The Infinity Has Been Released!

I've finally published my book! Hip hip hooray! *does magical little dance around the room*

Please please please check out my book! Visit this here page at Smashwords.com:

www.smashwords.com/books/view/330841
(here's the website in case the hyperlink doesn't work) 

Unfortunately, you will have to make an account before buying (but it only takes a couple of minutes). 

Here's the summary:

Fourteen-year-old author Avon Forest embarks on her writing career with her debut novelette, The Infinity.

Doe was a typical teenage girl. She had an eccentric biology teacher, she went to band practice after school, and she always wished her life wasn't so boring. But Doe ends up meeting a group of strangers that make her life anything but dull and monotonous. She is swept up in a chase across time, and suddenly her life is entwined with the very people she once called kidnappers. Throughout all this, Doe realizes that every human being is a mixture of good and bad, and that love is the one thing that glues time together. 

Thanks! 

Stress...Stress...Stess

While I was writing my book, I was constantly stressed out about it. I needed to finish the chapter. I needed to format the book properly. I needed to promote it. I needed to get feedback. I needed to make changes. 

But I've realized that my book isn't the end (or the beginning) of the world. I wrote it because I wanted to, not because I had to. So why am I stressed out about it? I write for relaxation, so writing this book should had been relaxation for me. 

Don't let the stress of writing a book take over you. Think of it as fun, because that's exactly why you started writing it in the first place. Relax, because you will finish your book. And even if it's not successful, at least you did it. You accomplished something that few people ever dream of doing, and that's what counts. 

Introduction to The Infinity

Here's the introduction to my e-book, The Infinity, which will be released in June:

So here it is: my first novel. Some time ago, I decided to write a book about a girl who was kidnapped by a group of time travelers who were running away from a madwoman who wanted to use their DNA to save the world.

It's crazy, I know.

But eventually my boring life blended into their story, and now I can barely remember my life before meeting them and getting to know them as the characters you will meet in this book. My life is tangled in theirs––it always was, I guess. And surprisingly, after writing about this group of crazy people, I learned a lot about myself. In fact, in very loose terms you could say that I found out who I really was.

I'm still kind of figuring things out––I can't tell you exactly what I'm figuring out. But if you really would like to know, I'll just tell you that I'm doing ok. Everything's ok.

When I got my book deal for this novel (the one that you're currently reading), they asked that I write it as though I was writing a young adult fiction novel.  And I did. And here it is. But when I wrote this introduction, they told me to cut it out. And I said no. The only way an author can directly connect to her readers is through the author's note. And I wasn't going to let them take that away from me.

Then they asked me that I at least modify the last line. And I said no.

You see, this is my story.

Well, this is more like our story.

And would you do me a favor, whoever you are, reading this book? Just keep one thing in mind for me:

I don't write fiction.

It's called a good taste in music.

I will quote the words of my literature teacher: “You can think of a poem as a song. You don’t really think of a song’s meaning as you listen to it. What you really like is its beat, and tone, and the vocalist’s voice. A poem’s the same way. You don’t really try to find its meaning. You like it’s tone, its beat, and the voice of whoever’s reading it.”

This essay is not about poetry. It’s about story writing. But if poetry is like music, then any type of story or essay writing is like music, too. Writing has a tone; it has a beat; and it has a voice.

When I finished the first book of the Divergent trilogy (always have to bring up that book, don’t I?), I explored around Veronica Roth’s site. And she mentioned in one of her posts that the album “Memento Mori” by Flyleaf had inspired the tone and voice of Divergent. I may not be a big Flyleaf fan, but after listening to “Memento Mori” and realizing how much it mimicked the style of Divergent, I had an epiphany:

Listening to music helps your writing. A lot. And I’ll be metaphorical and say that it seeps into your writing the same way the dye in your tie-dye shirt swirls throughout the cottony fabric. And tie-dye shirts are prettier than your plain white tees, aren’t they? The tones and the styles of Memento Mori swirled throughout Veronica Roth’s book and made it more beautiful.

