Writer Problem #1: High School Politics

This is a problem that I’m pretty sure not a lot of other people have. I believe that it is something that is unique to me, but I understand that some other people who are in a similar situation that I am in could have this problem as well.

            So, writing high school politics, it shouldn’t be too hard right? Everyone went or goes to high school, so they should be able to base that off of their experience in life right? Wrong. I’m not saying that I dropped out of high school, because I am currently in high school, but I don’t go to a normal high school. I go to a private all girls’ high school.

            This normally on the surface doesn’t seem like it should be such a problem, at least it shouldn’t affect my writing at all. However, after writing The Unusual Isles (which almost all of the characters are high school students) and looking back at their characters, I realized that none of them really seem that realistic, their problems are stereotypical, along with some of their personalities, and I feel some of their qualities are over exaggerated. It’s nice that I’ve noticed it after the book is done and has been edited seven times.

            The environment at a private all girl high school is very different than that of a public school, or even any other co-ed school for that matter. There’s a sense of “sisterhood” and that everyone is a family, pretty much no bullying, there is a lot less drama since there are no boys to argue over, you play your big homecoming game against yourself, and we can get pink shirts for a club without causing uproar. I shouldn’t complain THAT much, but with this however also comes a LOT of people being fake, SUPER tight cliques, and this weird kind of dividing line between those who are really rich, and those who are poor since they spent all their money paying for tuition.

            Because this is the high school environment I grew up in, I realized that I don’t know how realistic high school politics work and I just noticed how my writing has been affected because of it. All of the characters are stereotypical because that is the only thing that I’ve been exposed to through TV shows, movies, and books. I don’t know if any of my characters are realistic enough to be liked by an audience because they seem so stereotypical to any other books about high school teenagers. I realized that my book consists of characters like the blonde stuck up cheerleader, the smart Asian kid, the bullied awkward ginger, a girl with depression and a jock that falls in love with her, and feuding football quarterbacks. When I actually sat back to think about that, the reality of how stereotypical they seems actually hit me for the first time.

            This is a problem I really don’t know how to fix. I’m graduating next year and I’m obviously not going to re-do high school just so I can gain experience for my writing. This is just something that will always be a barrier for me, and it’s just something that I need to learn to get over as a writer. I understand that there is nothing that I can do about it now, but I’m hoping that I’ll learn to get over it as a writer in the future.

            Since the age and maturity of my books seems to change with my own age and maturity when I get older, I also realized that I am going to face a similar problem once I get to college. Yes, I and going from a private all girl high school to a privately owned college where the campus is 70% female. So this means I’m never really going to get that college experience that most people have. I’m not staying in a dorm and I doubt there will be many parties.

            People could find a very easy solution to this problem by telling me “why don’t you write a book about an all girl private high school if that’s what you know in real life?” To this I have a very simple response. Realistically, I have enough of that in real life than I would like to deal with. I don’t need or want to write a book about it.

So, I really want to know if anyone else has this problem or anything similar to it. Leave a comment down below letting me know!

~K.M.D.

Winter Update! (Update #7)

I know, I know, I haven’t posted anything on here in ages, but I figured I should fill you guys in on what’s happening with my book.

So, over winter break, I had my book edited again, this time by the lovely Taren Blankenship who really helped me out with formatting and everything. I was also really nice to hear an opinion on it that wasn’t from my family. She was a great help and I really appreciated her volunteering to edit for me. (If you read this Taren, you’re getting thanked in the acknowledgements!)

After reading it over another two times, I feel like it’s ready for publishing, but there still the smallest bit of doubt in me that doesn’t want to publish it yet.

I really don’t know what it is and I didn’t have this same problem with my last book, probably because I wasn’t as serious about it and wanted to publish it really fast just for that sake of saying that I published a book.

I also really need to publish it because I started writing the sequel but I realized that I can’t get that much into it unless I publish the first one.

I think it might be partly because that I’m afraid what other people will say about it. Considering how much effort and time I put into this book, I’m just afraid that people will hate it and give it bad reviews. I know I’m not the best writer in the world and criticism comes with everything these days, and I’m expecting at least some bad review for it, but I’m still nervous about people hating it.

I’m also not exactly sure about how I should go about advertising it once I’m done with it. I’ll admit that more people know who I am right now than they did when I published my first book, but still, I’m not sure if anyone will really put forth the money to buy it.

After a lot of thought about sending it off to indie publishers and literary agents, I decided that I really don’t want to do that. For me, that’s just really time consuming and it’s just going to lead to more rejection. I also feel that since I wrote the book, I want to advertise for it and I want to get the full profit that might come with it.

So yeah, hopefully The Unusual Isles will be out and ready for purchase by the time I graduate from high school. I realize that I was pushing for Christmas time, but I knew in my mind that that deadline was never going to be met.

So stay tuned and I will definitely update you guys when I publish it!

~K.M.D.

