The Perils of Point of View

In the early stages of writing, there can be a lot of road blocks that prevent writers from getting into their stories. Most people seem to struggle with something like not having a plot figured out, or not having a good opening scene, but for me, the biggest struggle when beginning a new project is pinning down a point of view, or POV. While I advise the aforementioned writers to just wing it or to write later scenes, respectively, there isn’t really a work around for POV. You can’t write a text-based story without a POV.

Thoughts on Novels-in-Verse

I'm writing a novel(la)-in-verse, but when I tell people that, many of them wonder what I'm talking about. This isn't too surprising, given that the vast majority of novels-in-verse are written only for children and teens, and are a fairly new phenomenon, but I think they might be a little more common that most people believe.

Nano(inVerse)WriMo

It's that time again! Time for NaNoWriMo, when (seemingly) every other writer in existence vows to write 50,000 words of a new novel in one month, but when I say, "You ain't the boss o' me!" and do my own challenge that's way easier and won't completely destroy my desire to create. Forget "NaNoRebel"; I'm a veritable NaNoNe'er-Do-Well!

Thoughts on Horror

“Horror” is a difficult genre to pin down, because there are so many things that horrify us. Gore, death, the unknown, stepping on a snail barefoot (10/10 would not recommend). For the longest time, I didn’t think I liked horror until I started reading r/NoSleep, a subreddit wherein people tell fictional scary stories, but everyone—author and readers—pretend they're real, like a strange forum for people who have had terrifying and otherworldly experiences that you might accidentally run across if you were researching the supernatural (there is, by the way, a different subreddit for nonfiction accounts of supernatural encounters). I love the stories on r/NoSleep, and after thinking about it, realized that I also really like Asian horror like Seeds of Anxiety, The Eye, and some episodes of xxxHolic. On the other hand, I’m not a fan of Ringu or The Grudge. I can’t stand most American horror movies, be they monster movies, zombie flicks, or slasher films, but I like do A Quiet Place and most of Shyamalan's work. I theorize that, for me, it’s comes down to the type of horror in question. Thus, I thought I would examine these types and break the horror genre into several subcategories, based on how the horror is achieved.

Life Update: Interning Etc.

I'm swamped with schoolwork right now, so rather than write a long blog post, I thought I would do a mini life update with pictures.