Writing Advice from Sapphire

On Monday February 15th, I had the privilege of attending a workshop with Sapphire, author of the novel Push, which has been filmed as the Academy Award nominated Precious. Sapphire began by giving the small group of University of Pittsburgh students three writing exercises followed by a Q&A.

The writing exercises:

1. Choose a big event, personal or public, and write 7 vignettes about it and what happened afterward. The first one should start from the day the event occurred and the next six will be the six days that followed that event.

2. Write an homage about whoever is rocking your world. All artists should have another artist who is rocking their worlds.

3. What can't you write about, personally or publicly? What topic would have people at your throat if you wrote about it?

We shared our work in small groups for the first exercise, revealed the person who is rocking our world to everyone, and kept the third a secret. Makes me wonder how shocking and/or offensive some of the answers to the third exercise were.

Sapphire spoke about her time in her MFA poetry program where she first came up with the idea for Push. As a poet, she had no idea what a novel was, so she sought the advice of one of her professors, who had her degree in fiction.

She went to this professor and said, "What is a novel?"

To which the professor replied, "Sapphire, a novel is about a hundred and fifty pages."

"I thought: I can do that," Sapphire told us. She told us we need to give ourselves the freedom to write. We need to realize our full potential as human beings and help others to do the same. We can't wait around ten years thinking we're not good enough or old enough to be published authors.

"This is it," she said. "The time is now."

I don't think I've ever before been in the presence of someone so inspiring. I procrastinate almost all of the time. I let voices in the back of my head give me excuses not to write. I've trapped myself into thinking I can't do what I love just yet, I have to wait. But what am I waiting for? Inspiration that will let me write a novel in a week? I also think it is true that many people exist, but they are not living. From now on, I'm giving myself the freedom to write or I'll never finish this novel I've had in my head for years.

Mega Awesome Giveaway from Maggie Stiefvater

In Maggie Stiefvater's Shiver,

Grace and Sam found each other. Now, in Linger, they must fight to be together. For Grace, this means defying her parents and keeping a very dangerous secret about her own well-being. For Sam, this means grappling with his werewolf past . . . and figuring out a way to survive into the future. Add into the mix a new wolf named Cole, whose own past has the potential to destroy the whole pack. And Isabelle, who already lost her brother to the wolves . . . and is nonetheless drawn to Cole.

At turns harrowing and euphoric, Linger is a spellbinding love story that explores both sides of love -- the light and the dark, the warm and the cold -- in a way you will never forget.

Comes out in stores everywhere July 20th. Pre-order here.

Enter to win an advanced review copies of LINGER, Sisters Red, The Dead Tossed Waves, and The Replacement on Maggie's blog.

Bleeding Violet by Dia Reeves

Thank you Staysi from Around the World Tours for this ARC!

Love can be a dangerous thing....

Hanna simply wants to be loved. With a head plagued by hallucinations, a medicine cabinet full of pills, and a closet stuffed with frilly, violet dresses, Hanna's tired of being the outcast, the weird girl, the freak. So she runs away to Portero, Texas in search of a new home.

But Portero is a stranger town than Hanna expects. As she tries to make a place for herself, she discovers dark secrets that would terrify

any normal soul. Good thing for Hanna, she's far from normal. As this crazy girl meets an even crazier town, only two things are certain: Anything can happen and no one is safe.

I think the description is rather vague and even a bit misleading. I went into the book not knowing if it was going to be fantasy or realistic fiction. As it turns out, Bleeding Violet is an urban fantasy novel about a homicidal girl with manic depression. This is going to be a bold, compelling read, I thought.

The thing about Bleeding Violet is that it does not know where it's plot wants to go. It heads toward one sort of supernatural element, gets you interested...then dies off and veers in another direction. None of the characters had normal human reactions to the intense situations they were in, and I found myself unable to sympathize every time they made a mistake. At least, the writing wasn't getting their emotions through to me.

Bleeding Violet has some incestuous overtones throughout the book

that made me cringe. You could brush it off and think of these characters as living in a different place with a different set of societal rules but it gets out there. I could have screamed at the fact that the narrator and her mother have the ability to ensnare men with their beauty. This was my biggest problem with the book. When a woman's most influential quality is her looks despite her intelligence and power, I can't take the story seriously anymore. No matter how flawed this character is, great beauty is not a redeeming quality. And the bad boy boyfriend? The best thing about him was his hilariously pathetic father. I wish my dad dressed in a cape and tried to perform magic in the basement. (Note: I don't actually wish that.)

The book does contain sex between teenagers, which was not a problem for me. I actually applaud authors who aren't afraid to portray teens in all of their hormonal glory, but I can't overlook the supernatural beauty aspect.

If you want to read something weird and off-the-wall, go with this book.

2.5 wingspreads