New Account, New Start :)

It's not really that much of a new start. It just sounded good.

So, this isn't exactly the solution I had in mind for changing the accounts on my blog, it's slightly more stressful in that I shall now have to reapply all the settings that, in my eyes, make my blog MY blog. But it's a solution. I definitely didn't just waste an entire evening doing this.

I'm not deleting my old blog (for now, I need it as a reference to get this one looking exactly the same), and you can find a link to it in the sidebar thingy on the left. I don't see why you'd want to go look at it, I have all the posts from it right here (I know! Magic!), but still.

I have changed the name of my blog again, mostly because of course there cannot be two blogs existing at the same time with the same name. So I took a step back in time to rename it the original name, "The Authoress And The Voices". Except without the "And The Voices" bit. Because I didn't like it.

Well, that's that, I suppose. Eventually I aim for this blog to look exactly like the other one, but right now I have things to do and quite frankly I've had enough of sorting out blogs today. I'll be posting the same sort of stuff as I was before: book reviews, short stories, rants, etc... So there we go. Please enjoy my blog! :) Goodnight, readers... goodnight...

NaNoWriMo

I don't know if you've heard of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, which is actually international), but it's an online challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in a month (specifically, the month of November). Anyone can participate, and it's free to join.

I took part in NaNoWriMo for the first time in 2010, when I was fourteen. My novel was called The Children of The Forgotten and I completed it (albeit thanks to it snowing and my school being closed towards the end of the month, so I had a couple of extra full days in which to write). It wasn't very well planned and I never managed to finish the second draft but there we go.

In 2012 I took part in Camp NaNoWriMo, which is the same thing but in the summer - like an American summer camp, but online, and for writers. That was also fun (however I believe I prefer the November event; I think because it is more well-known, so there are more people and I felt like I was part of something bigger and grander.), although again it wasn't very well planned (I began the novel on an impulse with an idea that I forced out of my head specifically so I could take part). I did finish it, but I got bored with my main character halfway through, and I'd got quite far without very much actually happening, so I killed off my annoying protagonist, threw my plotline (metaphorically) out the window, and continued the novel by following some much more interesting characters who consequently had run-ins with dancing trees, cheese-on-toast running away, people with extremely long names made of up numbers, and a disappearing donut-seller who was actually a murderer (he poisoned his donuts). It was all rather amusing, but absolutely terrible.

I also attempted NaNoWriMo in 2011 (getting little further than perhaps 5,000 words) and Camp NaNoWriMo in 2012 (I got to 41,000 words before giving up - except that I didn't give up on the idea, because I'm still working on it now. Just very, very slowly.)

Generally I'm not very happy about there being no more January examinations, because it means we have to do ALL OF THEM in the summer which just adds to the pressure (thanks a lot, like we really need that), but what it does mean is that if I have no exams in January then I don't need to spend every second of November and December revising. Which in my books can only mean one thing. NaNoWriMo. Which is particularly good because NaNoWriMo is really the only time I have ever finished a writing project that isn't a short story.

I do have an idea already prepared for this year's novel, but the likelihood is that things will get pretty random (when one has 50,000 words to write in a month and a novel with serious themes, possibly the only way to get through it is to keep oneself entertained with the occasional light-hearted and plain crazy scene. It's gonna be great.). Fingers crossed for completing it, though. :)

TO READ: Fire

Fire by Kristin Cashore is the second in her The Seven Kingdoms Trilogy, however not only is it technically a prequel to first in the series Graceling but it isn't actually set in the Seven Kingdoms at all. In a land bordering the Seven Kingdoms to the east of an impassable mountain range known as The Dells, approximately forty years before the events of Graceling. This is, I think, my favourite book. My one favourite, ever. (And such a pretty cover the British edition has!!)

In The Dells - one of only two kingdoms known to its people, the other being the northern sea-faring land of Pikkia - there exists extraordinary creatures which can appear as any species, be it cat, mouse, wolf, raptor... These monsters, as they are called, can be distinguished by their unnaturally vibrant colours, and have the ability to take control of others' minds, which is added to the almost hypnotic effect their beauty has on some.

