The Return

I'm the worst. My last post was from April 2015......so I am the absolute worst. Let me just say it's so easy to fall into the habit of not blogging. Skip it one day and then the next and before you know it's been nearly year.

Honestly, I was a little surprised at how long it's been, but I know the exact reason why I stopped blogging. Technically there were many reasons, but one of the main reasons is because I was trying to do too many things at once (I have tendency to do that). I was trying to make this blog a place for reviews and update it with my writing journey and soon enough it became a chore to even think about it. And the more I look back at my old posts, the more I realize it wasn't just a chore. It was a little like wearing a mask. Don't get me wrong, those posts are still written in my voice and I wouldn't (and won't) take any of them down, but it doesn't feel like me. Or maybe that's just a sign that I did a lot of growing and changing in the past nine months.

But now that I took a very long break, I'm coming back with one goal in mind. The first goal I had. This is going to be a place to document my writing journey and that means, I don't need to have a post every week--frankly there's not that much I can really talk about in terms of my writing and my journey. It's a lot of what you think it is: sitting in front of a computer and typing away. And it means I don't have to pressure myself to put up reviews for books unless I want to. This is a safe place for me to just talk about things that I want to share. It is not a place for me to fulfill a certain requirement/obligation.

Now this isn't a recap post (that's going to be on here in a few days). This is more of a promise to myself that I don't have to do it all. But the things I do choose to do, I need to love. I've spent a lot of time thinking these past few months, and the conclusion I've come to is the fact that I owe it to myself to do this. I have this space and I might as well use it. Because ten years from now, I want to be able to look back. I want to see how I processed things.

Writing and publishing is a long journey and I want to remember all the tiny steps.

-Sarah

Excuses, excuses

Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. I know I haven’t updated this blog as much as I set out to for my resolution and I only have myself to blame for that, but I’m been busy. It all boils down to one word: school.

This has probably been the worst and best time of my college career. 

I’m graduating in a month (eek!) and this is the first time in about 15 years that I won’t be in school. It also doesn’t help that I’m graduating without my closest friends because I’m graduating a year early. And it definitely doesn’t help that I’ve lost complete motivation for anything remotely related to class. Worst of all, I really don’t know what I’m doing with my life or where I’m headed. To make it worse, it’s all anyone can ask me about.

But it is the best time I’ve had in college. One, I’m so close to being free (free I tell you!). Two, this past year, I’ve figured out some rather important things about myself. What I love. What I need to do. What I can’t survive without. For the first time in my college career, I’ve actually had some free time. I’ve explored my true passion and fallen even deeper in love with it (if that’s possible). I’ve been able to balance school, friends, reading, and writing. (At least I think I did a good job—we shall see once grades are released at the end of April). Nothing is better than being done with homework before it’s dark out because of the small amount of classes I’m taking. 

But I’m still busy. Stressful is an understatement some days. If you want to call my last semester terrifying, stressful, anxiety inducing experience of my life, then I will agree with you. I thought starting college was bad. 

Long story short—there have been too many things competing for my attention lately and I just haven’t had the energy or time to blog. I know it’s an excuse, but I swear I’ll do better. I’m going to try to stick to my resolution of updating my blog twice a week (I’m thinking Mondays and Friday). 

I’m not giving up. I made myself a promise and I’m going to work as hard as I can to keep it. 

Proud of YA

I tweeted about this topic not too long ago after I read The One by Kiera Cass (good, easy read if you’re looking for some drama filled romance). After letting the idea simmer for a couple of days, I realize a tweet and a Tumblr post wasn’t enough. Thus, this blog post was created.

It’s taken me a long time (20 years to be exact) to be comfortable with the things I love. I know it sounds a little crazy. That I’m uncomfortable and awkward with the things I love the most—writing and reading YA. It should be the simplest thing for me to talk about. It’s literally a never ending topic, but up until the middle of 2014 I wouldn’t talk about it. And if I did, it was always in the vaguest terms.

http://bookriot.com/2014/05/22/30-diverse-ya-titles-get-radar/

Q: What do you like to do? 

