Something that I told my mom a few weeks ago has really been prodding the back of my mind, so I thought I would talk about it here because it's about writing. We were talking about how mature of a teenager I am, and I told my mom that she probably wouldn't think that if she knew every thought that went through my head all day. Because, let's face it. On the inside, I'm just as stupid and reckless as any other teenager. The only difference is that my priorities are a little different, but I still think LIKE a teenager, just not about the same things as most other 17-year-old girls. And plus when I have an impulse to do something, there's usually something that physically prevents me from doing it, or I'm just too much of a coward. (What does that tell you about my thoughts?) And I told my mom that there's a filter on my mouth that blocks about 96% of what I want to say. Like I told my ex-boyfriend, I have a lot to say, it's just that none of it can make it past the filter. It reminds me of the Mark Twain quote that says "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than open your mouth and remove all doubt." Or something like that. I don't remember the exact quote, but you get the gist of it. And I've been saying it forever, but if someone read all of the stories I've written (and maybe even got a commentary from me about what's to come in unfinished works), they could get a better idea of what I'm like than my best friends have. You would literally know me inside and out. Luckily for me, though, nobody's ever going to get the chance to do that. But my point is, I have a filter somewhere between my brain and my mouth (probably somewhere in the nasal region) that blocks 96% of what I want to say. That's a lot of things I never get to say. So in order to keep from going crazy, all of my thoughts get poured into my writing, where they can be fictionalized and metaphorized and covered up so I know they're there, but the stories can (for the most part) be shown to the public. It's interesting when you think about it, because I've always taken great pride in this part of me that makes me stand out from my peers (my being shy), and now I've found a way to connect that to my other favorite part of myself (my writing ability). Since I discovered that, my writing life has been booming. I didn't even really realize that until I just typed it here, but something in my writing gene has been eating its Wheaties lately, and I couldn't really figure out why. I thought it might be because school is starting next week and my brain loves coming up with new ways to torture me, but now I really get it. It's like the realization of why I have my writing gift. Of course, I could be all wrong, but it's a good theory. It makes sense.

Anyway, this whole thing led me to thinking about the Promise Series. Those books are basically a biography of my 8th grade and high school life, both from the perspective of who I am and who I wish I was. But it's a biography nonetheless, so there are a lot of people who are in my life that are in these books, in one form or another. And even though I changed their names and some things about them, if people who read it knew me well enough and knew who I hang/hung out with, they could know who everyone is. I'm talking friends, ex-boyfriends, parents, siblings (well, sibLING), people from work, random people in general who I meet--anyone is fair game. So I was just thinking, my whole life in some way or another--including how I see the world--is represented in these books, so what if someone I know reads it and is like, "Hey, so-and-so character must be me. Wait--what do you mean Lucy thinks I'm obnoxious? I should go yell at Nicole!" I wouldn't care, really, but it would still be interesting. That's why I write under a penname, though. That way if someone I didn't like in middle school (someone who can actually read, of course) picks up this book called Some Kind of Miracle by Daqu and sees that Alana didn't like a certain character, their mind won't immediately jump to me. It's just some food for thought, though.

Oh, and here's another thing. I discovered about halfway through writing the last paragraph that the anonymity of the internet (even though most people who would ever read this know exactly who I am) decreases my filter from 96% to 42%, so take it or leave it.

Okay, first of all, I should mention that I never knew this in the several months that I've been keeping this blog, but I had a setting turned on that only allowed people who were signed in to comment, and that has now been turned off, so if anyone has something they want to say about my posts, they're welcome to. I'm sorry. I wasn't being snobby or anything, I just never realized that was the default setting.

Right now I'm on the second part of a two-part vacation, and it's going great. I woke up Wednesday at zero-dark-thirty in the morning and went to Miami, OK (pronounced My-Am-Uh, unlike in Florida). Don't get me wrong, I love the city, but the hotel I stayed in was awful. Because--here's the thing! It wasn't a hotel! It was a motel! This brings my times I've stayed in a motel up to a grand total of 2, and I've been miserable both times. Because the thing is, I hate bugs. No, that's not true. I *searches for thesaurus* despise, detest, loathe, bugs. They're awful. And I'm not one of those people who are scared of them, because let's face it, I'm about a hundred billion times bigger than the average bug, but they're just annoying. Very, very, very, very annoying. Especially the ones who feel the need to buzz around my head all day and are too chicken to accept my double-dog-dare to land. So I spent most of that afternoon/night making a tent with my bed covers, where I could write in peace. Which was great, except it was a million frickin degrees in that room. The whole experience taught me a valuable lesson, though. I've kind of been looking forward to living that whole starving-artist lifestyle, and I realized that maybe that isn't the best option for a girl who's spent almost her entire life in the suburbs, raised in a middle-class family. Is that going to stop me? Hell no. I'll move someplace where it's so cold that bugs can't live there, and if that doesn't work, just wear bug spray like it's lotion. :D

But that nightmare did end, and now I'm in Kansas City. Currently I'm at the hotel pool, watching my dad float around. Kansas City is awesome. It's one of my favorite cities. Actually the reason I'm here is to tour UMKC, and I think that unless something happens and I'm granted a full scholarship to my dream college, I'm going there. It's an awesome school.

