Life + Writing Update + Happy New Year!!

Why, hullo, friends! How is it already 2021?? It feels like just yesterday it was August. I took yet another unintentional hiatus, and I feel like I owe you guys an update on where I’m at right now with writing and such! I’m pretty sure 2020 was a crazy year for all of us.

Life

• I started grad school in August! I’m currently getting my Master’s degree in English. Grad school wasn’t a journey that I was planning on taking, but God very clearly pointed me in that direction. It’s been a huge adjustment, especially since my undergraduate degree isn’t in English and I’m at a different university, but it’s been an exciting new challenge.
• I haven’t really considered myself an athletic person, but about two years ago, I started rock climbing, and now… well, I’m a little obsessed. I love both the physical and mental challenge of it, and it’s just a ton of fun. Don’t be surprised if some random post or short story comes up that has something to do with rock climbing. 😀
• As for reading, most of the reading I’ve done this year has been for school, with two major exceptions: Agatha Christie mysteries and Brandon Sanderson’s books. I read my first Agatha Christie book as part of a summer book club, and I absolutely loved it. Since then, I’ve read two more, and I have several others saved on my Kindle. I’ve read pretty much every Brandon Sanderson book I could get my hands on this year, and if you’re a fantasy fan, you should definitely check his books out! If you’ve already read his books, tell me which is your favorite in the comments!

Writing

• Over the past several months, I’ve made quite a bit of progress on Forcefield (IDIA #3). At this point, I’m about halfway done! My goal is to finish the book and publish it sometime in 2021, hopefully in the summer. So far, it’s shaping up well, and I’m really excited about how it’s going!
• I started a new project for Nanowrimo, which unfortunately I did not complete, but so far it’s been a lot of fun to write. Basically, I’m taking one of my short stories, The Villain and the Hero, and turning it into a full-length novel. I love the characters in it, and it’s turning into more of a mystery-slash-heist-slash-superhero book, with a little romance thrown in. Currently, it’s on the back burner until I finish Forcefield, but I’m excited to get back to work on it soon.
• Due to grad school, I’ve been writing a lot more academic papers, but last spring, I wrote a thesis about writing blind characters in fiction. I loved working on that project, and it’s something I’ve been looking into publishing academically. At the moment, that process is certainly slow, but I also wrote two short stories featuring blind characters as a part of that thesis. I’m looking into publishing those in creative journals–which, again, is slow going–but depending on how that search goes, I may share those here on my blog. They were so much fun to write, and I absolutely want to share them with you at some point… it just might be a while!
• Overall, I’ve been a little burned out on writing due to the huge increase in writing from grad school (and becoming an English major), which is part of the reason my blogging dropped off during the semester… but that was also due to poor planning on my part. My plan for this year/semester is to put out a blog post every Monday, but at least once a month.

Overall, this has been a crazy year, and not nearly as productive as I wish it had been, but we’ve made it through! I hope you are all doing well, and that we can all look back and find some good in 2020. Don’t forget to drop down in the comments and say hi! Happy New Year, friends!

Have you read any Agatha Christie or Brandon Sanderson books? What are your favorite books you’ve read this year? What’s something good that happened for you in 2020?

Writing About Writing: Worldbuilding (AKA Discussing Brandon Sanderson Books)

Hullo, my friends! As you may have noticed, it is not Tuesday, but since I’ve missed a few weeks of posting, I thought I owed you guys an extra post. That, plus I had some post inspiration this week, and I wanted to share some thoughts with you guys! I want to thank everyone who signed up for the cover reveal for Forcefield. If you haven’t gotten an e-mail from me with the post information, let me know, since I’ve been having some internet issues. If you didn’t sign up, and you’d still like to participate, the form is still open here, as long as you sign up before the reveal happens on August 4th. Now, on to the post!

