When I don't feel like writing...

I think about several months from now, when I finally finish my book.
I think about sending the query to multiple agents.
I think about receiving that one non-rejection and sending the full manuscript.

I imagine them liking it. I imagine them telling me they want to represent me.

And then I think about what it would be like to see the cover of my book for the first time. To receive the ARC in the mail. To read the first reviews. To see it on bookshelves.

And suddenly I feel like writing again.

(rough) Untitled post-apocalypse excerpt.

I scream her name, needing a response from her. I knew it was weird when I woke up after she did—she never sleeps later than I do. But then she wouldn’t respond to my shaking her, and she wouldn’t respond to my voice, and now she’s not waking up to my screams. It’s not weird anymore. It’s disturbing. She could be more than just unconscious.

“Juno,” I say, my vocals almost giving up on me. I cup her face in my hands, praying for a miracle to exist just this once. I never ask for anything. Not from Juno, not from God, not from anything else that might hold the universe together. But I need this.

I need it not to be true. I need it not to be my fault.

It was, though. I killed Juno. I let her die.

In my final effort, I shove my ear against her chest, hoping to hear a steady heartbeat. Anything. Something that will tell me she’s not finished.

There is a heartbeat. It’s not steady. Like the inconsistent flutter of butterfly wings. I could let myself cry out of exhilaration, but I don’t. I keep myself together, letting the relief swallow me, but not for long. If that butterfly heart of hers decides to stop flickering, then I am alone in this world and relief would do no good.

I round her body and lift her, my elbows curling under her arms, her head lolling back against my shoulder. Her heels drag along the court floor as I tow her out of the mall. I wish I could leave her here. But two break ins over the course of seven days have led me to doubt the security of our home. She can’t stay here, not in this condition.

Pulling her out of the building is a harder task than I figured, taking longer than it should. She can’t be more than eighty pounds, so why does it feel twice that? I want to get her help now. I want to hurry. I want to talk to her, to give her words of encouragement. But she won’t hear me, and I can’t go any faster, and there is no help in the world. It’s as empty as it was yesterday. And the day before that. And the week, and the month, and the year before that. The streets are barren, silent except for my struggling to carry the girl. The buildings towering over us hold nothing but the science that killed us in the first place, the storehouses and the factories full of bodies that couldn’t survive as long as Juno and I have.

I scream. My throat is already sore from trying to wake Juno, dry from my own lack of hydration, and my head spins if I even raise my voice. But I scream again. I don’t know if I’m saying words, but in my head I’m crying for help. I need somebody to hear me.

Is it too much to ask for another miracle?

I don’t do it. I should, but I don’t. Nothing is going to respond. Nobody is going to hear, and even if they do, nobody is going to listen. I was wrong yesterday. The world is lonely all right, but maybe we are alone.

Maybe we are alone.

About writing and being a writer.

The truth is... I don't like calling myself a writer. I don't tell people that I'm an aspiring author (not in real life; I tend to flaunt it on the internet, though I'm often hesitant). This stems from the fear that people will not take me seriously. Everybody is a writer. Everybody writes books. Writing books is the new black.

I think people write books because it's cool now. It's a fad. This frustrates me, because nothing about books should ever be a fad. Books remain forever. They remain when lives pass. They should be revered, pondered, challenged, kept, loved. Understood. I think there are too many writers who do not think this way. How do you write books and yet totally miss the true weight of their existence?

I've talked about this before, how hard it is to be published. It seems so easy to be the author of a best-selling novel. I thought like that once, too. I was once a writer. I was once an aspiring author. I thought I was going to sell my books. Now I doubt. Uncertainty paints over my hope, black strokes across a canvas that was probably beautiful at one point. My level of thinking has steadily declined: "I hope my book is the #1 New York Times best seller!"

"I hope I become a best-selling author!"

"I hope I can get published!"

"I hope this agent likes my query."

"I hope I don't get rejected."

"I hope the agents respond quickly so I can know sooner that I've been rejected."

