Prompts.

I've been writing a lot of SoF lately, so I wanted to do something different. I think it's important to switch it up now and then with writing. I searched for some prompts, and came up with "Flourish of hate". It seems different enough, so I ran with it; featuring Cindy from Crossfire!

Do any of you guys have any prompt ideas? I'd love to try them out!

There were two things that I had never felt before.

Two very important things, both interlinked by their intensity, woven into each other like needle and thread. These two things were as important as life to many and were nothing to a very few, and even those few were lying. I knew they were lying now, as I stood and stared, and I knew that as soon as one of them clicked into place, the other would be out of my grasp for forever.

You could not hold all the cards and still sit at the table.

I had never been skilled at bluffing, and I refused to let this be any exception. I had not been told by a kind parent or a loving mentor that either of these things were dangerous, that either of them were binding. That if you put your hands into the shallows it would envelope you, suck in you in and never let you go as if it were tar. It would stain your skin and rip whatever was left of you out through your pores until you were convinced that you could never feel more alive, never feel more invigorated then you did at that moment. It would throb and ache and shoot ice through your veins that was melted by fire shortly afterwards, singing everything else that you thought you held. Your fingers would be raw and bleeding after you touched it, and once you invited it in, once it slunk lovers hands over you, you could never go back.

It would take a part of you you could never replace, and it would own that piece until you died. Until your last breath scattered through your body, it would have you.

I would like to say that I fought, that I struck out against it before it could claim me. I wish that I could write this to you and tell you of my struggle, of how it clawed at my throat and I pried it away from my skin before the claws sank too deep.

But I can not.

It slunk up to me and I threw open my arms and invited it in. I wrapped it around me like a second skin, as if it clothed me and I were naked without it. I let it choke every breath out of me that I had, let it rip my veins and replace it with its own pounding venom until it escalated in my ears and thrummed its touch across every part of me.

Never had I felt more alive, and as I stared across the room at the woman on the opposite side of the table, it was through new eyes. Everything had been repainted in aggressive shades of crimson, and I let it curl my lips into a snarl, I let it lower my brows over my eyes and coil my body into tension that could only be released by a series of three words- three words that were representations of one of the two things I had never felt. Three words that were equally important to another set.

“I hate you,” I whispered, and watched as the ripples from my body plunging into the thick feeling boiled to a stand still and the identification was complete.

And with a flourish of hate, I leaned back in my chair against my bound hands clasped behind me and smiled.

Inspiration

A list of things that inspire me creatively, because I think outside influences of inspiration are important. Equally important is realizing what inspires you.

• God. He's given so much to inspire me with, from the beauty of the world around me, to the amazingly complex manner humans function, to awe inspiring grace and movement in my life that I could do nothing BUT write an entire series from it.

• Friends. Yeah, ya'll. People around me have always inspired me to push myself and do better, especially when they are driven and purposed in their own lives. I'm very blessed now in my life because I am surrounded by nothing BUT creative friends left and right, and I cannot get enough of it. It's amazing to see their projects and characters and art take life, and it gives me determination to do the same with my own stories.

• Bad writing as well as fantastic writing. To explain this, I read an article over at YA Highway that suggested that just as you get just as inspired from bad writing as good writing. Good writing, great writing, causes you to want to be at that level, to inspire and provoke the same feelings that you respond with in your own craft. You want t craft the same emotion, the same depth of characters and cleverness. Horrible writing on the other hand makes you take a step back and say "I can do better than this, and I will." Seeing other's mistakes and (sadly) failures in bringing to life what you are trying to allows you to strive to overcome those same problems. Reading flawless writing 24/7 can be inspiring, but pick up a lame novel every now and then to see how things can go wrong (and what makes them wrong in the first place). It helps with evaluating your own progress and gives you a list of things to not do in your own story. (For this I recommend Nevermore by Noel and Twilight.)

• Music. Obvious, but its totally true. Music inspires moods, lyrics and swells of music flash scenes at me at every which way, and it always gives me something to think about in relation to characters and their emotions.

• Animals. From my horse to the screech and barn owls that nest and hunt on our lawn every winter, fall and spring, animals inspire me. They are front forward, always honest in their emotions, and never fail to let me know what they are thinking (or trying to think). Their crazy antics and willingness to spend long nights with me at my desk (this is clearly my cat, haha) makes them the best companions a writing recluse could ask for! And they are great therapy during NaNo.

