Little Read Writing Hood

If you're one of those lucky people who currently find yourself with more free time than you know what to do with thanks to this unfortunate virus, keep reading. I have generously compiled a list of challenges for your reading/writing pleasure. Use this list as you best see fit during these trying times and feel free to post any challenges of your own in the comments. 1. Read a book that is entirely out of your realm of interest and write down a list of 10 things you learned from the experience. You might pick up some writing dos and don'ts or just learn something new about a topic you've never explored before. 2. Write down the first sentence someone says to you today (or it could be the first sentence of an email since, you know, social distancing) and make it the first sentence of a new story. See how far you go from there. You could write a whole page, a whole chapter, or a whole novel! 3. Find a book that has been turned into a movie. Read the book, then watch the movi...

Now I know what you're thinking. Seriously, a new book? Shouldn't you finish the one you've been working on FOR YEARS before just randomly swerving into a whole other lane? Well, the surprising answer is, no, you shouldn't. And can I just say that this was an incredibly painful realization for me to come to. I've always been the kind of person that will not, under any circumstances, walk away from an unfinished project. It just eats away at me, sitting there in all its unfinishedness, until I can't take it anymore and get it done regardless of whether I have time or not. Apparently, you can't always have that approach with books. I've mentioned my biggest project a few times before, but for those of you who are new to the scene, I've been working on a four-book fantasy series for about four years now. For the most part, those four years of writing were amazing. Writing is truly my passion, and nothing makes me happier than creating thro...

In case you were wondering (you probably weren't, but oh well), this is what it looks like when I try to write poetry. I submitted these four poems for publication in a literary magazine, and they accepted THREE of them! I was super happy, and sort of pleasantly surprised since I've always found poetry to be really difficult to wrap my head around. If you've never taken a stab at poetry before, I would totally recommend it! To make this more fun (and not just about me), I'm proposing a little challenge. If you can guess which poem the magazine DIDN'T take, drop it in the comments and I'll let you pick the topic for my next blog post. Or, if you think you know which poem is MY personal favorite, toss that in the comments for another shot at being topic picker. Thanks everybody 😜 Not Quite an Elephant In my experience, many would consider the poor rhinoceros to be the elephant’s shadow, merely a lesser reflection. When in actuality, the r...

Surprise! Little Read Writing Hood isn't the name I was born with. Sorry to burst your bubble if you didn't know that already 😜 I was talking to someone about my blog today and revealed that I use a fake name. Their first reaction was that's so cool , immediately followed by, but why though ? That's a good question. Why DO I use a fake name? I thought I knew, and it surprised me how much I had to think about it before answering this person. I'm still not sure if either of us were fully satisfied with the answer I gave, so like always, I shall use this space and all of you as a scribbling board to get my thoughts down on paper and try to understand the twisted inner workings of my brain. First, some background! For those of you who aren't familiar, a fake name, or a pen name, or a pseudonym if you want to be fancy, is a different name that an author/writer uses in place of their own actual name. Nowadays, with the internet, people do this all the t...

I've noticed something popping up a lot lately, so therefore, I feel the need to ramble. Or maybe rant. No. It's definitely a ramble. Ranting is reserved for someone who is upset by something. In this case, I'm just confused. How many of you have seen books with a cover like this? Or like these? Or my personal favorite, the booty shot. My question is...why? Why does this type of cover seem to be a recent trend? I've seen books like this coming across my Pinterest account as suggestions to put on my "Wish List" board for things I might want to read. Well to be honest, I have NO IDEA if I want to read these books. Do you know why? It's because the cover tells me literally NOTHING about them. Let's look at this one as an example. (Disclaimer: I haven't read any of these books, so I'm not trying to bash the writers or cover designers or anything like that. I'm just working through my confusion.) So, wh...

I thought it might be a good idea to put my query letter here just to get some more eyes on it, and also to give an example in case anyone needs ideas on formatting for their own letter. Let me know what you think! Also, if you have any questions about query letters or why I made the choices I did in terms of content, just let me know. I'll do my best to help you out! Thanks everybody! Side note: I obviously didn't sign my real name at the bottom and also took out the name of the agency I interned with for the sake of anonymity! ... To Whom it May Concern, I thought you might enjoy my 105,000 word debut fantasy novel To the Ever and Back . This story is told from three alternating perspectives of a human, a Shifter, and a girl who shouldn't exist. This wasn’t part of the plan. Damien asked for a powerful, obedient servant. Instead, he got a little girl. A girl can’t help him get his parents back. She’s loud, immature, insists on doing everything the hard way, ...

