Road Trip Wednesday: In a Land Far, Far Away...

Road Trip Wednesday is hosted by YA Highway.

This Week's Topic: Describe your dream writing retreat. Where would you go? Who and what would you bring?

Honestly, I wouldn't go far, far away. I'd stay in Nova Scotia, but I'd head to a small cottage by the ocean. Nothing inspires me quite like the ocean does, and I don't spend near enough time there considering how close I am to it. I'd love to go at the end of August/beginning of September, when the water's colder, but not so cold that I couldn't reward myself with a swim. That would also make it the perfect get-away before school/my real life starts again.

See? He wants to come!

The cottage is as important as the ocean, because many of my best stories come from time spent in cottages. It's a small, intimate environment--the same type of environment I like to set my work in--and that leads people to be more honest, more daring, and more magical.

In an ideal world, my cats would enjoy the drive, and I'd bring them. They're great company while writing, because they'll leave me alone, but still recognize when I'm crying over a scene feeling down and cuddle with me to make me feel better. I'd also bring books for inspiration, and music to listen to as I write (which would most likely be a mix of showtunes.)

What's your ideal writing retreat?

Road Trip Wednesday: All I Want for Christmas

Road Trip Wednesday is hosted by YA Highway.

This Week's Topic: What would be the ideal holiday present for your main character (or favorite character?)

I love prompts which give me an excuse to perform ridiculous Google searches! I have two main characters at the moment, Arianna and Tiffany. Arianna's a musical theatre geek, and Tiffany's the captain of a dance team.

Arianna: Be a Broadway Star Board Game 

Guys, if I knew enough people who love Broadway as much as I do and would be willing to play this with me, this would totally be on my Christmas list. It's a board game which takes you through the process of becoming a Broadway star, all the way from acting school to the Tony's. There are also Make or Break Cards which give you a chance to perform, and according to Amazon reviews, the challenges include, "Sing a Rodgers and Hammerstein song like a rock song." Arianna would love to live through a Broadway career without actually living through it, and she'll take any opportunity to perform, so this would be perfect for her.

Tiffany: Wireless Boombox

Tiffany likes to dance in the middle of a football field at midnight, and she has to dance with her iPod in her pocket and headphones in her ears. Speaking from experience, it's not ideal, especially when your iPod goes flying and you nearly strangle yourself. She could bring this boombox to the field and dance, which would not only be safer, but more of a rewarding experience since her music would fill her small town. It would also be great for dance team practices since her school doesn't have decent speakers in the budget, and its portability would allow her to travel with it to competitions. 

What would you buy your characters for the holidays?

Road Trip Wednesday: Understanding the Ladybug

Road Trip Wednesday is hosted by YA Highway.

This Week's Topic: What's your numero uno reason for writing?

The Sequel: How the Ladybug Applied Mascara

One of my earliest memories is learning about fables in elementary school. I loved them, and was as excited as I'd ever be about an assignment when our teacher asked us to write a fable. 

I wrote about how the ladybug got its spots and it was a creative, touching, absolutely ridiculous piece that I was so proud of. 

Fast forward, and I have more questions. I learn about friendship and God and love and dance and sex and history and music, but it's never enough. I always know that there's more to know, but I don't know what else I need to know; I don't know what questions to ask.

So, I write about it. I write about a character who has casual sex to understand why people do that (as well as why people don't.) I write about relationships to understand how they can be so messy and so incredible at the same time. I write about dance to understand why it affects me the way it does.

I write to learn about how the ladybug got its spots. 

Why do you write?

Road Trip Wednesday: Lather, Rinse, Repeat

Road Trip Wednesday is hosted by YA Highway.

This Week's Topic:

What themes, settings, motifs, scenes, or other elements do you find recurring in your work?

Sibling Relationships

I have a great relationship with my brother, but it's not like the sibling relationships I write about. The ones I write about tend to be ones where at least one sibling is totally dependent on the other. 

