But anyways. I’m thinking about reviving this blog, just because I don’t want it to be lost on the internet.

I have two more months left of school and pretty soon I’ll be a junior in high school, which is really exciting, for me, because I was beginning to think I would be in high school forever.

Right now I am reading Anna Karenina, a book that I have been putting off for quite some time. I am really sorry I ignored it for so long, because I am really enjoying it. Levin is my favorite character right now. It’s cute how he blushes and…he’s just so awkward and tense and he’s really an interesting character.

I’ve been think about writing a young adult historical, but I don’t know what it would be about. So, more on this later, I suppose.

And I watched the BBC version of The Diary of Anne Frank a couple of days ago and LOVED it. I will have a review up some time soon. Oh and I seen Persuasion, so maybe I’ll review that as well.

Until next time!

Aren’t they amazing and beautiful and…oh I just love them! This amazingly talented person who I call Cal, made these for me. I entered one of her contest and won, so she made me a fanmix which consist of CD covers and music. She’s not finished with it yet, but I am already in love with these pictures!

Rendition is the new title for The Jane Effect which I am supposed to be rewriting but I have left it alone for quite some time. These really make me want to start writing the story again.

Well, a lot has happened. My computer went haywire for a while, so I just completely left it alone. Plus, the instructions I had were really confusing. So because of my computer being difficult, all of my writing had come to an end. Yes, I know there is paper and pens and pencils and stuff but I think better when I’m typing. There’s something about the constant tap tap of the keys that gets the creative juices flowing. And all of my writing is stored on my computer, so yeah, I was kinda freaking out for a long time.

Luckily, my computer fixed itself and I put all of my writing in a safe place so if this is to happen again, I can still have my writing and I won’t have to get all upset.

I haven’t been reading much. Wuthering Heights was possibly the last book I read. I have to start preparing to go back to school and I seriously don’t want to go. I like being lazy. I like sleeping in. I know school work isn’t going to be hard, it’s just the thought of getting out of bed and going to school that I don’t want to do. Blegh!

To end this post:

All the books I have read are italicized. All the books I have not read are bolded.  All the books I have seen the movie of are underlined. This list was taken from  June’s blog

1. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

2. The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien

3. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

4. Harry Potter series by JK Rowling

5. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

6. The Bible (parts of it)

7. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

8. 1984 by George Orwell

9. His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman

1o. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

11. Little Women by  Louisa M Alcott

12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

13. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller

14. Complete Works of Shakespeare (I’ve read Romeo and Juliet, and saw the movie)

15. Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier (I heard this book was reminiscent of Jane Eyre, so I might check it out)

16. The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien

17. Birdsong by Sebastian Faulk

18. Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger

19. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (This is on my list and I really want to see the movie)

20. Middlemarch by George Eliot

21. Gone With The Wind by  Margaret Mitchell (I seen the movie once)

22. The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald (I’ve read other stories by him, he’s one of my favorite authors, I just haven’t got around to reading Gatsby though.)

23. Bleak House by Charles Dickens

24. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

27.  Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28. Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

29. Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

30. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

31. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (I’m currently reading it)

32. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

33. Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis

34. Emma by Jane Austen (I have seen the movie and I own the book, but I haven’t gotten around to reading it yet.) 

35. Persuasion by Jane Austen (I have the book)

36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by CS Lewis

37. The Kite Runnder by Khaled Hossein

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis De Bernieres

39. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

40. Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne

41. Animal Farm by George Orwell

42. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

43. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney by John Irving

45. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (I really really want to read this though)

46. Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery

47. Far From The Madding Crowd by  Thomas Hardy

48. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

49. Lord of the Flies by William Golding X

50. Atonement by Ian McEwan (I read it but I’m not old of enough to see the movie)

51. Life of Pi  by Yann Martel

52. Dune by Frank Herbert

53. Cold Comfort Farm

54. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen

55. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth

56. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57. A Tale Of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

58. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night by Mark Haddon

60. Love In The Time Of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (On my To-Read list)

61. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

62. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov (On my To-Read list)

63. The Secret History by Donna Tartt

64. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

66. On The Road by Jack Kerouac

67. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding

69. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

70. Moby Dick by Herman Melville

71. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

72. Dracula by Bram Stoker

73. The Secret Garden by  Frances Hodgson Burnett

74. Notes From A Small Island by Bill Bryson

75. Ulysses by James Joyce

76. The Inferno by Dante

77. Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome

78. Germinal by Emile Zola

79. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray (I love this movie!)

