Poem One: In Flanders Fields

         April is poetry month, so I thought I would post a poem per day that I enjoy. While I hate writing poetry, I love reading it so I'll definitely have enough for the month. Enjoy. 

In Flanders Fields

by John McCrae, May 1915

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

Birthday Girl

     So yeah, it's my birthday. Just felt like announcing it. I mean, I'm having a small party later, just my close family. If it was up to me, this would be my cake:

   But since I'm saving up for my super sweet sixteen next year, this cake isn't an option. Now, I do have one birthday request. It's quite simple, juts go here (inkpop) and read and comment on the first chapter of The Curse of the Good Girl. Is that too much to ask? I just want to know what people think about it. I haven't worked on it in a few weeks because of my really busy schedule (the play is going good and I'm really excited that we open Friday) but as soon as the play is over, I'm back to business. Well, maybe not exactly when it's over. My goal is actully to restart on April 1st. I thought it would be a funny start date, plus that gives me six days to regroup and redirect my energy into it.
    That's all for now I guess. I don't officially turn fifteen until 5:32 P.M, but whatever. Life's good for now so why complain?
                                   ~XOXO,
                                            Libby

The Curse of the Good Girl, Tuneful, and My Hair

    I dyed my hair today. Naturally I'm a brunette. Medium brown. For 8th grade graduation, I had gotten red high lights. Since then, I've gotten different shades of red highlights: fire red, violet red, violet red mixed with fuchsia. My hair had to be five or so different colors. But now I've evened it all out in one color: Black.

            Before                                               After

Year book photo with my red/brown hair.
I had paid extra for them to take out my
zits in the year book photo...

 ...I wish I could do the same with my camera. You don't get the full
effect of the color in this picture, but it's pretty dark. My bathroom lighting is just sucky so you can't really tell. 

     Onto inkpop news. For those who don't know, I'm part of a teen writing site called inkpop.com. Over the summer, I had a novel up called Confessions of an Optimistic Pessimist: Life, Love & Other Absurd Forces. Right now I'm working on another novel, but it's not really up on inkpop. It's too hard balancing school, creative writing classes and work, writing a book, and swapping reads and requests. So, I'm not swapping until it's finished and edited. Still, I make exceptions.

    Besides time issues, another real reason why I don't read much on inkpop is because I've come to find that a lot of what people write these days is not what I'm interested in. It's hard giving someone a helpful and good review when you want to rip your eyes out of your head just to have a reason not to. It's not because of their writing itself, I'm sure their good, but it's the genre. I used to love paranormal and supernatural books, but for at lest right now I'm into realistic fiction. And lest me tell you, more then 70% of inkpop is supernatural books.

    A little over a week ago I received a read request. It wasn't even a swap request, the person just wanted me to read their project! I was about to ignore it, when I noticed that she had included a book trailer link with the project. I love book trailers. Be it published books, self-published books, or unpublished books, if there is a trailer, I will watch it. I copy and pasted the link and decided to watch it. What I saw was this:




    I was so blown away by this trailer, that I did decide to read her story, Tuneful. I ended up really loving it. Some book trailers are ten times better then the actual book, but not in this case. They compliment each other perfectly. I may only be on chapter four, but already I know that it's my new favorite book on inkpop -- it's staying on my picks list until it makes it to the top!

    As much as I love her book, it's really her trailer that drew me in. If it wasn't for it, I would have never checked out the book. So, being slightly shameless, I asked her to make me one. Of course I hoped she would say yes, but seeing as my own schedule is so busy, I had really no way of knowing if hers was equally or even more busy then mine. I was prepared for a no. When she responded back with a yes, I swear I felt like doing somersaults! Of course I didn't, I don't want to kill myself. It took her about week, but today I received an email saying it was finished. This is the end product:



     I'm in love with it. It works perfectly for my story. I'm amazed that she grasped my  vision so well -- but maybe that's because I wrote her like two Microsoft word pages of info for the trailer. It may have been too much info, but it obviously paid off. So thank you so much to emaone who made me the loveliest book trailer in book trailer history -- except for maybe the one she made for her own book. I can't decided which one I like better. She is just so talented that all her work is great: book trailers; book covers; book itself. Check out her website. You can find it here. Her YouTube channel can be found here. And I already linked her inkpop profile to her name above, but I might as well like it again here.

     Last night I finished chapter five of my The Curse of the Good Girl. I'm at 9, 566 words. Though it might be less. Chapter one is probably going to be taken apart and used for scrap. There's parts that just don't work and so I'm going to copy and paste what does and erase what doesn't. But that's not until I'm done. I'm leaving the editing for later and am just going to concentrate on writing for now.

