Laura's blog

My brother really needs to get his driver's license so that I don't have to drive him to college. That requires me to get up at 6:45 AM. I've never functioned well at that time. My morning classes even in elementary school were horrible because I was so tired and had so much trouble focusing my attention. I blame that for why I hate math. Nope, getting up early results in days like today, where I was completely burned out and frustrated by 6 PM. If I hadn't pre-written this post, I wouldn't WUW this week. I took a nap. I wish I could retake all those naps I wanted to skip as a kid. Me this evening. Anyway, writing! I finished my Ready Set Write! side goal for the week: complete a scene from Contracted and start the next one. However, I'm worried that my voice/style will change as I get further into the story. I'm editing another WIP with drastically different characters, voice, and style. This is the first time I've been worried that working on t...

I've heard a lot about this show. I've heard it praised to the roof. I've also heard the SPLAT of virtual tomatoes. And you know me -- always willing to weigh in with an opinion.  I have a friend who always tries to tell me this or that about Game of Thrones -- how it's fantasy porn or how too many people die or how it's not literary or what the author's evil goals are -- when he hasn't seen the show or read the books. I can tolerate the hipsters who don't want to watch something because it's popular. I don't like the hipsters who refuse to watch something and pass judgment on it anyway. So to avoid being that person, I sat down and watched Orange is the New Black. 8 episodes of it. [SPOILERS AHEAD] It's very easy to binge-watch. It's kind of like a train wreck -- I can't look away. My favorite character is Piper's roommate, Miss Claudette. I also like Susanne/Crazy Eyes, because she peed on Piper's floor, and Piper i...

I'm sort-of-nearly to the end of my critiquing adventure. My Ready. Set. Write! goals have all been oriented on editing this WIP, my first WIP, which I started when I was a 14-year-old high school freshman and finished when I was an upcoming senior in college. "Finished." Haha. I know, I amuse even myself sometimes.  What I'm Reading MILA 2.0 is going swimmingly. Apart from some weird wordage that occasionally throws me, it's great. I also like that it has an introverted protagonist.  I'm also working on Throne of Glass. The captain of the guard seems like an interesting guy. The prince is a typical spoiled pretty-boy who probably will fall in love with Celaena and then think he's entitled to her love because he gets everything he wants all the time, and an affair with an assassin is something cool and dangerous outside the propriety of princely life. He's not quite Joffrey, but I will be REALLY MAD if Celaena chooses him. There was a similar...

As per my book cover theme lately, I thought I'd do something... fun . I've noticed an annoying trend in YA book covers. Thing is, a lot of YA book covers look like more professional versions of the "selfie" made infamous by Facebook. A girl (it's almost always a girl) looks coyly over her shoulder, staring deeply into the camera...sometimes even with a duckface. It might be more Angelina Jolie than ridiculous, but it's still a duckface. See Exhibit A, slight pouty duckface, perfectly curled hair, flirty look, and all:   How does that dagger (if you even notice it under the title text) stay on her arm without cutting her anyway? This is the kind of photo I might post to Facebook to say, "Look how subtle and intriguing I am! You're attracted by my sexy air of mild danger (but not too dangerous, because that would be unfeminine and scare you away)." Kind of bland. Would you guess that that character is supposed to be an assassin? No? How...

Sorry I skipped last week's What's Up Wednesday! I was busier than usual. Here's what I'm up to: What I'm reading I am in nerd flip-out mode over William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope. It's like someone took my two biggest nerd-loves and combined them. Also, it works really well. Star Wars starts off with a Prologue and text falling across a screen. This book starts off with "PROLOGUE. Enter Chorus. It is a period of civil war..." I also finished Needful Things , which was boring and did not live up to expectations. I read Girl Parts as well, and am still figuring out what I think about it before I write a review. On one hand, I like that the second half of the book is all about Rose learning how to take sexual agency for herself (rather than for others).  On the other hand, it seems like yet another book that says, "You need to have sex to be a whole person." This book was described as "hilarious" on...

This evening, I was reading along with the Twitter hashtag #solidarityisforwhitewomen. A quick summary: first and second wave feminism were dominated by white women -- in particular, upper middle class straight white women. Third wave feminism (current-ish times) tries to account for the differences of race, economic situation, gender expression, and orientation.  That's in its ideal form. However, the practice isn't perfect, and the #solidarityisforwhitewomen hashtag is about women of color calling out their feminist "sisters" on their racial hypocrisy. Like how white feminists assume white culture is better, as in this image: Mostly I read and RT-d, because, ya know, I'm white, so I kind of would have been missing the point otherwise. There comes a time when one should just shut up and listen. After a while, I opened a new tab and finished my review of one of my favorite books, Partials by Dan Wells. I had to look up an image to go with the artic...

I had a "DUH!!!" moment about my WIP last week. I was plotting which direction the re-writes should take and what needed the most work. And then it hit me with a great big and I was all like partly because it seems so obvious in retrospect, but mostly because it means I will have to rewrite to an extent which I have never rewritten before. I really have no clue how I managed to overlook this. Well, that's a lie -- because I made sure not to make this same mistake in another part of the WIP. I was oh-so-concerned that the friends-to-significant-others relationship should develop naturally. I was also oh-so-concerned that the just-friends relationship did the same thing. And the same for the sibling relationship, and so on and so forth. Basically, I was so concerned over all this side stuff that I COMPLETELY IGNORED what might just be the MOST IMPORTANT relationship in the WHOLE DAMN THING. I mean, it's not important in that it's meanin...