First off, I know a lot schools started back this week (in one form or another), so I wanted to send good wishes out to all the teachers, parents, and students embarking on this new school year. My kids don’t start until next week, and I’m having a lot of feelings about it, many of which I’m keeping close to the chest because I want to stay as positive as possible for the kiddos. I wrote a post about change back in 2015 and find much of it is relevant to the year 2020.
This was the school year where all three kiddos were supposed to have some form of formal schooling. The year where I would have a little more time to write. The fact that this isn’t happening is a small thing in comparison to a lot of other problems, but I’m still trying to allow myself to feel some resentment about it without wallowing. I’ve had a ton of writing ideas lately, so at least my creativity is flowing again.
In bookish news, I have a secret project I’ve been working on. Some of you may already know this one, and it’s getting a second life! It’s a project I’ve been working on in the in-between spaces. I was stuck on it for a little bit, but now that I’ve solved a particular problem, it’s well on its way. I don’t have the timeline pinned down yet for a release. Maybe I’ll just do a surprise release with it whenever it’s done.
Here’s an adorable teaser image for it that I cannot take credit for as it was done by an illustrator. I’ll let you know all the details soon!
After pushing last fall and winter to get ELIXIR SAVED ready for publication, I was planning on taking a break in the spring to read and fill up my creative well. Then all the pandemic stuff happened, the kids moved to distance learning, and I didn’t get a chance to fill up the well.
I got to a point at the end of the spring when I felt like I would never figure out how to get back into writing and still felt totally burnt out. But I was also itching to get working on this witchy middle grade book I’d started last fall when I did an Unworkshop at the Highlights Foundation (you can read about that amazing experience on my post “Highlights Foundation Unworkshop: A Little Creepy, A Lot Productive”). I’m the type of writer who needs breaks, but when the itch to write comes back, I get antsy. It’s like my body is reacting to my brain’s need to write.
And I really love this witchy middle grade I’ve been working on. It’s about breaking up with toxic friendships, middle school bullying, historical and modern witches, crows, painting and art, mourning the loss of a loved one and how that process never really ends, and a Halloween night corn maze. I even got a crow t-shirt for my birthday to really get into the creative spirit of it.
So I thought about what would help me get back into it and came up with the idea of an accountability buddy. Having someone to check in with where we could be like “Did you get your words in this week?” would make it so I would be letting them down if I didn’t do my work.
A thing you may not know about me is that I’m not very good at asking for help. I hate the idea of putting people out for my benefit…even if it’s not necessarily an inconvenience to them or maybe it’s even something they would enjoy or benefit from. This avoidance of asking for help isn’t something I consciously do; it’s more like it’s in my nature not to bother others. Most of the time I don’t realize I’m doing it (or not doing it as is most often in these situations).
Anyway, I was super nervous when I reached out to one of my writer friends about being accountability buddies. I tried to be totally casual about it, prefacing it with statements like “only if you’re interested and have the time.” I didn’t even suggest the writing together (virtually, of course, because of the pandemic).
It turns out, she was totally on board with it (and I never should have been nervous about reaching out to her in the first place). She had been getting up early in the morning to write before her daughter woke up and asked if I’d be interested in joining her in those early morning session. Which I was super excited about!
Except for one thing…so something else you might now know about me (you’re just all learning so much about me today!) is that I am 100% not a morning person. Before kids, I used to sleep in on weekends until 11:00 and stay up all hours of the night reading or writing. On the other hand, my husband and our two older kids are early risers. I think I’ve had to wake up the kids to get ready for school maybe once. They have a clock in their room, not to wake them up with an alarm, but to let them know when it’s 6:30 a.m. and they’re allowed to get out of bed. They are my alarm clocks!
But, I could see how getting up early would allow me to get back to writing. And if my friend was already doing it, then it wouldn’t be an inconvenience to her at all. That’s why three mornings a week, my phone alarm rings at 5:30 a.m. and I roll out of bed to get my tea ready in time for our 5:45 writing sessions.
I’m not gonna lie and say it’s gotten easy the more I’ve done it…I still hate waking up that early and it feels totally unnatural. (It helps that it’s at least somewhat light this time of year.) But it feels so good to get all those words on the page before breakfast. My word count for the witchy MG is over 35,000 now. I’m past the muddy middle and working my way towards the end. Plus, it’s really fun to write with someone else and to spend at least a few minutes chatting together about our writing projects and life and stuff.