Another good thing about going on vacation is that I get a lot of writing done. Vacations with my dad and I tend to involve a lot of time with me and my laptop, between driving to wherever we're going (usually a 4-6 hour drive) and me staying in the hotel room for about 96% of the trip. On this trip I got a little more of the Promise Series written, and I'm hoping to get a little more done on the way home. And I also wrote a little bit of a story that will most likely never develop into a full novel, but it's fun to write little scenes of it here and there.

As a final note, I'm having second thoughts on the Black Diamond series. I feel like the whole thing, in addition to being an awesome story, is a little too forced. Another author may be able to pull it off, but with my writing style, I don't know if I can. I'm not giving up on it quite yet, but I'm seriously considering it. If I'm going to write this story, I need to take an entirely different approach to it. Or another thing I could do is just take all of my favorite things from the series and stick them in other novels. I know one sub-plot that the still-unnamed sequel to Desiring Truth has been bugging me and bugging me about borrowing, and if I give it to Truth and Dave then Aqua and Pyro can't have it. It's too awesome for two stories to have it. It's also vital to the Black Diamond series, though, so if I do give that sub-plot to Dave and Truth then the Black Diamond series falls apart. So I'm just going to do some soul-searching for awhile, and keep my invisible blog-readers in suspense. But hey. I'm a writer. Cliff-hangers are what I do best!

**Daqu**

I'm in a kind of calm serenity in my life. Even though I'm going through a huge transition period in my life right now, my writing life has never looked better. I finished Desiring Truth, minus the epilogue that still needs to be written. But for all intents and purposes, the story is complete. And I'm really happy about that and sad at the same time. Because this is a story that I've essentially poured my heart and soul into, and it's been so much fun to write. There was never a time when I was like, "Ugh. Just write anything to get the words down." I had a LOT of fun writing this book. But now I have a new book to get all excited about. The working title is Beloved until I can think of a better one, if I do. But the basic idea of the story is a 17-or 18-year-old girl who is a very devout Christian, and then things start happening where the choices she makes and the things that happen to her just go against Christianity's teachings in as many ways as I can think of, but she's still determined to remain a Christian. The thing I'm most looking forward to in this story is doing all the research for it. I'm very excited about my newest project, though. Even though my rebound-book track record is not the greatest (50%, actually), I'm really hoping for this one!

I just spent pretty much all night on the NaNoWriMo forums (completely ignoring homework, of course!), and I feel like there are a number of things that I've said over and over again, because these things help prove almost every point when it comes to my writing style.

First, I'm a serious writer. I'm not the kind of writer who would ever randomly have ninjas attacking her main character on the street. When I'm stuck for a plot, I sit back and think about it; I don't go off on random tangents. ONE TIME during NaNoWriMo last year I took Susabelle's suggestion and gave my character a random, mysterious illness, but let's face it. The story would never have made it past 15,000 words if I hadn't, and most of my stories include random and mysterious illnesses anyway, so it wasn't that far of a jump. And I did it in a very serious way.

Second, yes, I edit while I write, and I do read over the draft. Reading over the draft while I'm writing it just helps me get into the mood for the story, plus there are just some scenes I write that are incredibly too awesome to not be read at any given opportunity. And yes, I do edit. No formal double-spacing-red-pen editing, but if I don't, I end up with sentences that I remember made so much sense when I wrote them, but a few months later when I go back, I don't have a clue where they came from. I remember quite clearly at a write-in for NaNo last year, my mind was focused on eating while writing a descriptive scene, and actually mentioned that my character's fingers tasted good. Imagine going back and reading that six months later.

Third, I have multiple WIP at a time. I usually keep up a steady stream of 15-20 stories that I'm actively working on, and that doesn't include the multiple books in the Promise series, the Black Diamond series, the Clandephyte series, and a couple more. And I never have any of the slightest bit of trouble keeping their plots straight or anything like that. These characters and these stories all feel so real to me, that I don't even feel like I'm making them up. I just feel like I'm telling somebody's story. I really feel that my body was built to be a writer, and part of that is the ability to keep multiple plots and characters straight (all in my head) with all the effort it takes to roll over in bed on Monday morning. In a way, though, my having multiple WIP sort of reminds me of a person I know who (by the way, makes a lot of money) was in debt, and when this person got married, their new spouse paid off all the debt as a wedding present. And after that (I'm not sure exactly how long. Weeks? Months?) the person just slid right back into debt. My mom calls it just being comfortable owing people money. I think I'm just comfortable having multiple novels that I feel a pressing need to finish, sometimes to the point that I don't know where to start and end up writing nothing. It works for me, though.

