Fun Fact Friday!

For my birthday, my wonderful sister gave me not only a lifetime supply of pens, but also a subscription to Mental Floss. At some point in the months prior to my birthday, she asked me, "Lauren, on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being absolutely loathe them and 10 being wouldn't rather hear anything else, how much do you love random facts?" I think I answered a seven, so I am now receiving this magazine filled with... you guessed it! Random facts!!

Lucky for you, it means Fun Fact Fridays will now have considerably less facts originating from my summer job in the travel industry.

So, here you go! ( I do hope you are somewhere above a five on the random fact scale, which would mean you actually enjoy these...)

1. The average body yields enough carbon to make 240 pencils.
2. A single happy friend is worth about $45,000. (I promise I'm not making this up - it was researched by someone with credentials.)
3. Half the people who have ever walked the Earth died of malaria.
4. Since I always have a writing related fun fact... I added my first song to my SNI playlist, which will hopefully soon be my new WIP! The song is this. I'm not sure why... don't judge me! (Okay except watching this music video and remembering how much I actually dislike Taylor Swift makes me wish it wasn't the first song... oh well!)


Thursday morning I woke up wondering how it was already Thursday. By the time I left work that afternoon I was convinced it was Friday. The good news? Today actually IS Friday! So Happy Friday! I do hope you enjoy it.

Why Sending a Query is Like Smashing a Bug

Okay, no, bugs are not the epitome of my hopes and dreams. They aren't things I've carefully crafted and spent my time on. But when I pressed "send" on my first query letter, I jumped back from my computer and shuddered a little. Just like after I squash a bug.

Here's the thing - once you kill a bug, that's it. It's not coming back to life even if you want it to. (Okay, I have had bugs jump back out of the kleenex when I was peeking to make sure it had died, but that's rare.)

Once you've sent your query letter, you can't retract it. It's out there for someone to read and judge. Everything I've ever wanted since I was five is in that query letter even though I haven't explicitly told the agent that.

So, now I wait. I do believe my email checking is about to significantly increase. I'm sticking with that tried and true saying, "Prepare for the worst, hope for the best."Because even if I get only form rejections in return, I'm moving forward. I'm putting myself out there and not letting fear keep me from pursuing my dream. Easier said than done, right?

What did it feel like when you sent your first query letter? Or are you hesitant to start querying? Let me know!

Fun Fact Friday!

Okay, I've been failing on the fun fact fridays lately... my apologies! I work at a place that plans customized international trips for people, so I learn a lot of useless facts about random cities and countries. That's where a lot of these fun facts come from. My coworkers and I have decided that we'd be very good at jeopardy. Anyway, here they are! Oh, and happy Friday!

1. An elephant has 50,000 muscles in its trunk alone.

From www.treehugger.com

2. The world's largest cuckoo clock is in Wiesbaden, Germany.
3. Frederick Chopin's heart is in an urn inside a column in a church in Warsaw. Is it just me, or is that odd?
4. I sent my first query letter EVER this week, and then some more! (I'll have a post about querying in a couple of days...)

The Blogfest of Death!

Today's blogfest is... The Blogfest of Death! Hosted by Tessa's Blurb. Be sure to go read the other entries which I'm sure are wonderful! I'm going to do my best to get around to everyone's entries, but there are a lot so it might take a little bit.

My entry on this lovely Sunday is from a work that took me several years to write and still, after many plot revisions, topped out at 28,000 words (yikes! too short!). I still like it, but it was truly most important for learning purposes. However, someone dies in it! Woohoo! Okay, not really happy, but for the purposes of this blogfest it is. And to correct myself, the death actually occurs before this scene. ( I hope that isn't against the rules...)

So here you go! I hope you enjoy...

Ruth may have been informed of where they were going, but the moment she saw her brother’s red pick-up truck in the middle of an intersection smashed against another car, surrounded by debris, truth began to register, and she forgot about everything else.

A wreck had indeed happened, and that was Robert’s truck.

A tow truck was beginning to load the vehicles, and Ruth stared at the seat in front of her, hoping Robert’s truck was totaled and going directly to a junk yard. She didn’t think her stomach, or her heart, could handle seeing it a second time.

The police officer was speaking, but Ruth didn’t hear much. Her parents nodded along like obedient students, but when Ruth leaned over to her mother beside her and, whispering, asked where they were going, her mother responded with a shrug and tears.