80. Possession by  AS Byatt

81. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

82. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

83. The Color Purple by Alice Walker

84. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

85. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

86. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

87. Charlotte’s Web by EB White

88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom (I read Tuesday’s With Morrie though)

89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90. The Faraway Tree Collection by Enid Blyton

91. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

92. The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery (I read it in French)

93. The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

94. Watership Down by Richard Adams

95. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

96. A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute

97. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

98. Hamlet by William Shakespeare

99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl

100. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

So, the BBC said most people will have only read 6 out of these 100 books. Well, I read 10 and I’m only fifteen. The people that they quizzed were probably in college or way older, so I think I did pretty well.

If you don’t know what the heck I’m talking about, here’s the cover and the summary of the book.

The last thing high school sophomore Nora Grey wanted was to be partnered with a total stranger in biology, especially when the segment is on human anatomy and sexuality. But Patch, her biology partner, is fascinatingly intriguing, very attractive…and has a way of unnerving Nora in all the ways she never wanted to be unnerved. Nora knows that Patch is dangerous, and that she should probably stay away from him—especially after she suspects him of being the masked stalker who seems to be trying to kill her—but their paths keep on crossing, and she can’t deny the connection that she feels with him.

I mind wrote yesterday, especially since I had no paper or pencils and I was far from my computer. It was torture, but mind-writing is the next best thing, I suppose.

I want to do so much with Before There Were Swans.

It’s often that I think of the short term goals, like finishing a chapter or establishing a believable and likable yet different heroin.

My long term goal, I guess, would be to get past four chapters, because I’ve never gotten past the fourth chapter in anything except for The  Jane Effect, but still.

That’s about it. As long as I can get pass the fourth chapter, I suppose that’s good enough for me, for now.

Goals are kinda like milestones. Once I finish one, I’ll have another.

Well, I should get some writing done while I still have some computer time.

True love, in all it’s celestial charm, and
star-crossed ways, only exist in a writer’s
mind, for humans have not yet learned
how to manifest it.

So, I decided to look up John Keats. It’s really sad that his love with Fanny Brawne didn’t work out and he died so young. And he even requested to have letters by her to him, destroyed, so their relationship must have been tragic.

But what amazes me is the impact he’s had on poetry. I mean, he was one of the greatest poets of the Romantic period.

I’ve only read three so far, but I plan to get to more. The first I read, was La Belle Dame Sans Merci which means in French,  The Beautiful Lady Without Mercy. But (my French teacher would be proud) Merci actually means Thank You in today’s language, but in another time it actually meant mercy.

This spoke to me because though I only took two years of French, I am completely in love with the language. I almost regret switching over to Spanish, but I’ll have to pick up classes again soon, so that the bit of French that I know doesn’t turn to dust.

But anyways, I liked the poem. I read that somewhere it was based on both a dream he had and his indecision about whether he should continue the relationship with Fanny.

Most of his poems seems to be about beauty, which then leads to pleasure, and ultimately love. I think that John Keats was a romantic. He seemed very passionate, and if he loved, he loved deeply. So, when Fanny broke his heart, he fell into a sort of rut.

I think the message he is trying to get across is that things are not always what they appear to be. When you see something so beautiful, like say a butterfly. If you’re religious or not, you wonder at how it came to be. You might wonder how it got those colorful specks in it’s wings or you may wonder why it’s so lithe and free. You don’t really get why it’s there, but you think it’s really really beautiful and that’s all that matters at the moment. If you were a painter or a photographer or a writer or some type of artist, you’d want to capture the creature the best you can. You focus on it, trying to get that mental picture but then it flies away or a bird swoops down and eats it.

Now, it’s gone. You’re sad because you wanted to capture that beauty so bad. You were mesmerized, addicted to it’s presence, and now that it is absent from sight, there’s a piece of your artistic soul missing.

I know my example wasn’t good but exchange that butterfly for a beautiful woman (okay, in my case a handsome man) whom you love dearly and you kinda get what John Keats was trying to say.

I think if somehow I could talk to John Keats, I would tell him that with time, the heart can heal, even after love is lost. I read that he had died a bitter man, and that is truly sad.

But poetry, speaks what the heart feels and from reading his other poems like Bright Star, The Eve of St. Agnes (my favorite) and On a Grecian Urn, I think that John Keats had a beautiful soul.

All poetry comes from the soul, and if not from the soul, it comes from your mind. That’s why I love poetry so much. I don’t know why I stopped writing it. I am so caught up in story writing, that I forget my roots.