"My life is one big rejection letter and all I do is query even more agents."

It's not writing anymore. It's querying. It's waiting. It's embracing rejection. It's continuing on.
That's why I'm not a writer. I'm not an aspiring author.
I am just a girl with stories, ridiculously trudging through a vast forest of rejections until somebody finds me.

Review: MATCHED, by Ally Condie

I was finally able to read this book. Now that I've finished it, I don't know where to begin.

Matched is a story about a girl who lives in a society where choices are made for you. Society decides when you die, where you live, who you love. But a glitch occurs at Cassia's own Matched Ceremony, where she is supposed to find out who she will be spending the rest of her life with. Turns out, Cassia is Matched with two people: handsome and competitive Xander, and quiet and observant Ky.

I give this book 4 out of 5.

Something I loved about Matched was the society. Even though we knew going into the book that it had to have been flawed, it really did seem perfect in the beginning. Ally Condie did an exceptional job portraying the citizens and their lives. I loved reading through and watching as Cassia unveiled one bit of information at a time, things that slowly began pulling her life apart.

The writing was also beautiful. There were so many times when I had to pause, just to read over and appreciate the way Ally Condie had written a sentence. Her way with words, the manner in which she knits them together into this subtle masterpiece would have been enough to keep me reading. Even if I did not absolutely love the storyline.

I also found myself addicted to Ky's story. I was drawn to him the moment we found out who he was, what was wrong with him. He is an amazing character (though I don't want to put down Xander, because I love him, too--just differently than I love Ky) with beautiful flaws. And in a strange way, no flaws at all.

The whole story throughout is relatively calm and quietly told. Don't go into this book expecting The Hunger Games or Divergent. Even if this is dystopian, this is a love story. It is centered around the love Cassia has for Ky, for Xander, for her family, and how that love grows into potential change. I recommend Matched wholeheartedly. It was better than I thought it would be, and now I can't wait to devour the sequel, waiting for me up there on my dresser.

A rant on my own characters and their development.

I should consider cutting down the titles to my posts. But maybe not because I don't actually care.
^ And that is Jenesis rubbing off on me.

Creating characters is the funnest thing about writing books, but it's also one of the hardest. For me, anyway, I can't seem to make them not flat. In my book Lachrymae, the characters had their own personalities and everything, but I don't think I showed them to the reader enough. Too flat. In Adhesions, the characters were real to me, but that's because I basically grew up with those kids; they've been in my head since I was twelve.

But my marauding girls... it's almost like they weren't even created by me. It's like they've always existed and they've just been waiting for somebody to find them and write about them. I didn't have their personalities in mind when I started writing--all I had was the memory of the dream. And all that was in the dream were the two girls riding in the back of a pickup in a dead world. Their appearances were clear enough--one blonde with a pixie cut, the other with long chestnut bangs in her eyes--but I didn't know how they would act.

It's blowing me away as I write about their lives, their characters coming out with such natural ease. And the strangest thing, I think, is that neither of them has anything in common with me. Well, maybe Juno, but not that much. A lot of writers put who they are in their characters. I did that with all of my lead girls--Tess and Kara and Kasey and all the other girls I've made up. But Jenesis... she's like the opposite of me. (Except for her pessimism; we're both pretty negative.)

I remember reading something Veronica Roth wrote, about how she doesn't agree with all the things Tris believes. I thought that was so strange. Why write about a character if you don't agree with what she thinks? But that's my relationship with Jenesis. Some of the things she says, as I'm writing, I'm thinking, "This is not even right--how do you believe that, Jen?"

I think this is proof that my writing does steadily improve. I am able to get into the head of somebody different from me and share their thoughts with the world. For once, I've broken out of the comfort zone of my own mind and have begun exploring new personalities (wow, if that doesn't sound psychotic, I don't know what does).

From here, I can only hope that other people will want to read Jenesis's thoughts, too.

This is my synopsis to Untitled Marauders Story. It is subject to change.