Dance

This one's an obvious one, as I love dance as much as I love writing. This was the first dance video in my youtube subscriptions today, and it represents how I like to write dance well. It's a classroom opposed to a stage, it's messy and honest and raw, it hasn't been polished to perfection. 

Small Towns

I love intimate settings, places where a story feels close and quiet. 

Self-Worth

This is huge in all my novels. My characters determine how much they're worth based on their popularity, grades, body, relationships, and so on. Ultimately, the coming-of-age moment for them is realizing how destructive that is, and that they are awesome just as they are. 

What themes reoccur in your novels? 

Road Trip Wednesday: Setting

Road Trip Wednesday is hosted by YA Highway.

This Week's Topic: What is the most inspiring setting you've ever visited? 

The picture on the left is of the mountains in Almaty, Kazakhstan. I lived in Almaty for a month, and the walk to the university involved fifteen minutes of walking along a canal with an incredible view of the mountains, and fifteen minutes of walking in a beautiful park.

Almaty was a new, foreign, and beautiful city. I fell in love with it.

But it hasn't--and I don't imagine it will--inspired any stories. The city that has inspired multiple stories, and really, has had the strongest influence on who I am as a writer? 

Orangeville, Ontario. 

Uh, yeah. That's Orangeville, and it's as average of a town as that picture makes it look. I have family there, so my summer vacations have been in Orangeville for as long as I can remember. Maybe I'm so inspired by it because it was the first time I saw people living day-to-day lives outside of Nova Scotia, but I didn't think that way when I was five.

I was fifteen when we were driving through Orangeville on a vacation and I thought: Wow, this place is small. Really, it's not that small, but it certainly was in comparison to the city I grew up in. 

From there, I thought of what it would be like to live in a small town, and from there, characters were born, and from there, a plot was beginning to form, and by the end of the car ride, I knew I had something good.

And for a fifteen-year-old who didn't know who I wanted to be as a writer, I did. I wrote a ridiculously long piece of  fanfiction and had the most fun I'd ever had writing. Looking back, it's so bad--I was re-reading it the other day and yelling at myself, honestly--and I wasn't totally oblivious to that back then, especially once I had some distance from it. I knew the writing wasn't great--not to mention that I was yet to realize loose and lose were two different words, the dramatic "I don't want to loose you!" scene lost some of its effect--and the plot was sloppy, but there was something in the characters and the heart of the story that was worth something.

I realized that I'm a character-driven writer, that I love to write about relationships (romantic and non-romantic ones) and it's what I'm best at it, and that I really love to set my stories in small towns, or at least in a setting with few people and few distractions from each other (like the cottage where three people stay in Duets.) The majority of the work I've written since then has taken place in an intimate environment, even if that wasn't my intention when I started the piece. It always turns out that way.

I always loved going to Orangeville because I loved seeing my family, but now, I love the town itself, too.

What setting has inspired you?

Road Trip Wednesday: It's for Research, I Promise...

Road Trip Wednesday is hosted by YA Highway.

This Week's Topic: What is the strangest/weirdest thing you've ever researched?

I visited my grandmother in Ontario the other weekend, and she asked me if I had any experience with people who use wheelchairs.

Well, not with real people. I have, however, become attached to a fictional wheelchair user over the past year. So, I know a fair bit about wheelchairs (and specifically people with paraplegia), but it's taken a few awkward trips to Google to gain that knowledge.

My search history includes:

• Sex and paraplegia
• Paraplegia and boners (though I didn't use that term)
• Paraplegia sexual function (Are you sensing a theme? All of this research was totally necessary, though. It led to one of my favourite scenes in the novel)
• How do people in wheelchairs bathe
• How to help a paraplegic bathe
• How do paraplegic people use the bathroom
• How to date a guy in a wheelchair (I didn't actually want an answer to this question, but to see how people would answer this question)

 What is the strangest/weirdest thing you've ever researched?

Road Trip Wednesday: Who Should Narrate the Audio Book?