When I was seven, I always used to sit on the porch and write about all around me. I remember I wrote this one poem about Spring. It had a pretty basic rhyming scheme, but I like it because it was the first poem I ever wrote. From then on, I just loved poetry. It helped me through a lot of tough times.  And then I fell in love with characters and the stories they had to tell.

* The two stanzas at the beginning of this post, comes from a poem I wrote called The Dissection of Hearts

I am a huge procrastinator. This banner didn’t take me long to make but still, I should be writing. The picture was taken from the stills for Bright Star. Once I saw it, I knew that I had to make something with it and so, voila!

Ben Whishaw slightly resembles what my character, Edmund Grey, in Before There Were Swans would look like, except his hair isn’t so unkempt. Speaking of which, the more I think about this story, the more I am beginning to fall in love with it. I haven’t really started writing it yet but I just love the idea. I love Anne and how independent and strong she is, especially since she goes through a lot in this story. And Edmund, I hate to actually say this, but I think he’s one of the first male characters of mine, that I actually like. I know it’s not good to play favorites, especially when all of my characters are my babies, but I like how honest, and straightforward he is. I also admire his ability to see good in people. He starts off as this quiet but firm character but Anne really changes him, and…

Wow, you’d think I’d want to marry this story, but if I’ve learned anything from writing, it would be that you have to know and trust your characters, as well as yourself and the story you want to write. If you establish love for your story then that unbreakable bond will form and there won’t be anything to stop you from writing till the end.

I believe that this is the one story that I am truly in love with it. I mean, I never felt this way about an idea before. Of course, I like all of my stories, but there’s a certain place in my heart, for this one.

I have twelve more chapters to read of Wuthering Heights. I plan to read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall next. It’s only fair that I pay attention to Ann as well.

I’ve been googling like mad trying to find out who is playing Mr. Rochester in the 2009 version of Jane Eyre. I really really want to know and nobody is releasing anything. UGH!!!!

Plus, the movies not going to be aired till December. So I guess I must be patient.

I have a SNI!

It’s been cooking in my head for a while but I don’t know if I want to pursue it or let it fall with the rest of the ideas I have. Bah, I NEED to write! I’ve been writing but not a lot.

But anyways, it’s tentatively titled Before There Were Swans. It’s of course, a historical romance with Gothic elements. The MC is in my mind all the time and I can’t help but hear her voice at odd hours of the day.

I wrote a little for it last night. This part is my favorite part:

“If we turn our faces from the Almighty, we shun ourselves.” Mary would say. “And once we have not a care for ourselves, we give our mind, body, and soul up to the very devil who means us harm. So read your Scriptures, heed your Creator’s words. Do not shun him, for in shunning him, you damn yourself.” She said this to me especially, since I refused to become attached to the Bible like Isaac had. Before I went to bed, she would tell me about Hell and how it wasn’t a pleasant place to be. But I was never scared. You could thrust a flaming coal from the fire at me and my heart would not miss a beat. After everyone left, I believed I was already in Hell and so, mentions of this place that Mary spoke so passionately of seemed to me birthed from falsehood. Because a place without the sun, a place where I couldn’t roam about as freely as I used to, was a torment to my vigorous soul!

I had wanted Ann to be a kind, loving character but then she turned out to be this disobedient brat who is sort of dramatic. Her name was Beatrice but she only likes to be called Ann, so yeah. I know a lot about her already and I could write the story, but I don’t know. I have too many WIPs on my plate now.

My FP account is collecting dust but I decided to go check out FF. I’m not making an account, especially since I don’t really write fan fiction. But, they did have a Jane Eyre section and I was curious, so I went to go check it out.

Some people wrote how they would have did this chapter or that scene. There were some really well written ones. Some people even held true to Jane’s morals and Mr. Rochester’s theatrics. It was quite nice to see but then I wondered on to the M rated ones.

After seeing the 2006 version of Jane Eyre and having read the book, I can see that there are HUGE differences in style. While the novel didn’t really highlight the sexual tension we knew it was there, but in the movie “whoa, can you say hot?”

This “hotness” factor existed in the fan fiction. It seems that people were partial to the fact that Jane slept with Mr. Rochester before she left him. Okay, for anyone who hasn’t read Jane Eyre, they might think that’s okay. Really, some weren’t too explicit and were actually written well, but still, given that Jane has her morals, I don’t think she would sleep with Mr. Rochester.

I know it’s only fan fiction and fans are free to imagine but it just made me think. In those times, if you had sex out of wedlock you were “ruined” No man would want you and seeing as though Jane was a very religious moral soul, how she could have sex with him and then leave, just really doesn’t make since. She was concerned with saving his soul. He was the married one and if they did do it, he would be the one sinning. So, really the wrong would be on both sides, if this event had happened.

