Watch What You Say...

I doubt that this is just something I do. Your brain thinks one thing, your mouth says another. The only problem is that I seem to do this kind of thing more than most people. Take today for example. My cat, Picard, got into my mother's room, so she tells me to get him out so he won't shed hair all over her stuff. So I open my mouth to call Picard, and I end up shutting my mouth halfway through Farhan's name, which my mother notices. I know how that happened - before going up to see Mom I'd been working on True or False?, specifically a chapter in Farhan's POV. I could have just as easily ended up calling my cat Goher or Shazi, but of course that's not the most reassuring thing to tell my mother, who now thinks I'm crazily obsessed.

On another note, I'm doing my best to finish the first draft of True or False? by the end of this week. Let's hope I can do it...

Dreams

Dreams can always be a source of inspiration to authors. I got the idea for True or False? from a dream, and so far it's been going pretty well, although I don't know why Jal the band still keeps showing up in my dreams. Not that I'm complaining - the dreams have always been pleasant, except for one that made me cry in the morning when I woke up... Anyway, last night I had yet another dream involving Farhan, Goher, and Shazi. And no, it was not something to inspire another novel. Calm down, I'm getting to the point. In the dream, everyone in my family was sitting at home doing...nothing, from what I could tell, when the doorbell rang. My Dad, who was near the door, didn't answer it for some reason and went up to his room, maybe because he didn't want to be seen in his pajamas. I don't know why, but I was pretty excited and glad that I got to open the door myself, and I saw first Farhan, then Goher, and then Shazi. Don't know how I'd been expecting them, but I pretended that I hadn't and invited them in, making sure they sat down in our living room first before they could tell me what they were doing there. And then I don't remember what the rest of the dream was about. That's the unfortunate thing - I can never seem to remember the whole of my dreams, only little bits and pieces. Their car probably broke down just outside the house or something. Or maybe they needed directions, but I know that Goher has an iPhone so I would think that he'd be able to use the maps function for that...unless it ran out of battery. I don't know, but I can use some aspects of the dream in True or False? - like...never mind, I can't, because I really don't remember much other than opening the door, seeing them all in sunglasses (in February? Well, I use transition glasses that annoy me beyond all reason but always look like sunglasses as long as the sun is out. I don't know what their excuse is...), and inviting them in. Did I mention that it was snowing in my dream? 

Almost There...

I have about a third of True or False? left to write, then some time - hopefully not much more than a month - for editing. In terms of editing, there are some details I need to go back and add, some stuff that need cutting out, and the typical grammar and spelling errors. I also need to go back and add some chapters in Goher's point of view (in the unnecessarily large screenshot, he's the one on the left - and the guitarist of the band. He's also on the left in the smaller screenshot.) for one of the subplots of the novel that I later decided needed to be expanded on. There's also a chapter that requires some historical research done, so that will take a couple of days - I'm grateful for the Internet - and one chapter in Farhan's point of view that I got so stuck on that I had to skip it and go on to the next chapter. Let me point out that it is not easy to write a novel where your characters are real people - I might have to end up following Farhan around for a day before I can get that chapter right, or I might just need to watch a couple of interviews, depending on how it gets. In terms of stuff I need to cut out, there are some parts that are just...well, silly. But I like to make people laugh, so there are going to be parts that are a bit silly, but I want to cut anything out that just seems downright ridiculous. Usually anything like that was written after midnight. For some reason I always write a lot after midnight, but that's also when my brain tends to stop working properly, so what I write might not always make sense. Once I'm done with the manuscript and all the editing, I'll do what I can to see about copyright issues. Maybe the Law of Attraction can help me somehow pull the band to my front door with my mind...

True or False?

I don't think I'm the only author - even of the ones who haven't been published yet - who wonder what it would be like if a one of her novels were adapted into a feature film. Right now, the one I'm thinking about is True or False? even though I've still got about a third of the manuscript to write, and then about a month of editing after that. I'm hoping to be completely done by April - let's hope it works out. That way, I can spend April, May, and June finishing the second half of Sea of Benevolence and then work on the fourth and last installment of the shape-shifter series in the summer. Then next year, my senior year of high school, I want to spend on that vampire novel and another that I've had the idea for since this past summer. Yes, I know, I plan out when I'm going to write each book, but it's a time management thing, and when I'm in high school, there's not a whole lot of time to throw around and way too many ideas. 

