I know sometimes you feel like you don’t have time to read because you want to use that time to write. However, I personally believe reading and writing go hand in hand. When you’re feeling lost, reading can be the greatest inspiration to get yourself back into writing again. If anything, I honestly believe what inspires most writer’s writing is the books the writer reads.
For me, most of the writing I do here on my blog is mostly book reviews and video games, with these confessions posts being published whenever I feel inspired to write about writing. However, what you’ll notice if you go through the books I’ve written reviews on is that I mostly talk about young adult literature, fantasy and occasionally science fiction, romance and mystery. This makes sense for me as a writer because these are the type of books I read. But, I also feel like with my own writing, these types of books inspire me to write outside of what I do here on my blog. Most of the writing I do outside of here that I decide to publish on my blog is usually one of these genres. This is because I gain my inspiration from these stories and use them to help me come up with unique stories of my own.
I write within the genres I read because I find that reading inspires writing. And I think most writers can agree with me on this. I honestly think one of the basic tools a writer needs to be successful is to read a lot. Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean someone can’t be a writer because they don’t read. I just think a writer who doesn’t read will have a much more difficult time at being successful as a writer due to having one less source of inspiration in their lives.
I feel like reading can help you a lot with your writing. By reading other books, you expose yourself to a variety of different writing styles and can see what works and what doesn’t. You can also make note of writing devices such as plot, setting, character, etc. in a story to get an idea of how to improve your own writing.
I believe that reading helps you gain knowledge. So as a writer, I believe the more books you read, the more you are able to understand writing as a whole. So for me personally, I believe in order to be a successful writer, you have to read just as much as you write.
Mila was never meant to learn the truth about her identity. She was a girl living with her mother in a small Minnesota town. She was supposed to forget her past—that she was built in a secret computer science lab and programmed to do things real people would never do.
Now she has no choice but to run—from the dangerous operatives who want her terminated because she knows too much and from a mysterious group that wants to capture her alive and unlock her advanced technology. However, what Mila’s becoming is beyond anyone’s imagination, including her own, and it just might save her life.
When I first started reading this book, I wasn’t completely sure what to make of it. The pacing was slow, the characters you as the reader were introduced to were annoying, and the storyline didn’t flow together quite as smoothly as you’d expect. As you continue reading, however, the story gets more invigorating, the main character becomes much deeper, and the plot becomes even more intense. It’s as if Debra Driza’s writing became more focused and she knew exactly what direction she wanted to take her readers.
And for me, it worked. The story came together, started making sense and I liked what I was seeing overall. I enjoyed it because while it started off slow, I still found myself wanting to continue reading to find out what happened next. I wanted to see what happened to Mila, how she’d deal with learning the truth about herself and what she’d do next.
I gave this book a chance because my grandmother recommended it to me. And I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. What I enjoyed when reading MILO 2.0 is that it’s unlike any other book I’ve read. What I mean to say is this is the first book I’ve really read that’s focused on a character who isn’t quite human. She’s an android with unusual abilities who questions her humanity and what it means to be human. Yet, has the capacity to feel deep human emotions that makes it much more difficult for her to survive the tasks she encounters throughout the story. And I enjoyed every minute I learned more about her abilities.
What I also enjoyed when reading this book is how Mila’s character questions what it means to be human. She questions everything she’s dealing with in her life and refuses to do anything that’ll make her even less human. I like this aspect of her character because she wants to fight to be alive and free from what’ll happen to her when she’s caught.
I also like that MILO 2.0 is very action packed. As the story continues moving along, it gets even more intense with each page the reader turns. One minute, Mila is enjoying her normal life as a teenage girl. The next, she’s having to flee from those who are trying to catch her. She doesn’t completely understand what she’s running away from, just knows that if she gets caught, her life will get a whole lot worse than it was before.