There was one fan-fic where Mr. Rochester says that if they go through with it she has to be his wife, there is no turning back. But then she leaves anyways. Jane had to leave. As I said, she wanted to save Mr. Rochester and herself from the temptation that was before them. Though apart of me wished she hadn’t left, you have to look at the more logical side of things.

Besides, she was 18. I don’t know what yesterday’s teens were like but I know that she has lived amongst girls for the most of her life and as Mrs. Fairfax said, she knew nothing about men. Maybe I’m looking to into it but that really needed to get out.

Oh there was this really really good fan-fic that was about eight chapters are so long. The writer included Mr. Rochester’s childhood and it was so believable. Fan-fics are so much fun to read but I would never have the heart to write one. I’d feel guilty for changing things up.

Today’s post ends with a poem written by yours truly. Virtual cookies for anyone who can figure out what inspired it.

Eternity

And I wait for it’s sweet bliss to peak over the
much awaited horizon. It does not come for
night has it in it’s hallowed arms. Give it to me
oh Goddess of fate for I can not judge my
will any longer. It is secured by the day which
holds my heart in it’s fair hands but I fear that
they are not as pale or as beautiful as the
hands of lady Juliet. She is the east and the
sun sets in the inevitable west. The stars
have not a say in my fate for my heart has
won it’s quarrel with the moon and the
planets have aligned for on this night,
she shall be mine and the morning will
come.

Love is universal. Everyone has felt loved or has loved someone. It doesn’t have to be a romantic love. You can simply love a friend or a family member or a pet or anything in this world, but love is love.

Having read a lot of books, having seen a lot of movies, and from personal experience, I can conclude that love makes us do and say crazy things.

I was digging through some of old writing from when I was nine. I wrote two novels and one surprisingly was in fact a Regency/fantasy romance. It was about this girl named Catherine whose mother despised her and her father. After her parents’ death, she was sent to go live with her eccentric grandfather who kept telling her that she was princess of a far away land called Majesta.

But anyways, she had fallen in love with a boy named Adam. It was love at first sight, and it seemed that the two formed an attachment because Catherine would not forget him and when they met at a ball years later, it seemed that he didn’t forget her either.

Reading this story over, I was shocked at how much I actually knew about love. Catherine was haunted by her love for Adam. It plagued her because she didn’t know whether he felt the same way about her anymore. And when she was forced into an arranged marriage, things started getting worse. She didn’t know what to do and she couldn’t stop loving Adam. As a nine year old, I knew that sometimes love doesn’t work out. It will haunt you. It will plague you. It will tear you down. It will make you laugh. It will make you cry. No love is perfect. No love ever will be. It’s the way of the world and it’s the way a romantic story should be.

Two years ago, I joined a writing site and I’ve reviewed a lot of people’s work. They all seemed to jump right into the romance not making their characters struggle. It’s like handing a gun to a suicidal man. Once you let your characters have the easy way out, your story will fall dead.

There are trials of love. Some may be tragic before they find the light, others may just not work out. But it makes your story better.

The topic of this blog post was inspired by something I seen on YouTube. It was a movie about Adele Hugo the daughter of Victor Hugo.

She fell in love with a soldier who couldn’t love her back, but she wouldn’t give up and for that, her love drove her to madness.

I almost cried when I read the biography of her. It’s sad to know that a person could go through that but it goes to proof that love doesn’t always end with butterflies and rainbows. So, if you want to write a believable romance, by all means let it end in love and folly, but don’t make it easy.

Many writers give their characters different obstacles. For example, Jane Austen, made Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy blind to their love by making them both proud and prejudiced.

Charlotte Bronte, put between Mr. Rochester and Jane, the fact that they were both from different social classes and that Mr. Rochester was already married to another woman.

William Shakespeare made it apparent that Romeo and Juliet’s families were feuding and that their relationship was forbidden.

Let us not forget Emily Bronte’s characters, Catherine and Heathcliff. They loved each other so much but it was their love that destroyed everything around them, including themselves.

The reason why I am talking about these stories is that when you’re writing, especially if you’re writing a historical romance, you need to read the genre you are writing. These are like your textbooks and this what you learn from.

As I’ve read all of these books, my stories have improved immensely. They’ve taught me that love has not one road, but it has many, and sometimes you might get lost but after you climb through every bush, every tree branch, you’ll find love waiting there at the end of the road, whether it be trampled on by the journey, strong and beautiful, that is up to you, but there are roads that are paved to love, and if you want your love story to be successful, you must walk them until the end.

Hopefully that all made sense.