Why I Write: Origins

Growing up, everyone dreams of the ultimate fantasy career that he or she believes will make life perfect: police officer, firefighter, actress, singer, athlete, professional gamer, you name it. I thought I wanted to be a veterinarian before I learned I had a phobia of needles and fainted at the sight of blood. For many years I dreamed of becoming an astronomer and studying the planets, possibly discovering a new one and naming it after myself, but after five weeks in high school physics I laughed at the idea and dropped the course. Combining so much math with science was like listening to Spanglish: I could never keep up with which subject we were focusing on. Fortunately, writing pulled me in and whacked me over the head a few times to let me know that I was born to work with words. I may be a young writer, but my writing origins spanned eight years, starting with the preparation for the Writing TAAS Test, meeting the Texas Poet Laureate, and hearing the greatest advice I’ve ever been given.

Exit Exam



Book Review – Delirium

I'm still getting chills!~ GoodReads

Blip!

Delirium by Lauren Oliver focused on a futuristic Portland, Maine, where the citizens were surrounded by electric fences and injected at 18 with the cure for love, affectionately called amor deliria nervosa. The protagonist Lena, nicknamed from Magdalena, plays the role of a young 17 year-old woman who is anxiously awaiting the day she can be injected with the love cure, be paired up with a cured man, and live her life free from the pain of heartbreak, misunderstanding, and originality. The arrival of Alex, a charming young man, and the sudden mood-swings from her best friend Hana alter Lena's perception of the world.

NaNoWriMo 2014 - Preparing for NaNoWriMo

Maybe it’s because I never know what I’m going to write before November 1st strikes, but I never prepare for NaNoWriMo. This year, I plan on changing that and writing an outline for a dystopian novel. I’m terrified for two reasons. One, I’m worried I’ll get hung up on writing it perfectly and not finish, and two, the last two novels I’ve written without planning ended up being mystery and YA thriller.

Is YA thriller even a thing?

Why I Write: Young Adult

As a teenager, life is arguably the most dramatic it will ever be (without considering raising children and your spouse). For that reason a young adult is receptive and likely to change his or her beliefs or perspectives before the permanent transition into adulthood. Writing for young adults is crucial and should be given more seriousness by authors and readers. I may have been in high school daydreaming about boys more often than not, but the novels that stuck with me were the ones where self-discovery was more important than a high school crush. Novels like The Ranger’s Apprentice, His Dark Materials, and Stravaganza illustrate the necessity of understanding and trusting ourselves before we focus on friends, family, and romance.

The Ranger’s Apprentice

John Flanagan’s character goals for Will in The Ranger’s Apprentice included finding a purpose or career in life before giving himself to others, either in friendship or romance. 

The Reader’s Obsession with Dystopian Novels

Books I've just read vs. Books I'm going to finish this month

While many genres have blown up in recent years in mainstream fiction (I’m looking at you, zombies and vampires), the dystopian novel offers something much more tangible than fantasy or science fiction: possibility. Could we, as the human race, one day live in spaceships or on the moon? We will probably need to if we destroy Earth any faster. Could vampires, dragons, or hobbits exist in the future since they’ve survived hundreds of years worth of stories? Possibly, although with the spread of Ebola and bath salts zombies may come to life soonest. Our hopes and fears aside, dystopian novels place the reader in a society that resembles the modern world but without free will, decision-making, or emotional connections. If all it takes is a drastic war or one evil man getting into power to create a dystopian novel, then Hitler may be the greatest source of motivation readers need to understand why living within a dystopian novel is something that is not only a possibility, but something humans have already lived through.

What is a Dystopia?

Analyzing the Setting of Cinder

"Fairy Tale Recreation in a Futuristic Society: Analyzing the Setting of Cinder"

Foreword:

Because reading on a screen is difficult enough without adding lengthy paragraphs fit for a newspaper, I have broken up the follow analysis into headings, with each body paragraph stuck between a Heading and an image even though it may appear to be two or four paragraphs total. Formatting aside, each analysis-blog will focus on one main element of fiction (setting, plot, characters, imagery, voice, or point of view) and there will be no order for which element I choose. The decision will be based on the current novel.

"Fairy Tale Recreation in a Futuristic Society: Analyzing the Setting of Cinder"

Recreating fairy tales for modern audiences and transforming the world into a dystopian society is challenging enough before you focus on maintaining the reliability of the narrator and its story. Whisking Cinderella into New Beijing following World War IV rattles the reader’s expectations of a fairy tale by entering the familiar setting of China. Marissa Meyer creates reliable characters and believable history through her use of setting in the young adult novel Cinder. Now a cyborg but still an orphan, Cinder works as a mechanic in New Beijing for her wicked stepmother where she meets and falls in love with Prince Kaito, who hopes to have his android repaired before his royal Coronation. Reimagining China for a dystopian future by blending the old traditions of an Asian market and government with new customs involving androids and cyborgs illustrates the importance and reliability a reader places on the story’s setting because he or she is more likely to believe in the possibility of Cinderella keeping an android for a best friend rather than a mouse.

Image Courtesy BooksHub

Dystopia vs. Utopia

Utopia is defined as “an ideal place or state [or] any visionary system of political or social perfection” (Dictionary.com). It derives from the Greek, literally translating into “no place.” Strange how utopian novels and stories have been around for 500 years, and yet people still think an utopian society is possible to create. Please welcome into the argument, the dystopian novel.

I believe that the word “dystopian” is viewed in a negative light. We read these stories of children murdering each other, burning books, deciding factions, and rewriting the 1980s as strange worlds we would never live within, but that’s a lie. The real reason we cling to dystopian novels is because dystopian is a fancy term for the real world, our world. You know, the one you live in right now? This is a dystopian society. Just because people don’t go out and shoot their neighbors in the night or live in tight cliques doesn’t mean we aren’t a dystopian society.