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I’ve been fortunate enough over the past year or so to read a LOT of Brandon Sanderson books. If you’re not familiar with his books, he writes fantasy books that are well-known for having a ton of foreshadowing and plot twists–and also for the in-depth worldbuilding in each book or series. I’ve gotten to read Elantris, the Mistborn series, and I’m currently making my way through his Stormlight Archives.

One other book of Sanderson’s that’s important to mention for this post is Sanderson’s Arcanum Unbounded, which is a collection of short stories and novellas, some of which are related to other books and series he’s written. It’s a little complicated, but the one I’ll be mentioning the most in this post is The Emperor’s Soul, which is a (mostly) standalone novella.

And, in fact, I was mostly inspired by Brandon Sanderson’s comments after the novella, where he discussed his inspiration for the story. The quote that really caught my attention was this: “You can’t always write what you know–not exactly what you know. You can, however, write what you see.” 

This quote came after Sanderson explained that he got the idea for the magic system in The Emperor’s Soul from a trip to Taiwan and the National Palace Museum. To simplify things a lot, he was inspired to make the magic system in this novella based on historical stamps he saw at the museum. Basically, he asked himself the question, “What if stamps could be used to rewrite the history of an object?” This led to the development of the magic system in this novella.

Recently, I’ve been working on an idea for a fantasy story (which I won’t be starting any time soon), and I’ve found myself looking closer at Sanderson’s worldbuilding techniques since I keep being blown away by them. A lot of worldbuilding in his stories seem to be answers to “What if?” questions. One of the most memorable bits of worldbuilding for me is a group of people in The Stormlight Archives whose eyebrows never stop growing. This tiny aspect of the larger worldbuilding just asks: “What if people had eyebrows that never stopped growing, just like hair?” That question adds a distinctive feature to a people group and helps the world feel more developed and diverse. Asking these questions develops a vibrant story world that feels deep and realistic–as realistic as a fantasy story can feel, that is!

So ask those crazy what-if questions! Maybe you’ll find a story there.

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This turned out to be more of a ramble than a cohesive post, but I hope you found something helpful here! Have you read any of Brandon Sanderson’s books? What books have impressed you with their worldbuilding? Let me know in the comments below!

An Update For You!

Hullo, my friends! I hope you are all doing well during this crazy time! Today I bring you the update post I talked about in my last post. I wanted to let you guys know a little bit of what’s going on and what my plans are for blogging and writing.

• Writing: I’ll admit, writing has fallen a bit to the side in the past year or so. While finishing up my last year of college, most of my writing time was spent on my thesis. Currently, I plan on writing IDIA 3, and then switching over to work on one of my other writing projects (I haven’t decided which one yet!). I’ve set a goal of reaching 15,000 words on IDIA 3 by the end of May, which should be a pretty attainable goal, and hopefully, I’ll be able to start looking for beta readers and sharing snippets soon!
• Blogging: In case you hadn’t noticed… I’ve been very bad at keeping up with the blogging side of things! One of my goals for the rest of the month is to set up a blogging schedule and prewriting some posts. My current plan is to post something every Tuesday–and I’m telling you all that so that you can bug me about it when I forget! 😀 I’m hoping that having a set schedule will help me to post more regularly, and if I have to adjust that later, I can do so. I mostly want to have a set schedule to encourage me to post more often.
• Reading: If there’s one thing that I have kept up with, it’s been reading! My original reading goal for this year was 20 books, but I’ve already increased that to 26, because I’ve read more books than I thought I would. At this point, I’ve read 17 books, so I may end up increasing my goal again. Many of the books I’ve read have been rereads, but I’ve also been reading through a lot of Brandon Sanderson’s books. His books are amazing, and he even has a series of writing class videos on his YouTube channel, which you should definitely check out if you’re a writer.

So that’s the first post of (hopefully) many more! What are your thoughts on blogging schedules? Are you excited about IDIA 3? Comment below your thoughts, and let me know if there are any blog posts or series you’d like to see me do!