Category Archives: fiction

Learning outside the classroom, one Breeze story at a time.

Posted on October 3, 2010 | Leave a comment

I think my favorite part of writing for JMU’s student-run paper is the people I’ve met. Sometimes I take a story, set up interviews, and afterward, I feel like I got so much more out of it than just the facts.

That seems to happen a lot with me at school. Freshman and sophomore year, I took almost all gen ed courses. US History, Anthropology and Art History stand out. I came away from those classes with an appreciation for the knowledge I’d learned in a way that probably wasn’t normal. How many college kids go around saying they really enjoyed memorizing dates and artist names and analyzing a giant canvas with paint dripped all over it entitled “Autumn Rhythm”? Not many.

On Thursday, I’d about had it with the week, ready to throw away all hope left in humanity. It was pouring rain and I didn’t have an umbrella with me. The weather had gone from 90 to 65 in three days, and I felt like that only mirrored my inability to comprehend anything I was learning in my classes. I felt like I was, pretty literally, drowning. But I had to meet with a professor for one of my stories, and talking with him, seeing the affinity he has for his job, made me feel better. Who wouldn’t want to be happy doing something they love, even as it pours down buckets outside? That’s what I want for myself some day.

Which is why I’ve spent the last three days busting my butt to get this latest manuscript edited. I started about two weeks ago, having just finished a Writer’s Digest course, but just recently I revved it up, taking my pen and giving myself no mercy as I ran through sentences, ideas, plot and back story in my head. And on Friday, I checked the mail to find an issue of Writer’s Digest my mom had sent me before leaving the country for a trip. On the cover? 27 agents seeking representation.

Yes. This is the push I need to move myself one step closer to being like that professor, being completely happy with where I’m at.

I feel like I’ve grown so much since I started four years ago, but I still stay up until one a.m. running through the words in my head, trying to make them fit into the big picture, trying to link scenes and watch sub-plots pan out. At the end of the day, all I want to do is write.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in being yourself, fiction

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Writing is more than what you know.

Posted on August 28, 2010 | Leave a comment

For at least the last four or five years, I’ve put my whole heart and soul into believing one silly little piece of advice: write what you know.

Writing magazines, how-to books, and authors all said the same thing. They said write what you know, what’s true to you. They said great fiction stems from familiarity because it has a sense of truth to it. Because people will pick up your book, flip through it, and read it. Because if you want to get published, this is where your credibility will shine through.

You must pour your heart out on a piece of paper like shards of broken glass and let other people take it all in: the good, the bad, the downright awful. And they will take it in because it is real. If it isn’t, the glass will polish itself, the shards will piece back together, and nothing about your so-called experience will resonate.

But I don’t really buy that anymore.

In the last two days, I have covered political debate in a state I’m not a resident of (VA) and captured the essence of growth experiences I haven’t been apart of (freshman orientation guides). I’ve taken in the bits and pieces gathered from someone else’s world entirely and let their hopes, their dreams, their aspirations shine on paper. I’ve created a looking glass into their heart that does not cloud over with my secondhand accounts of their experiences.

On the contrary, I’m beginning to believe that if you can take in the raw thoughts and feelings of someone else, of something else, and create meaning out of it, you’re doing something right. If you can write a story about a girl who lost a mother or was abused by her father, even if you’ve never experienced either of those things, how can you hold onto that one little piece of advice for dear life? How can you cling to something so strongly when you know otherwise?

The whole world is filled with beautiful experiences and heartbreaking stories, but we cannot live them all on our own. That’s just not possible. That’s why we read books and watch movies and create entirely fictional stories in our heads. That’s why so many endings will always reside in our future. We can never know where the path will take us, but we can always listen to where other people have gone before.

Good fiction, even good nonfiction, draws from these strong emotions we feel. We can take a hundred different scenarios and begin to imagine a realistic reaction because we have felt something similar or seen something comparable.

If we can breathe life into someone else’s worries and disappointments, dreams and thanksgivings, why shouldn’t we?

→ Leave a comment

Posted in fiction

Tagged , ,

Sometimes, direction leads you elsewhere.