• Movies and writing books. Because come now! How many times have you seen a movie and the characters cause you to wish to create something just like them? Movies are a favorite source of inspiration for me. When I'm stuck, I often put on LOTR just so that I have something to listen to while I plot. It helps that the characters in LOTR talk like mine in terms of time period. Also, writing books because I've recently been collecting them like a mad woman, and am currently at 4. They include (all of these are fantastic) Your First Novel: A published author and a top agent share the keys to achieving your dream By Rittenberg and Whitcomb, The Little Red Writing Book by Royal, Revision and Self-Editing by Bell, and The Art of War for Writers.

Of course there are many other things that inspire me, but these are the first ones that sprang to mind.

What inspires you?

Finally! And yet...

So Christopher Paolini, someone who's books I've been reading since the first one was published (2003), has finally announced the fourth and final book in the Inheritance Cycle. It's called Inheritance. (I...really wish I was kidding with that title, but I'm not. It's official.) After years of waiting for him to even announce the title and cover and tentative due date, he just splurges it out there today and it's everywhere.

Now, when I first read his writing, I was 13. My Auntie Carrie gave it to me for Christmas in 2003, and told me how she thought of me and how I could do exactly what he did (get published successfully at a young age). I looked to him as inspiration from that moment, and absolutely LOVED Eragon. I loved everything about it, the characters, the concept of dragon riders (I was a huge fan of the Pern series at the time), and I was constantly drawing fan art for it all over. Its pretty much what jump started me starting SoF "for real", and I began to wonder about my own stories and how I could make them into something. A few years passed and the second one came out while I was 15. I bought it at once and sped through it- and noticed that the writing seemed... different. More advanced. I grew excited because of this, realizing that Chris had improved and how this, again, could be me. There were things I noticed in the book even at the age of 15 that I felt were off, like pacing and plot (and I HATED Arya. I still dislike her), but I shrugged them off because c'mon- dragons! And lots of betrayal!

Fast forward to 2008 and Brisingr comes out in all it's golden glory. And I'm now 18, almost finished writing my own books, and I pick up this story again, eagerly. And find out that not only has his writing style altered completely, but along with it, the characters are suddenly, without explanation, different. There was more life in them, more fire and personality, and suddenly I was plunged into 784 pages of character development and depth that should have been crafted in the very beginning. It felt like a completely different author had taken the helm of this book and was pouring themselves into it, unlike the first two. They paled in comparison, and as a result, it turned me sour against the story. Because now it was choppy, sloppy, inconsistent, and these characters I had invested five years of my life in where only now being developed. I was disappointed, and realized that this man who had written these books had made a drastic and terrible mistake.

He'd published the books before the story was ready.

What I read in Brisingr, the style and characters, was a different animal all together. It threw me off horribly, and while it is awesome that he grew, what he failed to realize was that he took his characters and story along with him, and in turn left the other two books behind. Christopher Paolini wrote Eragon when he was 15. He edited it once himself, his family then edited it, and then sent it off to his parents publishing company, who then got it picked up by Knopf, a major publishing company. Then it was spread all over, and he became a success, a marvel at his age (He was 20 at the time) and now millions of people are in love with this story. I have NO problem with anything I mentioned, because it's his story, if he wants to pump it out like this, then good for him. I still consider him remarkable, I just no longer consider his actions smart.

This author quickly went from one of my inspirations to a large, fat example of "do not do." Make no mistake, I will be pre-ordering my copy of the last book and most likely enjoy it. I do expect that it'll be totally different than the 3rd book, and I have little concern that I'll be wrong. The red, flaring warning signs I have taken from this near 10 year venture I've been on with these books, however, is that my first instinct, what I wanted to do at once, what people urge me to do all the time, is wrong. I cannot tell you how many times my family and friends hear that I've finished what I explain very clearly is a first draft, and they immediately respond with "So when will it be published?" This question used to stress me out, because then I'd walk away thinking "Yeah, when WILL it be published? I should write faster."

