Trigger Warning

I've been wresting with whether I should write this or not for a while now, and maybe it's a little soon. I don't know. But I've been having a lot of issues getting past this problem for too long-- a lot of stress dreams and nightmares-- and I think getting it all out there will help. So, I guess I'm coming back to my writing with a bit of a bang, since I'm putting a lot of personal stuff out there here. Sit tight. I guess I should add a trigger warning since there is mention of selfharm and suicide. There are a lot of things that went into me being the way I am today, but I don't need to get into all of that. For the purpose of this piece, all that needs to be known is where I was mentally the months leading into my senior year. I had already wrestled with bad eating habits in previous years because of medications I was taking. Due to some things that happened, I got to where I wouldn't eat and I was selfharming every night. I would dig at my skin in the shower, wishing I could just stop existing to some degree. I was shutting down completely. I had made an online friend who lived a few towns over-- who I had no intention of meeting, let alone being with-- around midsummer. He spent the summer telling me about his psuedorelations, pissing and moaning about his family, how his dad was trying to kick him out, and how much he hated them-- taking breaks only to ask me if I had changed my mind about whether I wanted to be with him or not... as if I should have interest in a guy who brags about literally throwing his siblings across the house in a fit of rage. Yeah. Real winner. Real red flag. Fastforward to the start of my senior year. He had started "dating" a girl from my school, but within a few days, I had spotted her with another guy. And of course, my deep-seated need to help literally everyone but myself kicked in and I told him about what I saw. This is where things got very confusing in my head, and I began ignoring a lot of things that I shouldn't have. The sentament was mistaken for interest-- on both fronts. I was seventeen and in a very fragile state. After he wound up breaking up with her, we talked on the phone. We wound up deciding to meet, his parents driving him, my mom driving me. The moment I saw him step out of the car, everything in me said to leave. I was on high alert and no part of me wanted to be near him. But I couldn't exactly tell my mom my brain was saying no and that something wasn't right about him. Things got very complicated very fast. At the time we met, it was the end of August and I still wasn't really eating and was still selfharming. He had gotten me to start eating again and I stopped selfharming for the time. It seemed like a good thing. I was in such a state of disrepair that I had let myself believe he had saved me. I was on the fasttrack to the grave, and he stopped me. And for that, I was supposed to love him, right? By December that same year, my mom had let it leak that he was proposing to me. And my heart dropped. It wasn't what I wanted. It was the middle of my senior year. But how was I supposed to tell the person who saved my life no? He proposed on my birthday-- December 24th. I didn't want to, but I said yes. I owed him as much. My mom insisted we get married before I went to cosmetology school, that way I would be able to pull loans to cover it. So the wedding was set for June just after graduation. Things went fine for a short bit. There were a few moments that reminded me why I didn't want to be there in the first place-- he always said if it didn't effect him directly, he didn't care. I couldn't stand how incredibly selfish of a human he was. It disgusted me. I managed to overlook it for years though. The things I couldn't overlook though... that list was endless and overtime, left a few scars. When we had first gotten together, he had told me he didn't like it when women wore tight clothes. He prefered them wearing loose-fitting clothing, hiding themselves. After he made comments about my clothes enough, I got to where I only really wore tee-shirts and jeans. I left him in 2020 and I'm still trying to get used to the idea of wearing what I want. He once made a comment about how women who had slept with more than two men were whores. Meanwhile he was the third guy I had been with. When I told him that, he got angry, telling me I never told him I had slept with two other guys, as if he hadn't slept with more than that. Something to know is I went through a lot of sexual abuse through my junior and high school years, some of it I repressed. With that being said, I over time ran into situations that made me remember. And everytime, I mentally broke. I stayed in bed for a whole day, sobbing, curled up in a ball. When I talked to him about it, you know what he said? "My cousin raped me and I'm not messed up about it. Why are you?" After these incidents were said and done, I had a solid case of haphaphobia. I wouldn't let him touch me. My guy friends weren't even allowed to hug me. Strictly highfives-- with permission. Around 2015, I began to fall into a deep depression. I drank almost every night to try to cope with my thoughts. I had a lot of suppressed anger and I wrote and drew about it pretty often. I talked to my friends about my suicidal ideations and they helped me through, but things continued. I had eventually had a complete mental break and said in the middle of a bar with my friends that I wanted to kill myself before laughing maniacally, segueing into full on sobbing. I constantly wanted to leave him or just stop existing entirely, but I couldn't bring myself to for the same reasons I was with him in the first place. That same year, he had been working 2pm to 12am as a supervisor for his job, but he often got back a few hours late. That wasn't unusual. But there were some days where he wouldn't get home until around 4am. One of the night's this happened, I had a feeling something was off. I woke up every hour with a bad feeling. Fast forward to 2017 and we had moved a town over. He called me about an hour after getting to work one day, telling me to go onto facebook and block a certain person, along with their phone number. I didn't need him to tell me why-- I knew. I asked anyways. Back in 2015, he had cheated on me for some woman in her fourties. She had hoped he could talk me into having an open marriage. He had told me that he would never stop caring about her and that he had developed a bit of an obsession with her. The only reason he told me is because she threatened to send me screenshots of their conversations. When he tried to explain himself, he said he was lonely because I wouldn't touch him. It didn't matter that it was because I was mentally screwed and literally couldn't handle being touched without having a negative physical and mental response. He also said he thought I was cheating on him for my best female friend. Istill stayed. Because he saved me and I owed him. My brother compared the situation the Stalkholm syndrome and I guess it sorta fits. Over the next few months, I had multiple people come to me saying he was cheating with multiple other people. It was around this time period that I attemted suicide for the first time. Things were very bad for a very long time. I woke up most mornings with the thought, "I want to kill myself." He didn't allow me to work, so unless my friends were free to hang, I was stuck, wasting time at home. I would go on hikes when I could, but I developed adult-onset asthma, so I couldn't even do that anymore, really. After a while, I stopped staying because I felt like I owed him and started staying because I thought I deserved it after so many years of being there when I shouldn't have been. When things went wrong, I told myself, "I deserve this. I deserve to be unhappy." For years, I told myself this. He had always had some anger issues, but over the years, they got worse. He had a tendancy to ignore me for hours when he was mad for any reason, but his anger was usually towards video games. He had a tendency to not properly direct that anger. He broke two tvs within a few years. We had to replace multiple ps4 controllers because he kept throwing them. He broke a standing fan along with a vintage lamp-- the hit to the lamp nearly hit me instead. When I bothered with playing games online with him, he would talk down to me regularly. After enough times of having to mute my mic while I cried, I just stopped playing with him. Now, everyone I live with has to be hyperaware of my response to yelling when it comes to technology because I'm extremely prone to flinching away and crying. His anger wasn't limited to this though. On multiple accounts, he threw my cat into walls and doorframes in fits of rage. I had adopted a staphordshire pit/rot weiler mix pup and she had a habit of finding pretty much anything she could get her teeth on and running with it. She had gotten ahold of one of his socks once and he decided grabbing a rock the size of a large head and trying to smash her with it was the proper response. As far as my family is concered, he got to the point that he didn't even bother being nice anymore. When they were coming over, he got aggressively angry and would curse about how he wasn't going to have time to play his games before having to go to bed. Once they actually got there, that attitude wouldn't change and he would just hole up in the bedroom the whole time. They say trauma takes away your options. It really does. I went through so much mental turmoil for all those years. And for all those years, the only people I really had to talk to about it were my best friends. But it's those same traumas that led to me losing those friends. Could you imagine? Going through so many years of your life wanting nothing more than to escape, and the only way you have to escape is your best friends. And those friends abandon you... because they can't handle your issues anymore, so selfinvolved they didn't even realize what you were going through. In leaving my ex, I literally had to completely start over. I had never been allowed to keep a job, didn't know if I could handle paying bills on my own, had no friends left, and quite frankly, I didn't know if I wanted to continue.