However, there are a lot of things with this story I don’t completely like. For starters, the first half of the novel like I said before moved at too slow a pace. It was like Driza was struggling to write, figure out where she wanted the direction of this story to go. Everything was a complete mess that desperately needed to be changed. Especially the plot because I have a hard time believing they were found out because of an accident in a car.
Part of what made the first half of the story not as good as the rest were the characters. In particular, the girls Mila had become friends with when she moved to small town Minnesota. They were all just sort of snooty, rude, mean, not the type of people she should’ve been friends with when she moved there. I know part of the reason she was friends with them was because the leader of their group Kaylee welcomed her into the fold since she was new there, but overall, I didn’t see any other valid reasons for her to continue interacting with them, especially when Hunter came into town.
Speaking of which, I hated the instant attraction Driza made Hunter and Mila feel for each other. While I overall like Hunter’s character (what we see of it, I mean), I feel like their romance is completely rushed. They’ve only had a small amount of interactions with each other, yet they’ve almost kissed a couple times and Mila is constantly thinking about him while she’s on the run and when she gets captured. It feels like infatuation instead of love to me and I wish she’d given their interest with each other more room to grow. Or I would’ve been perfectly fine if there was no romance at all throughout the story. I know it’s in there to show that she’s capable of having human emotions, but I do feel like it doesn’t need to be there. And I don’t know, I have a feeling it could be the death of her at some point in the rest of the books to come.
However, I overall enjoyed reading MILA 2.0. Despite its flaws, it was a book unlike any other I’ve read and I can’t wait to continue reading the rest of the books in this trilogy to find out what happens next to Mila. I highly recommend this book to anyone who’s willing to push through a book to get to the juice of a story and to people who love young adult science fiction novels that center around a teenage android.
Arena of Valor is a multiplayer online battle arena game for mobiles published by Tencent Games. In this game, you are on a team with four other players as you try your best to destroy their home base. Doing so requires a lot of leveling up and good teamwork. Depending on what hero you choose determines what abilities you have. For example, some heroes are good at jungling (where you go into the wild and defeat monsters to gain experience and level up your hero) while others are good tanks. So do the best to choose heroes to balance out your team so you can win.
I just recently started playing Arena of Valor when I saw one of the Youtubers I follow play it. And man, do I really enjoy it. What I enjoy about this game is that its team based. While I enjoy playing video games by myself, I don’t mind a game that involves playing with other gamers and trying to reach victory together. It gives me the chance to interact with other people who enjoy video games as much as I do.
I also like Arena of Valor because of it being a 5v5 game for mobile. While I’ve never played a game like this on my phone, I like that MOBA games are being brought to mobile because I feel like the controls are a lot easier. I also think it’s very convenient too because you don’t have to worry about booting up your computer or laptop to play, it’s all just right there in your hands. The controls are also pretty easy to learn too, which is another plus to me because the player doesn’t have to worry all too much about what buttons to push to use their abilities.
I love that this game has a variety of heroes for you to choose from. Every time I play a game feels like a new experience because I want to play as many of the heroes I can so I can see which heroes work for me. I like that as you continue playing the game and getting a feel for how it works, you can unlock more heroes to experiment with along with more talents. This gives me incentive to continue playing Arena of Valor and seeing how far I can get.
My biggest challenge playing this game is that I don’t yet completely understand how to use the Arcana system and what items I should be buying when I level up my heroes. While I get how the Arcana system works (you have three types of Arcana: red is strength, life is purple, and green is willpower and as you play and level up, you unlock more Arcana to build up your heroes), I haven’t completely figured out how to use the Arcana and the items I buy in game to my advantage. I know I’ve just started playing recently so this’ll come with time so I’m just doing the best I can with it until then.