Writing Tips: Brainstorming

For brainstorming, there really isn’t a particular way you can brainstorm. People think in different ways and brainstorming is easier in different ways for different people. Here are just some ideas I can give people based off my own experience.

1.      Always carry around a pen and paper with you. Ideas can come to you at any time, and by any time I literally mean anytime. I’ve gotten a lot of ideas in the middle of class one day, in the car, at the movies, and all sorts of other strange places.

2.      When you get an idea, WRITE IT DOWN! I cannot stress how important this is. There are many occasions when I thought of a really good idea and didn’t have any time to write it down, and then forgot it later, and it either took me several days to remember it again, or I never remembered it at all.

3.      Take time to think. Thinking about the different possibilities is something that can really help me to think of more ideas. For me personally, the time before I fall asleep at night and a long car drive are the times that are most productive for me.

4.      Take inspiration from things in your own life. Sometime you take a lot of time trying to think of some crazy creative idea when the best thing to write about is what’s right in front of you. When you take inspiration from things in your own life, it also makes your writing more personal, and it might even effect your writing style.

5.      Other tips there are a lot of other brainstorming techniques that I know of but don’t personally use because they don’t work for me, but they work for plenty of other people.

a.       Make a Web: those are those things that you make for school when brainstorming for an essay, and even though they are helpful for essay writing, they can also be very useful for creative writing as well. So basically, just think of any random word you can think of and put it in the center circle. Then, you just start branching off ideas for things that relate to that word.

b.      Free Writing: This is basically you take out a piece of paper and write anything that comes into your mind, not matter how stupid and random it is. The point is, is that once you take the time and read it over, something you wrote down, whether it be a word, a phrase, or an idea will spark some kind of inspiration.

c.       Writing Prompts: When you get really desperate and need something to write, or you just aren’t accomplishing anything from the brainstorming that you’ve attempted, then start to look for writing prompts. You can find these all over the internet, and all you have to do search “writing prompts” and a whole bunch of them should show up. If you look through enough of them, one of them is bound to interest you.

                                                                                                             

~K.M.D.

November Update and Cover Reveal! (Update #6)

This month I have been editing more of my novel, although I haven’t edited in a few weeks and forgot where I left off, so I might just start over again from the beginning again. I have also wrote out a bunch of character development sheets for pretty much all of the characters in The Unusual Isles (I did 29 of them). I know that this is really late in the writing process to be making out character development sheets, but since I am writing a sequel it will be nice to have them for the sequel.

Speaking of a sequel, I already have a title for it, although I’m not going to reveal that right at this moment, but a sequel will be written, right after I finished up editing. I am actually getting really excited for writing the sequel; I wrote out the entire outline for it last night. Parts are going to be really sad and I would be lying if I said all of the characters were going to make it to the end of the book alive.

An estimated publishing date is still set for around Christmas time, at least that’s what I’m really aiming for. The one thing that is really holding me back isn’t necessarily the editing, but the fact that if I publish it and file for copyright and then find a little grammar error in it later, it’s going to bug me forever.

I am also planning on making a separate Facebook page specifically for The Unusual Isles, so be on the look out for that coming soon!  

Also, I have picked a cover I am going to use for the book. Thanks to everyone who voted, and although the cover I picked isn’t the one that received the most votes, after consulting with a few people who know the book best besides me, we decided that this cover fit the mood of the book best.

Without further ado, here is the cover of The Unusual Isles (or the picture at least)

~K.M.D.

Extra! Extra! Nanowrimo

You heard me right. National Write a Novel in November is soon approaching, and the question is still looming over my head, should I participate in it this year?

For those of you who are not familiar with what Nanowrimo is, it is when authors push themselves to write a 50,000 word novel in one month over the course of the month of November.

Firstly, I would like to give credit to everyone who can actually complete Nanowrimo. You people have wonderfully talent and deserve to be appreciated more.

Having tried doing this before, I would like to say that this is a very hard thing to do, especially for me. I am not the type of writer who can just keep writing and writing, but I’m the kind of author who goes back and edits parts I don’t like or fix plot elements that don’t make sense, while I’m in the writing process, which makes Nanowrimo very hard to do.

I had originally planned on doing to before, having part of a novel planned out, but I decided that it probably wouldn’t work considering I tried the same thing the past two years and hadn’t gotten past the first 500 words.

I then was going to set myself a personal goal instead of following the main Nanowrimo goal. Instead of writing a 50,000 word novel, I was just going to write 50,000 words in general, whether that have been short stories, poems, blog posts, or the start of a new novel.

The idea however occurred before I had started school when I realized that attempting anything close to Nanowrimo would be nearly impossible. With my school work, I don’t have much time to do anything anymore. I barely have time to edit The Unusual Isles or keep up on this blog for that matter, so writing a 50,000 word novel is just not even something in my grasp this year.

So long story short, am I doing Nanowrimo this year? No. Hopefully next year though, and hopefully one year in the future, I’ll actually complete it.

~K.M.D.