Category Archives: fiction

Learning outside the classroom, one Breeze story at a time.

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I think my favorite part of writing for JMU’s student-run paper is the people I’ve met. Sometimes I take a story, set up interviews, and afterward, I feel like I got so much more out of it than just the facts.

That seems to happen a lot with me at school. Freshman and sophomore year, I took almost all gen ed courses. US History, Anthropology and Art History stand out. I came away from those classes with an appreciation for the knowledge I’d learned in a way that probably wasn’t normal. How many college kids go around saying they really enjoyed memorizing dates and artist names and analyzing a giant canvas with paint dripped all over it entitled “Autumn Rhythm”? Not many.

On Thursday, I’d about had it with the week, ready to throw away all hope left in humanity. It was pouring rain and I didn’t have an umbrella with me. The weather had gone from 90 to 65 in three days, and I felt like that only mirrored my inability to comprehend anything I was learning in my classes. I felt like I was, pretty literally, drowning. But I had to meet with a professor for one of my stories, and talking with him, seeing the affinity he has for his job, made me feel better. Who wouldn’t want to be happy doing something they love, even as it pours down buckets outside? That’s what I want for myself some day.

Which is why I’ve spent the last three days busting my butt to get this latest manuscript edited. I started about two weeks ago, having just finished a Writer’s Digest course, but just recently I revved it up, taking my pen and giving myself no mercy as I ran through sentences, ideas, plot and back story in my head. And on Friday, I checked the mail to find an issue of Writer’s Digest my mom had sent me before leaving the country for a trip. On the cover? 27 agents seeking representation.

Yes. This is the push I need to move myself one step closer to being like that professor, being completely happy with where I’m at.

I feel like I’ve grown so much since I started four years ago, but I still stay up until one a.m. running through the words in my head, trying to make them fit into the big picture, trying to link scenes and watch sub-plots pan out. At the end of the day, all I want to do is write.

By the way, every month I send out a short + sweet newsletter brimming with cool finds related to the monthly theme. It'd be stellar if you subscribed. If it's not worthy, it doesn't go in the newsletter. That. Simple.

Writing is more than what you know.

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For at least the last four or five years, I’ve put my whole heart and soul into believing one silly little piece of advice: write what you know.

Writing magazines, how-to books, and authors all said the same thing. They said write what you know, what’s true to you. They said great fiction stems from familiarity because it has a sense of truth to it. Because people will pick up your book, flip through it, and read it. Because if you want to get published, this is where your credibility will shine through.

You must pour your heart out on a piece of paper like shards of broken glass and let other people take it all in: the good, the bad, the downright awful. And they will take it in because it is real. If it isn’t, the glass will polish itself, the shards will piece back together, and nothing about your so-called experience will resonate.

But I don’t really buy that anymore.

In the last two days, I have covered political debate in a state I’m not a resident of (VA) and captured the essence of growth experiences I haven’t been apart of (freshman orientation guides). I’ve taken in the bits and pieces gathered from someone else’s world entirely and let their hopes, their dreams, their aspirations shine on paper. I’ve created a looking glass into their heart that does not cloud over with my secondhand accounts of their experiences.

On the contrary, I’m beginning to believe that if you can take in the raw thoughts and feelings of someone else, of something else, and create meaning out of it, you’re doing something right. If you can write a story about a girl who lost a mother or was abused by her father, even if you’ve never experienced either of those things, how can you hold onto that one little piece of advice for dear life? How can you cling to something so strongly when you know otherwise?

The whole world is filled with beautiful experiences and heartbreaking stories, but we cannot live them all on our own. That’s just not possible. That’s why we read books and watch movies and create entirely fictional stories in our heads. That’s why so many endings will always reside in our future. We can never know where the path will take us, but we can always listen to where other people have gone before.

Good fiction, even good nonfiction, draws from these strong emotions we feel. We can take a hundred different scenarios and begin to imagine a realistic reaction because we have felt something similar or seen something comparable.

If we can breathe life into someone else’s worries and disappointments, dreams and thanksgivings, why shouldn’t we?

By the way, every month I send out a short + sweet newsletter brimming with cool finds related to the monthly theme. It'd be stellar if you subscribed. If it's not worthy, it doesn't go in the newsletter. That. Simple.

Stealing Away Goodness and Great Movies

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This has been a month oozing with goodness. It’s filling me up and I’m tucking it down, holding on for when it gets cold and the snow starts and I seem to forget that it’s not always going to be twenty degrees outside. As you can tell, I’m a fan of summer.

