My Writing Process Blog Tour

Hello to my small, but amazing group of readers. I am writing this blog post as a part of a blog tour and was tagged by Melanie Fishbane fellow writer and friend. Check out her blog here:

http://melaniefishbane.wordpress.com 

Here's the deal: I will answer a few questions about my writing process and send you on to see some more blogs, so here goes:

What are you working on?

I am working on several things right now. I am editing a YA project that is vaguely in the magical realism genre about a teenage girl who is a healer. When I get bogged down with editing, I work on pre-writing and world building for a Dystopian YA novel or maybe it's quasi-near future or something...hence the pre-writing. It's fun to world build and play around with ideas. When I'm pre-writing I often draw the spaces my characters exist in, or take pictures of places that are significant in the story that exist in my real world. I would like to get a cork board to pin them to so I can look at them while I'm working, but I haven't done that yet.  

 How does your work differ from others of its genre?

Hmmm...well, I think I use magical realism a bit differently than it's normally used, it's not exactly magic and it's not exactly magical-realism. I'm being vague, but it's hard to explain without being specific and I don't like to be too specific when I'm still working on a project. I want my readers to feel as though they exist in the world my characters exist in. I hope they can see the colors and feel the textures of the world. I hope my characters feel real to them, real and honest. I put my heart on the page and I hope that shows through.

Why do you write what you do?

I write YA because I remember high school in vivid color and in vivid emotional detail. I remeÿmber what it was like to feel insecure and alone. High School shapes us and changes us. One of my escapes in times of trial was to read. I read everything I could get my hands on. The YA genre was really starting to emerge and develop at the time and has continued to grow. I'm excited to be a part of a genre that meant so much to me in my teen years. I hope that something I write, can one day be a comfort and solace to someone.

How does your writing process work?

For me, I start to get ideas about a story and it tends to just percolate in my brain until a full story emerges. Then I start writing it down and hopefully, eventually it becomes a plot and the characters start to walk and talk like real people. JIt's a different process each time I write something new. Sometimes I have the full story in my head and I know exactly how it will go, other times I know the emotional story better than I know that actual story and it takes time to get it solid in my head before I can get it on the page. 

When I sit down to write, I tend to need a lot of time to get into the story. I like to make playlists of music that sets the tone for the book I'm working on, that helps. I don't sit at a desk. I have a small couch in my office and warm comfy blankets. I like to wrap up in one on a cold day and drink hot tea and dive in to the story. On warm sunny days, I like to sit on my deck under an umbrella with iced tea and my laptop. I like to be comfortable and happy when I'm writing. Sometimes I listen to music, sometimes I need quiet.  I used to write at my favorite indie bookstore, but it closed down a few years back and a better substitute has yet to be found. 

Now that I have a cozy home office, I prefer to write there, and my puppy likes to snuggle up next to me a take a nap to the sound of the tickety tack of the keyboard. 
It sounds lovely doesn't it? Sometimes it is. However there are many days where I can't even look at my laptop without feeling crushing defeat because I have NO idea where my story is going, or I feel inadequate to the task of writing anything worth reading. I turn my head and put my hand up trying not to see my writing space as I happily go about baking a cake or brownies or something really delicious because THAT will help me feel better...right?! Oh well, writing, for me, has its ups and downs. Sometimes it's really hard and sometimes it sings like sparrow. Sometimes I feel brilliant and other times I feel, at best, mediocre. Always, there is the drive to write, the desire to tell a story, the need to share an emotional truth in words. I can't NOT write. So I have learned, and am still learning, to embrace the mess that is the life of a writer all the heights and depths of it. 

I want to thank Melanie Fishbane for tagging me in the blog tour! Make sure you check out her blog.

Also here are a few I recommend:

Ellar Cooper
Ingrid Sundberg

Sheryl Scarborough

Happy Writing!