Hey everyone, my birthday was yesterday. Happy b-day to me, happy b-day to me lalalalalalalalalala lalalala. J
Okay, here’s the issue and my blog’s link: http://annaswanson.blogspot.com/
WRITING TIPS
~Write what you know and research what you don’t. The thing is you know what you don’t know. I think that has a double meaning. . .
~ Sometimes, you can cure writer’s block by actually writing! Amazing!
~ Look at other author’s work, evaluate their style of writing. What do they do differently than you? Why?
~Sometimes taking a break from writing is a good thing, unless you’re doing Nanowrimo.
~ Eat the left over candy canes, mint stimulates your brain. Yummy!!
RESEARCH TIPS
~ If you are writing about a true disaster(or something like that) then research for survivor accounts. I met one of the last holocaust survivors and got his autograph just last year!
~ Sometimes research is required, and if you can’t find it online look in a book.
~ If you’re looking up something about the army or something like that, the U.S. has sites that are for that certain group. Like the Navy, Army, Air forces, etc.
~ Sometimes it’s helpful to go online, copy and paste the info onto a word document, cut out the stuff that you don’t want, and then
LINKS
http://ywp.nanowrimo.org/node/843996?page=0#comment-1081811
Great prompt!!
http://www.bloomingdales.com/
A good clothing store for when you’re doing research for a book that you’re writing like the Clique. It’s very expensive.
http://www.awakeanddrink.webs.com/
A really strange website about ‘real vampires’ that actually ‘drink blood’. The people there are weird, but it does have some info about vampires for your novel!
OPINION
What is your novel about? Why?
Sparkle_167: Well, my novel's about a girl, waking up with no memories and then, she well, have to go on some sort of quest to get her memories back.
It's kinda boring.
But yeah, that's the main idea.
As for where I got the idea, I'm not sure.
It just came to me I guess...
Kpaws99: spies, and because i know a lot about them.
MidnightFlame: My other novel(not my nano one) is about a girl who basically questions life - she then gets caught up in a load of murders and the only way to stop it is to visit the world of the dead. I basically chose to write about it and came up with the idea from myself. I always think to much and ask impossible questions, which is just like the main character(Ericah) in the novel.
Next week’s opinion: What does the color blue mean to you? Why?
CONTEST
We had lots of submissions and our wonderful judge MidnightFlame told me to put all of the submission into the newsletter! The winning one will be the first one featured and then the two others will be featured in the fourth issue. So here is the winning story by Dcgirl4ever!!
Here is the story:
The Space in Between
Every night, a zombie stands across my yard and stares through my bedroom window. I stand there on the other side of the glass, safe inside my room, staring back, crying.
I don't believe all zombies are bad. In fact, I believe the majority of them are just misunderstood. Still, ever since the virus spread from Europe all over the world nearly ten years ago, people have been calling them monsters. Undead creatures that don't deserve to be treated as humans. But I think otherwise.
It actually took the virus a long time to get to this part of the country. The zombies only began popping up about eight months ago. Life was so simple before all that began. I remember lying on the beach with my first and only love, Jamie Lucero, letting the sun tan our skin and the waves lap up on our feet. We'd press out palms together and he'd tell me that the reason people had spaces in between their fingers was so someone else could fill them—cheesy line, I know, he probably read it online somewhere, but it made me smile.
We were wild and carefree; it was the summer before our senior year, and we were determined to make this one count. But the summer I thought I would remember forever was ripped away from me the moment the virus hit our town and claimed its first victim. After that, things were never the same—not for me, not for anyone.
I feel like the rain falls more often these days. I visit the ocean alone now. I'm graduating in the spring and have plans to attend our local community college for a nursing degree, but it's hard, seeing the looks on the faces of my former friends who I grew apart from in the weeks after the initial attacks and knowing those looks of pity are directed toward me. I look down at my hands and see the space in between my fingers and there's nothing but a big gap there, a void that mirrors the one in my heart.
When the first attack happened, I didn't know what was going on. It was late that summer, and Jamie and I had been hanging out at the beach, playing a little volleyball with a few friends. Back then, it had been just one zombie. He ran across the crowded beach, through the screaming crowd, going right for me. I don't know why I was chosen to be the one he attacked, but I was. I'd seen them on TV, in magazines, online, but to see one in person...
The smell was putrid, the skin was rotten, but it was those dead eyes that gave it away, those eyes that told me that person shouldn't be alive, but there they were, coming right at me, single snaggletooth out. Being bitten is one of several ways to get the virus transferred to you. I knew I was a goner.
Then, suddenly, I felt two strong hands grab me and shove me out of the way. A voice whispered in my ear, "I love you, Meg," as I fell. On the ground, face-down and spitting sand, I heard horrified screams and cries but I still didn't know what was going on until I reached for the hand that wasn't there.
Now, as I lie in bed and stare at the ceiling, I think about how the doctors worked so hard to save him. He hadn't just been attacked—Jamie was mauled by that zombie. That should have been me. That would have been me if he hadn't saved my life by pushing me out of the way and making himself a direct target for the hungry creature.
It should have been me who was attacked. It should have been me who died. It should have been me who came back.
I know I should think of them as monsters, as villains, as the things that destroyed my life. But I can't. Because now...now he's one of them. It's hard for me to imagine the only boy I've ever loved as some sort of soulless creature.
I know he's there. I can feel his empty eyes burning holes through my curtains. So I get up one more time, open them, pull up the blinds so there's nothing between us but a piece of glass and a wide stretch of yard, and I watch him watching me.
My therapist says it's not good for me to do this. She says it would be better for me to forget the horrible incident on the beach between the mystery zombie and Jamie and I, says I need to stop staring at him across the yard wondering what he's thinking—if he's even thinking anything at all—and that I need to find something more productive to do with my time.
I press my palm up against the window and try to will him over to me with nothing but my eyes. I wonder if he can tell what I want him to do. For the past eight months, there's only been one thing I've wanted, but he won't allow it to happen. He just stands in that one place and stares until the sun comes up, when he disappears into the dense forest behind my house with his zombie friends.
"Please," I whisper. "I need to know. I need to know if you feel anything at all."
I heard once on some talk show that there are some zombies who can still grasp a few powerful human emotions—love being one of them. I hope he can see the love in my expression. It's the only way I know to communicate with him. Although I'm a zombie advocate, I know his fellow undead companions are also watching me from behind the trees—if I went outside, I could be attacked, and then who would save me?
Out in the night, I think I see him shift slightly, but I can't be sure. God, if my parents catch me doing this, they'll kill me—they're both one-hundred percent anti-zombie.
And then, there he is, not as fast as one of the Runners we saw on the beach but faster than a lot of zombies I've seen—he's only feet from the window, staring back at me from the darkness.
I see my reflection in the glass, and it gives me the illusion that I'm out there with him. Maybe that's where I belong. If everything went as it was supposed to, that would have been me out there, as it should have been. It should have been anyone else, anyone else but him.
A tear trickles down my cheek. I want so badly what I can't have. And now, I think, he recognizes it. Maybe something clicks in my that zombie brain of his, but there's a sudden clarity in my boyfriend's expression. Although he can't speak, his own eyes seem to say I understand.
For a moment, the love I feel for Jamie Lucero is enough to bridge the gap between life and death as he slowly shuffles over to the window and presses his hand against the cold glass. We'll never be on the same side of the window again. But with our hands pressed together, separated by only a pane of glass, I know the space in between us has never been so short in the eight months since he saved my life.
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