The new look

If you've been a visitor to my blog in the past you'll know it used to look very different. It looked somewhat .. sad and cheap!

Well I logged into my blog the other day and found it looking completely different. A butterfly background, this awesome vintage looking book header... it looked SO much better.

I didn't do this. But I soon found out who did.

My amazing man has been living in a different city from me for two months now. We're finding the long distance thing pretty hard. He'd been talking for months about making my blog look more visually appealing (that was the designer in him talking), but I didn't know what I wanted done with it so I just left it.

He had a few days off work a few weeks ago and decided to revamp my blog to surprise me. He made the whole thing from scratch (the designer noob in me is so super impressed). I love it, I think it represents me much better, it looks more sophisticated and classy.

So I just want to write this quick post to thank him for doing this for me. I love it and my blog is DEFINITELY more visually appealing now!

What do you all think? :) 

Three pages isn't enough!

In the last year or so I've started actively reading the acknowledgements of a book. I didn't used to. I just wanted the story. However, seeing how important my friends and family are to my own process of writing a novel, I realise the acknowledgments are vital. 

In fact, sometimes it almost seems like the acknowledgements aren't enough. For example, one day I was speaking to my mother and she said something along the lines of "Oh I expect that to happen when you write your novel." I stopped dead and thought I must have misheard her, after all the Skype connection between New Zealand and New York is often pretty unreliable. It turned out that's exactly what she'd said. I was quite surprised and asked why she thought I would write a book. She said, you love reading, you've always loved writing and I wouldn't be surprised if that's what you do next.

She was right of course. Like mother's always know, she knew what my next step was before I did. In fact, I had always wanted to write a book, I just wasn't sure if I had it in me. Hearing my mother say that really gave me the confidence to step forward and begin. Even now as I write this, there are very few people I've told that I'm writing. I've told a few people I barely know which I seem to feel okay with, but in terms of who I speak to in my daily life I told my FH, my mum, my little sister, my older sister's husband, my roommate and one of my good friends who is the most avid reader and book critic I know.

Without my FH and my good friend, I would have been stuck before I even started. They're the ones I turn to if I can't make something flow, or find the right name for a character or a city, or if I can't quite figure out which direction my plot will head in, they're the ones I'll tell my ideas to to gauge reaction. The rest I simply told the plot to in order to see what they thought of the general idea. In fact, I only told my little sister because she was suspicious about the reason I was asking her for boys and girls names. She later told mum she was surprised at how much she liked my idea (pft, thanks little sis...!)

I'm no where near the publishing or even editing stage of my WIP, but it's nice to acknowledge the people who have stood by me and cheered me on from before day one! Sometimes, the acknowledgements just aren't enough.

Who are the people you want to shout out to, who have helped you with your writing or whatever it is you're passionate about?

The Writing Community

Warning - I'm not witty at the best of times but this post rates 98% on the sappy factor.

This post isn't particularly about writing per se, but I wanted to write a post that talked about the online writing community in general.

I haven't been blogging for very long, it's really only been a couple of months since I started this blog and I still haven't told any of my friends or family about it yet. Mostly when I start a new blog, I tell people I know about it and get everyone to follow me, but my writing.... at the moment it's something I don't feel ready to share just yet. It's like it's my "dirty little secret" - just kidding ... but not really. One day I'll definitely tell them my blog exists, but it's almost like I need to prove to myself that I can really make a go at being a writer first.

There are very few people who I have told that I'm writing, and even fewer know about the plot of my WIP. A couple of people who have known me for a long time laughed when I told them I was writing a book.  I'd never really talked about my desire to write to them in the past, and because I'm not one of those authors who has been walking around with a notepad and pen since I was old enough to stand up, people didn't believe me when I said I wanted to be a writer. I have to say, it was quite disheartening to see people who know me so well laugh at the prospect of me working on a novel. It got to the point where I was embarrassed to tell people that I wanted to spend the next year focusing on my writing because I didn't want them to think I was a hopeless dreamer.

It is true that any desire I had to write had been kept under wraps most of my life. I didn't talk about it much, any writing that I did was channeled into other mediums like blogs, magazine articles, reviews, newspaper articles, school essays and the occasional short story here and there... I always loved writing, particularly creative writing, I just didn't figure there was any point in pursuing it because, quite frankly, I thought I was rubbish. I channeled all my energy into performance - singing, dance and drama - until I decided I was rubbish at them as well!

It wasn't until I was stuck in a horrible, dead end job which was going no where that I decided I really wanted a job that would let me write. I remember a conversation to my mother where I literally just whined about how all I wanted to do was write. My mum then mentioned something about me writing a novel. I'd never even considered the possibility of writing a book. I don't know why I hadn't thought of it sooner because writing a novel would really be a combination of everything I love. I really try and make a conscious effort to focus on the things that make me happy in life, by doing what I love to do. This mentality gave me the final push to just go ahead and give it a try. While I have lived with this mentality for quite some time, I recently saw this video, which is quite inspiring, which might better help explain my 'seize the day' and 'do what you love' frame of mind.

Anyway, the whole point of this post was to talk about the writing community. When I started this blog I had no readers (I still don't think I have any regular readers, but it's nice to know my blog gets viewed by eyes other than my own from time to time)! After I started this blog I discovered a whole new part of cyberspace within the 'online writing community'. While I started reading a lot of other blogs written both by individuals and groups, one of my favourite places to check into regularly quickly became YA Highway. Aside from the great posts that are put up every few days, I love their weekly blog hop. Being able to discover new blogs and writers, and seeing everyone's answers to the weekly questions is my favourite part of the week. It is when the more personalized answers come out that the writing community has really given me 'warm fuzzies'. The questions that talk about aspects of our book or our future plans has always really surprised me. I certainly wasn't expecting the writing community to be so incredibly, unquestioningly supportive and lovely. It's really blown me away, and the comments I get on this blog really make me smile.

I'm kind of a 'blog noob' and can't always figure out how to follow people... in fact I've only just figured out how to schedule posts and imbed YouTube videos (oh the shame), but I'm working on figuring it out (I get the ones that say 'google connect' but after that I'm stumped... help?!) because all the other writers blogs I've been reading on here have really impressed me and I've learned so much from this community.

**update - I've FINALLY figured out how to put the 'followers' section in there. I always wondered why it was never showing up.... and here I was thinking I was tech savvy!**

So I just wanted to write a quick (well I intended it to be quick but it's actually rather long) post about how thankful I am to the writing community for being your amazing selves, for the lovely post comments (I will never, ever stop loving the awesome blog post comments) and for being all around awesome. The support I receive from others in the writing community really encourages me to be proud about my writing, to not want to keep it a secret, and encourages me to keep going. It fuels my love and passion for the written word and it inspires me to reach higher than I ever thought possible. I'm excited about talking more to all the amazing writers on here, learning from them and supporting them in their own endeavors.