Road Trip Wednesday is hosted by YA Highway.

This Week's Topic:

If you got to choose a celebrity narrator for the audio book of your WIP or your favorite novel, who would it be and why?

When I hear my narrator talk, I don't hear the tone of her voice. I do, however, hear her attitude and emotion. So, this choice is more about the way my character speaks than it is about how she sounds. 

Chelsie Hightower, of So You Think You Can Dance and Dancing with the Stars fame, is who I would choose to narrate Building Forts as Callie. I have no idea if she can act--her dancing suggests that she can, but that doesn't involve her voice--but her attitude matches Callie's well enough that it wouldn't be much of a stretch.

I've posted a collection of Chelsie's quotes, many of which match Callie's personality. The most important part of Callie's voice is her snark, which I hear in how Chelsie's sarcastic with others and herself. Callie's also not the most eloquent of narrators, and Chelsie has multiple moments where she realizes what she's saying isn't quite right halfway through. I also think how Chelsie's sexy when she dances, but jokes about her sexuality and is a little tomboy-ish off stage, would translate well to how Callie can be so awkward during flirting and foreplay, but ultimately knows how to, uh, get the job done.

Who would you choose to narrate your WIP's audio book?

Road Trip Wednesday: Sing, Sing a Song...

Road Trip Wednesday is hosted by YA Highway. 

This Week's Topic: If your WIP or favorite book were music, what song(s) would it be?

I love this topic so much. I posted Building Forts' playlist awhile ago, and though those songs are still on it, it has changed from a focused playlist of twenty-three songs to a mess of, uh, 161 songs and counting, which you can see here if you're interested. Any song that reminds me of a scene in my novel makes the cut--whether because of music, lyrics, or both--and I can justify every song on that playlist (yes, including Like a G6), even if the connection's a bit of a stretch.

Needless to say, it was difficult to narrow my novel down to one song for this post. Many of the songs in the playlist represent specific scenes, so those are out, but there are also a fair number which fit the overall theme. So, honourable mentions go to every song by Thriving Ivory, "Car Crash" by Wakey!Wakey!, "Fix You" by Coldplay, "For Blue Skies" by Strays Don't Sleep, "Teenage Dream" by Katy Perry, and "Falling" by The Civil Wars. 

The song I think best represents my novel, however, is "Corner of Your Heart" by Ingrid Michaelson.

This was not the first song that came to mind when I read the prompt, because I don't write to it near as often as I write to the songs above. But, it is exactly what my MC, Callie, does throughout the novel. She has two romantic relationships, and though one is considerably healthier than the other, in both she gives the guy everything she has for next to nothing in return, her whole heart for a corner of his.

I also want to share this dance to this song, because I discovered it long after I began this novel, and was shocked by how the male dancer just is Chase. It's kind of ridiculous. He even has the right hair!

What song would your WIP be?

Road Trip Wednesday: Who Wants to Read Forever...

Road Trip Wednesday is hosted by YA Highway.

This Week's Topic: In the movie Groundhog Day, Bill Murray has to relive the same day over and over. What books would you pick to read over and over for the rest of your life?

On the rare occasion when I have no new books or library books to read, these are the books I turn to:

 The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants Series - Ann Brashares
I'll always remember the first time I read The Sisterhood of The Traveling Pants, and the moment I realized that I could relate to every character in the novel. That was one of the first times I've ever connected with a book on that level, and oh my gosh, it was such a relief. Here were four teenage girls going through things I went through and feeling things I felt, and it was like someone was telling me, "Hey, it's ok. You're not crazy to feel the things you feel. Just human." As I read through the series, I felt as though I grew up with these girls.

I can read this book over and over again because I'm a mixture of Lena, Tibby, Carmen, and Bridget all wrapped into one, and reading their stories often feels like reading and remembering my own.

