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Author: Sara Carroll
Book Review: I’ll Give You The Sun, by Jandy Nelson

Book Review: I’ll Give You The Sun, by Jandy Nelson

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I’ll Give You the Sun, by Jandy Nelson

Originally published: September 16, 2014

 

  • ISBN-10: 0142425761
  • ISBN-13: 978-0142425763

 

Jude and her twin brother, Noah, are incredibly close. At thirteen, isolated Noah draws constantly and is falling in love with the charismatic boy next door, while daredevil Jude cliff-dives and wears red-red lipstick and does the talking for both of them. But three years later, Jude and Noah are barely speaking. Something has happened to wreck the twins in different and dramatic ways . . . until Jude meets a cocky, broken, beautiful boy, as well as someone else—an even more unpredictable new force in her life. The early years are Noah’s story to tell. The later years are Jude’s. What the twins don’t realize is that they each have only half the story, and if they could just find their way back to one another, they’d have a chance to remake their world.

 

Sometimes I come across great books in strange ways.  I’ll purposefully walk down a random aisle at the library and start pulling books off the shelves until one speaks to me; I devour award-winning book lists and save them on my nightstand; this time, I first heard of the book on Twitter when someone said the book was amazing and recommended to read it.

I did.  And so should you.

I’ll Give You the Sun is a beautifully written coming of age story that covers all the traditional topics – first loves and sibling rivalry – but with a colour and passion that is uncommon in adult novels let alone one in the young adult genre.  This book made me remember how powerful emotions are during our teenage years – they make us into poets and actors and artists even if we end up losing those things with the weight of time and experience and life.

This story not only includes these typical themes, but Nelson also weaves in threads of grief and death and grit, of passion and disappointment and hope.  All set against the backdrop of a quaint little oceanfront town that made me want to move to the seaside, which almost becomes a one of the characters itself.

It’s not easy to convey characters who are quirky oddballs without leaving the reader feeling that these people are not realistic, but Nelson does it beautifully.  Noah’s brain and inner voice are a constantly exploding rainbow of vibrantly coloured scenes.  Jude is a bit more circumspect, if having an ongoing dialogue with your dead grandmother counts as circumspect.  Grannie dispenses such useful advice as always carrying an onion in your pocket to ward off evil, and Jude is so endearing that people seem to like her anyway.  Embracing these characters reminds us to embrace our own inner weirdos, which is a fun side lesson for teen and adult alike.

Jude and Noah are both artists in their own way, and part of the story revolves around their admission into an elite art academy – the fortunes and misfortunes of each twin lead them down separate paths, and happily the reader is not quite sure which way the story will end.

For a teen novel, this book manages to deal with very adult themes in a PG-13 kind of way, without sacrificing any of the seriousness of the topics covered.  I’ll Give You The Sun almost made me want to be a teenager again – if there was anything you even remotely miss about that time in your life, I recommend you read this book and relive a few of those bittersweet memories too.
10 Writing Prompts to Beat Writer’s Block

10 Writing Prompts to Beat Writer’s Block

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Writer’s block is the woooorrrrrrsssstttt.

If you have ever sat down to do some writing and found yourself just sitting and staring at an empty screen or a blank notebook page, you know what I’m talking about.  Sometimes I describe it to my husband by saying “there’s just no words in my brain”.  For someone who is a writer to come up with such a terrible description is a fitting tribute to how agonizing writer’s block can be.

There are lots of ways that writers use to beat the block, but today I’m going to offer some tips on writing prompts.

Generally, writing prompts (or “daily prompts”) are short writing exercises that a writer follows as a way to generate ideas.  The prompt can be anything from a word, a starting line, or even a photo, and the writer’s job is to create a poem, story, or any other creative work based on the prompt.

If a prompt doesn’t, well, prompt you to think of a story you can always use it to write about a current event or describe a fictional character.  You could even use it to remind you of a story from your own life, and then write down that story as your response to the prompt.

The best way to beat writer’s block is to just write something.  Often when we see words on a page, it helps get over that initial hump and the story starts to flow a bit easier.  Think of the writing prompt as that booster that gets you over the initial hump!

Here are some one-word writing prompts for you to use when you’re faced with the blank page!  Remember: it really doesn’t matter what you write in response to these, just write something!  If you don’t understand one of the words, use a dictionary to look it up – often the dictionary definition can really get you started with your writing!

 

One-Word Prompts

  • Oblivion
  • Accident
  • Smooth
  • Fateful
  • Deadline
  • Crystalize
  • Shattered
  • Whirling
  • Baked
  • Wretched

 

I would love to hear how you use writing prompts and if they help you beat writer’s block!  Share in the comments!

 
Story Ideas from Everyday Life

Story Ideas from Everyday Life

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One of the biggest problems that many writers struggle with is finding inspiration for their stories.  We’ve all sat, with growing anxiety, staring at the empty white screen on our computers or (if you’re old school like me) the pristine but empty white pages of your notebooks.  Where does inspiration come from?

Throughout my writing journey I’ve looked for creative ways to find inspiration, to tease out the life stories that make for compelling reading.  There are many different ways to do this.  Some people rely on daily prompts – there are lots of websites or books that offer a different ‘prompt’ word or idea which a writer can use to craft a story.  Other people will write a fictional story based on a real-life event (kind of like Law and Order was “ripped from the headlines”).

One technique I’ve found helpful is also one of the hardest to do.  Find some time to just sit in a busy place and watch the lives that go by.  Listen, if you can, to people talk to each other and try to figure out their relationship with each other.  How are they feeling?  How does the event you’re observing fit into their journey?  These are great ways to come up with ideas and the scenes that will help you tell your character’s story.

