My 5 Favourite Bookish Twists || Clichés & Twists 02

Today is part two of my clichés & twists series. Be sure to read part one if you haven't yet. As I stated last week, I like the "perfect" things. Beautiful heroine, handsome hero, predictable romance, happy-ever-after, villain-is-caught type of books. And yet... I also love the not-what-I-expected, bittersweet, realistic, unusual type of books too. There's a place for both. I firmly believe we need books that show different point-of-views--the unheard, unthought-of, forgotten POVs. Books that show life as it is, but reminds you that whatever happens, God is there and He reigns. Books that challenge your opinions and prejudices. Books that show you things you didn't think about. And books that are just frankly exciting and unusual. Today, I'll be listing my five favourite book twists--things that make a book stand out or hit hard. 

1. Blemished hero.

Henty's heroes are almost always handsome, strong, brave, and skilled. And yet one of my favourite of his heroes is the only flawed one--Ralph Bathurst. Bathurst is clever, handsome, and strong; but he has an innate and helpless horror of noise. Yells, gunshots, roars. drumbeats--loud noises he cannot stand. Talk about a serious defect during the Indian Mutiny! Bathurst's struggles to overcome his flaw are excellent. Heroes who struggle, in any way, are very relatable.

2.  Flawed heroine.  
This, again, ties in with number one. The Little Women from the classic are all flawed--pride, temper,  shyness. And yet, don't we all relate to them and love them? Anne Shirley is beautiful, but she struggles against her "romanticness" and her pride. A flawed heroine, whether in her face or her character, is much more "living" than a perfect one. The "perfect" characters often tend to be boring, if not irritating. 

3. Different POV.

There are some topics that we are used to seeing through the eyes of the same type of person. A WWII book is generally through the eyes of an Ally. An American Revolution book tends to be (on the American side at least) to be from an American's POV. The French-Indian wars in the 1600s are typically written from the French standpoint. But a book that shows WWII through the eyes of an German. Or the American Revolution from the POV of an Englishman or a Canadian. Or the French-Indian wars from the standpoint of an Iroquois. Now that is new and fascinating--and, if well done, though-provoking--even to the author himself, perhaps. 

4. Unexpected twist.

Rather a vague title, but let me explain. By this I mean when you, the reader, is expecting something to happen and the book takes a strong turn to the left or right of that and you are left gaping in astonishment. Unless it has nothing whatsoever to do with the story, that is a fascinating place. 

5. Bittersweet ending. 
Your "ship" didn't happen. The MC's best friend died. They didn't strike gold. The homestead was filed by someone else. Loss. Loss in any way. Bittersweet endings can be so well done. In real life, things don't turn out the way we want. In books, the same can happen--and remind us that there is still hope and beauty. 

So let the villain get away. Make your Nazi captain nice instead of devilish. Marry your main character to someone else than her childhood friend or her dashing rescuer. Give you hero a fatal character defect. Make them unusual and real. 

~ / / ~

What are your thoughts on this series? Have you any favourite twists?

Vulnerable & Real

I spilled this out tonight after realizing this with many tears. It’s messy and raw and real. I’m sharing it because I want to be real and a help to someone. I hope some girl can see through this that she isn’t alone, that someone else has struggled as she has/is, and that she too can find healing, peace, and victory in Christ. I want to share my journey through this sea called life and share what I have learned to make things easier for someone. 

As a character I have about three good virtues. It’s easy for me to love people, and hard for me to dislike them. I feel sorry for them easily, and I try to find mitigations or excuses for them a lot. I can be very dedicated and perfectionist.

For the rest, I’m a mess. 

I am always afraid of doing something wrong. I’m afraid to make a mistake. To do something stupid. To cause an accident. To do something wrong. I’m always, always afraid. I worry that I said something stupid, or that I looked like an attention hog, or that I sound too French or too English, or that I did something against etiquette or custom. I’m afraid that I broke the law or will do use something wrong. I’m afraid all the time. 

And because I am not perfect, I have a very low self-esteem. I’m proud, very proud, but because I don’t measure up to my standards that hurts my pride. I’m not witty. I can’t draw. I’m not good at making quick decisions (because I’m afraid of making a bad decision). I can’t play an instrument. I can’t talk French or English perfectly. I don’t read as fast as my sister does. I can’t braid my hair. I’m not pretty. I’m overweight. I’m awkward. I’m clumsy. I’m shy. I’m slow at catching concepts. I’m very naïve. I’m impatient. I’m lazy. I’m very easily discouraged. I’m fearful. I’m not very spiritual at all. All those flaws overwhelm me and to me, I am valueless because I can’t do anything important. To me, I’m a failure. 

And I spend my life in a constant cycle of fear and discouragement. Oh, in between I’m happy. I am easily made happy and I get very happy very quickly. But even in my happy moments, those things stand out.

But now I am looking again. Rethinking my life. Am I a failure? Didn’t God make me the way I was, naïve, clumsy, absent-minded, forgetful, awkward, slow, short, big-boned? And didn’t I make bad choices and end up overweight and scarred by acne and with ugly fingernails? Don’t I have to fight against my laziness and discouragement and pride? 

The answer is YES. 

Yes. I will embrace the body and character God gave me. He didn’t make me witty. He didn’t make me with black hair and a long nose and long hands and small bones and a long frame. He didn’t make me quick at understanding simple everyday things. He made me as I am for a reason. I am not valueless because I am short, or slow, or naïve, or awkward, or absent-minded. He made me that way because He can use me this way if I let Him. And the rest? I can change it. I can change my body weight. I can stop picking at my pimples and biting my nails and having bad manners. I can fight against my laziness and pride and discouragement. 

