We talked about a lot of things. Amongst them, writing styles. She has a very purposeful, down-to-the-point style. I’m different, with metaphors and music. She asked me what I thought made a good writer. My answer? Detail. So then I began wondering what people have to say about their writing and how it shapes them. I asked two people (person A and person B) a series of questions, which I myself answered below. Many thanks to the wonderful Nikki and Bella who cooperated and satisfied my curiousity! You both rock.

Want to answer these questions? I’d love to hear from you! Leave a comment! How does your writing style define you?

How would you describe your writing style?
Me: As a learner and beginner, it’s a work in progress. When I write, I’m more of a natural poet than a prose writer. I think in poetry, lyric, metaphor. I want to write so when you read, it’s like watching a musical. I want the reader to be able to read it like music. Right now, however, I’m a quarter teenage-angst, half-romantic, quarter drama, with a sea-full of excruciating detail.
A: [It's] having no boundaries. It’s a lot of metaphor, a lot of feeling, and it’s always a lot closer to poetry than prose.  I love the small details. I want reading my stuff to be like watching TV in your head.
B: Overly descriptive at times…under descriptive at others…a bit stereotypical…very typical of teenage years.

What makes a good author/writer?
Me: Detail. Lots and lot of excruciating detail, the passion and neuroses to work with that detail and the world around it. Painstaking criticism of every single word until you have a (nearly) flawless masterpiece. It’s not being afraid to swallow scorpions to better your story.
A: Passion, knowledge of ones audience, and the world in general, and the ability to be generally fearless in what they write. You can’t be afraid that what you have to say is going to strike nerves. You gotta know what’s on your heart and write it regardless. It’s the authors who take risks that come out on top. If no never step out of your comfort zone you’ll never know what you can accomplish. 
B: Story-telling abilities accented by actually talented writing….or more, accented by an actual talent for writing.

What makes you (in general, people, etc.) a writer?
Me: One who loves words more than anything else, who can know and love them like a first-born child. I am a writer because it is who I am.
A: I guess I just have a lot to see, that can’t be expressed otherwise. It’s always something that comes easily to me. I think in metaphors. I’m willing to fight for it too, and that’s the most important thing. I want to keep going, I want to grow, and I’m not scared of what I’ve got to say.
B: Anyone who puts pen to paper or fingers to keyboard/typewriter or somehow sets unspoken thoughts to paper or internet. Anyone with idea that they cannot keep within.

Why do you write?
Me: Someone once said that if you slit my arm, I’d bleed ink. While this may not be true, I write because I have to. I know I can. There are things that must be said, must be written, and it’s up to me to do it. I cannot live without writing. It’s a necessity. I have to many ideas not to write. It’s the only thing I know.
A: Because I have too to live. I love it. It’s necessary.
B: Because there is nothing else for me to do and because some ideas must be expelled.

I’ve concluded, as so many before me have, that writing is a necessity. It’s worse than crack – once you start, you can’t go back. It’s what we need to live and what sets us apart from everyone else.

Forget for a moment that it would be an insult to Jo Rowling to even be asked to co-present with Stephenie Meyer. Stephenie Meyer should not even be asked to preside at awards. Obviously, the Oscar producers were desperate for some media attention from the younger generation. Both declined – Meyer because she’s Mormon and doesn’t work on Sundays — Rowling because she has scheduling conflicts. Now, I know Meyer is definitely Mormon and Rowling probably insanely busy, but I also think there’s the small factor that the two of them really don’t want to meet.

Think of it. J.K. Rowling is a top of the line author who writes for all ages, genders, every demographic, whereas Stephenie Meyer…well, she admits she writes for 12-year-old girls. Rowling writes with excruciating detail and original characters that are deep on so many multiple levels – they’re almost realistic. She created a world so phenomenal, there are over 150 characters equaling in level depth. And then you have Meyer, with Mary-Sue protagonist Bella Swan, a sparkling boyfriend, and cliché, guessable plots – this writer seems to write only for her fans. (The 12-year-old girls).

J.K. Rowling is no fool. She knows it would be bad if she decapitated Stephenie Meyer (how much everyone may want her to do so). She also knows that meeting Meyer would result in a showdown so epic, it would be like no other Author Battle before.

Meyer: “….Edward, sparklingfancysuperhot vampire…”
Rowling: “Real vampires don’t shine.”
Meyer: “Mine do – they’re perfect” -swoons-
Rowling (in her fancy British accent): “Oh, please. My Cedric Diggory teenage wizard could beat your hundred year old Edward in a heartbeat – and he got killed in book 4!”
Meyer: “You kill your characters! I don’t have the gall to do that to them.”
Rowling: “So you settle for a book that anticipates a huge battle and results in a little handshake in the end. Really realistic.”

…and on and on. It is quite obvious that Jo Rowling would win the Battle of the Writers – she thinks things out a hundred times better than Meyer does. Quite frankly, it’s insulting that Stephenie Meyer should be considered next to Jo Rowling.

So tell me: What’s your opinion of a Jo Rowling – Stephenie Meyer showdown? Who would win? What’s your opinion of the two meeting?

I haven’t written in a month…maybe a month and a half. That’s right, folks. A month and a half of no writing. How, you may ask, can an aspiring writer not write for a month and a half and still survive? I don’t know. I barely survived. True, I had Mock Trial Competitions (my school made it to second round Regionals!) and it was the end of the trimester at school, but I don’t know why I stopped. It’s not even writer’s block, like this adorable little kitty. I can write 50k in a month. However, I just stopped. Like that. Stopped. Don’t know why. No reason.

