bookstore = desire to write

So, if you are new to my blog you might not know that I live in small town South Dakota. Due to this slight location difficulty, I can get to a book store perhaps once every couple months, due to it being an hour away. But, bookstores are always a source of interesting emotions to me.

Being a science fiction writer, I often find myself checking out the recent release and other books that appear good in science fiction/fantasy section. I never buy books in the store and rarely do I buy books off of Amazon. The reason? A lot of it has to do with I’m too worried about getting a bad book. A lot of it has to do with my strict determination to maintain a sense of morality in what I read, that sense of morality being low swearing and low on sexual references/sex, if any.

But worse is that recently I haven’t found anything that I have actually wanted to read. I’ve liked some Orson Scott Card books, so I think I’m going to see what he does outside of Ender’s universe. (I saw Treason today and it looked interesting.) And actually Asimov looks very interest in some of his other books, so I’ll look at those. But in general, the new books are rather dull.

Which leads me into why bookstores are very unique for me. They make me want to write. Either I am incredibly unique in my interests, or there are other people out there who want to read what I want to read.

So my solution? I’ll write what I want to read. Obviously, that isn’t the best solution in the world. For one, it means that my writing skills don’t really improve with what I read. But in all honesty, is what is put out right now worth basing one’s writing skills on? I learned almost more about characters from reading a Charlotte Yonge (circa 1850) than I have from anything else. And I don’t see what people are doing thus far in science fiction. For all I know, someone has already written every story that I want to write. (Although my opinion is that by writing something that may have a little bit of three or four authors ideas, along with some of my own, it automatically becomes all mine. That is a whole entire blog entry.)

I would like to be able to read the kind of stories I like but I don’t know how to find them. Actually, what’s really bad is sometimes I want to just sit down and read a story that hasn’t been written at all, just to know where it ends up. But I like the idea of writing and by seeing how much  there isn’t in Barnes & Noble to read, it makes me want to write, and get published all the more.

On one other note, there seems to be a lot of fantasy published right now. I’m not sure why. Maybe it has to do with the Twilight craze or something. But my (probably faulty) logic is that eventually publishers are going to stop wanting to publish fantasy and go more towards science fiction again. I need to be there with my book, sooner rather than later, because if this happens, I want to have a shot.

Since, another one of my (probably faulty) logical deductions is that recently publishers have been accepting younger authors’ works. It used to be the case that authors were generally in their fifties or sixties and now they can be younger. If, for some reason, they see this as a bonus (more stories to be written by a younger author = more money maybe?), then I also have an advantage. (Although being the eldest of four, turning twenty-two this year and still hardly anything done in life, I’m questioning my youth on occasionally. Mentally, I’m still very young but age wise… ? Yeah, okay, I still look like I’m a teenager.)

So, this ended up being a giant ramble but to summarize so you’re not completely lost, I want to read good books. But good books are difficult to find, even in bookstores. So I write the books I want to read and hope that someday (preferably sooner) they’ll be published so others can read them as well.

One thing that I would like to ask published authors if you are reading this. I would be much more likely to read your book if I knew what I was getting into with morality before I began reading it. Don’t need to know the details like how many times they say F***. Just general comments would suffice. Thank you.

family and writing don’t mix

I started officially writing on February 14th, 2003. I know that because we were traveling to Springfield for Valentines day, I wanted something to do in the car, so I took the computer and wrote my first sentence. After that, I just kept writing.

I don’t remember how my brother, Oliver, began reading my stories. He was eleven; I was fourteen, but I would write them and he would read them. I must have realized that I wanted to get better, because I would end by wanting feedback so badly at the end, and he would never be able to give me much.

Then began the writing contest at the library that August and soon afterwards I started one of my longest projects, along with role playing. Over the next four years, I worked on a story called Hope (I actually rewrote Hope once, because it started out so poorly and with no character.), role played with my friend and wrote ETOLT. This is when I learned a lot about characters.

But, because it took me practically four years to write Hope, Oliver grew up, I grew up, and I didn’t want Oliver to read the story, nor did he want to read them.

But Elianna did. (My sister.) She wanted to read Hope, and as soon as I printed it out and said that she could read it, she read it. I gave her my old, old stories I wrote when I was fourteen and she read those too. She even liked to read the short stories I wrote for the writing contest while I was writing them.

Elianna is, or maybe was, my plotting buddy. No, she couldn’t give me a lot of ideas but she let me tell her my ideas. She knows almost most my stories because I tell her them all before she reads them. (It doesn’t help when I want to know what does she think of X’s surprise, but… ). She jokes that when I get a book published, I need to dedicate it to her.

No one else in my family though really seemed to care that much. My mom ( who is bad with names) never could seem to follow my stories. Moreover, she’s a slow reader, so reading a book of mine would take her months. My other brother hates reading. My dad… I don’t know, I just don’t like the idea of him reading anything. And Oliver became too critical for me to want him to read anything, even if I thought he did. (It’s easier to have a stranger read it.)

The problem is I don’t know what to think of my sister anymore. Part of the reason that we could plot together is because we went to bed at the same time. However, we rarely do that now, myself going to bed an hour later than her. Also, it isn’t fair that when we talk, it’s me who does all the talking. So when it comes down to it, we don’t have much of a chance to talk anymore.

Besides that, I’ve finished a bunch of things but she wants me to print it out for her and then maybe she’ll get around to reading it. I had Shad printed for five or six months before she decided to read it. (She then read it in 3 days, and I think she liked it a lot.) When I asked her if she wanted me to print something for her to read, she changed the topic and didn’t really say anything.

I understand that she might be outgrowing the desire to look up to her big sister all the time. (Which, for those who are younger, is very scary.) But I wish that if she didn’t want to read it, she would just say, “Abigail, I don’t want to read your story.” I think she doesn’t want to hurt my feelings but it’s harder when she doesn’t say it flat out than to have her beat around the bush and pretend she wants to. (With this particular incident, I mentioned something to my mom and she said to print it and she’ll read it. Hasn’t yet but someday.)

I write because I like to write. I write because I have hundreds and hundreds of stories popping into my head constantly and I need to get them out. I write for others to read. If I could have some of my books published and not gain a penny from it, right now I think I would be happy with that. I just want people to read what I wrote and enjoy it. (That enjoying part is the key here. :) ) But I don’t have any friends to read what I wrote. I don’t have any much in my family who want to read it (including my sister).  But I do wish that people would read it, enjoy, and then tell me what I do wrong so I can get better.