Posted on July 19, 2010 | Leave a comment

And that’s okay. As long as it leads you somewhere. Six Sentences had a contest titled “Mind Games”, and when I first sat down to write, I ended up with what is now called “Hit or Miss”, a far cry from mind games:

Barry sat across from me, staring so hard at my forehead that I thought he might burn a hole straight through it. My fingers hovered over the white pegs, even before he called out “B-12″, sinking my cargo ship. I added another white peg to the boat, shaking my head. “Liar,” he called out, standing up and peering over the other side of the grayish plastic barrier to find all my boats filled with white pegs, my game long over. That’s how I ended up in the other room, eavesdropping while my husband of almost fifty years asked the customer service representative if he could speak to Milton Bradley himself about what to do when he found his wife cheating. At a board game.

I’m happy with it, but sometimes it baffles my mind. How does someone just sit at their computer with this small inkling of an idea, and come out with a life? A life that’s never existed before? Do we have the authority to do that? That’s some pretty powerful stuff, writing is.

Jumping off that, a great book needs a great image on the cover. I know, I know. “Don’t judge a book by it’s cover,” right? That’s half the battle for me. The other half? A great first sentence.

Here are some of my favorite first sentences from the YA genre:

“You can tell a lot about people from what they order for breakfast.” – THE FORTUNES OF INDIGO SKYE, Deb Caletti

“To say my life changed when my mother married Dino Cavalli (yes, the Dino Cavalli) would be like saying that the tornado changed things for Dorothy.” – WILD ROSES, Deb Caletti

“Not to brag or anything, but if you saw me from behind, you’d probably think I was perfect.” – NORTH OF BEAUTIFUL, Justina Chen Headley

And why are they great opening sentences? Because the words are so definitive, so matter-of-fact, that you’re forced to ask a boatload of questions: “Who ordered breakfast that was so transparent?” or “What did Dino Cavalli do that was so life-altering?” or “Why from behind? What am I missing?” There are hundreds of examples throughout written history, but these are just a few quick examples. My books each have to have a powerful cover and a powerful first sentence. I’m going to give you a small glimpse into each.

“Even if I had enjoyed this flight, what followed could only be described as inevitable. With my eyelids finally drifting closed, my last few moments of peace in this world were cut short by a loud, overly friendly voice. It had been my third, maybe fourth attempt to sleep.” – RUNNING IN CIRCLES

“In the beginning, you never see the end, but it’s there. Just a little glimmer off in the distance that you have to squint to see. Beginnings were always the same: the morning after, so many bad decisions just reek of alcohol and loose lips. There I was, okay, several mornings after, trying to do laundry so I could rid myself of any memory of the stain on my shirt, the smell of liquor on my clothes. In the laundromat across the street from my neighborhood. And I prayed, just prayed, that my father didn’t drive by, peering inside the glass interior to see my tired face staring back.” – LEAP OF FAITH

Note: The covers are mock-ups, and I’d love to hear opinions on them, even though I fully intend on redoing both of them at a later date. Right now they are placeholders for my website, which I hope to launch in the fall.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in fiction

You know what they say about good news.

Posted on July 16, 2010 | Leave a comment

It comes in bundles, hitting you all at once like a wave drowning you in happiness. My cousin once said his mom’s life was like drowning in chocolate. Really good, but really hard. Maybe mine’s just like bathing in chocolate. I don’t know if I’m quite at the drowning stage.

At any rate, I have news to share. That “Mind Games” contest I mentioned on Monday? Out of more than 300 entries, my entry was selected as one of the stories to be published. In a book. A “Mind Games” book. Of course I already bought the book, and it’s being shipped to my house.

Another contest is in the works. This one, I failed to mention, since I didn’t bother to vote in it, but somehow that didn’t matter. It’s for the June 2010 Six of the Month, also on the 6S Social Network, and the 6 finalists, myself included, were announced today. Now people have until Thursday, the 22nd, to vote for their favorite. As far as what the finalists will be receiving, I’m not sure yet. It’s all hush hush as they say. I’m going to post mine below, and if you like it enough to vote, please do so.

“Half a World Away” by Kaleigh Somers

We ran through that cornfield, dodging branches, unable to see more than a few feet in front of us. And I prayed that if I squeezed his hand hard enough, if I never let go, we could break through some time-space continuum. When we stopped, me a few steps behind him, smacking hard into his back, I thought we’d done it. Above us, a rainbow covered the sky for miles in either direction, illuminating it. “Aw man,” he said, shaking his head and dropping my hand, bringing me back to reality. Instead of a pot of gold, an endless supply of wishes, another world altogether, we were left only a moment away from where we’d started: two kids being called inside for dinner.

Check back soon. I’ll be posting my 6S Mind Games story along with some mock up book covers.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in fiction