33 Ways to Stay Creative

A little sunshine on a rainy day

Do you know how incredible you are?

I know I’ve said this before, but it’s something I firmly believe in. If you are querying, or are out on submission, or doing anything where you’re receiving rejections, celebrate them. Want to know why? You are actively DOING something. You decided to go for your dreams, you didn’t just talk about it – you sat down and wrote and revised and then you bravely put yourself out there. You are incredible!

Seriously, you are. How many people do you know that are brave enough to wear their heart so openly on their sleeves?

I wrote five books and queried them for over two years, before I signed with my agent on my SIXTH novel. As you can imagine, I racked up A LOT of rejections. Some were form letters, others were personalized, and a decent amount were encouraging enough for me to keep going.

Sure there are days where you feel like giving up, or question your sanity, but that stuff will pass. Really. It will.

If you’re feeling particularly down, allow yourself a day or two to regroup. Do something – ANYTHING – other than writing or querying. Go for a walk. Make a fancy dessert. Rent a bunch of movies and laugh until you cry. Watch a baseball game. But whatever you do, stay away from your computer.

Do not check your email. 

Do not touch your project for 24 solid hours. 

Read that book you keep putting off.

Meditate. 

By the end of the day you’ll start to feel something. You know what that is? It’s hope blossoming in the pit of your stomach. That’s also passion for your work. An entire day away from it is hard. You miss it. How can you even think of giving it up now, after you’ve come so far?

Now take that query letter back out and see what you can do to improve it. Do the same with your manuscript. Then get back out there and try all over again.

You know why I used to celebrate my rejections? Because I always believed that better things were in store for me. I just couldn’t always see it at the time, but I had faith it would all work out. I am a firm believer in the saying, when one door closes a better one opens.

Keep knocking and your door will open.

What’s even more impressive is this: you are learning so much about yourself. Look at how strong you are. You fell down, but you got back up again. I bet you didn’t know you had that kind of inner strength before.

Thank you for being incredible. 

Nerding out over this BIG time

Quote of the day

I think this quote is adorable, so I had to share it with you. Have a great weekend! XO

“You should date a girl who reads.
Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.”
― Rosemarie Urquico

if you work really hard…

Love this. xo

Retellings and the new Sherlock episode

So…I don’t have a cute little quote or saying for you this Monday, instead I’d like to gush about season two of Sherlock. Did you guys see it last night? GAH Benedict Cumberbatch is the PERFECT Sherlock. He plays the character so well, it’s definitely my favorite retelling of the Holmes mysteries. I have been WAITING for season two like a deranged groupie. I LOVE what the writers have done with the series.

This is the exact sort of thing that I really enjoy while reading a retelling of a popular story. It’s that essence of the character brought about in an entirely new (and exciting) way that makes you fall in love with the story all over.

For Sherlock, I love the modern-day setting and the neurotic behavior of this forensic genius. Intelligence definitely is the new sexy.

The first novel that comes to mind that I read recently is CINDER by Marissa Meyer. If you haven’t read that yet, you seriously should add it to the top of your TBR pile. It’s one of the best fairytale retellings I’ve read.

Here’s the blurb:

Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, the ruthless lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth’s fate hinges on one girl. .  

Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg. She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world’s future.

The second novel that I immediately think of is EVERNEATH by Brodi Ashton. In EVERNEATH Ashton brings a lovely modern twist to the ancient myth of Persephone. (Which happens to be one of my all-time favorite myths.)

Here’s the blurb:

Last spring, Nikki Beckett vanished, sucked into an underworld known as the Everneath, where immortals Feed on the emotions of despairing humans. Now she’s returned- to her old life, her family, her friends- before being banished back to the underworld… this time forever. 

She has six months before the Everneath comes to claim her, six months for good-byes she can’t find the words for, six months to find redemption, if it exists.

Nikki longs to spend these months reconnecting with her boyfriend, Jack, the one person she loves more than anything. But there’s a problem: Cole, the smoldering immortal who first enticed her to the Everneath, has followed Nikki to the mortal world. And he’ll do whatever it takes to bring her back- this time as his queen.

As Nikki’s time grows short and her relationships begin slipping from her grasp, she’s forced to make the hardest decision of her life: find a way to cheat fate and remain on the Surface with Jack or return to the Everneath and become Cole’s…

And because I can’t get enough Sherlock, I’m going to leave you with a little video. Enjoy!

Sherlock Season 2, episode 1 clip

 

Don’t Limit Yourself

It’s a great time to start thinking outside the box. Go be amazing this weekend.

Just Remember…

Here’s something to keep in mind if you’re frustrated with your current project…

Photo credit: Pintrest.com

25 First Sentences

If you’re a writer, you know how difficult it is to nail that elusive (and all-powerful) first line. Writing an entire book is often more enjoyable (and possibly easier) than coming up with that griping, you’ve GOT to read on sentence. Here are 25 first sentences from pretty amazing books that you can mull over this weekend. Recognize any of them? How does your first sentence compare? Does it set the tone of your novel?

First Sentence:

1. “So you want to know all about me.”

2. “He began his new life standing up, surrounded by cold darkness and stale, dusty air.”

3. “My mother used to tell me about the ocean.”

4. Daddy said, “Let mommy go first.”

5. “When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold.”

6. “The ornate script on the board twisted in the candlelight, making the letters and numbers dance in my head.”

7. “The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit.”

8. “I wait. They keep us in the dark for so long that we lose sense of our eyelids.”

9. “There is one mirror in my house.”

10. “Janie Hannagan’s math book slips from her fingers.”

11. “Enders gave me the creeps.”

12. “I smile at myself, at the foolishness of my imagination.”

13. “I’ve been locked up for 264 days.”

14. “It is my first morning of high school.”

15. “The first time I died, I didn’t see God.”

16. “I used to be someone.”

17. “Prayer candles flicker in my bedroom.”

18. “A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories.”

19. “I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up.”

20. “It has been sixty-four years since the president and the Consortium identified love as a disease, and forty-three since the scientists perfected a cure.”

21. “Sing, O Goddess, the anger of Achilles, son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans.”

22. “They called the world beyond the walls of the Pod “the Death Shop.””

23. “I’ve watched through his eyes, I’ve listened through his ears, and I tell you he’s the one.”

24. ““Where are you?” Aunt Hannah demanded as soon as Alex thumbed talk.”

25. “The screw through Cinder’s ankle had rusted, the engraved cross marks worn to a mangled circle.”

Authors and titles:

1. Ellen Hopkins CRANK

2. James Dashner THE MAZE RUNNER

3. Carrie Ryan THE FOREST OF HANDS AND TEETH

4. Beth Revis ACROSS THE UNIVERSE

5. Suzanne Collins THE HUNGER GAMES

6. Michelle Hodkin THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER

7. Scott Westerfeld  UGLIES

8. Lauren DeStefano WITHER

9. Veronica Roth DIVERGENT

10. Lisa McMann WAKE

11. Lissa Price STARTERS

12. Ally Condie MATCHED

13. Tahereh Mafi SHATTER ME

14. Laurie Halse Anderson SPEAK

15. Megan Miranda FRACTURE

16. Mary E. Pearson THE ADORATION OF JENNA FOX

17. Rae Carson THE GIRL OF FIRE AND THORNS

18. Aldous Huxley BRAVE NEW WORLD

19. Jack Kerouac ON THE ROAD

20. Lauren Oliver DELIRIUM

21. Homer THE ILIAD

22. Veronica Rossi UNDER THE NEVER SKY

23. Orson Scott Card ENDER’S GAME

24. Ilsa J. Bick ASHES

25. Marissa Meyer CINDER