When scientists created LIFE in the 22nd century, they did not suspect their new organisms to be hostile, to infest the dead and use the bodies to destroy all life that is not like them. Twenty years later, the living dead are annihilated, and so is most of humanity. Surviving in a world plagued by deadly ghosts, the mutated remnants of LIFE, Jenesis and Juno live only by cheating death on a daily basis until they come across a man who may be more than the lowly marauder he claims to be.

The first five pages of my untitled post-apocalyptic sci fi.

***Edited: These are no longer my first five pages. I have gone through and revised it into something better, though you still get the idea with this old version.

LIFE will cure CANCER.

I scoff at the graffiti marking the side of the decrepit bridge. We’ve only been here a couple times, but it always makes me laugh. A mirthless laugh, of course. Obviously it was written before half of humanity was slaughtered. I still haven’t figured out what cancer is—I assume it was a disease of some sort. Well, LIFE certainly did cure it.

By killing off everyone that had it.

My eyes scan the red spray-painted letters and then survey the surrounding area for any signs of other people. It’s rare, but sometimes you come across rival marauders. Today I’m not in any mood to fight—if we see anyone, we’re running. The buildings in the background look a lot older than they are. They have only been abandoned for about ten years, but it would be easy to mistake them for being centuries-old ruins. We normally don’t venture into the larger buildings, even though they probably have a lot of things we could use to our advantage. Tools, weapons, maybe scraps of food if we looked hard enough. But there could be other things haunting those buildings, judging by the array of the structures. We would rather not find out.  Sometimes it’s better to starve.

The air is thick and rancid around here because of the old river’s residue, but not rancid enough for a gas mask. I have smelled worse things than the black sludge crawling patiently underneath the bridge.

A laugh behind me makes me turn around and my gaze falls on Juno, doubling over into a plastic brown box. It’s blackened and melted in some areas. Looks like it survived a minor fire. It wasn’t here the last time we were. “Jenesis,” she says, her voice slightly echoed by the container. “Look what I found.”

I jaunt toward her and take a look at what she has in her hand. “Wow,” I say, taking it when she offers it to me. I turn through the fragile pages, my fingers gripping the hard cover.  It’s an antique. I didn’t think there were any paper books left—at least not out here.

“Look at the cover,” Juno tells me, her pale green eyes sheening with amusement.

I close the book and brush my obstructing bangs from my sight. How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse. The laugh I release is different than Juno’s. She was entertained by the title. I find it ironic. This is how we know the world has been predicting zombies centuries before it happened. I’ve heard the old theories—a lot of them were off. Neurological parasites, mutated viruses, violence-inducing prions. All scientifically sound, but nobody considered the “zombie apocalypse” to start from a lack of responsibility on the scientists’ part. They never thought that maybe life itself would bring about the living dead. Not a disease. Not a virus.

Not life, either. Not really. LIFE, to be exact—Lab-Initiated Fabricated Entities. Feigned life. Hostile life.

I drop the book back into the plastic box. Zombies are extinct now. Zombies are no longer the monsters that keep us awake at night, frightened and vulnerable in the darkness. The clatter of the book’s fall accompanies the high-pitched gasp from Juno’s lips, and she stoops into the container to retrieve it. “Don’t treat it so badly,” she says. “We should keep it. It could be worth something.”

“Who’s going to want that?” Nobody, that’s who. It’s hard enough trying to forget the zombies without their remnants haunting every building and infecting every being.

Juno looks at me with wide eyes for a moment, the expression tugging out the child in her, but drops the book back into its original place. She only gives her vulnerable expressions to me. If anybody else were to see her make those faces, they would kill her on the spot—or rape her, depending on their level of sadism—mistaking her for a weak individual. And she is—physically. She’s smaller than I am, tiny bones protruding within her skin, accentuating her hunger. She keeps her platinum hair no longer than the nape of her neck so she can pass as a boy when she needs to. Which is often. She’s pretty; that’s her only problem. But she’s tough. In some ways, a lot tougher than I am. She was able to kill one of her former allies with her bare hands.

