This will by my very first time participating in Beautiful People, but it’s a good time to start! This year I plan to do far more writing a get a few accomplishments under my belt, so let’s see how this goes!

Beautiful people is a meme posted by Paper Fury that asks writers questions about their characters. It’s definitely good for development and it’s a good way to connect with other writers!

What were your writing achievements last year?

I wanted to finish my first novel, which has a working name of Fade. Definitely not going to stick with that name, though.. do you know how many books on Goodreads are called Fade? Sometimes good titles are hard to come up with.

Tell us about your top priority writing project for this year?

I’m writing a middlegrade with the working title of “Don’t You See It?” But I doubt that’ll be the final title, as it’s too close to “Do You Believe Me?,” another Middlegrade I’m working on, and they’re unconnected. DYSI is about a young girl, Anya, who discovers a monster has been living in her room and influencing her throughout her entire life. As she realizes it’s there, it begins to give her more solid instructions for curing her loneliness, which leads to chaos for her. I’ve barely started, but I’m looking forward to writing more!

List 5 areas you’d like to work the hardest to improve this year.

I want to improve my characters, time spent writing, dedication, structure, and realism this year. Structure because this is a book that will have a VERY strict timeline, and realism because when I was writing Fade, I kept thinking of things I wanted to throw in and made work until the book because a moshpit of mostly-unconnected thoughts. I won’t do that with my middlegrade!

Are you participating in any writing challenges?

NaNoWriMo!! I have yet to ever fully complete a writing challenge with them, but maybe this is the year I’ll be successful! I’ll probably participate in Camp NaNo, because you can set your own goals with that, and it doesn’t have to be 50,000 words.

What’s your critique partner/beta reader situation like and do you have plans to expand this year?

My situation is completely nonexistent! The closest thing I have to a critique partner is my fiance, and he doesn’t read middlegrade so he won’t be helping with this one. Anyone looking for a partner?

Do you have plans to read any writer-related books this year? Or are there specific books you want to read for research?

I’ll soon be getting a book in the mail about grammar and structure, but that’s to improve my skills in my goal to become an editor rather than for my own writing. But I will be reading books for “research” if you can call it that.. I’ll be reading Patrick Ness’s A Monster Calls for inspiration, as a reminder of why I wanted to try a middlegrade. I’ll also be on the lookout for other good middlegrades since I mostly read YA; I need to know what makes a good middlegrade a good middlegrade.

Pick one character you want to get to know better, and how are you going to achieve this?

Anya’s main bully, a girl I’ve named Cassy. She does some awful things but, like all bullies, she has her reasons. I want to be able to really represent the significant side of bullies: the side that bullies because they’ve been bullied. And not by other kids.

Do you plan to edit or query, and what’s your plan of attack?

My plan of attack is to find out what “query” means in this regard. I know absolutely nothing about publishing through a company. Only editing and advertising.

Toni Morrison once said, “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”  What are the books that you want to see more of, and what “holes” do you think need filling in the literary world?

I want to see more books with darker main characters, like Neil Gaiman’s “The Graveyard Book,” and Patrick Ness’s “A Monster Calls.” I don’t think the literary world has too many holes, but there’s a certain feel of book that I’m looking for that those two have. Those are the books I love to read and the one I’m trying to write.

What do you hope to have achieved by the end of 2016?

I want to finish my first book! I want to have it outlined, written, and edited by the end of the year! It doesn’t need to be fantastic, and honestly I doubt it will be, but I want it to be done. Then I can tweak it until it IS fantastic or write something else that is.

 

So happy 2016 everyone! I hope everyone else has some good writerly goals and all the motivation needed to accomplish them! Good luck and God Bless!