While I really love playing Arena of Valor, I do have some things I don’t like about it. The biggest thing I don’t like about it is the Credibility system that’s in place to make sure players aren’t leaving games or trolling. With this Credibility system, if you leave a game for any reason at all, players can then report you for being AFK and you lose credibility points. While I get why this system is in place and do overall believe it’s a good thing to have, I think it needs some improvements. I’m not the type of person to leave in the middle of a game intentionally and then come back later. But there have been times where I’ve been playing and the game suddenly froze on me and I wasn’t able to get back into the game no matter how many times I tried. And I’ve lost credibility points whenever this has happened to me. This then left me frustrated with the game because I wanted to continue playing and enjoy it, but getting points taken away from me due to a system error made me less inclined to do so. And there is no way to dispute when someone reports you for being AFK, even if being gone from the game isn’t your fault. So people could end up taking advantage of this system, which is why I think they should have it set up where there’s a way to check that someone is actually AFK verses having system problems. I think there should be a way to tell so people don’t keep getting penalized because they have a crappy system because it’s hard to enjoy a game when it’s laggy and you keep being penalized because of it.
I also don’t like with Arena of Valor that to unlock some heroes you have to pay for them. I get having something in place to unlock heroes as you level up and play. But I don’t think you should have to pay to unlock heroes you really want to play as.
However, I am overall pleased with Arena of Valor as a MOBA game and am excited to continue playing it. I remember playing League of Legends and enjoying that a lot, but I think I like this one a little more because of how convenient it is. I also hope to try out more games like this one in the future because I know they’ll definitely be fun to play.
When novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Cormoran Strike. At first, Mrs. Quine just thinks her husband has gone off by himself for a few days—as he has done before—and she wants Strike to find him and bring him home.
But as Strike investigates, it becomes clear that there is more to Quine’s disappearance than his wife realizes. The novelist has just completed a manuscript featuring poisonous pen-portraits of almost everyone he knows. If the novel were to be published, it would ruin lives—meaning that there are a lot of people who might want him silenced.
When Quine is found brutally murdered under bizarre circumstances, it becomes a race against time to understand the motivation of a ruthless killer, a killer unlike any Strike has encountered before…
Wow. I really enjoyed reading this second book in the series more than The Cuckoo’s Calling, which wasn’t at all a bad read, but was missing something The Silkworm had for me: suspense. It was a page-turner, from start to finish because I really wanted to know who killed this writer. I was also curious about the world Strike immersed himself into in order to find the killer and figure out why this person went after Owen Quine. The world of publishing has never been a world I’ve been a part of, though I hope for that to change one day. But I was curious about Quine and this mysterious book he wrote about the people in his life so I was ready to dive in.
I’m not going to lie when I say part of my enjoyment of this book is because the case involved an author. I wanted to learn more about his book, and what about it was so terrible that it couldn’t be published. But what I got from that caught me off guard, but also made me laugh at the same time. So I was surprised about the type of books Quine typically wrote, but was also intrigued as to what this revealed about his character. I like that his book was connected to his death. I like that being incorporated into the case because it eliminated a lot of people being responsible for his murder except for the characters we were introduced to. The only problem I had when it came to this case is that Galbraith made Quine seem like the stereotypical author. His character sounded very cocky and arrogant, yet still eccentric at the same time, which is pretty normal to the way I’ve seen authors being described in books. This is a problem for me because people see authors this way already and was hoping his character would be described differently.
I also enjoyed seeing Strike and Robin’s friendship continue to blossom. I like seeing the way the two of them work together to investigate because you can tell that they trust each other. But at the same time, I worry that Galbraith is going to try and get them together as a couple. While I wouldn’t necessarily mind that, I really like seeing them work together and just being friends outside of the job. I also like seeing Robin’s character continue to develop as she stands up to her fiancé because she really enjoys her work. I feel like as she continues helping Strike with cases, she comes into her own and is becoming the person she’s meant to be.
I also enjoyed this book in the series more than The Cuckoo’s Calling because there was a lot of buildup when it came to finding Quine’s killer. The killer was revealed to us in a surprising way, which made us even more interested in finding out why this person killed Quine.
