My Work In Progress

Well, this post has been sitting in my drafts since December 19. That is evidence that talking about my personal writing does not come naturally to me... but I did make a goal to talk more about it once I started these weekly posts, so that is what I'm going to do!

I was tagged in this questionnaire (awhile ago) but I'm finally going to complete it!

The book I'm talking about is the book that I'm currently outlining, which I talked about in my last post.

What is the name of your book?

The working title is "I Am Terrible At Coming Up With Titles". See this post.

(Actually the working title is "Percy", which really isn't much better in my opinion).

Where did the idea for your book come from?

I'm not sure. I think I was just walking home from school one day in the winter a few years ago, and I had this idea to write a story about an invisible girl, and the story starts where some guy tells her she's invisible (because he is too). I've since changed the POV from the girl's perspective to the guy's.

In what genre would you classify your book?

YA dystopian? Maybe? It kind of has that flavour, I think.

If you had to pick actors to play your characters in a movie rendition, who would you choose?

I have no idea, although the actors on The Lizzie Bennet Diaries are pretty amazing.

Give us a one-sentence synopsis of your book.

17-year-old Percy Collins used to be invisible, part of the world of invisible people called Unseens, until he was injected with the legendary antidote to invisibility and for the first time in history, it worked on him, thus making him a very valuable person in the Unseen world. (Trouble ensues).

(Forgive me for that summary... it was the best I could come up with on short notice).

 

Is your book already published?

Nope.

How long did it take you to write your book?

It took me 2 years to complete it ("it" being the first draft - I've a long way to go before it's FINISHED finished) once I'd started. But the thing is, I hardly worked on it nonstop. So I don't think the length of time it takes to write a book is equal to the amount of work or effort you put into it. (In my opinion). If I would've worked on it nonstop, I probably could've finished in a few months at least. But life happens.

What other books within your genre would you compare it to? Or, readers of which books would enjoy yours?

Hmm... well I suppose I would link it to the obvious dystopians The Hunger Games and Divergent, although my book is quite different from both of them. The ways they are similar are: 1. Focus on the relationships between characters and a lot of character and character relationship development and 2. The focus on the fight to create the best world they can from the circumstances. I think these are the main similarities.

What authors inspired you to write this book?

John Green and Suzanne Collins both inspired me by creating an overwhelming desire in me to create something both meaningful and potentially world-changing, or at least worldview-changing. I want to make people think. What I learned in history in grade 11 and 12 (the 2 years I wrote it) also influenced my writing. We were learning about single-party states and Castro and Stalin, so I thought a lot about them and how they came to power and their influences as I wrote.

Tell us anything that might pique our interest in your book.

There are lots of good characters, and the MC grows as a character, and in my opinion this is the best thing I've ever written and therefore my favourite thing that I've ever written. I love the characters and I definitely think that it would be easy for others to fall in love with them as well.

I suppose now I should tag people - let's just say whoever reads this, do it, and then post a link or tweet me or something (or just write about your book in the comments). I want to know what you're writing about. :)

Going to the Zoo Builds Character

Guess what III got to do yesterday?? Yes, I got to go the zoo. My best friend and I biked to the park where the zoo is and then walked around for an hour. It was pretty fun seeing all those animals. But one thing I noticed was how much character those animals have...

Hey, you can see my reflection in the glass..

There's some lazy lions lolling on the... shelf thingamajig. Maybe they have a larger version of the character of my cat, Venus:



See, it isn't blogging that's keeping me from writing! ... ahem...

 Yup, that there is one lazy lion. My cat Venus has quite a character. She is in love with first and foremost, my dad (she butts him in the face with her furry little head and then curls up on his chest and walks over his face at night and if he pets her then she starts purring. She even climbed up a stepladder to be with him a few times) and then second, the vacuum. When I was vacuuming the other day, she was rolling around and purring near the suctiony part. She loves it. Oh, she also loves to get wet. She comes running every time my dad gets the contact solution out.

Okay... maybe the lions don't have quite the same character as Venus...

Yeah, that's a peacock up on that shelter thing. Can you say show off? In addition to having that gorgeous shimmery blue neck and a huge fan of patterened feathers attached to their butt, they have to perch on top of things and squawk at us as if we were peasants to their king.

Oh, and to add in some random facts about peacocks because people should be educated about such things: a female peacock is not actually a peacock; she's a peahen and the entire species is called peafowl. And since they supposedly roost in trees, I'm guessing they do fly. So apparently it was mating season when I was at the zoo because those peafowl were squawking all over the place. Listen to some peafowl squawking here. 

Um, I think I'll let you make up some characterization for the flamingo. I just wanted to put a picture in because I think it's funny to stand on one leg to sleep. I advise you try it sometime...hmm.

 That's a monkey, in case you couldn't figure it out. And boy do those guys have lots of character. They like to show off too, in a performance sort of way, swinging back and forth with their long arms at the top of their cage with their cute little baby clinging to their fuzzy chest. It was also interesting seeing the little baby monkeys get trampled many times by the older monkeys... It's like my dad with my two years younger brother: "Well, you need to toughen up anyway. Wimp." *punches my brother in the gut*

If you ever have posture problems, find a bald eagle. They have it down: shoulders back, head straight, feet shoulder width apart...

I think these little guys were the best characters of all. Everywhere we walked in the zoo we saw another prairie dog, chirping and speeding away or somersaulting over one of their buddies. They grew on me, so much so that I think they could feel that I liked them, so consequently thought only one thing: Food??

Those are my shoes... yeah, they got pretty close. Don't worry,
they didn't eat us (like my friend thought might happen).

Unfortunately, I had no food so instead they scampered back into their holes and proceeded to chirp-scream at us until we left.

So this post was not so I could show you pictures of my trip to the zoo, o' course (ahem... well) but because I wanted to tell you that if you ever have problems building a character, you should go to the zoo to find some ideas there.