Beautiful People #5: A Escritora

That's right, Dean, you are.

(Obviously, I had to steal this, Cait.)

Q U E S T I O N S

1. How many years have you been writing? I'm not sure at all when I began writing... several years ago, at least. I don't know that I ever thought I'd be a writer, though. I always hated "write a short story about _____" assignments the very most, all the way from K-4, until perhaps... 7th grade? Something like that. When did you officially consider yourself a 'writer'? A few years ago? I'm not really certain. I'll have to look through my dates and see. Though I believe the first time I officially considered myself an actual writer would have been soon after Anne-girl and I began talking about books and writing and characters and plots and movies and all.

2. How/why did you start writing? Because I had to, the way Jeremiah had to preach.

3. What's your favorite part of writing? Writing. I know, lame, boring, extremely creative answer. 'Tis the truth, though. Writing is my favorite part of writing. When the words flow not so much from me but through me and I'm simply the channel through which they pass from the abstract to black and white colors.

4. What's your biggest writing struggle? Plotting. Plotting, plotting, plotting. I get random ideas and scenes and pictures and words, but rarely ever an entire story. Or if I do, I can't get enough details pinned down to actually get on with it. Thus all the cliffhangerishness that goes on around here. (Desculpe.)

5. Do you write best at night or day? At night. In the middle of the night. Strange, perhaps, but true. Then again... it seems I'm not so alone in this as I once thought. My favorite writings are always the ones I wrote sometime in the wee hours of the morning. This does seem to be changing somewhat, but for now it still remains.

6. What does your writing space look like? (Feel free to show us pictures!) Hmm, I don't exactly have one. My writing space is my laptop, or occasionally my phone or tablet, or, even less often, my notebook. Unless it's poetry... poetry I write in notebooks, or occasionally on the phone. For poetry, writing tools from first choice to last: notebook, tablet, phone, laptop. And for everything else: laptop, tablet, phone, notebook. (Something like that.) Weird.

7. How long does it typically take you to write a complete draft? I don't know, I've never done that [yet].

8. How many projects do you work on at once? As many as I want, I suppose. I'm not extremely organized about this writing thing. I'm trapped, though, as anyone else. In the most beautiful, chaotic way, of course.

9. Do you prefer writing happy endings, sad ones, or somewhere in between? Somewhere in between, I suppose. I like happily sad endings, or sadly happy endings. Please tell me you understand what I'm saying? Because I do realize that at first glance that may look like exactly the same thing, but it is not.

10. List a few authors who've influenced your writing journey. (Listed randomly.)

• Markus Zusak (The Book Thief)
• Allie Condie (Matched)
• Westmoure (Revelations)
• Anne-girl (Scribblings)
• Cait (Paper Fury)
• Sky (Further Up and Further In)
• Clare Vanderpool (Moonlight Over Manifest)
• Matthew J. Kirby (Icefall)
• Nicholas Sparks (A Walk to Remember)
  I've never loved love stories, but he makes them real. I've never read any of his books {though I just started The Longest Ride}, but I've seen A Walk To Remember {which was the first love story I fell in love with}, The Notebook {which was the second, I think}, and, as of this week, The Lucky One {the movie could have been done much better, but the story behind the cheese was quite the one}. I didn't realize until this week, when I watched The Lucky One, that all three were based on books written by Nicholas Sparks. Thus his addition to my list of awesomeness writers.
• A&E (screenwriters, Once Upon a Time)
• the writers of Supernatural
• Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games)
• Michael Grant (Gone)
• Edgar Allen Poe
• Christopher Paolini (Eragon. His books breathed into me a permanent inspiration. I suppose the day I finished Inheritance is the day I truly began to become a writer.)
• Mark Twain
• Jack London (The Call of the Wild)
• Ely ({what can I say?})
• Olivia (The Scribbleagonist)
• Ashley G. ([insert title here])
• Christine Smith, aka Lauriloth (Musings of an Elf)
• Jaime, aka Jaguar Hero! (The Dancing Lawn)
• Vicki (Sunshine and Shadow)
• Rachel Heffinton (The Inkpen Authoress)
• Ted Dekker (The Circle Series)
• Rick Riordan (Percy Jackson. He writes with a simplicity I at times admire.)
• Amy Walker
• and of course many others, but I can't list them all (sadly)

11. Do you let people read your writing? Why or why not? It depends. Sometimes I post what I write, sometimes I show it to only certain people (or characters), and other times I show it to no one (perhaps not even myself). In the latter case, I have a secret, private blog upon which I scrawl any and all such works for safe-keeping. Why? Because some things simply are or are not meant for sharing, dearie.

12. What's your ultimate writing goal or dream? Ultimate? Hmm. Perhaps to have that one great book of my own that becomes classic and loved. Like The Book Thief. Not that said book would be like The Book Thief itself, or even the same genre, or anything, only that it would be that kind of beloved classic... you get the idea?

13. If you didn't write, what would you want to do? Act. As in, be a legit actress. Yes, that is my dream job.

14. Do you have a book you'd like to write one day but don't feel you're ready to attempt it yet? Yes, I do. The one that comes to mind would be World Without Water. It's sloshing around in my head still, gathering and collecting such things as would be needed until such a time presents itself. I don't want to start until it's ready for fear of ruining such a beautiful story. (Not that I'm really sure of what's going on yet, other than the original [title] idea. Which is part of why it's sloshing.)

15. Which story has your heart and won't let go? Jainie. And Alex. Also the others, but mostly Jainie (and Alex).

A perhaps [un]noteworthy note:

GIFs are cool but annoying. I never dreamed I'd actually use any.

And then Dean showed up on Beautiful People.

Hmm. Awesomeness, indeed.

"a escritora" is Portuguese for "the writer" (feminine), if you must know