Category Archives: books

books, miscellaneous 'bookish' things, my writings

nanowrimo: my third year

October 25, 2014 Emily 8 Comments

November 1st begins one of my favorite months of the years. Not only is it officially the start of the holidays for me (Thanksgiving, anyone? My favorite holiday. All the food! YES, PLEASE. Oh, and let’s not forget Christmas! Then there’s Valentine’s day, and… President’s day… Anyway.) It’s also NANOWRIMO! NaNoWriMo, short for National Novel Writing Month, happens every November. Thousands of writers all over the world set out to write a 50k novel in 30 days.

I’ve decided that this year, I’m really going to commit. I had originally wanted my word-count goal to be 50,000 words, but since I’ll be out of town for ten days (don’t get me wrong, I am NOT complaining! I’ve been waiting to go on this cruise since January!), I lowered it to 30,000 – which means if I don’t write while I’m out of town and write every other day I’m at home, I’d only have to write about 1,578 words a day – which is like a chapter for me, since my chapters typically range from 1500-2000 words.

I first heard about NaNoWriMo through Heather Vogel Frederick (one of my all-time favorite authors!) three years ago through her blog. I took a composition notebook and filled it with plans for my novel – a sci fi novel about a girl who found out she was born on Jupiter. (I mean, really, what was I thinking?! I’ve never even read sci-fi, much less write it!) I’m pretty sure I read a blog post encouraging writers to step out of their comfort zone and write something different. Needless to say, I finished it in that composition notebook and I’ve no idea what happened to it.

Last year I didn’t even reach my goal, but this time around…

Yes, I have a plan. And this year I’m going to complete my word-count goal.

I’ve even been reading some blogs with some awesome NaNo/Writing tips… Tessa at Christ is Write wrote 10 tips to prepare for NaNoWriMo, Cait at The Notebook Sister shares her sneaky secrets to writing 10,000 words in one day, and Shannon, Jill, and Stephanie are always sharing some awesome tips at Go Teen Writers – but this week they’ve been talking about where to begin when writing a novel. (I dare you to go check out Go Teen Writers! It’s a gold mine for writing tips, I promise!) And, of course, the Young Writer’s Program for NaNoWriMo is always posting loads of writing prep on the blog.

Are any of you guys participating in NaNoWriMo this coming month? Let me know in the comments below!

books, miscellaneous 'bookish' things

confession: i’m a notebook hoarder

October 20, 2014 Emily 12 Comments

It all began when I was seven years old. I wrote a 20-page “novel,” front and back on loose-leaf wide-ruled notebook paper and decided it was too much to simply paper clip them all together and carry around on a clipboard. SO. I became obsessed with binders. They were, to put it simply, the love of my life.

Then my binders failed me. They broke! They wouldn’t bind everything together right! What’s the point of a binder that doesn’t bind things?! You tell me. I began using notebooks at the mere age of… oh, me, it was so long ago… ah, probably eight or nine. I’d ask my mom or dad if they had any empty notebooks (spiral or composition, wide-ruled or college-ruled. Pffft. I didn’t care back then. And by the way, I really prefer paper composition college-ruled notebooks. Just for reference.)

Then I’d fill it with all sorts of stories and such! (Come on, now. What else is a notebook for?! If you say ‘school,’ I’m going to throw one of my notebooks at you. I hate wasting notebooks on all that school hullabaloo.

emily — BEHOLD, about 1/4 of the collection.

Left: In case you can’t read that, it’s entitled “The Life of a 10-year-old Spy.” Written and completed in 2012 by 10-years-and-ten-months-old me.

Right: “Sat, May 15th, 2010
One more week of school! Hal-a-loo-ya! Jackson and Aiden [cousins] left. Anna [sister] is taking a nap. Me and mommy are about to go to the mall. Yay! Well, that’s pretty much it! Catch’a later, journal!”

I even filled my notebooks with Swiftie (capital S, thank you) propaganda, back in the fifth grade when I had a *slight* obsession with Taylor Swift. I blush looking at this now… “Yes, I am a Swiftie,” the picture says. “Are you?”

Even now I fill my notebooks with stories and such… here’s a story I wrote when I was bored last week:

and you shall never read it!… at least, not until two years from now when I shamelessly poke fun at it, too.

I also have a writer’s notebook where I jot down things that inspire me… I keep it handy at all times. The one I’m using now was given to me from my dad a month ago, and it’s got a Jane Austen quote on the front! My kinda notebook, let me just tell you.

I’ve got a prayer journal, a diary, a “short story” journal, a writer’s notebook… and I plan to keep all of them. Words are forever, after all. You can’t depend on blogs to keep your stories and records. I want my kids and grand kids to be able to flip through my journals, to touch my words, to see my handwriting… to be able to touch and feel my words I wrote as a kid – be it “Mommy’s taking me to the mall” or something more personal. Those tangible moments you can keep forever on paper, but not on FaceBook or Instagram or Twitter.

Do you have any notebooks? What do you write in them? Let me know in the comment section below!

books

princess ever after by rachel hauck

October 18, 2014 Emily 2 Comments

I bought Princess Ever After at B&N with a giftcard I got for my birthday. I read the first book in the Royal Wedding series sometime last year, and loved it! I actually liked this one, the second in the series, even better, though, because I loved how the MC, Reggie, pieced together her family history – it was so cool, even though the country, Hessenberg, is made up. My verdict?