Seventeen-year-old Fire (so named for her flaming hair) is the only human monster alive, and is hated by many - sometimes for jealousy, sometimes for her father's legacy, but mostly for her venomous mind. Fire hides herself away on her late father's estate in a remote corner of the kingdom, where her kind-hearted neighbour raised her along with his son Archer, Fire's lifelong friend, in the hopes of deflecting all attention. But Fire isn't safe, not even here.

The Dells is a kingdom still recovering from a king corrupted by Fire's monster father Cansrel, and the throne of the current King Nash is unstable, and the threat of war is looming from all sides. Despite the royal family's obvious distrust of her, Fire's gift would be invaluable, and Fire is not her father. This is the story of Fire's fight to prove herself; to stay true to herself and to do what she feels is right and pay back the innocent prince Cansrel tried so many times to kill. Because underneath her otherworldly beauty, Fire is just as human as everybody else.

I wholeheartedly recommend that anyone and everyone reads this book - whether you're male or female, old or young. Partly because of a blog post I just found. I was going to comment on it, but then it became a bit long so I shall be posting it separately. But whether you'd rather read something fast-paced, or something political, or something romantic, or something magical, READ THIS BOOK.

Finally, I'd like to just direct people to a blog post that Kristin Cashore wrote about Fire and why she wrote it. Also, please find the list of awards and raving reviews for Fire here. :)

TO READ: Graceling

And at last, I've got to recommending what is probably my favourite series of books: The Seven Kingdoms trilogy by the wonderful Kristin Cashore (whose blog is here). Graceling is the first in the trilogy to have been published, and is Cashore's debut novel, although in the story's timeline it is not the first chronologically.

Graceling is set in a fictional Medieval-esque world made up of seven kingdoms: Nander, Estill, Sunder, Wester, Monsea, Lienid, and the Middluns. In this world, some people - called Gracelings - are born with extra-special abilities and are marked by having one eye a different colour to the other.

One such Graceling is Katsa, the niece of the king of the Middluns, who is Graced with killing, and is used by her uncle as a weapon to fuel his fearsome reputation. Sickened by the gruesome tasks she is forced to do, Katsa also works for a secret organisation called the Council, which she started herself, to do good and help people in order to balance out all those she has hurt and killed.

It is on a Council mission to rescue the kidnapped father of the peaceful king of Lienid that Katsa stumbles onto a dark mystery that will lead her on a journey of survival and self-discovery across the Seven Kingdoms in the hopes of putting right a world gone wrong.

Winner of several awards and nominated for many more, Graceling is a gripping and fast-paced coming-of-age novel for young adults, beautifully written with a touch of romance and humour, as well as believable characters who I myself have become incredibly emotionally attached to over at least five readings of this book. It's also due to be adapted for the big screen, by the makers of Life Of Pi; it's a film I'm very much looking forward to, I just hope they do it the justice it deserves.

Also, while browsing Kristin Cashore's blog for the link to the post in which the film was announced, I found this awesome post (if you read it, remember to read some of the comments too, as Cashore comments to answer peoples' questions with more wonderful insights). I swear it's the most inspirational post for writers EVER. Another of my favourites is this one; Kristin Cashore has some of the most brilliant advice for writers, I could actually spend all day finding links to posts from her blog that would be helpful to anyone aspiring to be a novelist (she is seriously inspirational).

Blog Neglect: A Notice To Those Few Who May Be Interested

I'm aware I've neglected my blog over the past couple of weeks. I have a few more book recommendations I want to post but mostly what I want to do with this blog is to post short stories on it, like I originally intended to. One day I hope to read a few things aloud to post as a video, but that may never happen; it all depends on whether I have the time, and the energy, and the resources (I do own a camera, but the charger went walkabout. As in, I think it may have hiked to the other end of the country or something), and whether or not I remember the idea when I do have all of those things.

Either way, my blog has to fight for priority, and unfortunately the more important stuff like school work will inevitably in out; therefore it doesn't bother me so much when a "deadline" for posting something passes. In conclusion, I won't be setting dates for posting anything anymore, you'll just have to wonder and wait, and my next blog post will hit you when you least expect it.