My biggest problem with The Silkworm is the quotes at the beginning of each chapter. I usually don’t mind when books have quotes, but the ones in this book felt like they didn’t belong to me, and I would’ve been fine reading the book without them.
I also felt that most of the characters who knew Quine were too similar. I don’t know if it’s because they all worked in publishing or were authors, but it annoyed me because I didn’t really like any of them. They just seemed too similar to me so when the killer was finally revealed, I wasn’t quite as surprised as I thought I’d be. I felt like any one of them could’ve killed Quine, it was just a matter of which one Galbraith decided on.
However, neither of these problems for me made me enjoy The Silkworm any less. It was overall a very suspenseful, intriguing read that made me continue turning the page. I can’t wait to continue reading this series to find out what happens next.
Darcy Patel is afraid to believe all the hype. But it’s really happening – her teen novel is getting published. Instead of heading to college, she’s living in New York City, where she’s welcomed into the dazzling world of YA publishing. That means book tours, parties with her favorite authors, and finding a place to live that won’t leave her penniless. It means sleepless nights rewriting her first draft and struggling to find the perfect ending… all while dealing with the intoxicating, terrifying experience of falling in love – with another writer.
Told in alternating chapters is Darcy’s novel, the thrilling story of Lizzie, who wills her way into the afterworld to survive a deadly terrorist attack. With survival comes the responsibility to guide the restless spirits that walk our world, including one ghost with whom she shares a surprising personal connection. But Lizzie’s not alone in her new calling – she has counsel from a fellow spirit guide, a very desirable one, who is torn between wanting Lizzie and warning her that…
BELIEVING IS DANGEROUS.
In a brilliant high-wire act of weaving two epic narratives – and two unforgettable heroines – into one novel, Scott Westerfeld’s latest work is a triumph of storytelling.
The first time I read this book, I couldn’t put it down. It was about writing, and the world surrounding it, which fascinated me so much because I wanted to be a part of it. That was back in 2015, before I started writing here, before I graduated from college and was still doing my internship. I also loved reading the novel itself within the pages because Lizzie has such a fascinating story to tell.
Reading it again a second time, I’m just as enthralled with Darcy’s life as I was before. And I love Lizzie’s story just as much. To be honest, the way Westerfeld switches between worlds is one of my favorite things about Afterworlds. He does a good job of choosing when to end each chapter so that you’re hungry for more of what your leaving behind.
I also love this book because it’s a combination of young adult literature and paranormal romance. I love how the conflict Darcy goes through with her writing and her relationship with Imogen. You get to see her experience New York for the very first time, dealing with things writers deal with once a book is published while figuring out how relationships work. With Lizzie, I enjoy the paranormal aspects of her story like when she’s just back from the airport and truly realizes what’s happened to her and her learning more about the world she’s becoming a part of. I enjoyed learning about her mother’s childhood friend Mindy and seeing the flipside world.
Afterworlds is a good read for me because it talks about writing a lot. I enjoy reading fictional stories that bring up real-life concepts, such as what it’s like being a writer and beginning the process of getting your book into the world. I enjoyed Darcy’s interactions with other authors as she struggled to figure out what she needed to do and she struggled with getting her second novel started.
However, there were a lot of things lacking overall in this book that I feel need to be addressed. For one, I felt like there wasn’t a whole lot of conflict when it came to Darcy’s new life and the characters just seemed a little flat to me. What I mean is that I feel like the biggest problems Darcy dealt with as soon as she arrived in New York was getting her novel completed and her relationship with Imogen. You didn’t really hear about too much else going on with her in the story except when problems with Imogen occurred, which mostly happened because of Darcy’s inexperience with relationships. Even the fact that she could barely afford to live in New York wasn’t really addressed, she just spent her money however she wanted anyway. It also just felt like her relationship with Imogen came out of nowhere because she never mentions having feelings for her until Imogen confessed the way she felt about Darcy. The characters seemed flat to me because there wasn’t really any development as time went on, except with Lizzie, which wasn’t all that much either. Everyone pretty much stayed the same from the beginning to end, the only difference was that time moved forward in both stories.
