What photos inspire your books?

Alright! These are in no particular order, and I am not sharing which book each on is an inspiration from. Pretty much, you just get to look at fun, pretty pictures. Some of these you have seen before….

In honor of Saint Patrick’s Day, YA Highway wants us to all write a limerick about our favorite books and/or works in progress.

Holy commas! This one was hard. Apparently I have lost my touch since my stellar Freshman-Year-English-Class limerick. Of course, my determination to write one for both a WIP and my favorite book didn’t make the task any easier.

Are you ready? (I don’t think you really are.) Here we go…

Crime & Punishment:

He thought he could kill without guilt
Now the house of cards that he built
is starting to fall.
Now only a call
girl can help him to fix the tilt.

Jack the Reaper

There once was a girl named Jack
whose family was kind of wack.
They’d get orders to kill
and they’d have to fulfill,
’cause reapers aren’t cut any slack.

There you have it; my mad limerick skillz at work. Want to join in the fun? Head over to YA Highway and share a limerick of your own.

The first novel I ever finished (Glass) was written in a month (not in November, and not for anything like NaNoWriMo-it was just written in a month). The rush that comes with letting myself go to write so freely and quickly is not easily matched. I loved the exhilaration that came with it and I am excited to do it again.

So, in honor of NaNoWriMo, this week’s Teaser Tuesday features a little piece I wrote to prepare me to write Darken this month. This is not really a part of the novel; it is just a character exercise I took ten minutes to do in order to learn a little bit about Emily and Daniel. It is rough, but it told me what I needed to know. Enjoy!

I had my first crush on a boy when I was in the first grade. His name was Daniel Greiger and he was a slow reader. My teacher assigned me to tutor him. I thought I was in love.

In the fourth grade, when we both began piano lessons, I helped him learn to read music. For years, I crushed on Daniel. I stood in the shadows of all his popular, pretty girlfriends, hoping one day he would see me. He never did.

He never asked me out, never showed an interest. I was never more than “the smart girl who helped him out.” He was too busy chasing the girls with long legs and straight teeth to notice me. Long legs, straight teeth, and hair.

After all those years of pining for him, it is not a surprise that I thought of Daniel at the end. When the cancer finally won, and the light of my life began to darken, his face was the last thing I saw.

And then, when my eyes opened once more, his was the first face I saw. Standing before me was the boy who had always haunted my thoughts and dreams. And now I was to haunt him.

50,000 words is actually quite short for a novel, even a young adult one. It is definitely an admirable goal, but I have set my sights a little higher (call me stupid, I won’t be offended). I have a daily word goal of 2,500 words. I don’t write on Sundays, so with 25 writing days in November, this goal will help me produce 62,500 words, with is a pretty decent word count for a YA novel. I wrote at this same pace when writing Glass and found it really isn’t that hard to keep up with (as long as Bubba doesn’t need to see me ). It will be a busy month of writing, but totally worth it.

*DRAFT is the key word here. Writing a novel in a month is a doable task. Writing, revising, editing, and polishing a novel until it can be considered DONE in a month? Not so much. The point of NaNoWriMo is not to write a perfect book, it is to get the words on the page. The real craft comes with the revisions.

When I had to have my shoulder re-constructed two years ago, I knew massage therapy might not be a feasible career option anymore. I was disappointed. But at the same time, I was excited. With massage no longer an option, the whole world of opportunities opened up before me. I now had an excuse to go back to school again! (for Russian translation, for those who are curious)

This morning, I was getting all my ducks in a row concerning starting school again when it hit me: this is part of why I love writing! With each book I write, I learn more and more. Even better–with each new book, I learn an abundance of stuff I probably would not learn in a traditional classroom (unless I just went to school for every subject under the sun–if only I had the time and money). For instance, while researching for my books so far, I have learned about:

• Medieval mythology of Incubi, Succubi, Cambions, and Nephilim
• History of Charleston, SC–particularly its cemeteries
• Battle of New Bern (civil war)
• Physical and emotional damage of rape (this was tough reading)
• Architecture of old plantation homes
• Ninjitsu (the theory, not the practice)
• Dostoevsky, Dostoevsky, Dostoevsky!!

Okay, that last one will definitely be covered in a traditional classroom as I study Russian. I have learned countless other things while researching for my books, but this little list shows what I have learned more in-depth. What a wide range of studies!

Writing is the perfect thing for someone who likes to learn as much as I do. With each book I write, I have an excuse to spend time digging, searching, and reading about a wide assortment of topics. I learn things I had never even thought about before the book idea hit me. I learn things many people will probably never think about. And, as a bonus, much of my research spawns ideas for new books to write!

Oh, and another brilliant side-effect of all this research? I now know even more random trivia, which should help secure my position as Queen-of-Trivial-Pursuit.

Where the ideas came from:

The Kyle Prideaux series

Kyle came to me in a dream. When I woke up, I didn’t know much about her, but I was intrigued by the dream, and by the end of the day I had the plots for three books rolling around in my head. Admittedly, the plots have evolved and metamorphosed a LOT since that first day, but the series still started with that dream.

Jack the Reaper

Jack came to me as a snarky teenage voice. I was sitting at work one day, minding my own business, and there she was, harassing me and demanding her story be told. I took a few minutes to discover what her story really is. After jotting the basics of a plot down, I returned to work. Apparently the basics were not enough for Jack (who was still unnamed at the time). I struggled to continue working on Incubus for nearly a week before her constant nagging wore me down and I put my current project away to write her story.

Darken

I was at work one day, as I often am. Our water at the office is terrible, so we use a Culligan system for drinking water. Those Culligan coolers take SO long to fill a 40 ounce bottle (especially if you are trying to drain the last little bit out of the cooler because you just don’t feel like changing the bottle). So there I was, standing at the water cooler when suddenly I had a flash: Charleston, SC…cemetary…ghost story…love story…and from there a whole plot. And then I overflowed my bottle all over the lobby floor.

As you can see, each instance was a little different. I don’t know if I have ever come across a plot or character in the same way I came across another. Once I couldn’t think of a certain word; then, when I finally did, that one word spawned an entire plot.

I have never sat down and formulated a plot. I tried that once-forcing it DOES. NOT. WORK.

With so many different plots floating around in my head (and in a notebook awaiting their turns to be written), all birthed from completely different circumstances, it is no wonder my default response is “I get ideas everywhere.”

You tell me: where do you get your plot ideas?