Inspiration: Taylor Swift

Whenever someone asks me who my favourite artists are, my response is, "William Fitzsimmons, Mumford & Sons, Florence and the Machine, and Taylor Swift."

One of these things is not like other, right?

I was fifteen when Taylor Swift came out. I was fifteen when I had my first crush that went beyond, "Oh, he's cute." I honestly thought that I had a shot with this guy, but then he started dating his ex-girlfriend. I didn't know her, but from what others told me, she was pretty much exactly like me, just better according to him. It doesn't sound like a big deal now, but when I was fifteen, it completely crushed me. When I heard "Teardrops on my Guitar" on the radio, it was the first time as a young adult I'd heard a song and thought, "Oh my gosh, someone gets it." I quickly downloaded the rest of her music, and had the same experience with "Tied Together With a Smile", "Stay Beautiful", and "A Place in the World." Even though I couldn't relate to the other songs, I loved them just as much. In fact, "Cold as You" is still my favourite Taylor Swift song.

I didn't have the same experience with "Love Story" that I had with "Teardrops on My Guitar". I liked the song and thought it was cute, but it didn't strike me like Teardrops did. Still, I loved Taylor, and bought Fearless. I enjoyed it, but again, it didn't hit me like Taylor Swift did. That summer, I went away for a week to a random small town, where I met a boy. That boy was one of the biggest rushes I've ever experienced. We clicked and flirted like crazy (and until this point, I didn't flirt at all), but in a week, it was over. Suddenly, Fearless was the soundtrack to my life, just as Taylor Swift had been. "Love Story" and "Fearless" were my week, and "White Horse" was the rest of my summer. I also felt a connection to "The Best Day", "Change", and, unsurprisingly after reading the last section, "Fifteen."

The difference between Fearless and Taylor Swift was that I got bored with Fearless after my boy-drama ended, whereas I still love Taylor Swift. When Speak Now came out, I wasn't that excited. I thought I'd either outgrown Taylor or that she'd lost some of what made her first CD so magical. I didn't plan on listening to it, let alone buying it. "Mine" didn't change my mind. In fact, I rolled my eyes a little when I heard it: a cutesy love song from Taylor, how original. Her performance of "Innocent" at the VMAs also came off as little self-righteous to me, which didn't help matters (though, spoiler alert, I love the song now.) Taylor's performance of "Back to December" at the CMAs is what made me listen to the CD. Both the song and the performance itself were so honest, and for the first time since "White Horse", Taylor struck a chord with me. I listened to the rest of Speak Now, and now I'm in the process of falling in love with it. "Dear John" and "Sparks Fly" (yes, another cutesy love song, but now I know a cute boy to go with it) were instant favourites, but I'm sure as I continue to listen and continue to live, more of her songs will hit my heart.

Taylor Swift's success is no accident. She gets what it's like to be a young adult, and can capture moments of that with an almost uncomfortable amount of honesty in three minutes. In three albums, she's managed to capture the life of a young adult.

That's why, as a writer, Taylor Swift is an inspiration of mine.

Now, you tell me: what musicians inspire you as a writer?

PS: The guy I liked when I was fifteen? Turns out he was a jerk. The ex he was dating when I liked him? She's now one of my best friends. Amazing how things turn out, huh?

Road Trip Wednesday: It's Enough to Make You Go Crazy

On the Playlist: People All Get Ready - The Frames

Road Trip Wednesday is a "Blog Carnival," where YA Highway's contributors post a weekly writing-or reading-related question and answer it on their blogs. You can hop from destination to destination and get everybody's unique take on the topic.

There's one more hour of Wednesday left in Nova Scotia land, and it's time to take a road trip.

This Week's Topic: "The winds in Washokey make people crazy."

It's the first line of Kirstin Hubbard's novel LIKE MANDARIN, and if you'd like to win an ARC of LIKE MANDARIN, you should check out this contest at YA Highway.

The prompt for this week is to write about a time you did something completely crazy. I am not a crazy person by nature, but as I thought about the question throughout the day, I realized that all the crazy things I've done involve either God, like when I joined the leadership team for my school's Christian Fellowship this year, or meeting awesome online friends in an inspiring setting, like at a Missy Higgins concert in Toronto. The craziest thing I've done involves God, awesome friends, an inspiring setting.

I've been chatting online since I was twelve, which for the record, I don't recommend as it means there's lots of evidence of your twelve-year-old self all over teh interwebz. The first message board I ever participated on was on, wait for it, Neopets. Neopets had guilds, which were groups that people who shared a common interest could join. I was in a Canadian Idol one (this story just gets better and better, doesn't it?), and I started chatting with the other members of the guild. I became close to one girl who was a couple years older than me, who happened to live in Nova Scotia as well, though she lived a few hours away from me. She was a Christian, and I wasn't (but at twelve, my theology was, uh, completely wrong). She was always encouraging me to open my mind to Christianity, and not in a pushy way. She taught me about it and answered all of my questions without judgement.

One day, she told me she was going to be a counsellor at a Bible camp, and asked me to come. I was never the kind of kid who went to camp, other than few dance day camps (actually, the craziest thing I may have done was co-choreograph and perform a routine to "Space Cowboy" by N*SYNC), because I was awkward and just didn't know how to handle situations where I didn't know anyone. Also, I still wasn't a Christian at this point, so going to a Bible camp wasn't too appealing. I expected to be judged there, and I knew that there would be many conversations that I just wouldn't be comfortable with. But this girl honestly was my best friend, and I knew this might be the only chance I got to hang out with her, so I had to go.