So I did a self-experiment. While I was writing my first manuscript, I listened to the album “Ceremonials” by Florence + the Machine because the album perfectly mimicked the tone and style of the book I imagined in my head. For some chapters I would listen to that album, and for other chapters I would listen to something else or to nothing at all.

And you know what? The ‘FATM-chapters’ had a more developed voice than the other chapters. It wasn’t that the others chapters were BAD in terms of voice. It’s just that the FATM-chapters were a little bit better. The album “Ceremonials” had seeped into my writing like tie-dye. And even though it seemed a little weird at first, I soon realized how magnificent music could be, especially when it comes to story writing. 

Wait...what? A BOOK?!

So I finished something called A BOOK. 

And I'm a little bit happy. 

(only a little bit happy, I swear)

To get through this, I basically told myself that I ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY had to finish it or I would DIE OF SHAME. Which worked. Kind of. 

Tips on How to Write a Book:

1. Forget how crappy it is. 

Don't be a perfectionist. Concentrate on finishing it first, THEN fix it later. Try to swallow the OH MY GOD I HAVE TO FIX IT RIGHT NOW instinct. Write down what you have to fix on a sheet of paper. Once your done writing, take out the paper and start editing (which I did not do originally and for which now I pay the price). 

2. Give it to other people. I repeat. Give it to other people. 

You need other people's advice to make your work better. So give your book to a wide range of people. I suggest having AT LEAST five people read your writing so you can make it as good as possible. 

3. Relax. Life is good. 

If you are not a published author who is on a schedule to write your next book, don't feel like you have to write every single day. If you're just having a long day and you want to relax, do it. If you can wait for a moment, your book can too. 

Happy writing! 

Science (Fiction) and Faith

            Society has instinctively come to assume that ‘religion’ and ‘faith’ are brother and sister terms with the same meaning. Although Merriam-Webster states that the word ‘faith’ means “belief or trust in God or the doctrines of a religion”, there is one question to ask: Cannot faith also be in something quite isolated from religion itself?

On September 17, 2011, the eleventh episode of the sixth series of the British science fiction TV series Doctor Who premiered on BBC One. In this episode, an alien time traveler named ‘the Doctor’ and his companions Amy and Rory find themselves trapped in a 1980s hotel with constantly shifting and changing corridors. They meet a group of people who all have no clue as to how they arrived in the hotel: Rita, a Muslim medical student, Joe, a gambler, Gibbis, an alien, and Howie, a nerd in his late twenties who lives with his parents. The Doctor eventually realizes that the hotel captures people of ‘great faith’, and a creature lives off their faith by first ‘relocating’ their faith to itself by terrifying them with their worst fear. In their dying moments, the victims lose their personality, worship the creature, and continually utter the words ‘praise him’. The victims lose their faith to the creature, and in doing so, they lose their souls, too.

At one point in the episode, the Doctor says something remarkable about why the hotel is desensitizing its victims by exposing them to their worst nightmare:

It’s not fear. It’s faith. Not just religious faith, but faith in something. Howie believed in conspiracies, that external forces controlled the world. Joe had dice cufflinks and a chain with a horseshoe—he was a gambler. Gamblers believe in luck. They [Rita, Howie, Joe, and Gibbis] all believe there’s something guiding them, about to save them. That’s what it [the creature] replaces. Every time someone was confronted with their most primal fear they fell back on their most fundamental faith…[Amy’s] faith in me is what brought us [the Doctor, Amy, and Rory] here.

           

            There is one phrase in this spiel that stands out with a pale haze of white light hovering around it:

            “Not just religious faith, but faith in something.”

***

            In Life of Pi, Pi, the main character, finds out that his biology teacher, Mr. Kumar, is an atheist. Mr. Kumar states proudly to Pi, “I don’t believe in religion. Religion is darkness.” He then states later that he “believes in the virtues of science.”

            At the age of six, Mr. Kumar fell sick and had lain in bed for six months. Those six months were “the worst days of [his] life. He eventually recovered, but at the “price of his faith”. He firmly believed that “medicine had saved [him], not God”.

