A Little Thing Called Life

My weekends are usually pretty calm, but lately my boyfriend and I have been hanging out with his nephews. We've gone to Boomers more times than I care to admit (although, I did win the ticket jackpot on one of the games!), and we've been playing parents to these guys. But now the weekend is over, and I have a bit of time to finish my last post.

Okay, story #1: (hahaha, when I typed that, the first thing that popped up was for the Hustler club...really, Google?) Olivia Beaucher is from the town of Ashburton, one of the richest parts of the Bay Area. Harper Cahan is just a normal boy from Mapleton, but when he meets Olivia, he knows life is going to be different from that point on. He has no idea how different, though, when he learns that Olivia suffers from bipolar disorder. These two sixteen year olds have to navigate the waters of family, friends, and love, all while dealing with Olivia's incredible highs and lows. Bipolar disorder is a topic that I really wanted to explore, especially since someone very close to me suffers from a mild version of it. I'm trying my best to make it realistic, because I know how this disorder affects people all over the world. So I'm very hesitantly making my way through this world, and I hope I get it within the ballpark of being right.

Story #2: (no more pop-ups from Google? Hmmm...) Emerson has known Max Cooper since she was five, since he was her brother's best friend for almost eight years. He's even her first kiss and first love. Then, suddenly, he's gone. Two years later, when Emerson is starting her sophomore year of high school, Cooper reappears, sweeping her off her feet and telling her the truth about what really went on when he left her life. When I was younger, my brother had this friend that stayed at our house all the freaking time. Then he left, because he and my brother stopped being friends. Nothing ever happened between us, but he kept popping up in my life my first year of high school. I tried writing this story that same year, and I found bits and pieces of it the other month. I thought it it would be interesting to revisit these memories, because the story that I had developed in my mind was too wonderful to be true.

So there you go. We'll see how well these things go. So, far I'm pretty excited about #2, because I'm almost 20,000 words in. I can't seem to stop writing it. Although, I did take a long break this weekend, because of the kids and because I rented Pitch Perfect. Not as bad as I thought. Highly recommend it. But now I have to get back to this life. Breaks are always so nice.

Sickness Does Not Help Creativity

I work with little kids. Ages five to sixteen. Last week, eight of them were sick. One sneezed in my face, another wiped his nose and then touched my hands, and yet another drank from my water bottle, and then told me about it later. So it's no surprise that I woke up the other day with a stuffed nose and every cell in my body screaming for more sleep. I can feel my computer eyeing me in bed, and I feel terrible.

So I decided to set some goals, instead of just going nuts and writing for eighteen hundred hours, while I should be eating oranges and sleeping. About a year ago, I subscribed to Letters in the Mail from The Rumpus ($5 a month, people! Letters from authors every two weeks! It's awesome!), and one of the authors, I forget which, said that he set small goals for himself, maybe 100 words a day, and then worked his way up to 1,000 words a day. Well, that was an excellent idea, especially since I've been participating in NaNoWriMo for the last three years. So 1,000 words a day is easy compared to writing a novel in a month!

That is my goal. Sort of. 1,500 words per day. I thought that this would be helpful, but then I decided to James Patterson it and maybe work on two books at once. We'll see out that works out.

What are these two stories about? Well. Isn't that the million dollar question? They're both young adult books, because they're both about love, and isn't love so much more potent when you're a teenager? One is semi-autobiographical, and the other is...semi-something I wished would have happened when I was thirteen. I've been thinking about the latter one for about twelve years, and I just finally worked it out to where I think I might have something there. The former....well, it deals with bipolar disorder and how it affects those we love the most.

Yes, I am the Queen of Being Vague. But these are just super rough drafts right now. Hopefully I'll have more to it on my next post. I promise to explain them in more detail. In between being sick and immersing myself in Downton Abbey.

“Fiction Gives Us A Second Chance That Life Denies Us.”

So. Second try.

I had a blog before. Sort of. I considered it more of a journal than anything, and if people followed me, the more the merrier. But this one is going to be different. This one is actually going to push me into doing something I've been procrastinating on for the last, oh, twenty-so years of my life: this is going to help me finish and (hopefully) self-publish my book.

Why is this a big deal for me? Besides the obvious, the fact is I never let anyone see what I write. Sometimes I look at the screen and think, wow, good job, Bree, you've written at a second grade level (no offense to the second graders out there). Others times, I say, hey, look at that, that's okay. And then I promptly forget about it and continue on my second grade path. Either way, I won't let anyone read it, not even the guy I've known for ten years who hears me repeat SpongeBob jokes like I've found the Holy Grail of laughter.

But I feel that I've read enough books, written enough million page novels, to finally find my way into the oh-so-scary world of the public. I'd ask them to be gentle, but really, crying is good for the soul, so I've heard. So this is going to document the journey I take over the next however-long-it-takes-me, and hopefully, it won't be too boring.

So here's to second chances and changes. Let's see how it goes this time around.