In the meantime, I'm tired (it's only 7PM) and have things to be doing, and when I've done those things, then I have addictive computer games to play and funny cat videos to watch. Auf wiedersehen!

TO READ: Throne Of Glass

I was drawn to this fantasy novel by American writer Sarah J. Maas because of its promise of an intriguing and different story and a strong female lead character, but I soon found another reason to read it. Throne Of Glass began on writing website FictionPress.Net when Ms. Maas was sixteen. This got my attention because I joined FictionPress when I was thirteen, so I was really excited to find a brilliant, published book which started with a teen author on FictionPress. And a brilliant book it is, too, with elements of a romance and a murder mystery as well as fantasy.

This is the story of 18-year-old Celaena Sardothien, an infamous assassin serving a life sentence in a gruelling work prison which should already have killed her. Celaena dreams of freedom, and it is a chance at freedom she is offered when she is asked to represent the prince in a competition to become the King's Assassin, but will mean either death or a return to prison if she loses.

As I said, I picked up this book because of its promise of something different to the usual teen fantasy fare of vampires and werewolves, so I was disappointed when I found the first signs of a love triangle developing. I have grown sick of love triangles; I hate the things. But Sarah J. Maas actually pulls it off very well, and if you want to know how, or what I mean by that - well, you'll just have to read the book, won't you?

It isn't what I expected from reading the blurb, and there were bits I wasn't satisfied with, but overall the positives outweigh the negatives, and Throne of Glass is definitely worth reading.

TO READ: Mockingbird

Not to be confused with Harper Lee's bestseller, Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine is the story of a young girl named Caitlin who is struggling not only with her brother's death but also with Asperger's, a form of autism. It's well-written and thought-provoking, giving the reader an insight into how someone who lives with Asperger's might think, which was interesting for me as I know someone with a form of autism similar to Asperger's. I know that they read the book too, with somebody else, and apparently they really opened up to discuss the problems that they themselves have in dealing with autism while they were reading the book. It kind of helped me to understand things from the point of view of someone with autism; it's not that they're being stupid or awkward deliberately, it's because they are genuinely struggling with certain things, and this book helped me to see that.

The back of my copy of this book describes it as "bittersweet" and "unforgettable" and I would certainly agree with this. Even if the topic of autism has no relevance to you, I would still recommend you read it.

NOT TO READ: Flying Blind

Again I'd like to point out that I feel bad for criticising other writers' hard work but this is just my opinion, I'm sure there are many people who like this book. It's Flying Blind, book one of a series called The Dragon Diaries by Deborah Cooke. It took me a while to get into this book mostly because I didn't like Ms Cooke's style of writing. I thought the protagonist seemed childish (at least , at the start), a bit too full of herself and dramatic for me; it felt like she was trying too hard to get the reader's sympathy. As a writer I have been told over again that it is best to show the reader what you mean rather than tell them straight out, and I just thought that we were told too much rather than shown it. I must say that I did get into it eventually, the storyline did get better - but I do think it was slightly overdramatic at parts. I did just feel like it was trying too hard to be good, it wasn't natural. However, as I said, it improved as it went on, I thought.

If anyone's read it, then I'd like to know your thoughts, I know a good few people will disagree with me (I just read an online review that absolutely sings its praises, but I do agree with it when it says it's probably aimed at the younger end of the YA spectrum, which may be why I didn't enjoy as much as others did). I personally won't be reading the sequel, though, and you may well find my copy in a charity shop at some point in the future.

TO READ: ACID

Is it Sunday? I think it's Sunday. (This is what study leave does to brains who have trouble remembering the day of the week in normal circumstances...) Well I'm posting this whether it's Sunday or not, so deal with it. :)

ACID is the newly released debut novel of English author Emma Pass, who I have actually met. It is a dystopian thriller aimed at teenagers - and not just girls, as one might assume by the fact that the main character is female. ACID tells the story of 17-year-old Jenna Strong, who, in a future Britain controlled by strict dictatorship police force ACID, is trying to survive the high security prison she expects to spend the rest of her life in, until a mysterious rebel group break her out. Full of twists and turns you wouldn't expect, ACID could well be the next big thing in teen fiction.