I also didn’t particularly like the way Lizzie’s character developed when she was introduced into this new world. She gained this new ability to go into the flipside and see ghosts, yet immediately becomes attached to the first ghost she meets. She uses her new ability to cause bodily harm to another human being, but actually suffers no consequences for her actions. I understand why she hurts this person, but I still don’t think it’s the right way she could’ve done this and I feel like she hasn’t really learned much from the experience. I get she’s very curious about this new world she’s become a part of and wants to learn as much as she can about it. But I felt like that particular situation wasn’t necessary because there was no consequence for making that choice.
Overall, I enjoyed reading Afterworlds despite some of the problems I had with the overall plot and character development. Westerfeld’s writing really made this story enjoyable for me as I heard characters talk about writing and the two stories within made me interested in continuing to read to see what happened next. I look forward to reading more works by this author in the near future.
“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” – George Bernard Shaw
I know I’m being ahead of myself here whenever I wish you all a Happy New Year. I know it isn’t 2018 yet when I’m going to post this because I’m writing this ahead of time, due to already having reflections of 2017. But I wanted to get a head start on this because I was really itching to write and reflect about this year we’ve had.
2017 really has been quite the year. It’s been a year I know I’ll remember, maybe more than many of the others we’ve all left behind. I believe part of that is because so much has happened, yet almost everything feels exactly the same.
In 2017, I made quite a few changes I felt were needed in my life. I quit a job that did nothing but drain me emotionally and I fell in love with someone I never expected to, which allowed me to move on past my last relationship. I also continued writing here, even going so far as to making changes to my blog that I felt were necessary in order to make my blog into what I wanted it to be.
All of these different changes were things I needed to do to improve my life. However, I know there’s more changes I still have to make. That is where 2018 comes in. I hope with this new year to continue making changes in my life.
In 2018, I hope to continue improving with my writing by bringing in a variety of writing topics. Of course, I plan on continuing writing book reviews and talking about video games, but I want to continue writing about other things as well whenever I can. I also want to learn more, which means the possibility of making big decisions in my life in order to make that possible. I want to continue doing whatever is necessary to make writing a part of my life and eventually my career. And of course, I want to continue improving my blog in every way I can. I know I’ve already started down that path by changing my blog’s name to something more personal and changing the design. But I want to work on changing it some more if I can.
I want 2018 to be my year. I want it to be the year where I try new things and get completely out of my comfort zone. I want it to be the year where I continue reading new books and play video games I might never have tried before.
But I know in order for all of this to be possible, I have to step up and make these changes happen. Only time will tell for certain whether I’ll be able to do that.
Thank you everyone who reads my blog for being here with me in 2017. I hope you continue following me into the new year and that 2018 is what you want it to be. I know I’m definitely going to try the best I can to make it one of my best years yet.
I am a writer. I might not have all of the experience or knowledge as those who write for a living, but I am a writer because I have the passion for it. I am a writer because I enjoy it, it’s the one thing I know how to do and it’s the only thing I can imagine myself doing for the rest of my life.
Yet, others wouldn’t consider me a writer because I don’t have a job where I get paid to write. Or because I don’t have a novel or story published for readers to enjoy or critique. Or even because I don’t have enough knowledge or experience in writing to work for a major newspaper or publication.
But the thing is, I’ve been writing since 7th grade. And I haven’t quit since. Yes, I don’t work for a major publishing company or have 3 to 4 years of publishing/writing/newspaper experience, but I did study writing during my four years of college. I did an internship for a year with a nonprofit that worked with independent bookstores called Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance. This allowed me the opportunity to meet some Southern Authors at one of the trade shows I attended and gave me an insider’s look into the world of booksellers. I also was a part of my college’s online newspaper The PostScript for a year, where I wrote news stories that we published online and was the editor for a semester. For those interested in seeing for themselves, the page with all of my published stories can be found here. Being a part of a newspaper for a year was a rewarding experience. It gave me good insight into what it was like deciding what to write about in the community and gave me a better understanding of writing in a way I’d never thought of before.
