Questions

Hey fellow writers! Although I’m only a ****?nager, I’m trying to do Nanowrimo this year (National Novel Writing Month). Do you have any ***?ps for a young girl trying it out her first year? Is it ****?d to plan? To tell your friends about it? To keep writing even if the story is getting really dumb instead of starting over? Thank you!
Nanowrimo is supposed to be a contest: You’re just supposed to get out 50,000 words on paper in a story that at least makes ***?mi-sense. It’s supposed to be ***?n, a let-loose-and-write-like-heck sort of month.
- ***?ith R

what are some good books for a young adult girl? i like african american juvenile fiction books like Sharon M. Draper but i am tired of just reading the book i like over again. i am about to read november blues when it comes back to the library but are there any other good recommendations? i prefer books about girl.
- Nyla M

Writing soothes my soul and allows me to escape into my own created world where there are no boundaries. It calms me and takes me into an unknown world well worth the adventure. Much of my writing is the window to the heart, soul and mind of Lisa. While writing had been a hobby for many years, I opened that window for all the world to see when I did my first self-published booklet in 1997.

Poetry, on the other hand, was a hidden passion, peeking in on a deeper more intimate side of me. When I’m writing poetry there are no rules to follow, something I struggled with as a child. As a young girl, I was placed in a special remedial class for students who needed additional help with their reading skills. Little did I know how monumentally limiting that moment would be for me. With that experience, I decided my writing wasn’t good enough for anyone to see.

Eventually, I found that there were rules about writing, ways you should write even rules about life that I must follow to be good. I created my own hidden world of rules for writing, my own rules of life, and kept them in a safe place hidden from everyone. Publicly, I focused my energies on mathematics and earned a B.S.in Business Administration with a concentration in Finance. Although silent, the writer in me remained.

Funny, that I was teaching women to live passionately and to have powerful, fulfilled lives, yet my poetry was a hidden passion. I realized keeping it a secret was compromising my integrity. It was time to unleash, unlock and empower the extraordinary woman within.

My husband encouraged me to read my poetry aloud as often as possible given my love and passion for it. At an open mic night while visiting California, the positive response finally convinced me to believe my friends, my husband, and most importantly, to believe in myself. I decided to let go of the past about not being a good writer and to let it rip. I assembled an electronic book, A Collection on Love, Loss and Life and five accompanying poetic prints.

I believe there is a writer in all of us. The process of opening up your creativity is not a simple formula; each woman has her own process but the following steps worked for me:

1) Find the space for your creativity to emerge. You must be still to hear from your inner self, your spirit. Webster defines “be” as “to exist or live.” Being requires very little effort, very little thought, because you ARE simply by virtue of being alive.

Further, Webster defines “still” as “noiseless; silent, stationary and tranquil; calm.” In being still, you want to calm and center yourself, focusing on being present to the moment. One way to do this is to find a place of solitude, a tranquil place when you can actively listen for what’s needed and wanted.

2) Open your heart to your passions. In the still moments you want to listen to your spirit and begin to give language to your inner voice.

Ask yourself:

* What is it that I most love?

* What is life like when I lose track of time?

* What am I engaged in?

* What is the experience?

* What are my most intimate thoughts?

* When am I most alive?

3) Think of how you feel. Notice what emotions are bubbling up within you. Our emotions are the flags of our passions waving us down the path to our truest selves.

4) As your thoughts unfold, capture your experience on paper. Give it life by writing it as vividly and specifically as you can. Thank the Editor for sharing and send her away! Just be still and write until you are empty, describing every feeling, every thought and every emotion. I’ll leave you with an excerpt from my poem.

If My Passion Could Feel

If my passion could feel, it would spread its wings open, fly and soar Wide open.

Oh, freely gliding.

Free. Free. Free to be, to create, concentrate, relate from a clean slate.

And make visions of one’s own calling.

Embrace and face the world with a full succulent force and rejoice.