Which, for me (and in my opinion for any young author) is not at all the correct attitude. I feel that Chris was asked the same question and he turned to his parents and repeated it, and they published his book as a result. I'm not degrading the success he has, or saying that he's an idiot. In fact, he taught me a valuable lesson- to wait. I would sit and stew over SoF and pump out draft after draft of crap (will you believe that Kanaray used to have the power to shape shift into a small black cat? As in, HOUSE cat size. That poor boy.) and start to panic because I wasn't anywhere near complete. I had my family tell me how I could be published, how I should be, and would flip out because I wasn't. Now I look at my books and think "Slow and steady wins the race." Because guess what- it's taken me 4 years of writing to complete the first "complete" round of drafts, and now it may only take me 8 months to write both book 1 and 2. It's taken me 12 long years to get to this point where I feel confident about my writing and happy with slivers of my writing style. I don't feel I'm completely "there" yet, but I feel like I'm on the brink of it instead of miles away.

And I don't want to be like Christopher Paolini. I don't want my novels to jump styles and feel like different people are trying to write the same story and totally not succeeding. I don't want to be an astonishingly young author when these stories get published. I don't want them to just fall into someone's lap. I've grown so much in writing these books, and still am as I rewrite them, and I could rewrite them until the end of my life and learn something new each time- but I want to get them to a point where I know that this is the story I wanted told. That I don't have to suddenly develop characters in book 3, because they've been growing with the story this entire time. I think about the difference between him and me all the time. He didn't wait until his story was ready (if he had, it would all flow, all be in the advanced style he now uses.) He didn't even wait until he had the second book written before he published the first. And I think, for him, it was a mistake. At least from my point of view, because now these published books all feel so different to me and I can't enjoy them as the one story they are supposed to be.

Its just interesting to see him go through these books, and it'll definitely be interesting to see how he concludes this story. I learned a lot from these books, both when I loved the writing and even when I outgrew it. I'm still learning from them.

Oh, and to all my friends who have heard me say this before-

I TOLD you the last dragon (and the cover) was going to be green.

:)

Notes

In rewriting a manuscript, I've come across several differences that vary from writing one from scratch. In the first book of SoF I rewrote last fall/winter, I was faced with the task of taking something both hideously old and out of date and transforming it completely (plot, characters and style). With that, I was also heavily challenged to both change the development of the characters and factor in many ideas that had been completely missed and/or ignored, as well as trying to match it to the later two books. (There are four books in this series, all with finished 1st drafts). With book 1 it felt like less of a challenge because I had a lot of room to explore and reinvent the beginning of my tale.

I also had the first draft of the second book acting as a buffer, so while my goal was to still make the story smooth and flow into the other three books, it was not as if I had to immediately make it fit the same tone. I'm learning so much with the book 2 rewrite, and I'm astounded all the time by how I am relearning a lot as well. I feel like since I've been writing these books for 12 years I should know exactly what to do, what to write and where to write it, but most of this remains new to me as I go along. I feel seasoned and fresh to the scene all at once.

With book 2, the one I am currently writing, this is not the case. Book 2 is by far the most important book story wise because of it's content and how it ups the stakes of everything presented in book 1. Now, I take notes on my ideas as soon as they come to me, no matter where I am, because I know I'll forgot them if I don't. While this sounds handy, I often scribble them on obscure, odd pieces of paper located at work, at school, home, etc. I have a journal I take everywhere to keep all of these ideas in one place, but sometimes I forget it. So these ideas are pretty much scattered throughout a range of various places, and while I try to collect them all as I write, sometimes I miss things. And then we have situations like what happened this week, where I rewrite an entire series of events and forget to slip in a conversation that I was stoked about earlier but overlooked because I could not remember where the notes were. Turns out I scribbled them in my sketch book, which I never do.

And while I really liked this idea and conversation that I had scribbled about in my sketchbook, when I found my notes and skimmed them, I found out that what I had written and how the events had unfolded were ten times more accurate to the characters and the story than my "super cool" conversation idea had been. Basically it was going to be a discussion between the protagonist and the antagonist without the protagonist knowing he was speaking to the source of his misery and woe. That was going to be how I "introduced" my hero to my villain, and I thought at the time that it was clever and would give the scene an edge. It was going to be a cat and mouse game of the antagonist teasing whatever he wanted out of the poor main character Lonlor Swift, and Lonlor thinking he was in the company of a stranger that was on his side.

The major problem with this is that at the point where Allan (my bad guy) would approach Lonlor anonymously, said hero is feeling immensely betrayed and has so much conflict going on internally that Allan speaking to him would cause him to immediately jump to conclusions and mistrust (as he tends to do). The conversation would be very short, and Allan would be left looking like an utter fool. Which he is not.