                                   XOXO,
                                        Libby

Not Cool UK, Not Cool.

    I have this dream of moving to England when I’m older. Of course, this dream must have bumps in the road or else it would be too easy. Today I started looking into colleges in London. At first, I was having a hard enough time just finding a school in London that offers Creative Writing as a major (they don’t call it a major, they just call it a course of study) full-time (three years, for some reason they don’t have a fourth). After getting very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very aggravated and even venting to my friend Renee, I was able to find school. Right now my list contains:

1.      Goldsmiths University of London

2.      London Metropolitan University

3.      University of Greenwich

4.      Roehampton University

    After finding these schools, I decided to look more into how I actually get a visa to, you know, live there. God, I wish I didn’t. Talk about mood deflator. It’s so freaking hard to move to England. Going to school there isn’t that hard. It will require a visa for education and I’ll have to renew it a few times and all that, but if I choose to move there for another reason? HA! Unless I can prove I have family there (family born there), have a job waiting for me, or a fiancé, I basically screwed. So sad.

    Of course, now I know I have to go there for school. If not for my Bachelor’s degree, then most definitely for my Master’s. If I don’t, I may never be able to. Hearing this of course makes me sad, but at least I know before it’s too late.

    I’m pissed off at the UK at the moment, but whatever. I’ll deal. I guess. I’ll distract myself with Math homework. I mean, I NEED to get into a college in London now. This way, after I’m done with school, I will be able to get a job and apply for a work visa. With this, after a certain amount of time living there (I think five years, but I’m not sure) I can apply to become a legal citizen of the UK. Thank God I’m a writer; with all the paper work I’m going to have to sign, my writing skills are going to be put to use majorly.

    

                     XOXO,

                             Libby

Libby, The Writing Magician!

     OK, truth time: I'm not a magician. That would be awesome though, but I'm not. I've always sucked at magic tricks, the only one I've ever been able to successfully pull off is the smiling dollar bill one. Though none of this is really the point.

     What I am, is a novelist in training. One day, you will be able to walk into any book store (except for maybe specialized and indie ones) in the country and see my name on one of the covers. If I really was a magician, I would just use my magic and BAM(!), presto-booko! I would be a best-selling author. Sadly, I regret to inform you that up to this time this dream has not happened. It will one day, just not right now.

     I "discovered" blogging a year ago today. It was 9:41 pm and I was feeling depressed because of friendship problems, so I wrote a blog post about it. Though that post did get me in trouble later on with that friend, I kept at blogging. Why make a new blog, you ask? Because that blog has a lot of personal information. Not like where I live, sleep and breath stalker-handing information (well it does, but any site I'm has that info, I tend to over share), but more about people on my life that I've had problems with.

    I'm sure that one day I will be a known writer and when that day comes I don't want that info to be really out there. I can make a blog private and block people from reading it so no one else will see it, but I can't bring myself to delete it all. Too much meaning in some of those posts, it would be equivalent to me ripping up my diary -- which I will NEVER do. Instead, I've come to the solution to start a professional blog. This is it.

     I'm Libby Shaw -- it's not my real name. I decided I needed a pen name, and after trying out different ones, this is the one that I both like the best and decided fits me. Truth Time: I'm only almost fifteen. I know that seems young, but hey, I have goals in life and I'm going to set them.

    The one year anniversary of my first blog isn't the only reason I've started up this new blog. I've been getting more writing done these days. You see, back in the beginning of seventh grade I started writing a book. Well, I started the idea portion along with the first chapter or so. It wasn't until March that I seriously started writing it -- I had received a laptop for my thirteenth birthday. On New Years Eve of 2009 (eighth grade year) I finished the novel. I was quite proud of myself. Still, when I started re-reading it to edit, I saw it sucked. Badly.

     Since then I haven't accomplished much in the writing world. I tried writing another novel over the summer, but I didn't have much time and once school started time was out the window. I attend an art school with the sole purpose of writing in mind. Because of this I have almost no time. From 7:30am to 12:45pm I have my normal high school / 9th grade classes, then at 1:00pm to 4:00pm I get to hone my skills with the help of the creative writing courses I take.As soon as I get home I always collapse and take a nap because I'm so tired. Still, I enjoy art school; It's different from other schools and I encourage all to find one and apply.

    Recently I've finally found both the inspiration and the time to write. I'm working on a story called The Curse of The Good Girl (see tab). With this sudden inspiration, I've decided to record my turbulent journey in writing (and hopefully publication) in this very blog. This blog will hold my efforts, failures and successes (hopefully) at becoming a published writer. Thanks for coming along for the ride. Welcome to my world.