Once school starts back up again, it’s going to be a little trickier to do these early morning sessions (and it’ll be darker in the mornings), but I’m going to try for at least one morning a week. So keep your fingers crossed for me! If I can get this first draft done by the beginning of October, I will have drafted this novel in less than a year…which would be a first for me.
Thanks to everyone who took the “What Element Fuels Your Magic” quiz and shared their answers. It was insightful to learn what some of my long-time followers got as answers. I was very pleased to see that many of you thought your results matched up with your personality!
Technically you can take the quiz as many times as you’d like to try and get each of the possible elements, but I realize that can be harder to do than it seems and it’s also time consuming. (Despite switching around his answers, my spouse had a hard time getting anything other than Earth.) So I decided to share the descriptions of all the elements here.
If you have gotten a chance to take the quiz yet, try it out now before you know what the answers are.
And now for the descriptions:
Air Magic
Your magical element is air! You can be described as having your head in the clouds, but that’s only because it’s easy for you to get lost in your own amazing thoughts. The key to harnessing your air magic is practicality and focus, and then the sky is your limit.
Elixir Saved characters with air magic: Devon, Tarq, and Queenie.
Earth Magic
Your magical element is earth! You thrive on having a plan and acting upon it, and you aren’t afraid to showcase your best qualities. The key to mining your earth magic is to let go and trust your instincts, and then you’ll be able to move mountains.
Elixir Saved characters with earth magic: Katora, Hirsten, and Pop.
Fire Magic
Your magical element is fire! Your passions and feelings run deep, which means your emotions can burst out when they become too big, but that means everyone knows where they stand with you. The key to controlling your fire magic is discipline and balance, and then there’s no extinguishing your flame.
Elixir Saved characters with fire magic: Kylene, Zelenka, and Nika.
Water Magic
Your magical element is water! You don’t mind going with the flow. You have a healthy respect for your limits, which tend to be high, and you don’t like to have them tested. The key to capturing your water magic is boundaries and precision, and you’ll be a tidal wave.
Elixir Saved characters with water magic: Bhar, Palafair, and Em.
Now that you’ve seen all the possibilities, I’d love to know if you still think you got the one that best describes you?
About ELIXIR SAVED:
Three lives saved by the Elixir; three lives bound by it.
The Elixir entwines the lives of those it touches. Once upon a time, Kylene, Zelenka, and Devon tasted it and escaped death. None were left without scars. Now, a shocking message from the Ice Queen—one of Mother Nature’s higher beings—sends each survivor on a quest. Kylene travels to the frozen depths of Blanchardwood, Zelenka heads back to the wilds of Faway Forest, and Devon journeys to a reclusive mountain temple. The three paths converge in a war against an ancient and tricky foe. And even the Elixir cannot save everyone. The fate of the world balances on the edge of a sword, and the outcome depends on whether the survivors will sacrifice their second chances.
Escape back into the world of the Great Peninsula in this much-anticipated sequel to the award-winning ELIXIR BOUND. Perfect for fans of the Thrones of Glass series by Sarah J. Maas.
Frozen 2, which was the last movie I saw in theaters and is quite popular in my house right now (the whole Frozen franchise really…as evidenced by the requested Frozen Fever cake I made for my 3-year-old’s birthday earlier this month), is a really good example of the different kinds of strengths female characters can have.
Let’s take a look at Elsa. She embodies what a lot of people think about when it comes to strong female characters, à la Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games series or Sarah Connors from the Terminator franchise. I’m talking about the butt-kicking, weapon-wielding type. Elsa is powerful and so full of magic she literally cannot control it. These characters are seen as extraordinary and labeled as strong, often in a way that marks them as different from other female characters. Almost as if implying that women are inherently weak, especially since strong isn’t used nearly as often to describe male characters because it’s assumed of them.
These strong female characters certainly have their weaknesses; they wouldn’t be very interesting characters if they didn’t. Elsa can be distant to the people she loves, she has trouble accepting help, and she fails to recognize her own limitations. A character without such flaws is boring and has nothing to overcome internally.
In general, though, the power of characters like these women is in your face and often of the physical variety, so they get the descriptor of strong. Not to say that they aren’t mentally strong, too, (which they absolutely are), but their most obvious displays of strength are physical. These characters are clearly not to be trifled with. They go on adventures and quests. They face dangers and conquer them. I love these types of strong female characters!
But I also am quick to note that this isn’t the only way a female character can be strong (and this is true for male characters and we definitely need male characters to show different types of strength, but that’s for another post). That’s where Anna comes in.
