaNoWriMos) I scratched out 408 more pages of glorious crap. This crap ended with: "Yes," Hamilton watched the flames leap below in the courtyard, hungry for more. The charred skull of his father smiled at him. Hamilton smiled, "Yes... We'll kill them all." THE END 4/26/11 Oh, the drama.

You see? Sometimes breaking up and making up can be a good thing. Sometimes, writers have to put things away for a while, or in other words, break up with their work. In the time that the writer and the work are separated, both mature a little, the brilliance comes back, and the passion and excitement start to return. New ideas sneak forward and a stronger story that demands to be written rises out of the depths of imagination.

There is a piece of advise from Gail Carson Levine that she puts into her book Writing Magic. Levine gives the advise to keep everything you ever write for at least fifteen years. Once fifteen years passes, you have the choice to throw out that writing or to keep it. Following this advise keeps potentially amazing writing from being thrown out and lost forever.

“A novel rough draft is like bread dough; you need to beat the crap out of it for it to rise.” -Chris Baty


~Snowfire

Write What You Have Never Known

Write what you know, learn what you don't know. Or, write what you have never known. In other words, write whatever you want. The easiest way to describe an action, emotion, feeling, personality, or place is to experience it for yourself. If one character brushes their teeth, go brush your own teeth. Describe putting the toothpaste on the toothbrush, what they are thinking about as they are brushing their teeth. Writing about a character who hates the world is easier when you remember a time when you wished everyone annoying would drop dead. Think about how you felt, acted, reacted, your thoughts and feelings. Or, if you are writing about New York, New York, take a week vacation there. Meet the people, see the city, let the setting create the mood. You can learn about New York from any source, but nothing will help you imagine the place better then actually going. What if the characters and settings are made up? Then find a place somewhere close to that place. If your fantasy is set in a dense forest on another planet, make plans to spend an afternoon in the forest. Think about what your characters would do in a situation as you go though out the day. Put yourself in their shoes and walk around for a bit.

I write basically everything from mysteries to fantasy to romance to poems about socks. No, I have never been in a mystery, murder, or investigation, but the lack of experience will not stop me from writing about it. A big part of rewriting is research, surprisingly. One goal for most writers is to make the readers believe that, yes, this story is true and everything in it is possible. To do that, at least some aspects have to be realistic. No, a regular man cannot jump from building to building and shoot webs from his wrists. But, if you have him be bitten by a spider and given superpowers, then anything is possible and believable. Fiction is about writing the unordinary and extraordinary and making it seem like it could happen to anyone. It is about letting readers, for just a moment, feel like anything is possible. Words can leave us tangled in magic and hoping for something better. They can break us down and make us question the big questions. And when words come together to from sentences and sentences form paragraphs, paragraphs form chapters, and chapters form a story, then anything is possible. The reader's mind is yours to take away and meddle with until they read the last word. As a writer, you have the power to implant new ideas, make people really question right and wrong and how society works. A few words can change a nation. Such as "I have a dream..." "Four-score and seven years ago..." or "Mr. and Mrs. Dursley ,of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say they were perfectly normal, thank you very much." even "That's one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind".

Words have power. Choose them wisely. 

Don't be afraid to write what you will never know. 

~Snowie