To sum up, I went to a Christian camp when I wasn't a Christian and hated the idea of camp, to meet someone I met online. Not like me at all.

But it was incredible. My friend was just who she was online and I spent an awesome week with her. I will admit to having a couple issues with the people there, but we were twelve, so that's to be expected. Overall, though, they were great. The best part? That's where I was saved.

I don't take risks often, but every now and then I do something that surprises me, and it always seems to work out, even if it's just a bad decision that I learn tons from. Mostly, though, my moments of insanity have shown me a world I wouldn't have known otherwise.

Talking About Writing

On the Playlist: Down - Jason Walker

Today, a friend asked me, "What are you writing now?"

My answer? "It's YA Contemporary. With romance, but it's coming-of-age. *pause* It's about dance. *longest pause of my life* I hate to say this because it's embarrassing and a cheap trick *somehow an even longer pause than the last one* There's, uh, a freak car accident that puts the dancer in a wheelchair, and the story goes from there."

Yeah, I wouldn't read it either.

I don't know how to talk to people about what I write, unless it's over the internet or with a fellow writer. Though I'm certainly no expert at queries, I could write once that's better than what I told my friend (ok, given what I told my friend, that is not a hard thing to do.)

This friend is even one who I trust, who I know doesn't think I'm crazy for wanting to be a YA writer. Yet, I didn't know what to say to her. Heck, much of what I said wasn't even true. There's dance in my WIP, yes, but that's not what it's about. The accident isn't really a freak accident, or at least the results of it weren't as the character who was injured wasn't even sitting in a seat when they crashed. I have thought that the car accident was a cheap trick before, but I don't really anymore. It's necessary for the plot and it does more than just paralyze my character.

But I was embarrassed to say that I used a car accident, and strangely, embarrassed to say that I write romance. That's ridiculous, because I love romance, and believe it is as important as every other genre. The embarrassment came from the fact that I'm writing romance, because I don't have much experience with romance in real life. I was so tempted to tell my friend, "It really is better than it sounds", which we all know makes everyone think your novel is just as bad, if not worse, than you made it sound.

Being able to talk about my novel in real life (you know, as opposed to this fake life that is the internet) is definitely a skill I need to work on. How can I expect anyone to be interested in it when I can't make it sound interesting?

Does anyone else have verbal diarrhea when it comes to talking about their writing?

Update

On the Playlist: One by One - Robert Francis

This is a self-indulgent post written at midnight on an adrenaline rush. Don't say you weren't warned.

This post is just a quick update to let all of you know where I've been, what I've been up to, and when the blog will get back on its feet.

For the past two weeks, I've been in a fairly intense amount of pain. Now, there are three unrelated reasons for this pain, none of which should worry you. It's all pain I was supposed to have; for example, I got my wisdom teeth out last Saturday, and it's probably a good thing that I was in pain from it, but it didn't feel that way when I was living off a diet of milkshakes and jello. I was prescribed painkillers after I got my wisdom teeth out, with this magical little drug in them called codeine that made me useless. They didn't make me that dopey (though I did once try to pay for food in my school's cafeteria with my keys instead of my meal card), but they did make me tired as anything. I'm a university student, so I have class and homework. I'm also on the leadership team of my school's Christian Fellowship, so I have meetings to attend, and this past week we had an event that I helped to plan and run (I could've planned the date of the event better, eh?) Those are my priorities. They do leave time for writing and blogging and all that fun stuff, but that's now how I spent that time this past week. Thanks to codeine, I spent it sleeping (I also spent a fair amount of time wallowing in self-pity and watching guilty pleasure TV, like Dancing With the Stars.)

Needless to say, I fell behind on NaNoWriMo pretty quickly. Even before I got my wisdom teeth out, I was in pain for other reasons, and as much I wish it was, writing just isn't as important as school, the Christian Fellowship, and of course, keeping myself healthy. I called it quits around the end of the first week.

But, those weren't the only reasons I decided not to NaNo. At the end of October, I was stuck on revisions for Building Forts. Like, I've been trying to revise a scene for two weeks and just can't do it stuck. But, once I started my NaNo project, the inspiration for Building Forts came back. I'd kind of expected it to, but I didn't expect it to happen so quickly, nor did I expect to be as inspired as I was. I mentally worked through some of the major issues in the first draft that I realized were preventing me from revising specific scenes, and once I had those figured out, all I wanted to write was Building Forts. So, that's what I'm writing now. The revisions are quickly turning into total rewrites, but that's ok. It's better and I love it again.

Now, I'm not in pain, the event with the Christian Fellowship is over, and there's no longer codeine running through my system. School, however, has not gone away. In fact, it's probably busier than it's been all semester from now until Christmas break. Blogging won't be as slow as it's been lately, but it'll still be slow, and I'm sorry for that. It's not just because I'm busy with school, but being sick and/or on medication like I've been tends to put me in a bit of a mental funk, so I need to take some time to bounce back from that.

And that's what's going on with me. If you read all of that, I owe you a virtual cookie. Seriously.