Pens are like swords, and relationships are like glass...

If you are intrigued by the title, I'm glad, because that was the point. *chuckles*

Welcome to the book review for "The Unlikely Debut of Ellie Sweet" the sequel to "The Revised Life of Ellie Sweet" by Stephanie Morrill. 

She has a pen for a sword... but what can she use for a shield?

I got this book for Christmas from good ol' Santa Claus. 

I'm not unfamiliar with this authors work (obviously, since I read the first book in this series), in fact I read her blog fairly often (Go Teen Writers), she's also partnered with Jill Williamson, the author of The Blood of Kings Trilogy and The Safe Lands, to write with her on the blog. 

I've also read the first book in Stephanie Morrills' other series "The Reinvention of Skylar Hoyt". 

Moving on with the review, the opening certainly did not disappoint and I was hooked so well that I stayed up much later than I should with a flu flying about my home. Stephanie Morrill's book starts off at a steady incline to reach the climax of Ellie Sweet's story and leaves you with a satisfactory sigh by the end. From the very first sentences I enjoyed the comic sprinkled throughout it and the iron-clad strengthening in the personalities of the characters. In case those words are a little fuzzy... I'll elaborate:

What I mean by that is we see different sides and much more is revealed about the main characters during the time reading this book. Especially Ellie. A whole new batch of troubles is opened up for Ellie Sweet in this novel and being able to go through them with her so vividly because of Mrs. Morrill's steady hand in her craft makes it that much more enjoyable. 

Ellie Sweet's story contains everything you'd think would be happening in a teenage girls' life: high school drama, boys, schoolwork... the only huge difference is that she is on the verge of becoming a published author at the start of the book. And then perhaps that there is a love triangle weaved into her life story, which was actually established in the first book to begin with, but let's just say that the triangle is continued in this one - without giving to much away. 

Mrs. Morrill balances the elements of Ellie Sweet's writerly life without overdoing it, though I could be biased since I am a writer myself and I find things about it fascinating. And moving past that I think she handled the love triangle masterfully and definitely to her own style, she clearly avoided the cliche average formula for love triangles in many Young Author genre books nowadays. That's saying something coming from me, don't get me wrong, I love romance, but I can only read truly more original romance tales without cringing occasionally. Just because it's been done so many times.

But my favorite thing about this book (and the first book about Ellie Sweet) is how tasteful yet out in the open Mrs. Morrill tackles subjects like sex, beer, and drugs. She makes no clear effort to sugar coat it, and I really admire that, because after all; every high school girl comes across conversations like that. 

If I had one complaint/critique towards this book it would only be the way she cut the scenes and timeline. During my time reading it I feel like there was a 50/50 share of it being to slow, but then to fast at times. 

As I close this post I give this book 4 out of 5 stars. A job well done! =)

I look forward to buying the other books in the Reinvention of Skylar Hoyt series. ( And more books about Ellie Sweet? Please? No pressure of course haha :D )

Love

Jazmine

Dos Scribblings Weekly: Using life in your writing

Hey everybody,

It's been a long-long time. But coming this new year I'll be blogging twice a week like I should be.

Anyway, what this post will be about is certainly a little more personal for me. The idea for this post came to me only a little while ago when I was chewing on some thoughts about what's been going on in my life lately. I will not go into to much detail, but it's been difficult and very frustrating dealing with these problems and not being able to do anything about it for fear of screwing up any chance I have. And then on the flip side of things I feel I'm being far to paranoid, and that I just need to knock it off, but then I begin wondering all over again and feeling depressed. As you can see what I'm going through is just one vicious cycle of nasty feelings. As are most things in life unfortunately.
But on a happier note I have been working hard on seeing that I really don't have anything to be that sad about. Sure, the things I'm dealing with right now are difficult and irritating, but I'm a very blessed girl and I have everything I could ever need right in front of me. I may want things, but that doesn't mean I don't have everything I need. That's something I feel God has been putting on my heart lately to grow as a person.