Let's talk about YA

I'm not sure about other genres, but YA seems to have a lot of controversy surrounding it, not including the general question made by many cynical adults of whether it's actually any good. I mean, between people complaining about sexual assault, the usually less than extensive diction, lack of characters that are completely out of their mind by circumstance, and the supposedly weak plot, people find a lot to complain about.

I've noticed a reoccurring issue lately and it's a bit bothersome to me. Twice in a matter of three days, I found posts talking about authors being treated poorly. First, it was a post about Cassandra Clare, author of The Mortal Instruments, among other things and how some fans treat her over the death of her own characters. Two days later, John Green, which I believe is enough of a household name at this point that I don't need to name off any of his work.

When Cassandra Clare spoke about it, she seemed to think dehumanizing was something only female authors dealt with, but crazed fans aren't the only things that can lead to this problem, which became apparent to me when I ran across a Buzzfeed article about John Green. The article seems to be missing now, unfortunately, but the gist of it was some girl was basically calling him a pedophile... for writing YA romance. Kind of absurd, really.

Outside of that, I've seen a plethora of other authors get nailed for not drowning their characters in mental disorders from the ordeals they've witnessed and gone through. It's totally bizarre to me.

As for the matter of it being any good or not, that's completely subjective. But... I don't think the length of words should really be taken into account. Who was it that said, "Does he really think big emotions come from big words?" Right. I believe that was Ernest Hemingway. How can someone judge an author or book's value by things like this? Some of the most hauntingly beautiful stories I've read have been YA. Big words don't carry big meaning. Description, voice, style, and a good story are what make the book. 

"But the plot is over done. How do they keep pedaling this crap out?" What plot isn't over done? How many books, movies, video games, and comics are there out in this world at this point? And tell me, please, how any story can be entirely unique at this point. A story having similarities to others is inevitable at this point. That doesn't break the story, though. It can still be a completely enchanting tale. The only one's complaining are the people that think YA is strictly for teens.


I just think people really need to give YA authors a break. There's enough hate in this world already and so much disdain towards a book genre is a waste of energy.