Of course, it isn't perfect - I know some of my friends at creative writing club who read it had a note-passing conversation picking holes in the plot and confusing themselves with what happened there and why did this happen? However I myself didn't notice these things, and thoroughly enjoyed the book. It is fast-paced, well-written and intriguing; overall, difficult to put down. The ending perhaps fizzled out a bit, but other than that, it is a brilliant book that I completely recommend to girls and boys, teens and adults alike.

NOT TO READ: The Catcher In The Rye

First off, I would like to clarify that I am not saying this is not a good book. As a writer myself, I do not feel particularly comfortable in criticising other people's works since I know it's not nice to have people say your work is rubbish. This is not rubbish. On the contrary, The Catcher In The Rye is certainly a well-written book; the main character has a distinct and interesting voice and he is very well developed.

My main complaint with this book is its point. Or, more accurately, its lack of one. So the guy wanders round the city thinking about things. Tell me this: why do I care? If something of true consequence happened, then I might care. But nothing like this does happen. There is no true antagonist to go against the protagonist; there is no main problem to be overcome, therefore there is no building tension, no climax, no resolution. I admit that I had high hopes when I started the book; I thought, what's going to happen to this character? He implies something terrible happened to him, it must be interesting, what is it? But in the end it's... nothing. I think strange is the word I would use to describe it. Strange. Yes, I can see how these experiences might perhaps lead to the character feeling the way he does, but is it interesting enough to the reader? No, I do not think it is - I only really finished the book so that I could say I had read it from cover to cover, and in the hopes that something might actually happen.

If you look at it from an English Literature point of view, you might perhaps find something of interest than if you read it for pleasure. The Catcher In The Rye is certainly a literary venture; I wonder if it might be considered a modernist novel - a work in which the author experiments with a new way of writing narrative. In the light of this information, the book appears better, because a modernist book would tend to drop some aspect of the traditionally accepted form of a novel. Therefore, I would say that if you are planning to study it and look at it in depth, then go ahead, but if you are planning to read it for pleasure, depending on your taste, then this is not the book for you.

TO READ: The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton

This is a really enjoyable read, and as far as I can remember it is suitable for anyone with an attention span long enough to read it all. It's talented 'authoress' Kate Morton’s debut novel* a romantic mystery set mostly in 1913, 1975 and 2005, in England and in Australia. It’s hard to explain much of what it’s about without giving too much away, but I’ll give it a go:

It’s the story of a young girl found alone on a ship to Australia in 1913 who cannot remember who she is or how she got there, other than something about a woman named the Authoress. It is also the story of Nell, the woman the little girl grows up to be, who in 1975 goes back to England to trace her heritage and find out what happened to her. And finally it is the story of Cassandra, Nell’s granddaughter, who follows Nell’s footsteps because of a house she didn’t know existed and the forgotten garden attached to it in Cornwall which she inherits from Nell after the latter’s death in 2005.

For me The Forgotten Garden is a captivating page turner; a very impressive debut novel which I very much recommend to anyone and everyone. Never mind werewolves, vampires and high school love triangles, I really believe young people should read more books like Kate Morton’s, and they should begin with this one.

If anyone was wondering, the name of this blog is partly inspired by this book, which is why I thought it fitting to write about it first. And next week I WILL post on a Sunday, rather than forgetting and putting it off till next Sunday. :)

*She’s written three novels since, and I can verify that all three are indeed as good as the first; they are The House At Riverton, The Distant Hours and The Secret Keeper.

On A Different Note

The sun is setting and the scene outside my window looks like one of those old sepia photographs. I didn't know the world could look like that without actually being a sepia photograph. It's strange and sort of magical.

On the other hand, it could also look slightly like the whole view has been turned orange by the glow of a nearby fire. It would have to be a pretty big fire. Which is a scary thought. Luckily this is (hopefully) very unlikely.

To Read Or Not To Read: that's a very good question...

I'm going to start posting a weekly, um, post on the subject of books, namely ones that I would recommend and ones that I would not. This will begin next Sunday.