            Atheists may not believe in God, but that doesn’t mean they do not believe in anything. Mr. Kumar did not believe in God; he believed in science. As Pi says later in the chapter, “Atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak, speaks of faith.”

            There are innumerable types of faith. Yes, there is faith in God (or gods), but there is also faith in a loved one, in science, in luck, even in the most arbitrary fascinations imaginable. Rita had faith in Islam, Amy had faith in the Doctor, Mr. Kumar had faith in science, Joe had faith in luck, and Howie had faith in government conspiracies.

            One may live without religion, but that doesn’t mean one lives without faith.

Sources:

The Wikipedia summary of “The God Complex”

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_Complex

Digital Spy review of “The God Complex”

digitalspy.com/british-tv/…/doctor-who-the-god-complex-recap.html

“The God Complex” Quotes

planetclaire.org/quotes/doctorwho/series-six/the-god-complex/

The Shmoop page for Life of Pi

shmoop.com/life-of-pi/

“The God Complex” Preview Clip #2

bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00kf4pw

I Can't...Right?

                                     
I think every novel writer goes through it. It's a time when you just can't write...you don't have nearly 2% as much inspiration and hope and excitement as you did before. You keep putting your writing off; you write less often; your writing quality goes down.

And that's okay. Give yourself a break.
But not forever.

When I was in this lull of writing, I had a conversation with a friend, who was reading my developing novel. And she didn't tell me how much she liked it, or even how to improve it. She told me what it was about. She explained to me the plot, the characters, the style of writing, what kind of book it was.

It wasn't like she was talking to me, the author of the book. It was like she was talking to someone who had never read the book before, let alone wrote it.

And she explained the book to me in a way I'd never thought of the book before. All of a sudden, it was a completely different book, it was a completely different manuscript, it was a completely different project. It wasn't my book, it was someone else's book. And now it was my opportunity to work on it.

And I was excited to start something new. You know why? I had a head start: what I'd already written.

(this pictures is by INeedChemicalX on DeviantArt)

NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo
National Novel Writing Month

In my quest to write a novel in one school year, I have discovered the wonders of NaNo. 
What is NaNo about, you ask?

It's writing a novel. 
In one month. 
50,000 words long. 

NaNo is a pretty awesome opportunity for writers. It is a chance to loosen up and write down something that has not been thought through at all and will probably be the craziest thing you've ever written. 

But that's okay. Aren't the most amazing things you've ever read also the craziest, most unique things you've ever read?



Come on, a guy living in a hole in a ground? That's a guy with no life, not a mobbit. Wait, a hobbit? 
Kids killing kids? What kind of world is that? Do you actually think that anyone would read something that depressing?
A kid who goes to school at a magical wizard school? Excuse me, but do you think we're five year olds? 



Imagination sometimes comes in a hurry. When you have a short span of time (like a month), your brain is pulling things out of the air. (Please imagine, for a moment, the time when you did not study for a test and in the last five minutes of exam time you wrote down whatever you could think of even though it didn't make complete sense). 

About 100% percent of the time when you're writing your 50,000 NaNo words, whatever you write down is not perfect. 
But it's probably good. 

And there are a lot of people who worked with good and made awesome, right?

*cough cough J.K. Rowling, J.R.R. Tolkien, Suzanne Collins cough cough*

There may be a future for your NaNo novel. But you have to make it. 

P.S.  I love the coffee cup on the NaNo emblem-thingy (because that's what NaNo is all about). 

The Imagination Part of the Brain

Ever heard the phrase, "Good things come to those who wait?"

Well, it's wrong. Don't wait. Write.

I have recently learned that imagination does not hit if you go through three days of your life ignoring that essay that's screaming at you from its place on your desk. When an essay needs more imagination, don't ignore it.

Write, write, write. It doesn't matter if you're going to cut it out sooner or later. Writing is the source of amazing stuff. When you write, you think. And maybe, just maybe, you'll think of something perfect to resolve that issue you had in your essay.

It works, I swear.