Eventually Ruth saw the hospital further down the street and began to understand. They must need identification. Maybe we are saying goodbye.

Tears still hadn’t formed. The irreversible reality was gradually settling in Ruth’s crowded mind—but the grief hadn’t sunk in. She sat more in bewilderment than in a state of hysterics.

She had also forgotten that Jake was in her class when she was called to the office, and he was probably wondering what was going on. So when she saw his name on her ringing phone she ignored it, having little desire to speak to him about anything as huge as this.

A minute later, ten minutes later—she wasn’t sure about time anymore—her family was walking through the hospital doors and Sam was running toward Ruth—enveloping her in a hug.

And she cried.

Cried for her brother whom she’d never see again.

Cried because she was so much happier to see Sam than she would have been to see Jake.

And she cried because as Sam was holding her he was whispering, “It’s going to be okay. God has a good reason for this. Give Him time to explain,” and suddenly she no longer knew what she believed.

Ruth had always been a staunch supporter of “everything happens for a reason.” Every world catastrophe she was able to pass off as there being some greater reason she just wasn’t privileged to. Even her parents’ divorce—as abrupt and unexplained as it was—was reasoned in Ruth’s mind as for the better in some way, at some point in time.


It was how Ruth dealt with everything. But suddenly, when real catastrophe had struck her—not people in other countries or people she had never met—it all seemed like such crap. How would anything really be better without her brother?


Through her tears she glanced around the emergency room, looking for other people crying. Her eyes fell upon a mother and her young son, running alongside an entering stretcher. All Ruth could see was blood, but her mind saw the man as someone to blame. He was the driver, she decided, even though he may have come in from the other side of town.


Had Sam’s arms not been around her; had Ruth not felt, for just a moment, so safe and at peace, she would have chased after him. 

Saying Common Things in an Uncommon Way

As I've been working on revising my WIP, I've been thinking about how writers have to say cliche things, but it doesn't have to be in a cliche way. Confused yet?

Okay, a simple example is having a character who has something they want to say, but can't. Or wants to say, but isn't given the chance. Or - on a more positive note - a character is finally able to say something he couldn't before. These circumstances arise a lot, because they are daily occurrences in real life. But just because a character is stripped of all his fear and can finally say what's on his mind doesn't mean you have to write, "Suddenly, I was able to speak."

That's cliche. However, just in the books I was reading the last couple of weeks I came across these instances when a writer said something very simple in a unique, beautiful way.

"And I'm left staring out the window, watching District 12 disappear, with all my good-byes still hanging on my lips." - Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins

Ah that just makes my heart hurt! That last clause is so much more powerful than, "and I didn't get to say good-bye." The same point is made, but much better execution.

"The tears dissolve the last block of ice in my throat. I feel the frozen stillness melt down through the inside of me, dripping shards of ice that vanish in a puddle of sunlight on the stained floor. Words float up." Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson

I'm not just being told that the narrator can finally speak, I'm seeing the process with my own eyes. And still, the last sentence is simple and to the point.

So do you share my opinion on these quotes? Do you ever find yourself struggling with this?

By the way, I recommend both of those books!

It's a Marathon, Not a Sprint

My roommate is training for a marathon, and one night when she was talking about how many miles she was trying to run that week I realized how similar our goals for the summer were. Only, mine involves sitting in a chair and absolutely no physical activity.

See, she's never run a marathon before, and I've I'd never written a book before. The unknown of our separate treks is frightening - neither of us knows  knew what to expect. All we know are the proper steps to take. So she slowly builds up her endurance each week, and I sit sat down every night and wrote down words. Any words - not necessarily the right words, yet.

I change my present tense to past because somewhere along the way, I actually finished the novel. I kept pressing forward and when I encountered that unknown, I discovered that it wasn't really all that frightening. It was invigorating. I was happier than I had been in a very long time, and I accomplished a life-long goal.

Sometimes, when a writer is sitting at 20,000 words and has never written more than 30,000, finishing an actual novel seems impossible. Just like when you've only ever run five miles, or even 13 in a half marathon (as my roommate has), running 26 just seems like a frightening, unreachable amount. I can't tell you how many times I wrote just a few pages of a story and then stopped, thinking I didn't have it in me to write a couple of hundred pages.