A: Write. Read.

That is literally how I would answer my classmates. It wasn’t even limited to people I didn’t really know that well. I never really talked about how much I loved writing and reading with even my close friends. Don’t even get me started on talking about that subject with my parents or family. They all knew I was passionate about it, but I never really talked about it.

I mean I’m not a very vocal person to begin with honestly. I rather listen than talk—mostly out of fear of saying something incorrect. And I think you guys know that look you get when you tell people that you read YA—I absolutely hate that look. There were always more reasons to listen rather than talk. 

But this past year, someone or something turned the switch in my brain. I became more open. I learned that I can talk about what I love doing even if the person I was talking to didn’t share my interests. I’m the one starting conversations because I have to tell my friends about the latest book I read or the scene I recently wrote. I’m the one chatting away in the bookstore pointing out all the books I’ve heard were good to my parents. 

I really don’t know what happened. Maybe I’m just getting older, more mature, more comfortable in my skin, blah-blah-blah. I’m just more open about the things I love to do now. I have no shame for loving the things I do and it’s the best feeling. The freedom to talk about things I’m actually interested in and not the things that I “should” be interested in. 

I’m not ashamed of reading/writing YA. I never really was, but I was always cautious. The things I do to satisfy my passion it seems takes time for me to share. They take time for me to be proud of myself and speak about them. I can’t even tell you how grateful I am that I’m able to do it with my writing now. There are thousands of things I want, but I really needed this. I needed the courage to talk about what I love. 

And I’m not saying, I’m completely open about it. I will still probably answer that I write/read to people that ask me what I like doing in this new semester. And I won’t always be willing to expand upon it. (It really just depends on my mood for the day, honestly). But there will be more days that I will want to talk and talk and talk until the person regrets saying “What do you like to do?” 

Because I love YA. Reading it. Writing it. Just being in it. Considering how close I am to being 21, I know I’m not a “young adult” but it’s what I love. 

I will have no shame. I will be proud. And I will talk about it without fear of judgment. 

Have you guys ever had trouble talking about your passion? Have you ever had to monitor what you say around certain people? Comment below!

Ash in Our Minds

Someone decided to comment (in real life) on the title of my blog and I figured I might as well write out an explanation in a post. 

First thing, Ash In Our Minds was just something I came up with. I am absolutely terrible with naming anything it could be the title of a book, name of a class in my fantasy novels, or the title of a blog. Despite this fact about myself, I still like trying to come up with creative/cool titles or names or classifications. It’s grueling work on my part, so when I do find something I like I stick to it like glue. As in I will not change the name of this blog until I achieve my dream of being published (I have another title waiting for that day.) 

Second, I love birds. Not living, breathing, chirping birds that wake you up in the morning, but like dark silhouettes of birds (which I have on my bedroom wall). 

 The idea of birds fascinate me. Furthermore, I’ve always been a fan of fantasy and what’s the first fantasy bird most people think of? A phoenix. (I swear this will all make sense at the end of this post, so just bear with me.)

Third, I’m the type of person to find beauty in sadness. I have a penchant for darker, more negative things—don’t you ever just wonder what makes something so…dark. I like to consider it a residual part of my “moody years” which amounted to me wearing a black t-shirt now and then and refusing to believe anyone outside of my family and friends really understood me at all—oh how I don’t miss middle school (before I started writing at least).

So now to bring it all together. As subtitle for my blog so kindly puts: “After we exhaust the fire and passion in our minds, all that’s left is ash”, the title of my blog revolves around passion. I have a passion for writing and while passion is usually associated with the heart, I figured it would adept to correlate my passion with my mind because of all the story ideas that form in my head. Also sometimes the passion is so intense, so hot, and so bright that I can’t do anything but write it all down and get it all out there leaving only ash. The moment when you’re completely lost to writing that you can’t hear a thing around you is the moment I live for. The time when I can just forget everything else in my life and just focus on my writing, my story, and my passion.