So as I listen to The Piano Guys on my iPod I'll get down to the point of this blog post. All of those feelings I expressed above the picture of the heart (Isn't it a cute heart by the way? I just love it!) I plan on using somehow in my writing. I give credit to the book "The Revised Life of Ellie Sweet" by Stephanie Morrill for making me realize how important that concept really is for any author.
The mentor character Bronte for the main character Ellie Sweet said something like "If someone hurt you Ellie, use it. Use your anger and put it in your writing. Don't dwell on it, just use it." This is the most useful advice to date that I've received from a book or anyone.
Even though I've done it unconsciously for years during my writing career (I don't know if I should call it that?) I've never actually read or heard someone tell me to do specifically that. When I was around 12 or 13 and trying desperately to find who I was, I expressed... age appropriate feelings for the time in my life I was going through in a very excited fashion. Was it good writing? No. But now that I know consciously that using life experiences in your stories can create life in a novel, I can use it to my advantage and craft better stories. Especially now that my writing has simply improved from when I was a pre-teen. (I'm now going to graduate High School in May 2014)
My advice to you: I don't care what it is in your life, whether it be happy experiences or absolutely heartbreaking experiences you must seize the opportunity and write it into one of your novels somehow. This is, after all, what makes us writers; painting on a blank canvas for the onlookers to see and be drawn into our world.
I don't know any of you personally, but for me, this is a way I deal with pain in my life. Writing gives me a way to vent out those experiences that leave me breathless with sadness or anger. Of course you do not have to stay 100% detailed to what you experienced, but to give the reader something so raw from your own soul (whether or not the reader actually knows it) makes the characters all that more real, and the world they live in very real. I can't stress that enough.

So: use your experiences to write. =)

On a last note, I probably won't post again until after the new year. Just to get a fresh start, so I bid thee goodbye.... for now.

Love,

Jazmine

Dos Scribblings Weekly: What do I write next?

Hello!

Another apology is in order for forgetting to write anything yesterday. But hey... this'll happen a lot until I get used to this haha.

Anyway, I decided to make this a short post about plotting.
There are two kinds of writers when it comes to plotting: Pantsers, and Plotters.

Plotters: These authors plot everything down to the very detail of every word before they write very much.

Pantsers: These authors fly by the seat of their pants when they write their stories.  No direct plotting in any sense.

I consider myself somewhere between the two. I tend to really only plot any book chapter by chapter, as for the rest of it, I keep the rest of the book in my head. Just the general outline of it.
No matter the type of writer though, I always recommend plotting to a little extent. The least would be taking notes and jotting down your ideas. ( Most authors do that anyways though ha-ha )
The way I roll when I plot out each chapter in any given book I'm writing is to write it out scene by scene. Many months ago I started out with yellow notepads and wrote it all down on there, but now I use a free writing program called yWriter which was brought to my attention via the blog Go Teen Writers.
 Sometimes I find that what I plot down doesn't always fit into one chapter, but this is the way I write because I write almost to much sometimes, and if you find that something does not fit into the chapter at all story-wise you can just skip the part you wrote down and continue on happily writing.
Before you start plotting it out though, I recommend getting everything straightened out so you know the general line you want to go before you start plotting it.
I find that it makes it a lot easier in the long run when you actually start writing the scenes to plot it out. The great thing is that you never have to be bogged down by anything you write in your plotting notebook (or yWriter). I'm always adding or deleting things I write down, and I believe that it'll pay off when I start the second draft of some of my more recent books.
I already have to deal with the monster book I want to publish someday, and that was long before I found out about the many great tips of writing.
I hope you found this post helpful in any way, not one of my best posts but oh well!
I say plotting out - at least - chapter by chapter helps you keep your story in a straighter arrow towards writing THE END.

Love,

Jazmine

Dos Scribblings Weekly: Writing in the smiles and laughter

Hello again!

So I have to make an apology. I totally failed in blogging on Monday and Friday, but I suppose my excuse is that I was on vacation haha. Anyway... I thought today, an appropriate subject would be writing humor into the things we authors write. And what's funny is that I only just came up with this subject a few hours ago after I watched The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring because of the more humorous scenes. To quote one: "I have the eyes of a hawk and the ears of a fox." Gimli has an arrow pointed in his face after he speaks. The elf captain steps forward. "The dwarf breathes so loud we could've shot him in the dark." (Yes, I did just quote that from memory, and yes, I have watched it that many times. Can you tell I'm a fantasy fiction nutball yet? Teehee!)
As I've gotten more involved in the writing world I've realized the importance of humor in writing. Though unconsciously I've always strayed towards movies that always have just a dash of humor in them if not more. Humor makes everything. Humor adds a lightness to the otherwise darker parts of the stories we read and write.
If you are a writer trying to write more of a darker story, I wouldn't put to much humor in your story, of course, but coming from a readers point of view if there isn't any humor at all that might cause a smile or a giggle then it might be to bogged down with to much of the darker and heavier emotions in the book. I am a firm believer in balancing everything in a work of literature; no matter the genre.