If I had remembered where those notes were, the scene that is now unchangeable would have been written so much differently. I know I would have gone by my notes because this is a scene that got me "stuck" and wondering how to overcome it, and a simple fix like a few jotted sentences would have been very easy to enter. I didn't, and I think the story is better for it. I often find myself writing down ideas, thinking them utterly fitting for the story, and then being swept so far out to sea by the same story that I forget to insert them completely. I come back to them and say "Darn it, that was good" but then look back at my imperfect scene that just spewed from my fingertips in spurts, and realize "Well yes, it was, but this could be great. This is where it needs to be." Situations and characters change from what I originally plan.

Sometimes my story just needs me to get lost in it instead of it lost to me. Most of the time all I need to do is stop flouncing about trying to make every scene memorable, and to just write. I desperately want my story to be something that readers are immersed in, that they can barely tear themselves from, but what I want most of all is for me to be immersed. When I read books, I can tell when the author was in their world, with their characters, and when they were eyeing the entire story with a scrutinizing gaze and throwing in turns to spice it up.

Stories don't need flare, or edge, or added excitement and epic scenes at every corner. The scene I wrote instead of the one I planned was ten times better suited to the moment and situation, to the characters and story, and I think that gave it its own special place. I still keep all my notes and all of my discarded ideas, because maybe one day they will spark something different, or remind me of how I once went with the story instead of my head. I'll never downplay having and taking notes, or brainstorming ideas and using those, because I do it all the time.

But sometimes, it pays just to let the story breathe by itself without shoving an oxygen mask on it. Sometimes it pays just to lean forward and let it take on a life of its own.

I'm learning with this draft that when I do, when I stop worrying and concerning myself over details, magic happens.

And I like where it's taking me.

Swift

I just created an entire outfit based on the bird to the left, a whiskered tree swift. Beautiful birds, I cannot get enough of them! I love everything about their design and movements and voices.

What, you say, but something in the name of the bird seems familiar. Almost as if it's relatable to a character's surname in SoF! Even the colors seem to be in common!

Ah, says I. You'll just have to wait and see ;)

I encourage, as a writing or drawing exercise, to take a bird with multicolored plumage and see what you can make of it in regards to an outfit. Can you manage all of the colors while still getting the idea across? What about keeping certain, stronger characteristics?

Its a fun challenge!

Tricks

I've been coming up to little blocks in rewriting Descent.

I wouldn't call them writer blocks so much as tiny snags that keep tripping me up for a day or two (which sounds like a short time, but is incredibly frustrating to me and feels a lot longer as it happens) With that, I've been coming up with different, new ways to overcome them. Listening to favorite songs and taking a line of the lyrics, translating it into the story or my writing style, and working from there. I did that just now, and it pumped out two pages of thoughts I had not known my character even had.

Or picking a current mood or random theme to work into a scene or even a chapter. Googling "writing prompt ideas", reading one of the four writing books I have sitting on my shelf unloved because I've been more preoccupied with writing my book than reading any others. Or even posting on FB that I need help and sitting back and watching what creative friends come up with in regards to prompts and opening chapter line ideas. Sometimes its interesting and refreshing to stop staring at the screen waiting for your brain to come up with the brilliance, and let something else small or large spark the mood for you. It seems to give new perspectives and angles to an otherwise worn story. My story is so old to me that sometimes, I just want a breath of fresh air and a little nudge in the right direction that is not determined by me. Shuffle on iTunes often helps me with mood, or figuring out writing.

It's important, as a writer, to let trickles of outside influence in from time to time. I feel as writers and authors, we often are under the impression that any ideas and influences from the "outside" are bad. That everything has to come from us directly, as if we're reinventing the wheel. Authors and artists are obsessed with either two concepts- conforming to one "style" or genre of their craft, or being so obviously original that they have difficult times differentiating between the two. Balance is hard to find. In the Bible there is a verse that says "There is nothing new under the sun" and I often repeat it to myself as I write. It sounds so negative, but it's a helpful reminder that yes, people have written similar stories to what I am currently slaving over day and night. That yeah, fantasy is not a new concept, nor is a teenager trying to save the world, or a war that involves dragons. The difference is I'm the one who is telling it this time around, and I haven't before.

C.S. Lewis once said, “Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.”

Definitely something to reflect on as I plow forward with this draft and meet plenty of snags along the way. I'm in no race to finish this bad boy, but it is immersing me so quickly that I cannot help but speed on ahead. I'm in love with this story.