So for anyone out there who is at the beginning - who has never reached the end - remember that writing a book is a marathon, not a sprint. You can't write a book in one sitting, just like you can't jump up one day and say "I'm going to go run a marathon right now." If you can't see yourself ever reaching the end, stop thinking about the end. Write a page at a time, every day. Build up your endurance. If you run one mile at a time, eventually you'll have run a marathon.

Blogfest time!

So, I just found out about the "I can't say it" blogfest hosted by Shelley @ Stories in the Ordinary today, but it fits in so well with my WIP that I couldn't resist entering.

As a preface, I would like to say that I will definitely get to everyone's entries, but it won't all happen today thanks to that whole job thing. But I can't wait to read them all!

Okay, I'm not going to give much back story on this... I'm just going to share it. Here you go!

I was armed with my lemons, and when he asked about them I just said I really like the taste, which is ridiculous. Just because a person likes chocolate doesn’t mean he keeps it near him throughout his entire shift. But Justin nodded along like I was normal. Again, what is normal?

Since I really enjoy making drinks he took all the sweeping and table cleaning duties, and in the few moments customers weren’t lined up in front of the counter we talked about school and classes and going to college and how Austin and Dallas are different.

Dallas is definitely the better city, but he begged to differ. And the final blow came when he asked why I was here then, in Austin, and I had no response. Instead I ran to the bathroom. I actually didn’t need to throw up that time, I just needed space from the lies.

Sometimes I feel squandered by them, as though they are originating outside of me rather than within me. And sometimes I feel like that game at bowling alleys that convinces you to keep dropping in tokens or quarters because that block is sliding back and forth and eventually, for the right person, there are just enough tokens piled up that the block has nowhere left to go and pushes a handful of them over the edge. The lies keep piling up and eventually I just won’t have anywhere left to put them.

Eventually they are all going to come spilling out and I have the sense that the final lie that does the trick is not going to consult me about the time or place it slips out of my mouth.

(Also, because of the whole work thing, I'm posting this late Tuesday instead of Wednesday. Shhhhh don't tell)

Falling In Love...With a Character

More than once in my life,  I've finished a book and felt like one of the characters was out there somewhere still, if only I could find them. But I never can. And eventually I have to accept that when the book is over, my time with that character is up.

When I read The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold, I sat still, alone, for thirty minutes. I was hoping that if I didn't move Susie Salmon didn't cease to exist. And since she didn't exist anymore - since what was in those pages was all I was ever going to know about her and her family - I had to figure out how to go on with my life. It sounds melodramatic, I know, but it's truly what happened. Perhaps, then, it isn't hard to believe that even though I find it nearly impossible to choose a favorite book, that one is definitely high on the list.

Actually, here's something I wrote shortly after reading that book...

A weird feeling usually comes over me when I finish a book. The characters within it are forever frozen in time, and I am left only with reality. My first instinct is to go read another book, become lost in new characters, and travel to a new world. But then I feel somewhat guilty for leaving the last characters behind so quickly. I think, though, that just as there are moments and people in my life I will never forget, there are characters, chapters, and novels that not only changed me but will always remain a part of me, as though they existed beyond mere words placed on a page.

It's obviously happened with other books, too. I kid you not, one night I was praying and thinking through everyone I needed to pray for, and nearly prayed for a character in a book I was reading who was really struggling. Nearly, but just in time I remembered she was fake. 


As an aspiring author, that feeling I've had about characters is one I certainly want to give a reader. And as always, I think the best way to learn how to write that is to look at the books that accomplish it. So how do authors create characters that we can't forget? How do they become so real?


I've thought about it a lot, and I think one of the most important requirements for me is that the character must be relatable. I clearly don't want their life to be just like mine, because half the joy of reading is exploring the unknown I might otherwise never get to see, or perhaps doesn't even exist anywhere (cough cough, Hogwarts). But for me it's important that some aspect of their thoughts, actions, motivations, or personality makes sense to me so that I feel like I am experiencing every thing that doesn't make sense along with them.


Take Susie Salmon, for example. I clearly have not had all my body parts cut up and thrown away. And, believe it or not, I'm not writing this from the afterlife (Shocking, I know!). So how did I become so attached to her? First of all, her voice. She's young and innocent. She's upset. And she's watching her family deal with life in her absence. I couldn't relate to her circumstances, but I was right beside her as she watched life progress on earth. I understood why she had to watch, and that was enough.


So what makes you love a character so much you never want the book to end? And how do we, as writers, go about accomplishing that in our own works?