HELLO beautiful people. I have been extremely busy on top of trying to stay sane during this 10 283rd lockdown here in Québec, so I’m totally guilty of neglecting this blog. But I am here today with life updates, and hopefully things will settle down a bit and I’ll get to be a little more active here.
Anyway. Here’s what I’ve been up to:
Continue reading “Random Updates Because I Haven’t Posted in … Months?”Happy New Year, everyone!
Yes, it’s late, but what can I say. I didn’t especially feel like looking back at 2020, for obvious reasons. Though, I have to admit that it was quite a surprising year, reading-wise. That being said, let’s just dive into it. My favorite reads of 2020! (In no particular order.)
Continue reading “Favorite Books of 2020”
Sooo, Midnight Sun came out and the 14-year-old living rent free inside of me just took control over my brain? I put everything on hold and started rereading the entire Twilight Saga while I waited for my copy of the new book and it is a lot of pages, folks, but it’s also sort of magical to dive back into the world that was my OBSESSION as a teen.
Needless to say, my Forks vibes have been activated and I spent the whole week listening to ASMRs of rain of window panes and howling wolves or soundtracks from the movies, I avoid the sun at all costs and only take walks when it’s gray or dark, and obviously it’s all just as healthy as it was when I was 16. Continue reading “Forks Vibes Activated”
Of course, I read less than I usually do because mental health and quarantine do not go together. But I’m finally finding my rhythm again, which is great news! And I still read quite a few books, considering, including some new favorites!
Finding your voice as a writer may seem daunting, but it’s something you have to think about before starting a novel, or chances are your voice is going to change throughout the book, and that means a lot of rewriting.
So how do you find your author voice?
For today’s topic, I’ve scoured the internet for articles that stood out from the usual write every day piece of advice While this is should definitely be taken seriously, we’ve heard it before. We know.
My favorite post on voice was the following: 5 Ways to Develop Your Writer’s Voice, by Jennifer Louden.
There’s nothing more annoying than being a couple of pages into a book and still have no idea where the story is taking place. I don’t need to know the exact geographical coordinates, I don’t even need to know the city the characters live in, I just want to be able to picture them somewhere.
It’s called settting the scene.
And it’s important to do it from page one. The reader needs to feel like he’s right there in with the characters so he feels compelled to keep reading.
Yesterday, we discussed the importance of the first sentence, but I believe the hook is even more important than that first line. A book becomes a page-turner when a writer has the ability to hook us and to keep us hooked.
Today, I’m going to talk about that hook. For this post, I’ve selected an article from the Writer’s Digest that I absolutely adore: 10 Ways to Hook your Reader (and Reel them in for Good).
I went through those ten ways, (which are more like steps, really) and tried to see how Suzanne Collins, consciously or not, used those steps in The Hunger Games (a book that hooked me from page one to the very last).
Here goes.
Sometimes I walk into a bookstore, I pick up a couple of books and read their first lines. If a line hooks me, I buy the book. If it doesn’t, I put it back on the shelf. That’s how important first lines are to me. More important than the synopsis.
Because a synopsis tells me if the story will be interesting.
But the first sentence tells me if the author will keep me interested.
Hi folks! Hope you had a wonderful month of February. Mine was full of snow and travel craves I had to smother because MONEY.
But I did escape into books, and I managed to read four of them between work and writing and getting back to indoors rock-climbing!
Here they are:
The very first season of TEN DAYS OF WRITING has officially started, and we’re kicking off this thing with the theme of Beginnings (how fitting, Audrey)! Here’s how this is going to work:
Every day (from March 1st to 10th) a post about book beginnings will go up of AWA at precisely 8AM. (Yes, this is also a test to my self-discipline.)
Each post will tackle a branch of this wonderful theme and end with a little prompt or question to get you writing! You can set yourself a personal goal of how long or how many words you want to write each day during this challenge. (Personally, I’ve decided to challenge myself to write for half an hour every morning before work.)
*PLUS, you can take part in my personal wordcount tracker sheet, so we can all motivate ourselves to keep going!*
Hello everybody!
This is a short announcement post! I’ve been working on a project lately, and I think it’s time I just launch it to the world and see what happens. If this is successful, or at least fun, I plan to do a couple of these through the year. Continue reading “Ten Days of Writing // March”
the wind was as strong
on my cheeks
in my lungs
i thought it was wrong
to be lost
and alone Continue reading “Travel Memory Rambling – Ireland”
Here are the 20 books (or series) I really want to read in 2020. Some are books that are to be released this year, some are books I’ve heard about for a long time, and others have been on my shelves for way too long!
The day I learned my book Devonna was going to get published was just unreal.
Sometimes, you plan out the year to go in a certain direction and then life takes you competely by surprise and pushes you on an entirely different path. This was 2019 for me.
I had planned the greatest unusual trips for myself, but then I got an email from a publishing house with the most amazing news an aspiring author could possibly hear, and the launch of my very first book took all the time and energy that I had. I postponed many trips. But it’s okay.
It’s more than okay.
And I still got to do loads of travelling and adventuring in 2019, (just not as much as my travel-addict ass is used to). I’m still super happy about that.
Here’s what my year looked like in terms of travels.
2019 was a great year for me in terms of writing (my first book got published!) and living (I spent the summer writing and doing small roadtrips and camping trips with friends, and I went to Prague and Austria again in May!) but it wasn’t what I’d hoped for in terms of reading unfortunately.
I only read 44 books instead of the 52 I’d set for myself, and I feel like I DNFd a lot of books this year, but I’m still really proud of everything I’ve accomplished in the last year.
But without further ado, here’s my Top 10 Books I Read in 2019! Continue reading “Top 10 Books I Read in 2019”
audreywritesabroad 