Saturday, June 26, 2010

Hi, my name’s Sarah and I’m a book-oholic…

That’s something you all should probably know about me. Nearly everyone knows that I love to read. I happen to have been deemed one of the best readers in kindergarten, but I don’t mean to toot my own horn…

Anyways, if reading were involved you could bet that I would want in. Mom would read me bedtime stories. I’d participate in the summer reading program at the library and I could always be found with a book on me, sometimes two. I didn’t like to be at the end of a book and not have another one to immediately start on, especially if I was in the car. I find even now that it’s hard to fall asleep without a book to go to bed with. I told you, I’m addicted.

After reading, writing closely followed. I used to try to keep journals, but I’d end up only writing a few days, forgetting about it for a few months, coming back then finally just letting it go. Then I started writing short stories.

The first story I can remember writing had something to do with an alien spaceship that landed in the middle of a baseball field and was found by a bunch of kids. What can I say? I was young. As far as I know it’s unfinished and lost in the only way that kids can lose things. My first finished story was about someone that fell down the spillway at the lake and managed to survive and had to find a way out while finding more than a lost pair of sunglasses.

When I got to college I got into journalism and found out it wasn’t really my kind of thing. But I also got into a writing club, though that didn’t last long because I was finding it hard to get there regularly and then I believe the club ended itself. It was there that I heard about National Novel Writing Month (nanowrimo.org). NaNoWriMo is a challenge that takes place in November where you make a commitment to writing 50,000 words that month. We’ll get more into that when the time comes. I didn’t get on to their website right away, it wasn’t until last year that I finally signed up and participated. That’s how my first novel was born. Now it’s in that first editing/revising/rewriting stage. Slowly but surely it’s getting there. I hope to be done going through it before summers over.

That’s my story. What’s yours? Did you like to read as a kid? When did you start writing?

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Welcome to Scribbles and Shorts!

Hi! Thanks for visiting Scribbles and Shorts! My name is Sarah, and I’m pretty excited to start this blog. I hope it’ll be as much fun for you as it is for me.

The posts you’ll see on Scribbles and Shorts will be all about reading and writing, from summaries of different books to short stories posted just for fun. We’ll even get into things you might think about as an author like where ideas for plots come from, where you find the time to write in your busy schedules, even where you like to write.

I would love feedback on any of these subjects, so please, comment away! I want to know what everyone thinks, not just tell you what I think. Suggest a book you want to know about. Give me a topic for a short story you want to see me write and post. Everything will be kept PG of course. Constructive criticism is appreciated too. Do you think I’m doing something bad? Don’t just say ‘this is dumb!’ Tell me what it is that's dumb! I’ll take all comments into consideration. I also wouldn’t mind if you told me what I was doing good. :)

Another thing I thought I should mention is the ads over to the right. I hear that a lot of people don’t like to see ads and that is completely reasonable. I understand that they can be annoying, but I think these seem pretty unobtrusive. Ignore them if you wish.

Anyways, thanks for coming by! I’ll be posting at least twice a month, probably every second (2nd) and fourth (4th) Saturday. See you then.