"Tails for Pouncing."

So about a month ago, I was at Hastings in Conway, Arkansas with my best friend and there was a woman with a little table set up in the front, doing a signing. At first, I was feeling a bit anti-social, so we sort of just skipped over the area.

I was telling my friend about how awful I had seen some authors get treated in that particular store in the past and in doing so, I had convinced her to talk to the lady. So on we went to the little table in the front.


As it turns out, her name is Karen Hill and she's a really nice lady.

She wrote Cat Tails along with My Peekaboo Moon. Now, as you can tell by the names, they're children's books which generally isn't my cup of tea. But the artwork for My Peekaboo Moon had caught my eyes.

She went on to tell us about the illustrators and her inspiration for the books. It was a pretty pleasant meeting and if you are interested in buying children's books, these two are ones you should look into.

And if you are looking for other writers/authors of the genre to befriend or simply talk to, you should try getting a hold of her. She has a website called cattailsandfriends.com Just click the link and you're there. You'll find contact information there.

Can we just find a balance between character and plot?

I can't manage to find a book that isn't unbalanced lately. These authors are putting so much detail and work into their stories, but in doing so, they're somehow forgetting about the characters. How? Well, I'm not entirely sure. Obviously, books can be plot driven and that's fine. But it's generally apparent when it is, which brings me to my point.

All the detail in the world will not make up for poor character development. If your character has the personality of a box of rocks, it's going to take away from all that work you put into world-building. I've read reviews on books by authors guilty of this and I'm not the only one feeling this issue. Of course, it's probably not intentional. Which I guess leaves me with saying (yet again) find some character development sheets. Fill them out for every important character and don't put more into a side character than you do the main. The main character, if the story is character driven is-- as the title would suggest-- the driving force.

Detail is great. Always work on detail, but don't slight the characters while you're at it. It could most definitely be a problem that drives readers away.

Manuscript Maven

One of my writing friends, Sharon Mayhew, has started a business these past months and I've been wanting to talk about it but I've been having issues logging onto here for months. Fortunately, I'm here and able to talk about it now.

I had been having issues finding someone to look over my work for me, and she was there. As far as editing businesses go, I'm not well versed, but she's been helpful ever since a friend of mine introduced me to her last year. She pushed me to submit a query into a contest she and Terrie Wolf were doing and I am so glad I did. As for her line edits and critiques, I couldn't say enough. Her work is thorough and diligent. She is so incredibly gentle in delivering her thoughts about the work and she keeps the writer's voice in mind. Her penchant for minimalistic word usage has helped the flow of my writing tremendously as has her eye for noticing my typos and occasional laziness. 

More to the point, her business is called The Manuscript Maven. She does line editing, critiques, and author coaching for YA, MG, CB, and PB manuscripts. Any other information can be found in the link including how to contact her. 

Also, if you'd like to follow her, here's the link to her blog. 

Just a quick less technical tip

Ok, so lately I’ve been having some issues. Issues being… I feel like everything I do is mediocre. I sat around all day moping, wishing I were better at something. Anything, really. And after a few hours of this, I thought about where I started.

My writing was tantamount to the writings of a bored, eighteen-year-old’s attempt at writing… Well, "tantamount" is putting it lightly since that's exactly what it was. It was my senior year and I had just come into my love for reading. I had plenty of time on my hands so why not? I didn't note what it was going to be about. I didn't outline. I just... went for it. Oh, what a mess it was.

Three years later and my writing has gotten better. I don’t know how much better, but better, nonetheless. 

So, really, my tip is just don’t give up because you feel like you’re failing. Practice makes perfect. Reading doesn’t hurt either. If you feel like you are at a dead end, read. Read until you are nearly frantic to get back to your writing. 

If you’re serious about your writing, understand that it isn’t just something you jump into and are magically good at. It takes time-- years-- to understand and there is always room for improvement.

Just throwing more tips around

This is just a short list of tips I wrote last year. These, by the way, are lists I originally made on my Tumblr. I figure they may do some good on here.

Let's just get right into it. Your characters need to be dynamic. They need to seem like they could be real people and not robots. Make them cruel. Make them compassionate. Make them individuals. Make them real and remember events they go through will effect them. Character development sheets can help out a lot with this. Just look up “Character development sheet” on google and go. After that, you can write out their characteristics and make it come to life and apply it to your writing.

If you aren’t going to make an outline, at least go into it with at least a basic understanding of what the piece will be about. I made the mistake of just going at it and I paid for it. I had to do so much editing to make something of my first book because I had no idea what I was going to write about. So, please, at least think your story through. Once you have the major details worked out, you can deal with minor details later.

I’m not sure of the amount of people that pay attention to small details, but personally, I think you should make sure there are no holes in the story. When I read books, a lot of the time I’ll notice holes in a story and they’re usually small details but it bothers me that people are that careless. Fill in holes. Make sense of what you’re writing.

That's it for now. I'll post more another time. Have a nice day. :)