My Writing: I'm a pantser...and proud of it!

Now that I've completed (yay!!!) my first novel, I've determined my writing style.  I'm a pantser, or, someone that writes what comes to them and then revises when they are done - see: flying by the seat of their pants.  There are generally two types of writers out there, pantsers like myself and outliners.

I have to say, that since finishing The Phoenix: A Gathering, I've started working on another project.  So far, it's called Untouchable, but sadly, I don't think the title will stay.  Here's a little peak into my writing process:

Step 1 - Begin with a sentence or a vision.  What usually happens for me is I will hear a little voice in my head (not the crazy kind) and I will have an opening line that appears typically out of nowhere and I'll write it down.  The Phoenix began on my iPhone, believe it or not!

Step 2 - Reread sentence.  I'll stew on this opening sentence or paragraph for a day or two and see what comes about.

Step 3 - Write, write, write.

With Untouchable (working title), I got my general thoughts down on the computer and then tried outlining as well as trying to come up with the conflicts and climaxes, etc.  Oh my gosh!  I am just not that kind of girl.  Outlining at this point in my writing is just not happening.  Perhaps it never will.

I did however, come up with some valid questions I felt I needed to answer before continuing.  In case you were wondering, here they are:

1. Why is the main character (MC) important?
2. What is the disease? - which now has since been changed altogether
3. Where does the story take place?
4. Why are the men and women separated? - which spurred one of my major conflicts
5. Why does the populous live like they do?
6. Who is in control?
7. What are the conflicts? - not all are known to me at this time
8. What type of novel will this be?

I also get A LOT of inspiration from the music I can't live without while writing.  So, I have to give a shout out to PANDORA, and the channel I'm tuned to almost all day...every day...GOTYE!

Here is my playlist for writing:

• I Will Follow You Into The Dark by Death Cab For Cutie
• Roll Away Your Stone by Mumford & Sons
• New Slang by The Shins
• White Blank Page by Mumford & Sons
• The Funeral by Band Of Horses
• Welcome Home by Radical Face
• Little Lion Man (LP Version) by Mumford & Sons
• Cosmic Love by Florence + The Machine
• Comes And Goes (In Waves) by Greg Laswell
• Flightless Bird by Iron & Wine
• Arms by Christina Perri
• Faster by Within Temptation
• Fade Into You by Mazzy Star
• Hearts A Mess by Gotye
• Set The Fire To The Third Bar Feat. Martha Wainwright by Snow Patrol
• The Lonely by Christina Perri
• Just Breath (Live: On Ten Legs) by Pearl Jam
• Love The Way You Lie, Pt. III (Original Demo) by Skylar Grey
• Thistle & Weeds by Mumford & Sons
• Somebody That I Used To Know (Tiesto Remix) by Gotye

My Reading List: Once

Once by Anna Carey

When you're being hunted, who can you trust?

For the first time since she escaped from her school many months ago, Eve can sleep soundly. She's living in Califia, a haven for women, protected from the terrifying fate that awaits orphaned girls in The New America.

But her safety came at a price: She was forced to abandon Caleb, the boy she loves, wounded and alone at the city gates. When Eve gets word that Caleb is in trouble, she sets out into the wild again to rescue him, only to be captured and brought to the City of Sand, the capital of The New America.

Trapped inside the City walls, Eve uncovers a shocking secret about her past—and is forced to confront the harsh reality of her future. When she discovers Caleb is alive, Eve attempts to flee her prison so they can be together—but the consequences could be deadly. She must make a desperate choice to save the ones she loves . . . or risk losing Caleb forever.

In this breathless sequel to Eve, Anna Carey returns to her tale of romance, adventure, and sacrifice in a world that is both wonderfully strange and chillingly familiar.

My Writing: an Update

I'm so excited to tell you that I have just completed the first draft of The Phoenix: A Gathering!  It's complete at 82,000 words.  I'm sure after edits/revisions, etc. it will gain or lose a few of those words, but right now I'm just taking a break from The Phoenix and letting it sit for about a week.  I figure, after staring at the computer screen for the past 40 +/- days, it's best to let it stew a bit.