In the meantime, the Red House Young Writers Yearbook competition is open until July this year, and this is the last year I will be young enough to enter. If anyone ever read Part One of When I Turn Forty, posted on this blog a good couple of months ago, it will never be finished but I have started a new version which I should hope is greatly improved (it's certainly a lot shorter). I intend to send this to the competition once it has been completed and sufficiently edited (and greatly edited it will be). If however I change my mind, I will post it on here instead. :)

Also, I am considering starting a blog in which I post a small amount every day from the point of view one of my characters, like a short fictional diary entry. However, this idea only entered my head today, so it probably won't ever happen. It's looking less and less likely by the second. And I'm very busy. Revision is holding me hostage and it won't let me go till June. Until then, my friends... :)

Silence In The Library

The other day I was thinking about silence, because I do weird things like that. So I thought I'd write a blog post about it. I'm not entirely sure why. It seemed important at the time.

I think that there's value in silence. Everybody needs a voice and there is a hugely obvious value in that, because we need to communicate in order to make our lives as good as we can. I see it firstly as a little bit like the boy who cried wolf. He made it extremely clear that he had a voice, but nobody listened when he used his voice the one time he really needed it - to get away from the real wolf. I also see it a bit like that one guy in films - the old one, you know the one - who sits in a corner on his own, but the few times throughout the film when he speaks, the other characters stop and listen as if by doing so he'll give them rare gems that they're going to treasure forever.

What I am saying is that there is value in having a voice and there is value in silence but there is the greatest value on the perfect balance between the two. Basically, it's good to know when to speak and when to shut up.

I've been quiet on the blog front lately which isn't surprising, I'm a quiet person, and I'm busy. I doubt anyone really cares, to be honest. But just in case some people do, and those people read the first part of When I Turn Forty [see bottom of post for footnote on this] then I thought this would be a good time to inform those people that I haven't forgotten about it, and I have been writing Part Two, but it's not done yet. Hopefully soon. Emphasis on the "hopefully". Sorry. :)

Also, I like libraries. I bet you'd never have guessed that.

Footnote:
(I apologise - firstly because the idea was better when it was in  my head, and secondly because by the time it's done I will have put you through four parts of it. Luckily I guarantee that the fourth one will be good, even if the others aren't. Please read it just so you can read the last one when I finally get round to writing it. :) Also, sorry for being slow in writing the rest of it. )

FANFICTION!

I've just posted a one-chapter Bitterblue (Kristin Cashore, of course) fanfiction on (guess what) my FanFiction account, about Bitterblue's wedding... It's called Ghost Eyes. Please take a look! It isn't very long. I think I have anonymous reviews enabled, so anyone can post a comment. Thanks! :)

I've put this at the top of the story, so I don't know why I feel the need to say it again here, but with it being a fanfiction, all the characters in the story belong to Kristin Cashore, the writer of Bitterblue (which I started rereading yesterday, and I really shouldn't have, because on top of tons of homework and revision, I'm also already reading two (possibly three, I lose count) other books, all of which do not belong to me and need to be given back to friends and the school library at some point...)

Anyway, if you've not read Bitterblue or any of The Seven Kingdoms Trilogy, WHY NOT, it's amazing (and most certainly not as well-known as it should be). :)

...

Sigh. Five to seven in the evening and the only productive thing I've managed to do is finally finish editing my Bitterblue fanfiction and blog about it. Great. Not a day wasted at all. :P

I'm way too lazy...

Character Swap

We did an interesting activity in creative writing club today. We had to describe one of our characters who we knew well to someone else, and then they would have to write a short piece from your character's point of view, and you had to write a short piece from their character's point of view. It was quite difficult, at first, until you got into it.

I'd say that it made you realise how much your characters mean to you, but I was already aware that I was quite protective over my favourite characters and storylines (I feel I should apologise to all my other characters and storylines - just because you are not my favourites does not mean you are not valued, and no offense was intended). I also expected it to be difficult to write from the point of view of someone else's character, so there were no new lessons to be learned there either. However, what I did take away from this is how hard it is to describe your character to someone else and not miss anything out. I doubt my partner's piece shows my character the way I show my character, which is my fault not hers, she is an amazing writer.

