Tag: Writing Influences

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A Writing Update and Books I’ve Read Recently!

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It has been a few months since I lost wrote a blog post. I have read quite a few books since the last time I checked on my blog. I have also returned to college to finish up my English degree with creative writing emphasis. That has been exciting and has really helped my writing in surprising ways.

One of the classes I took was on war literature. In the start of The Gemstone Collector, the young adult fantasy book I’m self-publishing by the end of next summer, the main character Zephyr, is still feeling the effects of the war that happened ten years ago. I didn’t expect a class on war literature to help me out with my current book. Learning anything and everything is very helpful for writing. Like recently I went axe throwing and my instructor went into the physics of throwing axes, so that is great to use in a fantasy novel! Now I can say I have experience throwing axes. Although I was very bad at it, but it was fun.

Since I last talked about The Gemstone Collector, I have hired a freelance editor who did a developmental edit. I am starting to go through those edits. I plan on doing a few rounds of developmental edits. I want to make sure this book is the absolute best it can be. I’m actually having so much fun adding to the world I have created and coming up with ideas and plot twists I didn’t have in the book before I sent it to my developmental editor!

There is a lot of talk in the writing community discussing which is better, editing or drafting. I can’t decide which I like better. They are obviously both needed, but I think they are both so fun! It’s fun to draft and think up of a story on the spot, as I’m not an outliner, but it is also gratifying to improve your story and make it better in every way possible. They both have their time and right now, I can’t choose which one I enjoy the most.

Now on to the books I’ve read. I read a lot for school from September through December this year. A book I read for my war literature class was Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. It was the first Virginia Woolf book I’ve read and I definitely found it fascinating. She has a very stream of consciousness style of writing, at least in Mrs. Dalloway. I also studied indigenous author Lee Maracle in my Native Literature of the Pacific Northwest class. She was a member of the Stó:lō Nation and she is a very powerful and prolific writer. I would recommend looking her up!

As far as books for fun that I read I loved Rachel Griffin’s new book Bring Me Your Midnight! It was so fun and had the perfect seaside witchy vibes! Rachel Griffin is another author I would highly recommend. I’ve read all of her books and they are excellent and so fun! I’ve also read Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros, which I ended up loving! I read it while I had a bad cold so it really kept me entertained. I got sick for the first part of July. It was weird to have a cold during the summer. I also read The Dragon’s Promise by Elizabeth Lim. That sequel was so good and I feel like it’s hard to get sequels right, but The Dragon’s Promise was even better than the first book Six Crimson Cranes and that was very good!

I have read so many more books I could talk on and on about, but I will leave this blog post here and write something new in January of 2024! How are we already to 2024? That seems wild, but also pretty cool! I hope everyone has a great new year and that you get to read lots of great books and make progress toward your writing goals or creative projects!

My Process for Worldbuilding my Standalone Young Adult Fantasy Novels

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When I start writing a new young adult fantasy novel, it often begins with a complicated idea in my head. It also begins with a confusing magic system that I have to work out by thinking it through, and or writing it down in my drafting notebook. That idea makes sense to me, but then I have to figure out how to simplify it, so that it makes sense when I type out the first draft.   

I always want my idea for the book to be clear when I first start writing, but that is almost never the case. With each book I write though, it gets easier to make my initial idea for the book come across faster and with less drafts. I’ve been writing since I was fifteen; I’m almost thirty now and I have learned a lot in the last fifteen years about my writing process.  

It really is true what they say, practice makes perfect. I like to say that practice doesn’t make perfect, but rather it gives you the confidence to keep learning that one thing you are focused on. In my case, improving the stakes in my books and working on worldbuilding. Worldbuilding is my favorite part of writing standalone young adult fantasy books. Although, with these standalones, they all have the potential of turning into a series, but I enjoy having a satisfying conclusion to each book I write.

I used to second guess myself a lot when I was worldbuilding. It took me a long time to learn how to sprinkle pieces of information into the book without info dumping, or without it being boring. Now, I love sprinkling information in about the world, leaving little bread crumbs for the reader. It’s so much fun!

One of my favorite methods of not info dumping, is explaining the world through dialogue with my main characters, and through the main character learning something new about their world as they go along on their journey. I love how my process with worldbuilding has changed and how every time I sit down to write it gets easier and it’s more fun because I feel like I know what I’m doing now.  

How Skyrim Has Influenced My Writing

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In 2020 I discovered Skyrim music and ambience videos on YouTube. During the beginnings of Covid, I started writing my eighth book, A DANCE OF BEASTS AND PIANOS. I wrote that book listening only to the Skyrim soundtrack. I also wrote the first draft in three months which was the shortest amount of time I’ve ever written a draft. Now, at the time, I didn’t even know what Skyrim was—I just liked the music and images on YouTube and it increased my world-building skills. Then, a year later, I asked my brother for a video game recommendation where I would feel like I was in a fantasy world, and he gave me Skyrim on the Nintendo Switch for Christmas.

As soon as I started playing the game, I realized I knew the music because I had been listening to it for a year before while writing. It was a very strange and coincidental experience. I wrote another book after A DANCE OF BEASTS AND PIANOS called A HISTORY OF MEMORY AND GEMSTONES. Both of these are Young Adult Fantasy. I also listened to the Skyrim soundtrack while writing A HISTORY OF MEMORY AND GEMSTONES because I couldn’t bring myself to stop listening to it and it had become a part of my writing routine. I have to admit, it still is.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim came out in 2011, but I wasn’t playing video games back then, so I’m having a blast discovering new places on the Skyrim map eleven years later. I read a lot, so it’s nice when a video game can also inspire writing ideas. Spyro the Reignited Trilogy has also been an influence on my writing, though not as much as Skyrim. Has a video game ever inspired writing ideas for you, if you are a writer reading this?