#do this!

Name: Amy 

Relationship status: Married (not to a karate twink, unfortunately)

Favorite color: All shades of blue

Pets: nope

Favorite food: French fries

Coke or Pepsi: Coke

Day or night: I’m a night owl

Chapstick or Lipstick: Lipstick

Text or Call: Text mostly I think

Last song I listened to: Who do you Love - Quicksilver Messenger Service

REVEAL URSELF OMFG

As I mentioned yesterday, there’s a lot of advice out there that I don’t follow because I don’t think ANYONE should. But there’s also writing advice I don’t follow because it’s not personally helpful to me. I don’t write every day. I don’t use outlines. However, there are some tips I think are valuable for EVERYONE, no matter what your process. Here are a few of those:

Read widely and with attention. Definitely read the kind of pieces you want to produce, whether that’s poetry, thrillers, romance or memoirs. Study the ones that are popular and/or critically acclaimed and ask yourself: what are the audiences responding to? How did the author successfully tell her tale? What structure did he use? Read outside your area as well to get ideas that will help keep your writing fresh.

Follow the “because” and “but” rule. If you find your story has scenes that are strung together with “and then,” it’s probably not a story. It’s a series of events. To build a narrative arc, the scenes must be linked in meaning, not just chronology. Example: a detective at a murder scene believes the woman who called in the emergency is the killer so he decides to take her downtown for questioning, BUT then a second body turns up two miles away, killed in the same fashion. Or: He takes the woman downtown for questioning, and she confesses BECAUSE he tricks her into revealing her shameful secret past as a unicorn juggler.

Get outside eyes on your work. Ideally, you want someone with editorial experience to critique your work before you trot it out in public. It can also be valuable to have feedback from a few readers who love the genre you are writing in. The editor will hone your prose and spot the plot holes. Readers will tell you whether they are dying to turn the page to find out what happens next.

Pay as much attention to your last sentence as you do your first. It’s imperative to hook your reader on those early pages, but the last pages are what will linger with them after they have finished your story. A successful ending means that your readers are more likely to pick up your next one.

No one tagged me! I stole this from my darling @fassymioamor8. ❤️ There are only 20 questions tho, I don’t know why. :’D

Nickname: Siel is my nick in here so that works

Zodiac Sign: Aries

Height: 160 cm (about 5′3 I think)

Hogwarts House: Hufflepuff

Last thing googled: Thor avengers age of ultron (for an art project)

Favorite musicians: Too many to count here - right now my faves are Jenni Vartiainen(x) and Paula Vesala (x), both awesome Finnish artists.

Song stuck in my head: No More by Disturbed & Minä olen tie by Marko Hietala

Following: ~ 350

Followers:  ~ 450

Do I get asks: Occasionally. Thank you! :3 (Always nice to get them, make my day so much better.)

Amount of sleep: on weekdays 7 hours, on weekends 9 hours.

Lucky number: 27

Wearing: Right now my pyjamas!

Dream job: Librarian / zoologist

Dream trip: Anywhere if I have good company

Instruments: Playing none

Languages: Finnish is my native. English, some Sweden, French, and Spanish. Some Korean because of Taekwon-Do. :D

Favorite song: Changes often. Right now Little Talks by Of Monsters And Men

Random fact: When people ask me to tell them a random fact I cannot think of anything / I think of too many things. I have lots of freckles? I have a panic disorder? I’m biromantic demisexual? I have a blue belt in Taekwon-Do? CHOOSE.

Aesthetic: Flower crowns, evergreen forest, old books, mermaids, urban neon signs, celestial maps, old skeletons, rib cages, colorful glass windows, ram horns, angel wings, old glass bottles, ancient myths.