The Truth About Forever - Sarah Dessen
This is one of those books that I find it so difficult to talk about because of how much it means to me. I honestly don't know how to explain what I experienced--and still experience--as I read it, but I'll do my best. This was the exact book my teenage self needed to read, and gosh, I recognized that as I read it the first time. Macy is me. There are differences, of course; for example, I'm definitely not a runner. But, I still understand why she runs. It's why I write and dance. Her desire for perfection and her grief also ring true for me, even if I wish they didn't.

I'm talking in present tense because I'm still, figuratively speaking, a runner, I'm still a perfectionist, and I still experience grief. That's why I can read this book over and over again. We don't know Macy when she's nineteen, but I'd imagine she's quite similar to my nineteen-year-old self. She's matured, but the sixteen-year-old girl is still inside of her. Much like The Sisterhood of the Traveling of Pants, rereading this book is like reliving my life, and I can still feel so many of the feelings I felt when I was sixteen.

What book would you read over and over again for the rest of your life?

Road Trip Wednesday: Favourite WIP Lines

Road Trip Wednesday is hosted by YA Highway.

This Week's Topic: What is your favourite line from your WIP (or from a book you read recently?)

Confession: When I read this week's prompt, the first lines from my WIP to come to mind were dirty jokes. Honestly, I'm quite proud of them. 

Most of those only make sense in the context of the novel, (see, they're complex dirty jokes), so here are two innocent lines from BUILDING FORTS that I'm proud of:

Anyone who lives as much as he does would die.

Guys, that's the first line. In other words, lower your expectations, because the novel only gets worse! 

The other line is:

 Chase and I share one of those smiles that make people hate you because you're hogging happiness.

What are your favourite lines from your WIP?

Road Trip Wednesday: Six Word Memoir

Road Trip Wednesday is hosted by YA Highway

This Week's Prompt:

Your six-word memoir. Literally, your life story in six words.

When this week's prompt appeared on Twitter last night, this was honestly the first thing I thought, and it happened to be six words. I won't explain it because, well, it's my memoir, it should tell you everything. So, here it is:

Found God and never been kissed.

What's your six-word memoir? 

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.

Road Trip Wednesday: Who's Your Comp?

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

This Week's Topic: Who are your comp titles/authors?

 
I had a hard time with this question for Building Forts. I don't think it's so unique that there are no books like it, but I'm just not sure I can recognize when a book is like mine. There is, however, one book that came to mind:

 Cracked Up to Be by Courtney Summers was the first book that came to mind when I read this week's prompt. The relationship between Parker and Chris reminded me so much of the relationship between Callie and Darren, while the relationship between Parker and Jake reminded me of the relationship between Callie and Chase. It's still a stretch, especially the comparison with Parker and Jake, but the contrast between the two relationships is something I have in my novel. Also, Parker's snark reminded me of Callie.

The answer to this question was easy for the novel I plan to write for NaNoWriMo, Like a Bad Country Song. Of course, this is based on the outline alone, so things may change when I start to write:

 The Sky Always Hears Me and the Hills Don't Mind by Kirstin Cronn-Mills. A "perfect", but boring boyfriend. A boy a character shouldn't be with but really, really wants to be with. A strong relationship with a grandmother. These are all aspects of Like a Bad Country Song, though the issues are handled differently in my novel and Cronn-Mills'. However, the biggest similarity between my novel and The Sky Always Hears Me and the Hills Don't Mind is a small town, and more importantly, the overwhelming desire to just get out of it.

What books can you compare to your novels?

Road Trip Wednesday: First Lines

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

The Topic: 

What are your favorite first lines? How do your own WIPs start?

Before I discovered Absolute Write and  all of the fabulous and helpful writing blogs, Google was where I went to find writing advice.  No matter what I searched--writing tips, advice for writers, novels r kewl  can i write 1?--I always found this piece of advice among the articles I read: have a good opening line. It made sense. After all, I wouldn't want a bad opening line.

So, I'd run to my room and read the first line of all my books. Seriously. Some were better than others, but as a whole, I was pretty underwhelmed. These were books I loved, yet their opening lines, though never bad, were never particularly good.