And then, there is my blog here on WordPress, which I started in 2015 months after I graduated from college as a way for me to continue pursuing my passion in writing. A writing atmosphere that I find allows me the opportunity to continue writing the way I wish but also allows me the ability to improve my writing. A community of writers who’ve been nothing short of supportive as I continue on my own path of writing success.
During the two years I’ve been blogging on WordPress, I feel like I learn something different each time I set out to write. I’ve also found I’ve enjoyed writing a lot more now that I can write freely without following a specific set of guidelines. I think it has to do with being allowed on my blog to write in whatever style I choose, making changes whenever I find it necessary. But at the same time, I’ve learned that blogging is a lot different than reporting and each style of writing has its own unique rules.
I know my path of becoming a writer isn’t the traditional route of getting there, but I’ve found I’ve learned a lot since I first decided writing is what I wanted to do. In college, I gained the solid foundation needed to understand how writing works. Now, I am continuing to work on my writing style to see what suits me as well as just writing whenever and about whatever. I’m learning more about the blogging community and working on improving my blog to the best of my ability.
But at the end of all of this, I am a writer because I believe I am one. I am a writer because I enjoy it and can see myself writing for the rest of my life. And if you feel the same as I do, don’t let anyone tell you differently.
As a writer who struggles writing on a daily basis, I also struggle with writing whenever I feel like it. There are some days where writing comes naturally to me, like a breath of fresh air. But there are also days where I can’t even get one word down without everything I write sounding like complete garbage. Or where my head is too busy thinking that I can’t focus on the act of writing itself.
I’ve been having a lot of those days lately. I’ve been struggling with putting words down, but I try not to rush it because you can’t. You can’t because otherwise, you’re sitting there at a blank screen frustrated and angry with yourself for not being able to accomplish something you’ve done so many times before. I know because I’ve been there.
I’ve been dealing with this struggle a lot lately. Where I can’t seem to get words down as naturally as I used to. Where every time I write, I can’t focus on what I’m doing so I do something else instead.
And that’s okay. You’re allowed to have those moments.
But at the same time, even when you feel like writing, you can’t always write. Not because you don’t want to or aren’t trying, but because sometimes life gets in the way. Sometimes other people even who don’t understand the process of writing or understand that you can’t always write later when the words are there within arm’s reach.
And that’s okay too. Just do the best you can to write and always remember there’s always more days to fill up with your words that’ll make up for all the times you weren’t able to write. If you can’t write today, there’s always the possibility that tomorrow will be a better day to write for you.
And if not, that’s okay too. Because in the end, you’ll one day write again.
One of the many misconceptions about being a writer is that you have to write every day. Otherwise if you don’t, you apparently don’t enjoy it as much as you say you do or you don’t want to be a writer as much as you think. While some people might think this is true, I believe not all writers need to write every day as long as writing itself is still a part of your life in some way.
That’s why I’m willing to confess that I, myself don’t write every day. I try the best I can to make writing a weekly habit, even if it means jotting down an idea or two occasionally. But if I’m not in the right head space to write or don’t have any ideas, I don’t do it.
For one, writing is much more difficult to do when you don’t know what you want to talk about. Like I said in my last confessions post, writing is hard and it’s much easier to do when you already have a clear idea of what you want to talk about.
I also find writing to be fun and enjoy it more when there’s no added stress to doing it. That’s why I normally write whenever I feel like it because it becomes something I enjoy instead of being like a job to me.
So while other writers might write every day, I don’t because it doesn’t always work for me. It benefits me to write whenever inspiration strikes because that’s normally when my best ideas will truly emerge. That’s when I’ll truly make progress on whatever it is I’m currently working on.
Rainy Day's Books, Video Games and Other Writings 