I love to do this kind of thing when I travel alone.  It’s the perfect occasion to sit with a notebook and pen and just observe.  Make lots of notes and include any descriptors or flourishes you want – this can literally be the very beginning of a story and doesn’t have to stay true to life at all.  You are looking for inspiration, not trying to be a stickler for biography or historical facts!  If you’re picking up on a legitimate emotion or conflict, write down all the indicators that tell you the story of the emotion or conflict: body language, muscle tension, choice of words, everything.  These are the things that will make your characters come to life with authenticity.

Here’s a draft of a short story I wrote during one of these trips alone where I had the opportunity to really see the lives around me.  If I could show you my notebook, you’d see that it started out as point form observations and turned into quotes and then the paragraphs just started flowing.  I’m calling it a “draft” because I never really finished it or fleshed it out into anything more than a fragment of time on a train.  Although really, that in itself might be enough – telling the story of lives intertwining for just a moment?

 

Train 44

“Would you mind switching seats with me? I don’t like to face backwards” says the elderly woman to one of the two other ladies sharing a four – seater directly in front of me on Train 44. The younger woman (a daughter?) jumps up obligingly and quickly re-settles her traveling companion in the row that faces forward in the direction we are headed. They laugh amicably when the steward explains the emergency procedures for which they are responsible, sitting as they are in the emergency exit row.

“Oh I know all about this! Get the little hammer, smash the glass and chuck everyone out the window!” The ladies twitter amongst themselves and the steward awards them the green sticker signifying they have been appropriately briefed on how to save all of our lives. I quickly come to think of them as the sisterhood from that book The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants; these ladies might be returning from a girls getaway that has formed part of a yearly tradition or this might be their first adventure. Whichever; they are clearly at ease together.

The train picks up speed as an older British couple across the aisle each tap away on their individual iPads. They’ve told the train steward that they are traveling across the country visiting many of the major cities, and the steward offers travel tips and a few points of interest at their upcoming stop. I imagine the fun they have had planning this trip, maybe their first since retiring; searching online for sights to see and local culture to experience. A travel book pokes out of the backpack at the gentleman’s feet and his wife queries him about the next leg of their journey.

“Will we fly from Halifax to Montreal? Could we catch the train down to New York City?” She cannot remember the final details they settled on after weeks of planning. Nonetheless they are relaxed; perhaps they have made countless such train trips in the course of their marriage, bringing home the photos and memories which make up the tapestry of a life woven together.

(“You have to lie and pass yourself off as a professional Christmas tree decorator!” chortles the youngest woman of the Sisterhood, digging into an egg salad sandwich just purchased from the obliging steward.)

“Is there WiFi on this train?” asks a young man as he settles in next to another young man in the seats directly behind me. “Yeah, I think so” responds the second, which is met by a relieved grunt of thanks from the first. College-aged, headphones already on, they won’t be the most chatty of companions – a hypothesis that is gratified when I turn moments later to see that one of them has resettled himself elsewhere on the half-empty train.

(“There I went, flat on my face down into the bull’s pen!” recounts the elderly sisterhood lady, prompting an incomprehensible exchange about cows with giant nose rings.)

Elsewhere on the train the din of friendly chatter filters back to me as cornfields, trees and lakes slip by outside the window. Sun shines in on my face as we slow to pass through small towns where cars have stopped behind the flashing lights of railway crossings, waiting patiently while we pass.

A father and son speak to each other in a foreign language (Polish?), apparently on a long journey to visit family.

A young woman rests her head, asleep, against a balled up sweater rolled into a makeshift pillow.

The Sisterhood ladies have lapsed into full flow gossip.

“She really is snippy. I’m not fond of that Brenda at all.” “Well what about Terry?” “I don’t know, he hasn’t been around lately.” “Maybe she killed him!”

I smile and settle in with my own book, grateful for the empty seat next to me affording me my own private bubble. A few hours later we approach the train station at our shared destination and I privately wish them well as we pack up our belongings and prepare to de-board Train 44.

What do you think?  Could you find inspiration from the mundane moments of every day life?  What is your favourite way to get the creative juices flowing?  Tell me your ideas and techniques in the comments!

Happy Writing!

 

*This post is adapted from a piece I published at www.pagesandpaiges.wordpress.com (read the original here)
Book Review: The Women in the Castle – by Jessica Shattuck

Book Review: The Women in the Castle – by Jessica Shattuck

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Historical fiction is one of my favourite genres. Reading stories about characters living through important periods in history can provide a truly unique perspective on how people actually experienced that era, in ways that go beyond the tried-and-tested stories of history’s “main characters”.  

A great example of this is The Women in the Castle. This book tells the stories of war-time widows. These aren’t the widows of allied or German soldiers though, but rather the widows of German resistance fighters who are executed after a failed attempt on Hitler’s life.

Our main character, Marianne, fulfills her promise to the resistance by finding and bringing together these widows in the dying days of the war.  But rather than a bond of solidarity and shared loss, Marianne and the other women must confront their own unique experiences of the war, their conflicting feelings toward each other and their spouses, and somehow find a way to build a future for themselves in post-war Germany.

This is a perspective I never before considered and one that certainly wasn’t covered in any of the history classes I’ve taken. I am almost halfway through and am enthralled and appalled by the experiences these women go through; a compellingly written example of an author writing about a merciless time and who shows no mercy to her characters living through it.