Shocking. I know. I’m shocked too. When I write, it’s because I need to. If I don’t – especially for prolonged periods of time, I choke up, I become shaky and stressed. I lose sleep, constantly want to curl up in a ball and vomit until there’s nothing left in my stomach, claw my eyes out with forks…you get the idea.

I made a New Year’s Resolution to write more. Write and write and write and write and write. The past month and a half has been an EPIC FAIL at that. I don’t know why I don’t write. I need to, just like I need oxygen to breath, but I don’t. I promise to fix that.

I made a promise TO THIS KITTY. To fix it. To write. I shall.

And then yesterday, I wrote. I finally sat down with blank sheets of paper and just wrote. I think I shook with the brilliance of it. It was like wanting a big bucket of ice cream for months and months and months and then you finally have it and you can’t eat if fast enough, because you’ve missed it so much. Yeah, that’s how writing was.

I didn’t write anything good. I didn’t write anything special. I just wrote. Because, as all you writers out there know, we need writing to live. It’s as simple as that. And in that fact, in that imperfection, the words are beautiful. Then so, too, is the writer.

That’s when she realized something dreadful: the freshman cannot tell time! Conversation:

Silly freshman: “Where’s the clock?”
Librarian: “It’s right behind me on the wall.”
SF: “…oh. What time is it?”
Librarian: “You can’t read the clock?”
SF: “No, I never learned how to tell time.”

She’s had multiple conversations regarding telling time since then. What’s so wrong with this world that we can’t even tell time anymore? Really, people? Really? I don’t even have a digital watch – it’s an analog! Maybe I’m just weird. It’s so simple to read! Of course, it takes you about ten seconds longer, but in this fast paced world, what’s so wrong with waiting ten seconds?

from party to party, night to night, it’s always the same, always
yet another one night stand. Oh yes, you’re the one, the perfect person,
the best i could ever hope for. i love you. yes, you and the person before you
and the other three from last week.

i love you all. all you seven different people from seven different days. you’re
the one.

they’re all alike – each and every sheep: model student by day -
druggie&drunk by night. red cups as plastic as their smiles, they flash
sultry poses for cameras that are bound to end up in all the wrong
places.

it doesn’t matter – because
Hey, it’s another night, let’s have some fun! you’re only young once!
tomorrow’s another day, tomorrow it will change, tomorrow i will fix it.
Tomorrow! tomorrow. i love ya, tomorrow!

but annie ain’t singing anymore and her tone
doesn’t ring true to those who won’t wake up.
wake up.
Wake.
Up.

the world won’t wait.

This article is truly phenomenal.

To sum the article up: “Femicide, the systematic and planned destruction of the female population, is being used as a tactic of war to clear villages, pillage mines and destroy the fabric of Congolese society.”

The author goes on to say how babies – BABIES! – are raped, women, young and old.

Excerpt: “My play, “The Vagina Monologues,” opened my eyes to the world inside this world. Everywhere I traveled with it scores of women lined up to tell me of their rapes, incest, beatings, mutilations. It was because of this that over 11 years ago we launched V-Day, a worldwide movement to end violence against women and girls.”

“I think of Beatrice, shot in her vagina, who now has tubes instead of organs. Honorata, raped by gangs as she was tied upside down to a wheel. Noella, who is my heart — an 8-year-old girl who was held for 2 weeks as groups of grown men raped her over and over. Now she has a fistula, causing her to urinate and defecate on herself. Now she lives in humiliation.”

Does nobody else see this? Does anyone hear these women? Who hears us?

I honestly never thought I could do it. I’m unbelievably proud of myself and my accomplishments. True, half of the novel was crap, but that doesn’t matter because hey – it’s a draft, nothing’s perfect the first time around, and December is editing month!

But as I pause to collect myself, I find myself strangely empty. I was extremely stressed during the last month, but it has kept me going. I wrote, and now what will I do with all this free time?!

Now I pause to reflect, and a daunting question comes to mind: If I can do this, what else can I do? What else must I, must we all, do?

But I am novelist, hear me roar!

By the way, there’s a month until Christmas.
Happy Thanksigiving!

Your extremely happy novelist,

Bee.

When it comes to NaNoWriMo, I’m completely superstitious. To be extra careful, I’m also backing up my entire computer in three places. So, fellow writers, what are you superstitions, and what do you do to prepare for them? Anyone else have a fear like mine with the NaNo gear?

National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWriMo. 50,000 words, 30 days, November 1-30, 2009. No problem.

In case you are wondering, that’s 1,666.6666666667 words a day. or 1,667 words. Yes, I’m insane. And by the way – that’s 175 pages in a word document, roughly.

I have a plot. A good, strong plot, I think. Enough to write about for a month. I have characters. They need a bit of work.
I don’t have a life. That’s not a problem.
I have schoolwork. Now THAT’S a problem.
Most importantly, I have my friends – this is good, very good. They’ll help me as I write and blog and suffer my way through NaNoWrimo 2009.

Cheers!
–Bee.

(P.S. – this post is only 127 words. Get the idea?)

she hides so well
behind confidence, just a fabricated mask to
chain the reflecting sins of her heart.

and now, trapped in a self-inflicted prison of
shadow doubts, she tears down her soul,
colour by colour
and watches as the muddled rainbow-remnants slip beyond the drain,

forgotten,

her eyes flood with all the dreams she is forced to leave behind.

This poem, written in January of last year, was about a girl in denial. That girl meant – and still does – mean very much to me, although she has chosen to remove herself from my life. Journey on with me as I stumble onto an uncertain path, a new journey, and a new beginning.

I am scared to venture into the unknown.