Now writing it into your story may be a bit difficult if you think about it to much. Though I'm not a professional writer or anything, I have realized over the 8 or 9 years I've been writing stories that you can't try really hard to put humor in. Otherwise it will come out really... plastic.
This may not happen with everyone, but I find that any humor I have in my book usually just comes to me as I'm writing a scene. I see how the scene is being lain out and usually the words of my characters or the POV of my main character flows perfectly into the scene.
So whenever you're writing and you need humor, it's not a good idea to over think it. It will just cause problems with how the scene reads.
The best advice on learning what's funny if you're having trouble with that, however, is to just watch and read whatever you think is funny. Don't try to appeal to any particular persons funny bone. I have found that if it doesn't make me laugh I can't flesh out the humor as I normally would be able to.
Like I wrote in my last post: find things that inspire, or in this case, inspire the funny in you.
After a while of practicing at writing humor if you ever have trouble with it, you should be able to get the hang of it for the most part.
And if anyone is interested and you're having trouble trying to make something amusing or humorous leave a comment and I'll do my best to help ya!

 I'll be stopping here for now, but check back on Friday (7/12) for another blog post of Dos Scribblings.

Love,

Jazmine

Dos Scribblings Weekly -- Inspirations, imaginings, good literature... and other matters. =]

Well heelloooo!!

Welcome to the first post of Dos Scribblings Weekly. For now it's just one this week, but on Monday I will do another one and then on Friday again.
I decided just to do something simple and talk about some of the things that help me become inspired to weave a great story. But where to start?
Where it all starts. A spark. An idea. An exciting incident to spur the start of a story.
This is what has happened to me time and time again whenever I see an enchanting movie or read a great book woven by a wonderful storyteller. Or in some other not so-common-cases for me is reading other young writers work with a combination of the above.
The combination of other writers work and movies like Lord of the Rings, Terabithia, and Narnia inspired me to write one of my books called The World Within. I am editing the second draft currently, and if I remember correctly I finished it back in 2008 sometime.
This is the book I hope to publish someday soon... it would be fantastic. I am in love with the characters, and I'm lucky enough to be able to have such a strong world to build the story on.
 Everything about stories comes from a spark of inspiration at one point or another. The Hobbit "an Unexpected Journey" was one of the bigger reasons I got into editing my second draft of The World Within. 

There is always something so exciting about being inspired to write a new book... a new story. I love it. Unfortunately for us writers though, not every story idea may have a good storyline ahead of it. Maybe wonderful possibilities, but sometimes it just doesn't work out.
Though I still hold out hope for some of my own personal ideas I've had, (Like my Jack Frost story I got inspired to write after I saw Rise of the Guardians) not all of them are very easy to find conflict within the story.

Inspiration is what keeps writers going though, and thinking up ideas is one of the most fun parts about writing. The only problem is to keep on going once you've started to write this wonderful idea. And that's a whole other story for another time...

I'll leave you to think about this, and I hope this was entertaining enough for you to read so you'll come back on Monday to read the next post. Ta ta! :)

Love,

Jazmine




**Disclaimer** I do not own either of these images. All credit goes to the companies and people affiliated to these movies.

Determination = New blog posts

Hello blogger people's! 

