Liar!

I don't know who,
But someone lied to me.
Someone lied to me to get me here.
This wasn't how it was supposed to be.
And now,
What I really want to do is to roll up in a ball of fear.
I want to scream,
But that's all part of growing up, dear.
Lies.
This isn't how it was supposed to be.
Somebody definitely lied to me.
They hung the steak-bone in front of face,
Just to reveal that there was a noose at the end of this race.
Lies.
All of you lied to me.

Truth in Lies post #1

I just wanted to give you your daily dose of encouragement by giving you a little story about me. Me, myself, and I. I am a very weird, strange person and I don’t deny that, but I am also very insecure, and I can’t deny that. For me, the hardest thing in the world is accepting myself and my flaws. I want everything to be perfect, so I guess that makes me a perfectionist. I have many things I do not like about myself, and that makes me feel inferior and uncomfortable and extremely jealous of those who have (or seem to have) absolutely no problems with themselves, and I find it utterly incredible that while I’m sitting here dwelling on everything I want to be and sitting on that latest idea that pops into my head and not wanting to share it because I’m afraid, and I feel, for some reason, writing makes me less afraid of what I am and what I will become if I fail. I know that if I fail on this particular blog there will be no particular embarrassment, or really any consequence at all, but in real life I am afraid to even shout out something that I know is right. Why is that? I have absolutely no idea other than the several ideas that I have that I am too afraid to share. Now, I wish that things were different and I wish I could say that I didn’t want to put everyone else’s feelings in front of mine, but that is not true. I want everyone to be happy, but somewhere in there I lost the happiness that was intended for myself and maybe it was the way I was raised, but that is me, and when I’m not putting my happiness last and everyone else’s first, I happen to be making them miserable by hitting them where it hurts, and I do it on purpose when I’m hurt and I hate that about me, but I’m not saying I’m all negative, and I know, right know this doesn’t sound very encouraging, but trust me it is because I know one day I will break that shell and (hopefully) I will get a step closer by writing this and basically exposing myself as I have before on this blog whether or not you realize it, but this writing is me, and when I say the crimson stains are leaking from her heart to the ground, I’m secretly talking about me, and I’m slowly telling my story, and breaking open that fear to SPEAK. Now, that may all be swell and dandy, but what does it mean for you. Well, I by all accounts am completely crazy, BUT I say to all of you, right now that is better to be completely crazy and comfortable than shy and hidden away, especially in your writing. That purple-red dawn that creeps into the sky I’ve seen and I want you to see it and feel it as your reading my story, and as I SPEAK because it is beautiful if you give it a little bit of time, and I will finally be heard.

I am not a killer.

I am a person.

I am not a sociopath.

I am like you.

Please don’t judge me based on my story.

This is me.

Help! My Story is More Revolved Around Setting than Character

The title still looks weird.

Anyhow, so I've been looking at other writers work, and I'm noticing a pattern that a lot of writers seem to hate: they can't seem to control their writing. I did address this (kind of) a few post back (I even linked you guys to Go Teen Writers!) Anyhow, my big thing is that you really shouldn't try to control your writing too much. You can do that in revisions, but when you start your first draft, you should never tell your characters no. Why? Your characters have a way of knowing what to do better than you do, and when you deny them, you typically end up with a mess.

I started to do that with G.R.A.Y. This summer as I was writing it, I decided that I didn't like the direction it was going, and without giving too much away, let me say, I think that me trying to reign G.R.A.Y into what I imagined really assisted me in NOT completing it. I'm not saying that it's going to remain incomplete forever, but I am saying that choking your characters help nothing. (In fact, I had to rewrite the entire thing from the prologue at one point.)

Books tend to move in their own special ways, and I'm not saying you have absolutely no control over your book. You are the author. Remember that, but don't think your characters don't have a say in it too. The balance as a writer is really figuring out where to control your writing and how to continue your writing. In reality, to non-writers that sounds insane, but I'm not talking to non-writers. I'm talking to you. For me, the first step to my writing is figuring out an idea, then a character and going from there. I've learned the hard way that for me, if I try to plot it out more than that it doesn't really work. Another thing, although I don't plot out exactly what I want to do for my book does NOT mean that I don't have goals that my characters have to achieve. For example, my first book, Truth in Lies (That book is by baby. I will not show it to you guys until it is beautifully published and amazing. If it gets that far), my protagonist Jessica was originally supposed to go to this "evil" school for the majority of the book, and I was going to tell her life story for only a little part in the beginning of the book. Well, guess what happened? My idea kind of changed a little bit, and most of the book is about what happened BEFORE she got sent to the "evil" school. I still reached my goal in getting her to the evil school, but I allowed the book to "write itself" for a little while, per say, and that was only through me being flexible about my goals.

So, basically the point I'm trying to get across is: don't be mad at your book because it doesn't do exactly what you want or be exactly as you planned, just go with the flow, and let your book lead you by being flexible.

That is the longest moral I've ever heard of and it really sounds like I'm more of a hippie writer than anything, but that's my rant.
Thanks for reading!

G.R.A.Y Part 1

So, this summer, I worked on a new novel that is very unfinished, but something special happened with the characters that I wrote into this story: I fell in love with them. IT WAS (and still is) THE FIRST TIME THAT'S EVER HAPPENED TO ME! While I was editing my first completed novel, I discovered my hidden truth: I loved the content of that book (and still do), but I could care less about the characters. That's what made this book so special for me. So, I really hope that you, random readers, enjoy this as much as I did!

                                                                      Prologue

What is love? In my world, it all started at birth. The earth was taken from the state with luxurious flashing screens in every household and schools for learning, welcoming to every age, to a place where everything was corrupt to bring us to where we are today. The ones I dwell with are manipulators of all that is just. Our world is grey, but this is not how it always was; it was once in beautiful color, but now, we live in broken cities of broken worlds.

 When I was born, the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was a man, he was strong, tall, lean, and brave with shoulder-length dark grey hair flapping in the breeze onto his olive skin; he was my father. He looked ragged. He had brown streaks across his face, and his hair had grown unruly as he had waited for me to emerge.

The first sound I heard as a minute-old infant was my mother’s scream behind us; my father winced, but he kept running. They had let him go free into the dirt stained world away from the cottage my parents had intended for me to call home.

I was supposed to be their beautiful baby girl, born into a carefree world. Nine months before that they had been living in a perfect little house with a white fence and a golden retriever named Earth in a city not far from where I had been born. But when news spread of what the world had become, they had put giant walls around their city, and all the pregnant women were forced to move to camps. My parents had wanted to care for me, but they had no choice, except to give me up.

 At dark fall, my father slowed at our city’s giant magnificent mahogany doors, and the doors opened for him, well aware of what they were letting in. Inside the gates, it was a brand new world, an almost medieval world, the people, they were selling their goods on the sides of the street, smiling, carefree. The path we walked was separated from the dirt that everything else resided on; it was a carved gravel path; it was in preparation for them to come, my father had known. The buildings beside us were magnificently made as our ancestors had left them.

 When my father walked in, every one of the street people turned, and they rang the streets with applause. He lifted me up for all to see before laying me on the gravel and turning back to the door. The men controlling the doors smiled with tears in their eyes. The doors remained open.

My father hadn’t even walked to the heart of the opening to the world of misery, before I heard those loud bangs, unforgettable, even as a babe. I could swear that my father was smiling when the crimson bolts spread out of him. He fell to the ground, his eyes staring blankly into the light blue sky.