Their first paragraphs and pages, however, were fantastic.

When this topic came up on my blogroll, my mind went blank. There were no first lines that I'd stored in the back of my mind because they were so brilliant. Heck, no book titles even came to mind. I'm in my dorm room, so I couldn't raid my bookshelf like I used to for opening lines (and I so would've if I was at home), but I did look at the first lines of the library books I have in my room. One stood out to me, from Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson:

"So she tells me, the words dribbling out with cranberry muffin crumbs, commas dunked in her coffee."

The images this line creates are insane. It's so vivid. But, I'd love this line no matter where it was placed in the book. My opinion of the book would not have changed had the second line ("She tells me in four sentences. No, five.") had been the opening line.

Truth is, I don't really care about opening lines. Sure, it's good to have a good line like Anderson does, but it's good to have good lines throughout the novel. For me, if I'm hooked in the first couple pages, I'm good. A killer opening line helps that, but a couple of solid, engaging paragraphs help more.

All that said, I know that opening lines are incredibly important to some, so I do work harder at them than I do other lines. Here's the first line of Building Forts:

"Anyone who lives as much as he does would die."

What do you guys think? Do opening lines matter to you? What are your favourites? Let me know!

Road Trip Wednesday: Which Way to the Beach?

This week's topic:

You're packing for a month on a deserted island. What, as a reader and writer, must be in your backpack?

I would bring:

• The essentials: food, water, sunscreen, etc. A lighter would also be essential for me because there’s no way I could make a fire without one (and honestly, my chances are even iffy with one).
• The ultimate survival guide: The Bible. 
• Books, of course! I’d bring my favourites, but I’d probably leave The Hunger Games behind due to my paranoia. I’d also bring some books on my TBR list.
• Notebooks and pens. LOTS of pens. I lose them enough in my room, I can’t even imagine on a deserted island.
• An oldschool walkman with extra batteries and headphones
• CDs to write/dance/choreograph to: William Fitzsimmons, Mumford & Sons, Florence + The Machine, RENT Original Broadway Cast Soundtrack, and The Spice Girls. Werk.
• A volleyball named Wilson to be my BFF.

So yes, I would spend my month praying, studying, reading, writing, dancing, choreographing, and acting out every scene from RENT as every character. It would be a party.

Road Trip Wednesday #46: (Fictional) Friends Forever

On the Playlist: Empire State of Mind - Glee Cast (!!!)

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

This Week’s Topic:
If you went to high school with your characters, would you be friends?" (Taken from the Road Trip Wednesday page)

This is my first time participating in Road Trip Wednesday because I love this topic so much. The fact is, I love all of my characters dearly, but there are only three that I might have been friends with.

Building Forts is an interesting one, because I think I would’ve been part of Chase's group of friends, but I would've been the odd one out. Terri would be why I was in the group at all; we'd be friends. I would've really liked Chase and wished to be his friend, but pre-accident he would've intimidated me, even though Chase is not very intimidating. I was just a bit of a mess around cute guys in high school. And, Chase is a dancer! That would've put me over the edge. If it weren't for Callie, I may have befriended him post-accident. But, Callie and I would never have been friends, and she's my favourite of all my characters. I would've seen her as a slut, and that would've been that. I was so close minded in high school, even if I'd never admit it. Darren and I wouldn't have said two words to each other.

As for my new WIP (the last piece I teased from), Alexis and I would've been friends who hate each other as much as they love each other. I would've admired Nathan from afar, but he, like Chase, would've intimidated me (though Nate actually is a little intimidating). Tilly (MC) and I just wouldn't have been friends at all. Like with Darren, we could've gone through all of high school without talking to each other.

I find this so interesting because if I'd somehow gotten to know Callie and Tilly as people in high school, we would've been friends. Like, if we'd met in university without knowing anything about the other's reputation, we'd get along just fine. However, reputation means so much in high school, and that would've stopped us from being friends.