It would swoop up those who long and choose to be with me….finding peace and serenity within.

Ahhhh, yes, if my passion could feel….

Free, oooohhhh free, Wild-like free, free, freeeeeeeee…


- Lisa Thomas

I don’t know the authors name but the book is about a young girl, Mary, that is raped by roman soldiers and becomes possessed by demons. Jesus make the girl well and she follows him on his travels.

Does anyone recognize this book?
The title was somthing like Mary somthing. It is an adult book and I read it in 1995 or thereabouts. It was a paperback. It had a picture of a young woman on the cover.
I believe it was about Mary Magdalen
- absinthium1975

This article is devoted to the issue, which has been raised in a novel ‘Breath, Eyes, Memory’ written by Edwidge Danticat. The main character of the novel ‘Breath, Eyes, Memory’ written by Edwidge Danticatis Sophie, a young girl raised by her aunt and grandmother in Haiti. This is the first book of Danticat, in which she describes relationship between Sophie and women from her family.

The novel begins with Mother’s Day and the major character finds out that she will leave her home in Croix-des-Rosets and move to New York where her mother lives. The first chapters are devoted to Sophie’s life in Haiti, depicting her tender relationship with aunt. Sophie’s aunt does not have children and she loves Sophie’s very much. The author skillfully depicts their relationship. When a heroine congratulates her aunt on Mother’s Day, her aunt answers: ‘It is for a mother, your mother. When it is Aunt’s Day, you can make me one.’ (Danticat, p. 6) Sophie’s aunt loves her niece as her own daughter, but she does not pretend to a role of her mother knowing Sophie has had one.

In the first chapters the author portrays a calm and happy life in Haiti and the Haitian culture. Sophie’s life in New York, described in the last chapters is a direct opposite to Sophie’s life in Haiti. It is difficult for her to live there with her mother, whom she has never known and who left her. American culture is completely foreign to her. Edwidge Danticatmasterly represents Sophie’s confusion and her life in America. ‘Breath, Eyes, Memory’ is a beautifully crafted novel about family, culture, gender roles. It is a story of a young girl and her family – her aunt and grandmother, who surround her and play an important part in her life. It is a powerful novel about relationship between Sophie and her real mother.

The novel ‘Breath, Eyes, Memory’ depicts struggles and lives of women, their emotions and the violence of men. The story shows that real relatives who love Sophie are her aunt and grandmother. They raised her in spite of her origin and the reason she was born. This book shows that there is a bond between a mother and a daughter. However, this bond is strong if a mother raises her child.


- Olivia Hunt

I’ve been writing and writing the last few days, and now, the inevitable nightmare of all writers has returned… writer’s block.

I’m stuck on the sentence below. It sounds so amateur and I just can’t do anything to fix it. The sentence is driving me crazy, and I haven’t been able to write anything else. If I could just fix this sentence, I think I’ll be able to continue with the rest of my story.

Could anyone expand this sentence, or modify bits that don’t sound right? (In the story, the car crashes, with the main character - a young girl - and her father inside. The father dies, but the girl survives. This sentence is part of a flashback.)

*The cars span out of control and crashed, the chorus of scathing metal and screams was worse than the pain itself.*
I’m writing in past tense - “The car SPAN…”

I’m also writing in first person, from the perspective of the teenage girl.

I’d like the sentence to be expanded, if anyone can help.
Oops, you’re totally right, I’ve mixed up my tenses. I’ll fix it up. It’s in past tense.
Oh goodness. Sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong with my writing today. There’s only one car.
Thanks for all the advice!! I made so many silly mistakes. Trust me, my writing is usually not this horrific.
- Samantha

I always write over 500 words and well every time I try to fix it up it doesn’t make sense.

Im writing a ss about a young girl in the war who is trapped under a tree from a bomb falling and she goes unconcious, while she lay there dying she starts imagining the fairies has come to her.
In other words the fairies is a form of death.

Problem is I can’t keep it short.
- Addie D