My brother had to kill himself because I was too weak to do it for him. I couldn’t shoot a gun for a long time after that. The popping explosion would always bring back the memory of that gaping wound in his head. Even now, somewhere around three years later, I shudder as I recall the blood reaching out along cement as though searching for a new body.

“Look for something more useful,” I instruct Juno. I’m able to. We have decided that I am older, not only because I am so much taller, but because I look older. We don’t know our exact ages, but we made our decisions based on the other’s judgments. When she found me, she said I looked about sixteen. I thought she looked fourteen or fifteen. It’s been over three hundred days since then, so we can safely assume I am seventeen and she is around sixteen.

“There isn’t anything,” she responds, looking around with a hopeless shrug. Her eyes make their way over to what used to be the river. Now it’s just a cement basin, too deep for the slime that runs through it. She’s imagining water. We know what clean water looks like because of the rain—we catch it in cupped palms, glass containers, makeshift bowls. The yellowish color is a lot better than the brown of the rest of this world’s water sources.

I turn away from her and shuffle through a pile of loose rubble—I suspect some people attempted to clean up the city by hiding some of the debris under a bridge. They didn’t get very far before giving up. Less for me to dig through. Last time we were here, I managed to find some metal poles. I used them to keep the doors of our mall permanently locked—the last thing we needed was another stranger raiding through our belongings. There is bound to be another useful object for us to take this time around. I need a new spring for my gun. It jammed the other day and I lost the stupid thing trying to fix it.

“There’s nothing important in this box thing,” Juno says, half to herself. She adopts a new tone when she talks to herself. Slower, a few syllables drawn out. “Could we just empty it and take the box?”

“Yeah, do that.” Boxes can be good. More containers for water. I move through the piles of building fragments. I found the poles here last time, maybe I could find a little spring. I ignore the slim chances of that happening. Behind me, I hear Juno carefully emptying the container, dropping one item to the ground at a time, and I twitch my eyebrows in slight amusement. If it was me, I would have overturned the whole thing and gotten the job done in half a second. But I leave Juno to her odd ways.

Then she stops, and I know it’s not because the box is empty. If it was, she would have dragged it over to where I am and asked what I was doing. But it’s dead quiet all of a sudden; a stillness that cools the air.

“Oh God,” she murmurs.

Panic.  The muscles in my back stiffen.

“Jenesis.”

She’s quiet and collected, but it’s there, the throat-wrenching fear that clobbers her tone. I know what to expect when I turn around, and even as I do, my blood turns into ice water.

It’s on the other side of the mucky river, the transparent silhouette of a girl, as motionless and whist as death. The same fear that strangled Juno’s words attacks me, because I know it’s watching us. There are no eyes, no way of knowing exactly what it’s looking at, just a black face like a shadow against an invisible wall. But Ghosts don’t regularly take form. They are a gaseous mass of cyan vapor, like the glowing pulse exuding from the silhouette’s chest. Where the heart should be, as if these monsters could ever have one. The only time they appear to be anything other than vapor is when they’ve noticed something that strikes their interest.

Only once have I seen a Ghost adopt a human form. Two days before my brother shot himself, I saw one turn into his shadow. Matched his body perfectly.

Now it’s matching Juno’s body.

It sways like it’s deciding on a move, and my insides constrict, my legs getting ready to pounce on Juno if I have to. I am closer to her than the Ghost is. Even though Ghosts are faster, I may be able to beat it. I spare a glance at Juno. The mortification in her face is nearly enough to drive me to run at the Ghost, if only to save her, to give her a chance to run to safety. But I can’t leap out to save her. If I die, who will watch over her?

“Jenesis,” she whispers again. She doesn’t know if I’ve turned around, her eyes frozen on the shaded death in front of her. One hand is poised in the air like she could ever ward off a creature of malignant vapors. The other clasps onto the plastic container, her bony knuckles glowing with her tight grip.

“Juno,” I say, trying to keep my voice calm. I want to tell her not to move, but she’s not stupid. Neither am I. Neither is the Ghost.