Also, I am quite nervous to share what I wrote, although surprisingly I am quite happy with it. I'm just worried that I got her character all wrong and she won't be very happy with me, or that she won't think I wrote it very well (did I mention she's a better writer than me, and probably THE best in our group? Yeah.).

It also made me want to talk more about my novel, mostly to my best friend while we were walking home, which is odd for me, because, as I mentioned earlier, I'm quite protective over my characters and storylines. They're kind of part of me, they're some of those really private things that I daydream about randomly so I don't much like sharing them; you'd expect my best friend to know all about them, but she doesn't, we don't really talk about our writing all that much. When somebody, like my aunt, say, asks me if I'm writing anything at the moment, if I am, I'll generally just say something along the lines of "Um, yeah... I'm writing a fantasy story... about a girl... as usual..." and that'll be it.

Me and my friend did talk a bit about it - I can't remember how much I've said about this novel previously, but this is the friend who suggested the name Barnabus, if I mentioned that - and I told her today the significance of this - that although my novel finally has a proper title, the name Barnabus has stuck, to my main antagonist - and she was pleased, I think, of her contribution. She, I think, may or may not be the first person I have told my new title to. It's called The Secrets The Dead Keep. (By the way, this post isn't necessarily to talk about my novel, it doesn't really have much of a point...) Back in August last year I wrote about 41,000 words in a prologue and not quite twelve chapters (I had a plan set out, but in order to keep myself wanting to write, I skipped one of them; also, I never finished about Chapter Twelve) set over three months, when the whole novel will take place over twelve months. I don't really think there's much more I can say about it, I may or may not have given a (very) brief idea of what the plot is about in a previous post, I can't remember - my memory really isn't great, you may be able to tell :P.

So... maybe I'll post a bit of my novel on here at some point (apart from the random extract I had to remove from my first draft due to a "deliberate" mistake). I'd also like to read a bit of it out at Creative Writing, but I think it'd be best if I read the prologue, unfortunately I'm happy with neither the original prologue I wrote in August, or the one in the rewritten version, so that'll need a bit of work... Anyway. :) I'm sorry this post... wandered a bit, and that it didn't really have much of a point, but I wanted to post it, so there. :) I may be posting again soon if I manage to write part two of When I Turn Forty, if anyone's interested about that, which they're probably not - I've tried writing that story several times, I'm still not convinced the idea is any good when it's on paper instead of in my head (where it is  good), but I'll definitely be posting on the 14th (of February, this year, that is, guys :P). No extra brownie points for guessing the subject. :)

Whenever inspiration strikes, you have to take it... even when it seriously hinders the tidying of your desk...

This is what happens when an empty coffee mug inspires you, and there is a camera nearby... (I apologise in advance for my photography, which I thought was better than it actually is at the time, and for my messy desk)

It started off quite slowly...

And then it escalated...

And then it got out of hand... it ended up being a sort of 3D collage of things I like...

I apologise to Kristin Cashore for putting things on top of her books. They should be worshipped, not sat on by MP3 player speakers. :) (In case nobody has noticed, I would like to point out the little felt mouse sitting on top of the speakers. I don't really have a reason for doing that, except that I realise he isn't very noticeable, and that I think he would like to be noticed.)

And if anyone was wondering, I did manage to get my desk tidied in the end. :)

When I Turn Forty - Part One: a short story

This, I believe, will be a three-part short story, at least. I have had this idea lurking in the back of my mind for some time now, and have tried to write it on a few occasions. Don't expect anything spectacular. :)

It’d been a busy day.

Susanna got up at six o’clock this morning because she couldn’t stay in bed any longer for excitement. She woke her parents and opened her presents, and helped her mother make the cake, and decorated it herself and left her mother to clear up afterwards. She played with her new toys between floods of visiting relatives. Then she helped with lunch, and ate lunch, and put on her party dress and had her hair brushed and decorated with a pretty hairband, and bounced around the house until her friends arrived. Then she bounced around the house with them, and they played with her new toys, and then Susanna’s dad took them all to the cinema, and then bowling, and they ate pizza in the café in the bowling alley. And they talked and laughed and yelled and laughed and played with their balloons and their food and laughed until Susanna’s father thought he would be deaf for the rest of his life.