There’s a running joke in the Frozen franchise about how Anna is ordinary. When she calls herself ordinary in the first Frozen movie, Hans (her love interest at the time) agrees by saying, “That’s right, she is.” When Anna shoots him a wounded look, he adds, “In–in the best possible way.” In Frozen 2, Olaf recounts the events of the first movie and describes the sisters by saying, “One born with magical powers, the other powerless.”
Anna is also openly affectionate, is not afraid to be silly, and is all too aware of her powerlessness. She has her moments of physical strength (justifiably punching Hans in the first Frozen movie after he’s betrayed her and Elsa), but I don’t think she would be described as a strong female character in the way Elsa (or Katniss or Sarah Connors) is.
Warning about Frozen 2 spoilers….
Yet one of the biggest examples of an act of strength in the entire Frozen franchise is performed by Anna in Frozen 2. Having come to the realization that her sister has sacrificed herself for the truth and clutching Olaf as he flurries away to his death, Anna lies on a dark cave floor and just wants to give up. In the song “The Next Right Thing,” she sings:
I’ve seen dark before, but not like this This is cold, this is empty, this is numb The life I knew is over, the lights are out Hello, darkness, I’m ready to succumb
By the end of the song, Anna has found the strength within herself to make her way out the cave and has vowed to save her kingdom and the enchanted forest. Despite facing the darkest moments of her life and personally being done with it all, she gets up and moves forward (not on…there’s really no moving on from something like that). Then, despite the heartache and depression and physical fatigue, she proceeds to anger the Earth Giants so they throw boulders at her as they chase her to the dam that she is trying to get them to destroy. Now that’s a show of strength!
I’m not trying to take sides on whose strength is better. None of Anna’s strengths diminish Elsa’s, and vice versa. The point is that there are many different ways for characters (and people) to show strength and to be powerful. Let’s not limit our characters–male or female–to one type.
This is something I thought a lot about when working on the characters in the Elixir books. I wanted there to be strong female characters in every sense of the word. So if you enjoy stories about sisters and strong female characters (and ice palaces!), I encourage you to check out the award-winning YA fantasy ELIXIR BOUND and its standalone sequel ELIXIR SAVED.
I’ve always loved those BuzzFeed personality quizzes: Which Disney Princess Are You, What YA Dystopian Novel Would You Live In, What Fantasy Character Fits Your Personality. They remind me of my adolescents days when I would take the quizzes in Seventeen Magazine (when a physical magazine would actually come to your mailbox…I’m old!).
So I decided to make one for my latest YA fantasy ELIXIR SAVED. It was a lot of fun to make, and even more fun to take. (Can you tell all my marketing efforts for this book have been about doing things that I enjoy? If you haven’t seen my launch video with ELIXIR SAVED’s birth story, definitely check that out.)
One aspect of the worldbuilding I expanded upon from ELIXIR BOUND to ELIXIR SAVED was the magic. In book 1, we know some characters can use magic and others don’t. But as far as where magic comes from or what governs how it can be used, there’s not much there. What we do know is that Katora has inherited the magic of guardianship of the Elixir from her father and Hirsten has inherited his mapmaking magic from his father. We also know the higher beings use magic a lot more than humans and demicks, the mortal beings.
In book 2, I expanded upon how the magic in the world of the Great Peninsula works. One of the old theories is that magic comes from the elements, but that belief has fallen out of fashion in the time where the Elixir stories take place. Turns out, this is true. Each human or demick has one element that fuels their magic, though many mortal beings don’t tap into their magic at all. And higher beings can tap into all four elements as a source of magic.
The magic is fueled by the elements, but the magic itself isn’t necessarily tied to being able to manipulate a certain element Avatar-style (I only watched the series Avatar: The Last Airbender in the last couple of months and loved it!). So someone who gets their magic form the element water doesn’t use their magic to manipulate water…it’s simply the source of it. Each person’s magic is usually tied to being able to do one thing (like making maps move and hold memories), though, again, the higher beings aren’t restricted by this.
Which brings me to the quiz (finally!). You can find out what element fuels your magic, but what you do with that magic is only limited by your imagination. It also shows you what Elixir characters share that same element. It’s only 7 questions, and there are no wrong answers…the best kind of quiz!
B.T.W. I’m pretty consistently earth magic (no surprise that matches Katora’s element). I’d love to hear what your results are. Oh and if anyone is reading any of my book, I’d love pictures of them in the wild, so please tag me when you share.
