Ending Jenesis excerpt, celebrating 200 pages.

Not that 200 pages (about 60k words; I know page number means nothing) is the biggest accomplishment ever, but I've been bleeding and sweating and dying because of this stupid book these girls (Jenesis and Juno) are making me write. And I'm surprised I've even made it this far.
So here you go.

---

Juno lies next to me, twice the blankets climbing around her. Every now and then I check to see if she is sleeping, but her eyes remain fixed on the sky. Glowing specks poke through the midnight-colored fabric that stretches from one side of the horizon to the other. Juno was right. Malachi was right. There are millions, scintillating and dancing to music we will never hear.

“There’s one thing,” Juno says.

I turn to her again. “What?”

She gives a shrug, like she isn’t sure how to put her thoughts into words. I know how that is. “The ocean scared me today,” she says. “I never thought something could be so alive and so dead at the same time.”

I wait for her to make sense.

“I haven’t seen any of the world at all, except in pictures. But those pictures were beautiful. I know things don’t look like that now. The ocean definitely proved that. It made me scared—it made me think we’ll never have any hope. Everything on this planet will die, including humanity, and Earth will be left to rot alone in outer space.”

I stay quiet, looking at her. It’s like she has been shopping in my mind, trying on different ideas that came straight out of my head. They sound wrong coming from her.

“But the stars are still beautiful,” she continues. “All the death in this world will never be able to tamper with their beauty, because it can’t reach them. That gives me enough hope. Even if humanity does die off completely, Earth is still part of something bigger. Something magnificent. So nothing is ever truly hopeless.”

I usually come up with a title about halfway through the book.

And about halfway through this book, I came up with a title.
I wanted it to be two words. Mostly because everything else I write has a one-word title, and I was in the mood for something new. I also wanted Jenesis's name in it. So in order to make that work, it would have had to be something like Verbing Jenesis. Flying Jenesis. Being Jenesis. Finding Jenesis. But then I wanted it to have a post-apocalyptic feel. Killing Jenesis? I almost went with that, but it seemed like overkill. Even though parts of the book get a little violent and edgy, Killing didn't work.

Ending Jenesis.

That works. I see it, I hear it in my mind (I actually haven't said it out loud yet... that'll tell you how often I live inside my mind and how I hate living outside of it), and it just sounds right. It sounds like my book. It's the perfect title. Now I'm going to type it in a couple different ways, just to see how it looks.

Ending Jenesis.
ENDING JENESIS.

You think a title like that could sell? It's amazing what just a couple words could do for a book. It's perfect for me, definitely. Is it perfect for the rest of the world?

Jeez, I need to get the rest of it finished.

Untitled Post-Apocalypse (this really needs a title), 39k words.

Juno. I liked that name. I could get used to calling someone that. Even if part of her existence left me annoyed. Even if parts of her would still annoy me almost a year later, after all the arguments and near-death experiences and strokes of good luck that would make us feel like we’ve known each other for centuries.

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.