Now finally, at eight o’clock in the evening, they were alone again. The dark had fallen outside the frosty window, and the father sat in the kitchen washing the pots, staring listlessly into the water, exhausted. The mother sat by the fire in the sitting room reading a novel when her little girl skipped into the room with a picture book and a smile on her face. She pushed her mother’s novel out of the way and clambered up onto her lap, handing her the picture book. Her mother took it, put her arms around the girl and held the book in front of the two of them, but did not open it. She said,

                “Did you enjoy your birthday, Susanna?”

                “Yes, Mummy,” the girl said sweetly, grinning round at her. And then, remembering her manners, she said, “Thank you for my presents.”

                “You’re welcome, sweetie,” her mother said, smiling. “Is it good to be six?”

Susanna nodded eagerly, but the weariness from the day was clear in her contented little face. She patted the book and looked at her mother, who said, thoughtfully,

                “Now that you are six, what is it you would like to be when you are forty?”

                “A fairy!” Susanna cried happily.

                “A fairy,” her mother chuckled. “That’s lovely.”

And then she opened the book and proceeded to read her daughter to sleep.

*

A year passed.

Now here she was again, seven years old, after another busy birthday, and her father was in the kitchen reading his newspaper, and her mother was in the sitting room by the fire knitting. Again Susanna scrambled onto her mother’s knee and handed her a book to read.

                “Mummy, will you read to me?”

                “Of course, sweetie. Have you had a good birthday?”

                “Yes it was very – yes I really, really, really liked it.”

                “Good. What’s it like being seven?”

                “Big,” Susanna replied shortly.

Her mother smiled. “And what would you like it to be like when you’re forty?”

This time Susanna thought about it. “That’s really old,” she said after a minute. Her mother laughed, and tried not to think that she would be forty soon.

                “Not as old as, say, ninety.”

                “That’s really, really, really old!”

                “Yes, but what would you like to be when you’re forty?”

                “I’d like to be a princess.”

                “Really?” She should’ve expected that. “And how would become a princess?”

                “I’d marry a prince,” Susanna said, as if it was obvious. Her mother supposed it would be, to a girl who’d watched so many Disney Princess films.

                “Oh? Which prince?” her mother asked, wondering whether her daughter would say Prince William or Prince Harry.

                “Prince Charming!” Susanna said, and her mother realised that at this age, there were no princes in the world other than Prince Charming, not even the Princes William and Harry. “Can we read now, Mummy?”

                “Yes, dear. Once upon a time…”

*

In the year that followed, a lot happened. Susanna started Junior School, and came home one day to tell her mother shyly that she’d made friends with a boy in her class called Archie and one day they were going to get married and live happily ever after. Yet another day, she came home and told her mother in tears that some of the girls were being mean to her.

When she made friends with these girls, she invited them to her eighth birthday party, along with Archie and a few other friends. As it turned out, these girls only went for the cake. Susanna’s eighth birthday was when she learned that life isn’t perfect.

That evening, she went and curled up on her mother’s lap and put her arms around her and buried her face in her shoulder. She gave her no book to read, not this year. Her mother held her and rocked her as Susanna said,

                “Why do they not like me?”

To which her mother replied, after a minute’s thought, “I don’t know, dear. Some people aren’t very nice. Unfortunately that’s just the way it is.”

                “Why?”

                “Because everybody’s different and that’s just how some people turn out. Not very nice. Besides, not everybody’s parents are very nice. That might make them a not very nice person.”

                “I have nice parents,” Susanna said, and her mother smiled and hugged her only daughter closer.

                “Good,” she said. “We do try to be nice.”

                “I don’t ever want to be not nice like that,” Susanna declared, shaking her head.

                “No, I hope you’re not ever like that. What would you like to be instead?”

                “Nice,” Susanna replied simply. “And friendly and kind.”

                “What about when you’re older? When you’re forty, what would you like to be by the time you’re forty?”

And Susanna said, “Didn’t you ask me that last year?”

                “I did. But things change in a year. Now that you’re a bit older, what would you like to be by the time you’re forty?”