So basically, after talking about these things all night on the NaNo boards, I've come to a conclusion that kind of stopped me in my tracks, even though I've known it all along. Here it is:

I take writing way too seriously, considering that I don't get paid for it.


Is that going to stop me? No. Never in a million years. Writing is me. Is is a linking verb, meaning a state of being. I am writing. It's who I am, how I define myself. When people ask me about myself, the first thing I tell them is that I'm a writer. So, yeah, maybe I do take it too seriously, but I also have a LOT of fun doing it, and that's what's really important to me. Plus it's good practice for when I am getting paid for it and am a New York Times Bestselling author. But for now, I'm going to keep letting writing fill up the entire essence of my being. (Wow. If that's not New Agey, I don't know what is!)

Thanks for stopping by!

Yes, I am very aware that I haven't posted on here in almost a month. But, honestly, my writing life has been in a kind of rut lately. I always have the Promise series, but I have mixed feelings about that. I know the whole story in my head, so I'm reluctant to write it down because I'm afraid I'll screw it up.

But I have four more days of school. I swear, these last few weeks have been the longest in my life. I finally turned in my research paper for my expository writing class, so that's one less thing I have to worry about, but I still have a TON of German homework and geometry homework that I need to have done by tomorrow. Morning. I swear, my teachers really need to realize that we only have four more days of school and they need to stop pushing us. I just keep tell myself that if I take it one day at a time and don't fail anything, I'll be fine. I'll let you know how that goes ;)

So, last night I was randomly thinking and avoiding homework, and I got to thinking about me being a total spoiled brat and owning two laptops. Tamara (the Gateway) and Bob (the mac). I bought Tamara in January so that I could put all my novels and such on a computer that wasn't for school. And that worked out really well, minus a certain event in March that we don't talk about. But I don't think Tamara ever really recovered from that. She's just had one problem after another, it seems. And she's just so delicate. Because of the way she's built, she doesn't automatically sleep when you close her. This means that if you close her and pick her up wrong (this has happened) she'll shut down. It also means that battery life can go dead if you forget to put her to sleep. And I've also had random programs open. But Bob is such a normal laptop. He's so...sturdy, for lack of a better word. I've never had any problems with him at all. So somewhere in all of this I decided that I was going to start using Bob full time again, which pretty much means that I wasted $650 on Tamara. I don't really feel like buying her was a waste, but it kind of was. Like, I feel like buying her was stupid, but it was one of those lessons that I had to learn for myself. But then I didn't know what to do with her. Like, what do you do with just a spare laptop lying around? My boyfriend thinks I should just keep her for a spare backup, and I think he's right. There's two weeks over the summer that I have to give Bob back to school for updates and hard drive-wiping, so then I can just use Tamara.

Also, I really have no idea what to write. I really want to just stick with the Promise series, and that's not a problem. I can just keep writing it. And if inspiration strikes and I decide there's another novel I want to write, there's no law saying I can't write it. I had a write-in tonight, and next year's NaNo came up as a topic. I guess I hadn't really given it much thought, but assuming I don't write it over the summer, I think The Number Five would make a great NaNoWriMo novel.

I'm honestly not even sure if anyone actually reads this blog because no one ever comments, but if they do, is it weird to just hear me talk about all these stories that you've never read and have no idea what they're about?

I seriously feel like my writing life is going through a major push & pull stage. Usually I only get like this after I finish a story, but let's face it -- I haven't finished anything since NaNoWriMo. But now there are a million different stories that I 3/4 of the way want to write (okay, maybe not a MILLION), and it doesn't help that my boredom of the last couple of days has been cured by obsessive banner making, and they all seem to be for these brilliant stories. I don't know. We'll just have to see what happens. Right now I really want to concentrate on three main stories: a novel called Earth Song, an old reawakened project called The Tire Swing, and a completely new idea that I've been playing around with for months that I'm thinking should be some kind of companion to my novel Shadow's Call called The Six. It's really great.

And on the brighter side of things, Easter is tomorrow, and I just had another amazing date with my boyfriend. We played Halo 3 for, like, 2 hours. There's nothing like spending 2 hours just randomly shooting at your boyfriend :)

Peace out!

So, while I thought that Tamara was going to be gone, I started writing another novel in a notebook with an actual blue pen. I haven't done that since...sixth grade? I got my own very own computer for the first time for Christmas in 6th grade, and I haven't written a novel in a notebook since. The novel started off being a metaphor for my religious life, but now I don't even know what it is. A great novel with awesome characters? But now I'm so engrossed in it that even though I technically do have Tamara back, I have no desire to write Some Kind of Miracle. Which...I never had any desire to write it in the first place. Maybe it really wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if I just didn't write it. Alana and Lucy don't really need fallible evidence of their friendship. I don't know. We'll just have to see how things go. For right now, I'm just going to keep writing my new story and editing Burnt Flowers Fallen, which, by the way, is coming along fantastically.