Friends, I have struck GOLD. My savior has descended from the clouds and its name is Scribophile . Alright, I might be exaggerating the divine nature of this recent discovery, but it IS pretty amazing and it's helped me a lot, so naturally, I wanted to share it with you all in the hopes that it improves your writing life too! By the way, in case you were wondering, Scribophile isn't giving me money or anything to do this. I'm just sharing out of the goodness of my heart.😘 I shall start with the basics. What is Scribophile? So I'm still figuring out how it works, but basically, Scribophile is a place where writers can post chapters to be critiqued by their peers. It's pretty much an online community of beta readers. Oh, and guess what. I should probably mention, IT'S FREE. You get on, make an account, fluff up your profile, and post your first chapter to be critiqued. Except hold up, you can't. You aren't allowed to post your first chapt...

Just a quick one today. I'm currently reading two books at the same time ( Snow Like Ashes  by Sara Raasch and  Daughter of Smoke and Bone  by Laini Taylor) and I'm wondering what your thoughts are on this.  When I was younger, I considered it absolutely ridiculous to read more than one book at a time. It almost felt like I was betraying a book if I didn't give it my complete attention until we reached the end together. I also think I was worried about confusing plots or characters between the books or something. But recently, for whatever reason, I've started doubling up a little. To be honest, I kind of like it because having two books going means I can pick up whichever one I'm in the mood for at the time. What do you guys think? Do you read books one at a time? Or two, or three, or as many as you can cram into your brain at once?

So the other day I heard someone say "don't judge a book by its cover" and I thought, um actually, I do that all the time. In the literal sense of course. In no way does this post apply to people. Being the nerd that I am, I looked it up, and according to Wikipedia: "The English idiom don't judge a book by its cover is a metaphorical phrase that means one shouldn't prejudge the worth or value of something by its outward appearance alone." Ok well, yes and no. I agree with this, except not when it comes to books. I think the cover of a book is meant to tell you as much about the book as it possibly can at first glance. It should make you pick up the book and think, hmm, looks interesting . Then you could proceed to flip through, read the back cover, skip to the end and read that (barbarians), or whatever else you do to decide if a book is worth your time. I guess that's where the alone part comes at the end of the Wikipedia quote. We look at ...

Today I came across an interesting writing prompt I wanted to share with you guys. The above painting is  The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp by Rembrandt. The prompt is to write a piece from the perspective of the dead man (or his ghost) observing the scene around him. The catch is, you only have five minutes to do it. No editing after, and no overtime. Just write for five minutes and see what you get. Tell me how it goes! I'll include mine below. Let me know what you think. They were fascinated by me, these men. Their hearts, hardened by academic pursuit, saw no grief in my passing. In life, I'd have picked their pockets clean. In death, I could only watch them pick me clean. Vultures, tugging at my empty flesh. Even so, I sift through their coats for old time's sake. Comforting myself with the familiarity of entering another man's belongings, running my thumbs over the little pieces of his life. The first carries nothing but a pocketknife and a few papers. ...

So in an earlier post I mentioned love triangles and how hard they are to write effectively, and I just had the scary realization that I MIGHT BE WRITING A LOVE TRIANGLE. But I don't mean for it to be a love triangle, at least not in the traditional girl-meets-two-guys-and-can't-choose-between-them sense. I'm going to try to explain it to you readers/writers in the least confusing way possible and hopefully get some feedback on whether you think it could work, whether it's terribly cliche, or whether it's just trash and I should give up writing forever : ) So there is a Fey girl, a Fey guy, and a human guy. The Fey girl and the Fey guy have been best friends forever to the point that they basically know each other better than anyone else, share the same soul, etc. The human guy is a few years older (physically) than the two Fey. Human guy is initially the antagonist and Fey girl hates him for a whole slew of reasons. Eventually she realizes he's not tha...

As you probably guessed from the post title, this is a master list of my favorite books of all time (so yes I'll be including books I read while I was younger, although sometimes I reread them as a guilty pleasure. Don't judge!). I'll add to it as I come across new favorites and try to write reviews for a couple (if not all of them). Not every book on the list is fantasy, but I do read other things and if it's a good book, it's a good book, right? Some of the items listed are a complete series so I just included a picture of the first book (even though in most cases I was a nerd and read them all). Let me know if you enjoyed any of these beauties as much as I did, or if you have recommendations for books you think I might like. They're in no particular order and you can assume I give them all a 10/10 rating : ) Also I think I snuck a Shakespeare in there, which I know isn't technically a book, but it's my favorite Shakespeare play of all time so ...