Her daughter stared off at the far wall with a slight crease between her eyebrows. Eventually she said, absently,

                “Princesses aren’t like Cinderella and Snow White anymore, are they? Like, the princesses in magazines and things, they don’t look like princesses, do they, with big ball gowns and tiaras and…things. Do they?”

                “No, my dear, princesses aren’t like the ones in fairytales.”

Susanna wrinkled her nose. “Then I don’t want to be a princess.”

                “What do you want to be, then?” her mother asked her softly.

                “I don’t know,” Susanna admitted.

                “What about… An actress? Or a singer? A musician? A writer? An artist? What about a vet, or a doctor? A teacher? A designer? Maybe an astronaut? A chef? A horse rider? Or an explorer? I know, what about a ballerina?” But as her mother listed each one as she thought of them, Susanna just shook her head.

                “I don’t know, Mummy,” she said. “Well, really, I’d like to be a fairy. Or a dragon trainer.”

                “A ballerina can be similar to a fairy.”

Susanna thought about that, then said quickly, “No. No it’s not, Mummy.”

                “Okay, then.”

And that was the end of that conversation.

Why you should always reread what you last wrote the previous day before you start writing again

I just found this saved on my computer - it's a 58-word extract from my novel which I wrote last summer. I thought I'd post it on here for your entertainment. You'll see why I removed it. :)

"He worked here, once, before he died. It will have been sold from here, made in this very workroom behind me here.” He pointed his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the curtained archway.

                “Does he still work here?”

                “No,” the shop keeper said bluntly. “He’s dead.”

                “Oh.” Saffie was a little taken aback. “I’m sorry.”

This is still not a good time to be blogging

You guessed it, I have other more important things to be doing right now, although for once not many other things. But I figured I'd still like to say a little more about why I'm blogging, as I've been meaning to for a bit now. There are four main reasons, really.

Firstly, editing. I know from my previous posts that if there is a written form of verbal (and here's a word I hate having to spell) diarrhoea, I have it. But you guys don't want to read seriously long posts with no point to them. So I know now from taking part in NaNoWriMo (mentioned/explained a few posts back) that I can make things really wordy when I want to, to seriously increase my word count; let's see if I can learn to write things in as few words as possible instead. Or at least edit things down to as few words as possible. :)

Secondly, purpose. What's the point in me writing if nobody's going to read what I write? I lost confidence in writing websites such as FictionPress after hearing that some people have had their work plagarised, and there was nothing to prove that the writing was mine. After all, only me and my friends know that Lady Scarlet of Stormhold (my penname on FictionPress) is me; that could be anybody. Of course, just as on this blog, all my writing is mine. I just needed somewhere to post my writing where people can read it after I stopped posting on FictionPress, where I feel more secure that it is obvious whose work it is: mine.

I hope that makes sense.

Also, if nobody reads your work, then you don't have anybody to give you constructive criticism, you have nobody to help you to improve, and that's not going to get you very far. Writing is one of those things where you kind of need feedback, otherwise you have no way of knowing if what you've written is any good or not. And that's a very important point.

Thirdly, confidence. I think sharing my work will help me with my confidence, and yes I do have confidence issues, I have struggled with them probably since I was about eleven. I am considerably better than I used to be, but currently these worries have been changing - ie, before, I worried about not having friends and things, but I have a lot of good friends and have done for a while and am much happier than I used to be; the worries now are about the future (I won't go into it; this is not my journal). If I can feel confident in my writing, then I can feel confident that I always have that to fall back on if any other career plans fall through (although of course, I'd love for my writing to be my first career not my backup plan, but unfortunately life doesn't work like that).

And finally, experience. I remember at the creative writing club at my school a few years ago, a girl in year 13 was telling us how she was trying to get her novel published, and how difficult it is for young writers to get published just because of your age and therefore lack of experience. You don't need qualifications to be a writer, but you do need experience - practice makes perfect, as they say. So if one day this blog helps me get published in some way shape or form, brilliant. :)

I'm sorry for the length of this, I hoped I'd be able to keep this short, but... Oh well. Have a nice evening, everyone! :D