I have to say that when I was vacationing in June/July, that I never thought the idea that came to mind on the first of July would ever develop into an 82,000 word novel in 40 days.  The characters and story poured out of my fingers so easily, that I'm so inspired to keep writing that I have already started on a second novel, with brand new characters!

You can visit My Writing page to read the unedited Prologue of The Phoenix: A Gathering.  Keep in mind, what you read is the rough, first draft, completely unedited and raw.  I do hope you enjoy it, and if you do, feel free to leave a comment!  Also, the writing samples I leave on this blog belong to ME.  I've spent hours upon hours creating them, so please do not copy anything of mine without permission.  Thanks!

~Kristie
"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.  Inside a dog it's too dark to read - Groucho Marx"

My Reading List: Shatter Me

 

Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

"You can't touch me," I whisper.
I'm lying, is what I don't tell him.
He can touch me, is what I'll never tell him.
But things happen when people touch me.
Strange things.
Bad things.
No one knows why Juliette's touch is fatal, but The Reestablishment has plans for her. Plans to use her as a weapon.
But Juliette has plans of her own.
After a lifetime without freedom, she's finally discovering a strength to fight back for the very first time—and to find a future with the one boy she thought she'd lost forever.

My Reading List: Eve

 

Eve by Anna Carey

Where do you go when nowhere is safe?

After a deadly virus wiped out most of Earth's population, the world is a terrifying place.
Eighteen-year-old Eve has never been beyond the heavily guarded perimeter of her school, where she and two hundred other orphaned girls have been promised a bright future in The New America. But the night before graduation, Eve learns the shocking truth about her school's real purpose—and the horrifying fate that awaits her.

Fleeing the only home she's ever known, Eve sets off on a long, treacherous journey, searching for a place she can survive. Along the way she encounters Caleb, a rough, rebellious boy living in the wild. Caleb slowly wins her trust . . . and her heart. But when soldiers begin hunting them, Eve must choose between true love and her life.

My Reading List: Insurgent

 

Insurgent by Veronica Roth

One choice can transform you—or it can destroy you. But every choice has consequences, and as unrest surges in the factions all around her, Tris Prior must continue trying to save those she loves—and herself—while grappling with haunting questions of grief and forgiveness, identity and loyalty, politics and love.

Tris's initiation day should have been marked by celebration and victory with her chosen faction; instead, the day ended with unspeakable horrors. War now looms as conflict between the factions and their ideologies grows. And in times of war, sides must be chosen, secrets will emerge, and choices will become even more irrevocable—and even more powerful. Transformed by her own decisions but also by haunting grief and guilt, radical new discoveries, and shifting relationships, Tris must fully embrace her Divergence, even if she does not know what she may lose by doing so. 

New York Times bestselling author Veronica Roth's much-anticipated second book of the dystopian Divergent series is another intoxicating thrill ride of a story, rich with hallmark twists, heartbreaks, romance, and powerful insights about human nature.

My Reading List: Divergent

 

Divergent by Veronica Roth

In Beatrice Prior’s dystopian Chicago world, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue—Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is—she can’t have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.

During the highly competitive initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself Tris and struggles alongside her fellow initiates to live out the choice they have made. Together they must undergo extreme physical tests of endurance and intense psychological simulations, some with devastating consequences. As initiation transforms them all, Tris must determine who her friends really are—and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes fascinating, sometimes exasperating boy fits into the life she's chosen. But Tris also has a secret, one she's kept hidden from everyone because she's been warned it can mean death. And as she discovers unrest and growing conflict that threaten to unravel her seemingly perfect society, she also learns that her secret might help her save those she loves . . . or it might destroy her.

Debut author Veronica Roth bursts onto the YA scene with the first book in the Divergent series—dystopian thrillers filled with electrifying decisions, heartbreaking betrayals, stunning consequences, and unexpected romance.

My Reading List: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

 

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons—as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.

Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.

Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia—a land of wooden slave quarters, faith healings, and voodoo—to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells.

Henrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality” until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family—past and present—is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.

Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family—especially Henrietta’s daughter Deborah, who was devastated to learn about her mother’s cells. She was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Did it hurt her when researchers infected her cells with viruses and shot them into space? What happened to her sister, Elsie, who died in a mental institution at the age of fifteen? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance?
         
Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.