Anyway, back to True or False? I started a new thread for it on the forums of Jal's official website (www.jaltheband.com), got some comments, and a poll. In terms of the poll, 75% voted that they would definitely read it (some even posted saying they'd buy it the first day it released  no matter what), 18.18% said maybe, depending on the plot and how well-written it is, and since I haven't disclosed the whole plot yet, the maybe makes sense, although I have full confidence in my writing style, and 6.82% said they don't think they'd read it - most of those posted saying that they're just not readers. Which brings us to the film adaption. Well, either that, or me catching a plane to Lahore and following the guys around with a video camera while I documented their daily lives... For those 6.82%, they said they'd watch the movie, without a doubt. I can imagine it, although Saamiya would be tough to cast. I'd willingly volunteer for the role - I've got the right height and Pathan accent to make it work, at least.  

Midterms

Here's the worst thing about midterms: if you're a teen writer like me, they interfere with what could very well be the next bestselling novel to hit the New York Times list. I'm a good student, actually a great student, but I've always had to wonder what the point is to midterms. Think about it, if you learn one topic and mess up on a quiz or test, you can always make it up later by doing better on the next, so why are you getting tested on the same stuff twice? Odds are you won't understand something if you didn't understand it the first time. So it's just extra work for both the students and the teachers. I won't say I understand the point, because I can't, but I do understand that I've got to take them, and if you've got to take them, you might as well do the best you can, right? 

Good Things Come to Those who Wait...

Last year, around October, I entered the UP ALL NIGHT Contest hosted by Laura Geringer books, a division of HarperCollins. Yes, I said HarperCollins. Up All Night is a book comprising of six short stories by six different authors with one common theme: a character whose thoughts or situation kept him/her up all night. Libba Bray, author of A Great and Terrible Beauty, Rebel Angels, and The Sweet Far Thing wrote a short story for the book as well. To get a feel of what the stories were like, I borrowed the book from the library (although this was after I'd written my story, and I didn't edit much of it after reading the book). To enter the contest, my story also had to feature a character who stays up all night. So, with that idea in mind, I wrote "Boogey Till the Sunrise". Turns out, I've won first prize which gets me a copy of Up All Night signed by all the contributing authors and might get to have "Boogey Till the Sunrise" published! I'm starting to really like the Law of Attraction. If you haven't read it yet, get yourself a copy of The Secret by Rhonda Byrne. Or, if you're not a reader, well two things: 1. You're looking at the wrong blog and 2. See the movie! I started reading The Secret 45 minutes ago, and it's already begun to improve my life, and definitely my mood! I know, I sound nothing like a teen, but my old Italian teacher called me la nonna ("the grandma") for a reason. Can I help it if I want to improve my life after living for just under two decades? 

Push Contest

Last year I picked up a novel at my local library - Hail Caesar by Thu-Huong Ha - and let me be honest: the only reason I picked it up was because the author wrote it after winning a PUSH contest at the age of fourteen. It's a bit off-putting for me that all the novels published by PUSH- a division of Scholastic - revolve around high school kids with realistic plots. That means: nothing I've written fits into that. I tried thinking of something good to submit for their 2009 contest - might as well try it, the only thing I can lose is some postage on sending it - and came up with a stand-alone vampire novel. I guess that means I always have to spice something up in my writing. Not to suggest that high school stories are boring, but how many times can the boy-meets-girl, boy-gets-girl thing be done? And the vampire thing might be a strange side-effect of getting annoyed by hearing girls talk about how perfect Edward Cullen is for too long. Otherwise, I know I never would have tried anything with vampires in it - I think the literary world is far too full of them already. But I did write a synopsis - a requirement of the contest - and I think I've got something decent on my hands. Not that anyone will get overly obsessed with male vampire Fletcher Munroe, but that was never my plan. As long as he gets to have expressive dark brown eyes, I'm happy. Huh. I got so caught up with Fletcher's appearance that I never even thought about what the girl - Sakina Evergreen - should look like, even though she's the protagonist.