This'll be a really short post since I really need to go to bed... it is exactly 4 minutes until 1 AM where I live. And I'm going on an 18 hour road trip on Wednesday, can we say... STUPID? Bahahaha.... okay. Enough chit chat. Let's get down to business.
I'm going to be on vacation, but I'll still be able to use computer. On Friday I'm going to start what I'll be calling "Dos Scribblings Weekly" (a.k.a. Two Scribblings Weekly). This will be writing related and this will be a constant thing as long as I can keep thinking of subjects to write about about writing.... if that makes any sense. 
I'll probably have to get some ideas for what I'll write about. But this is my new determination; to blog at least twice a week. The days you can expect to see a post will be on Monday - to read a post during the week - and on Friday - so you can read a post over the weekend. 
Now that I've written all this... I am terrified I won't write anything interesting. I suppose if worse comes to worst, I'll just write a ramble. ha-ha. 
The last thing I'll say is that I will possibly post book reviews in the future, and maybe a video review. Or both at the same time. I'm not quite ready to give up my video reviewing that I've tried. 

SO. Check back here on Friday and there will be a post up and ready for you to read! 

... and I'm off to bed, so g'night! And lots of hugs and kisses and blessings to you. 

Love, 

Jazmine

My Secret Life: Some of my pieces of artwork...

I felt like sharing some of my artwork that I've done in the past and recent times... so here ya go!

My Secret Life: The people you don't think about

      Well... it's been quite a while since I've written a blog post. I guess I've just been experimenting with different things. I thought instead of writing book reviews on my blog that I would just do them on youtube, which someday I'll get back to and I did have fun doing them but I've been having some deep issues with some things in my life... so I figured I was lying when I smiled on camera. And I need to work that out before I start doing videos again. Anyway... 
      I was writing a history report for my schoolwork this night... and I kept thinking to myself about the lonely things I've felt in the past, and the lonely feelings I've had even now. And I found myself wandering to the fact that there are other girls and guys just like me that feel all alone and spend their days alone by themselves in their room at home with nothing but themselves and their family to have company for. I suppose it just made me sad, of course I do have some friends, and I am thankful for them very much. :) They are wonderful people. But even so I feel lonely almost all the time on occasion. 
      It makes me wonder why people don't make more of an effort to reach out to those who are sitting alone or don't talk to people all that much. Why don't people reach out to someone who doesn't have any friends? Instead of sticking to your own that you already have? You could change someone's life by doing that.
    Unfortunately I don't really have the chance to do that to often haha... considering I am that person most of the time. But I think I'm fortunate enough to have been able to do that at least one time and chat with a new girl to the area, unfortunately she moved away again, but I was happy to talk to her and I found we had a lot in common. 
      My heart aches for teens like myself who don't have anyone to talk to or spend their time alone wondering why there's no one to be friends with them. And why they always have to be the one to reach out if they want friends, though it is a good thing in order to get out of your shell, but it's nice to know that your wanted when someone says. "Hey, come on over, you wanna go hang out at so and so's house? Or at the park?" 
Or "Hey, have you watched this movie? or read this book? Or heard about this?" 
      This was just something that has been on my heart lately... as I find myself lost in my books and writing to escape the reality of sadness and loneliness around me and in my own personal life. As I'm writing this I'm actually getting a little choked up thinking about the teenagers who are feeling depressed... I don't even really care about my social life actually, I just ache for the kids who may not have one whether or not I do. I wish I could reach out to them even though I don't know them.
      I'll finish writing this post since I have to head off to bed, but maybe we should all start thinking about reaching out to that girl or boy sitting by themselves... instead of just saying "Nah, they're ok. They probably want to be alone." Maybe you should stop and realize that you're wrong. 90% of the time you are wrong when you see this person. 

The next time you see someone like that, stop, consider them, and realize that they are craving love and friendship because they don't have any. Think about how happy you are with your friends, and think about how they don't have that!

Don't even think about walking away and moving on with your day until you talk to them. If you don't know them introduce yourself... if you do know them, than say hello and strike up a conversation.

YOU MIGHT JUST MAKE SOMEONE'S DAY!

And perhaps if you are friends with someone, but they don't talk very much, and they smile all the time and act like everything's A-OK... chances are they aren't. Maybe they need someone to talk to. Invite them out to coffee or lunch, or just over to your house to hang out. 

YOU MIGHT JUST MAKE THEIR DAY!

Think about that the next time you tell yourself that sad looking thing in the corner just wants to be left alone.  

Think about that the next time your friend says that everything is OK. Even if they don't say anything about their problems, just telling them that you are there to listen helps them feel happy that they can confide in someone if they would like.


THINK ABOUT IT.