It’s not as morbid as it seems. I swear it. My title’s not about burning out. It’s not literally about the ash that fire leaves. It’s my way of expressing how much writing consumes me. It takes over every square inch of my mind and when I’ve finally written all of it down. I’m left with the residual, the ash, in my mind. That’s the only way I know how to handle this. The only way I know how to deal with writing. It’s about how a phoenix has to rise from the ashes to be born again. With the exhaustion of our passion by transferring it onto paper only breathes more life into more ideas and more stories. 

That’s why I named it Ash In Our Minds. 

Comment below if you have any thoughts you want to share. I would love to hear them! 

Hello, my name is...

Hello, my name is….

Sarah. If you’re reading this, that’s great. If you’re casually pressing the back button because you realized this is definitely not the page you’re looking for, that’s great too. Have a great day! 

If you’re still reading, let me introduce myself. You already know my name so I won’t repeat that. I’m twenty years old. I’m a full time college student with only a semester left until I have to face the “real world” and frankly, I have no plans past the next four months.

I don’t really know what happened, but one day it was like someone just flipped a switch on and with that my desire to be published was alit. Now you’re muttering, “So what, Sarah”. Yeah, I know how it seems. Another twenty year old writing stories in her spare time hoping to be published. That seems like what all English majors want. 

Well, I’m not a English major. I’m studying Biochemistry and it is far too late for me to start over and choose English as my major (not that I really believe that I would, I love biochemistry, honestly). 

I mean I definitely considered English/Creative Writing when I started college, but that got lost in the hustle and bustle of choosing a more “stable” major, something that I could use to get into Medical School. Yep, I’m also Pre-Med…or I was. I might be Pre-Pharmacy now. Or I might just decide to forgo either of those options and go into writing. 

Which is why I started this blog. It’s a way to record my path to publishing (if I ever get there) and make some friends along the way. I originally decided to start this blog at the start of the new year (sort of like a New Years’ Resolution) and because my semester is rather busy, but I’ve been itching to start it, so I literally said “screw it” on my way back to my apartment after class today. I want to blog. I can have two readers or 2000 readers. I’m going to make the effort to blog at least every other day about writing and life in general so I can find out what it is I want out of life. 

Now that’s out of the way. Let me introduce myself again, just because I can -shrugs-. 

Hi, my name is Sarah. I’m a twenty year old completely and utterly in love with writing and reading YA books. I’ve been writing since I was fourteen—it all started with a  girl named Faith a healer who had to learn she had far more wounds to heal on herself before she could heal others. 

I continued writing in high school and then came to college. Writing my freshman year was non-existent, truthfully. I was struggling enough with classes and eating alone in the dining hall and making some new friends. Sophomore year I didn’t write very much either. But the summers after freshman and sophomore year—I wrote like a madwomen. I finished one manuscript the freshman year summer and 1.75 manuscripts this past summer. 

Now as a junior graduating early, I’ve been hit with those “big, important” questions. What am I going to do with my life? What do I need to do to get into this school or that one? What’s going to get me a stable job in the future?

And with all of these questions, I realized how much I love writing. How much I want to be published. How much being a YA author would be the dream job. 

So I decided I’m actually going to revise these manuscripts on my computer, continuing writing new ones, and start to eventually query agents. Basically, I’m going to take one step into the publishing/writing path. This isn’t something I ever want to forget—whether it works out the way I want it to (if I get an agent and a book deal) or if it doesn’t (if it doesn’t work and I have to return to my writer’s cave writing manuscripts that won’t see the light of day). 

I don’t ever want to forget. This is my way of recording everything. This is me taking a chance. This is me making writing a priority. This is me loving writing more than I’m scared of failing at it. This is me following my passion. Most of all, this is me being honest with myself. 

Whether you’re only going to read this post or all the subsequent ones—Hi, my name is Sarah and I’m an aspiring writer/author. (Pretend I shouted that from the highest hill/mountain/building in your respective town or city).