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Five stars!

Title: Princess Ever After

Author: Rachel Hauck

Genre: Christian Fiction

Length: 360 pages

Publisher: Zondervan

Source: I bought it!

Blurb:

Regina Beswick was born to be a princess. But she’s content to be a small-town girl, running a classic auto restoration shop, unaware a secret destiny awaits her. One that will leap from the pages of her grandmother’s hand-painted book of fairytales. Tanner Burkhardt is the stoic Minister of Culture for the Grand Duchy of Hessenberg. When he is tasked to retrieve the long-lost princess, he must overcome his fear of failure in order to secure his nation’s future—and his own. Yet lurking in the political shadows is a fierce opponent with sinister plans to abolish the throne forever. Overwhelmed with opposition, Regina must decide if she’s destined to restore old cars or an ancient nation. Together—with a little divine intervention—Regina and Tanner discover the truth of her heritage and the healing power of true love.

I’ll admit, this is absolutely a cliche. But who cares? I have a weakness for a cheesy romance.

Alright, so first thing’s first. Reactions. Whaaat? Reactions? Why, whatever do you mean, Emily? I mean that sometimes the way characters react to things in a book are so unrealistic. But in Princess Ever After? Totally realistic. Regina finds out she’s a long-lost princess of a country she knows little to nothing about and she doesn’t even believe it at first.

She laughed “The king of Brighton wrote me a letter?” – Page 48

When she finally does realize it’s all true, she freaks. She does what anyone would do – she runs off, she questions God, she blusters and basically just flips out.

I also loved the speed of things – it was very well written! From beginning to end, nothing went too fast or too slow for me. With a lot of love triangle type books, the relationship of the characters either goes way too fast or way too slow. Again, Princess Ever After felt very real. As Reggie fell in love with Tanner, the minister of culture, I felt as though it went at a steady, but natural pace – which was super awesome!

Being a princess is tough, ya know? You can’t just go around kissing your minister-of-culture any time you want.

Another thing I loved is how Rachel Hauck brought all of the settings to life. Regina may be a princess, but she’s grown up in Tallahassee, Florida, all her life – she says “ya’ll” frequently and refers to country music several times. And when she flies to Brighton – the country she’s supposed to restore – the way Reggie falls in love with her ancestor’s home country is so subtle but definite. It’s so beautiful how she connects with the kingdom and people.

So as I first began typing this up, I originally gave the book four stars. But as I kept thinking up all the things I loved about this book, I realized it really didn’t have any flaws and I really loved everything about it. I totally reccommend you to go and read it! It was AMAZING!

Overall GIF Reaction:

So what do you think? Sound like a book you’d want to read?

books

catching up

October 15, 2014 Emily 12 Comments

Hey guys! So first: my apologies for having not posted in so long. (Hey, I’m a busy person, alright?!) Here’s my excuse: I’m learning Latin this year and have to be able to draw the whole world and all of the countries by the end of the year (plus label the US and Canada.) What now?! Yep, yep. (“Suurrree, sweetie, home-schooling will be a breeze!” says mom.) Mmm-hmm… lol, but I kid, I kid, okay?! Seriously, it’s a blast. But I just haven’t been in the blogging “groove” lately. So I’m sorry about that.

Today I decided to talk a little about all the bookish happenings in my life lately, because, as a wise lady named Helen Exley once said, “Books can be dangerous. The best ones should be labeled ‘This could change your life.'” Are you ready? The books I’ve gathered thus far this month…

So up on the top left is Princess Ever After by Rachel Hauck – I bought this one from B&N with a gift card I got from my birthday. (Seriously, my friends know me so well. What more could I want? I even used some of the gift card to buy a cup of coffee in the B&N!) I’ve got a few more chapters left, and I’m really excited to see how it ends. It went really slowly in the beginning, but we’ll just have to see!

Up on the top right is Half a Chance by Cynthia Lord, which I won in a giveaway over at Bookish Serendipity! (Thanks SO much, Samantha and Miss Lord!) I got it signed from Miss Cynthia Lord herself (which is AWESOME), and it was my first giveaway I won, which I was uber-excited about. Be sure to go and check out Samantha’s blog, and some of Cynthia Lord over at her website. I’ve never read any of her books, although I’ve wanted to read Rules, so I’m happy to have gotten that!

Down on the bottom left is The Secret Garden – it’s a required reading for my home-school curriculum. I read the Classical Starts version when I was younger so I’m familiar with it, but I’m glad I’m finally getting around to reading the full version.

Annnnd last on the bottom right is Powerful Writing by Richard Andersen. It was on sale at B&N, so my mom bought it for me. It’s got a lot of great tips! It’s more geared towards writing essays and letters and such, but I can still use those skills in writing fiction, too.

And just LOOK at all the notebooks and journals I’ve accumulated (whoa, big word, haha!) this past week:

And now you know my weakness. Well, that and chocolate.

That’s it for now! Hopefully, I’ll be able to begin posting more often, and I’ve been invited to participate in a couple of tags, so I’ll definitely be posting those soon! So long for now! 😉