Friday’s goodness came to me unexpectedly. Remember that contest I got nominated for? The one for the Six of the Month? Well, I won. I won the whole entire thing! When I logged into the website on Friday morning, I just kind of stared at the screen and said, “What the…”. And my little sister’s in the other room, going, “What happened?” And I’m waving her over, “Come here, come here,” and pointing at the screen. And then she freaks out, so I freak out, and pretty soon we’re both jumping up and down screaming and hugging each other. Those are the moments I live for. Those are the moments I save for a rainy day.

As I read further, I learned I’ll be headlining the newest 6s book, called 6s: Half A World Away. It’ll be available on CreateSpace starting Friday. I’ll post details once they send me a link for it, so check back later for that.

In other news, I’ve been blessed in the movie and book department lately. This past week, I watched Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island which left me stunned. Same with Inception, which I watched Saturday. Both of them were so well-written, so well crafted, that I’m just hoping someday I can write something that brilliant. What killed me (both times), was probably the ending. If anyone can tell me for sure what it means–”what does this mean?!” as Rainbow Guy would say–I will feel so much better. The endings for both were ambiguous in the most painfully perfect way. What happens after the camera stops is up to you. And of course, I’m a Leo fan.

It’s been a Leonardo DiCaprio and apparently Joseph Gordon Levitt filled week, as I watched (500) Days of Summer last night, too.

By the way, every month I send out a short + sweet newsletter brimming with cool finds related to the monthly theme. It'd be stellar if you subscribed. If it's not worthy, it doesn't go in the newsletter. That. Simple.

Sometimes, direction leads you elsewhere.

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And that’s okay. As long as it leads you somewhere. Six Sentences had a contest titled “Mind Games”, and when I first sat down to write, I ended up with what is now called “Hit or Miss”, a far cry from mind games:

Barry sat across from me, staring so hard at my forehead that I thought he might burn a hole straight through it. My fingers hovered over the white pegs, even before he called out “B-12″, sinking my cargo ship. I added another white peg to the boat, shaking my head. “Liar,” he called out, standing up and peering over the other side of the grayish plastic barrier to find all my boats filled with white pegs, my game long over. That’s how I ended up in the other room, eavesdropping while my husband of almost fifty years asked the customer service representative if he could speak to Milton Bradley himself about what to do when he found his wife cheating. At a board game.

I’m happy with it, but sometimes it baffles my mind. How does someone just sit at their computer with this small inkling of an idea, and come out with a life? A life that’s never existed before? Do we have the authority to do that? That’s some pretty powerful stuff, writing is.

Jumping off that, a great book needs a great image on the cover. I know, I know. “Don’t judge a book by it’s cover,” right? That’s half the battle for me. The other half? A great first sentence.

Here are some of my favorite first sentences from the YA genre:

“You can tell a lot about people from what they order for breakfast.” – THE FORTUNES OF INDIGO SKYE, Deb Caletti

“To say my life changed when my mother married Dino Cavalli (yes, the Dino Cavalli) would be like saying that the tornado changed things for Dorothy.” – WILD ROSES, Deb Caletti

“Not to brag or anything, but if you saw me from behind, you’d probably think I was perfect.” – NORTH OF BEAUTIFUL, Justina Chen Headley

And why are they great opening sentences? Because the words are so definitive, so matter-of-fact, that you’re forced to ask a boatload of questions: “Who ordered breakfast that was so transparent?” or “What did Dino Cavalli do that was so life-altering?” or “Why from behind? What am I missing?” There are hundreds of examples throughout written history, but these are just a few quick examples. My books each have to have a powerful cover and a powerful first sentence. I’m going to give you a small glimpse into each.

“Even if I had enjoyed this flight, what followed could only be described as inevitable. With my eyelids finally drifting closed, my last few moments of peace in this world were cut short by a loud, overly friendly voice. It had been my third, maybe fourth attempt to sleep.” – RUNNING IN CIRCLES

“In the beginning, you never see the end, but it’s there. Just a little glimmer off in the distance that you have to squint to see. Beginnings were always the same: the morning after, so many bad decisions just reek of alcohol and loose lips. There I was, okay, several mornings after, trying to do laundry so I could rid myself of any memory of the stain on my shirt, the smell of liquor on my clothes. In the laundromat across the street from my neighborhood. And I prayed, just prayed, that my father didn’t drive by, peering inside the glass interior to see my tired face staring back.” – LEAP OF FAITH

Note: The covers are mock-ups, and I’d love to hear opinions on them, even though I fully intend on redoing both of them at a later date. Right now they are placeholders for my website, which I hope to launch in the fall.

By the way, every month I send out a short + sweet newsletter brimming with cool finds related to the monthly theme. It'd be stellar if you subscribed. If it's not worthy, it doesn't go in the newsletter. That. Simple.