In His strength. 

I do not need to live in fear. If I genuinely let the Spirit control me,

I won’t say have to worry about hurting or offending people, because I’ll be telling the truth with love. I don’t need to worry about making mistakes, because Christian life is all about grace. I will mess up. I will come short. And I have to. Because when I fail, that’s when I need Jesus’ strength to go on. It’s not my strength that can do this. I cannot love a perfect life on my own. I cannot do this in my own strength. 

My problem is I am focusing on myself. I set myself a standard and did not reach it. And the goal was me. I wanted to be pretty and talented because I wanted people to notice and think well of me. Not of my God. Of me. I want to be strong and perfect in myself. I did not want to accept that I was not perfect and not strong and I needed God’s strength. My image of perfectionism and beauty was wrong. 

I need to realign my goals and priorities. My goal needs to be to be like Christ. To have Jesus shining through me. The outside and the defects don’t matter when Christ is in your heart, because the inside becomes beautiful and it shows through. I need to surrender myself and my pride and let Christ have His way in me. I need to admit that I cannot be perfect on my own, in anything, but through Christ who strengtheneth me, I can have the victory over my struggles and be perfect in Him. 

My Writing Journey: My Advice to Young Aspiring Authors

As a child, I took scenes and passages and descriptions from various books and move them into a story. I usually ended up with it unfinished, but at the time it pleased me very much. Then I began to write little stories—2 or 3 pages, probably less than 500 words. When I was about 10, I started my first written-all-out-of-my-own-head book. I never got past chapter three, but it wasn't a bad plot. 

Then when I was twelve, I met a girl. She was a teenager, and writing books and stories. Inspired by her, I decided to start writing. My first book was from a writing prompt. At the moment I was deep into Scottish history, and very much in love with Sir William Wallace. (Not much has changed). So I wrote out about twenty different story titles and sat down to write the stories, the first one being the story of the girls in the tower.

Around the same time, I read this story (Morning in the Trenches) and decided I could write better than the young lady who wrote it, so I began a WWI story set in France. The story morphed into a book, and then I laid plans for a six-book series, each chronicling a year of the war. My Scottish book reached about 12k or so—I never finished it—and my French WWI book was about that or less. 

Thus began my writing journey. I wrote many short stories and began several short story collections. My average length was 10,000 words (usually attained with some difficulty) for a long story and 300-500 for a short story. I was a solitary writer. I told family and friends about my writing and sometimes they read it and praised it, which made me so happy. 

I was introduced to NaNoWriMo when I was around thirteen. At this moment my model was that girl and I was striving to be like her (writing books, writing every day, etc). Of course my life was very different from hers, and I was discontented and frustrated. While she wrote 50,000 words for NaNo, finished books, and even published books, I could hardly write 10,000 words, I had no good books, and I struggled to write every day. I neglected other things and grew angry and upset when my writing time was restricted, threatened, or taken away. I was often depressed and angry. But I kept writing and enjoyed my new stories. I participated in Victoria's monthly writing challenges and was always so happy when she commented about my stories. At one time I had an email thread where I sent monthly updates of my writing to various family and friends, and sometimes they answered. 

In 2016, as a fifteen-year-old, I began to do NaNoWriMo. My first story, a pretend biography, was 15,151 words long. I kept writing. My best friend was a staunch supporter, and so were some family members; and I kept writing stories for Victoria's challenges. My word counts still stayed around 10,000 maximum, though I usually had shorter stories that that. 

Earlier that year I had begun to follow Amanda Tero. The first post from her blog that I ever read was this one. It struck me hard, because it was exactly what I needed, though I didn’t like it. Some time after I read this one and was again hit hard—it was so my story and so what I didn't want to do. I did not want to give up my writing. But finally, after struggling for years, I began to let go of my writing. I’m not sure when exactly, but it was some time after this. I wrote for the pleasure of writing, most of the time; didn’t strive to be the same as my model; and was much happier. And I finally surrendered my writing time. I still kept learning all I could about writing, and followed many writers' blogs. But writing became a hobby instead of my obsession.

In 2017 I began to write longer stories, and began a trilogy. Story #1 was 8 or 9,000 words long; story #3 was about the same; and I wrote story #2 for NaNoWriMo. I did Camp NaNo in July (I don’t know how much I wrote; somehow I have no records), and during NaNoWriMo I wrote 14,172 words. I was ecstatic—I had almost reached novella (15k) length! I was also very happy to have written a story that had been in my head for a long time. This was the first time I began to write stories that I had written in my head. 

In 2018 the pattern continued. My word count varied between 500-10,000 words. I didn’t write very much. In July I wrote a 12k story in a 100-for-100 (writing 100 words every day for 100 days). I missed only 3 days, even if we were traveling across the U.S. & Canada on vacation, and ended up with 12,436 words. And it was a story with characters from a story in my head. I also had some of my stories published on a blog and I was so happy--especially when people commented that they liked my stories. 

During NaNo 2018, I wrote 18,504 words in 12 days and was almost speechless with happiness. Not only had I passed 15k, I had also written a good story and I’d written an average of 1,542 words a day. That story ended up at 19,110 words and I went on to write 21,190 words’ worth of Flash Fiction. So I finished up with 40,300 words’ worth of writing in 30 days. My dream was still to write a 50,000 word book, but I could only hope in the distant future that this would happen. And I dreamed of writing 50,000 words for NaNo—all on the same project—but this also seemed a distant achievement.

In April 2019 I participated in Camp NaNo again and this time I joined a cabin. I wrote 40,682 words in 30 days, and it was all on the same story—which was not yet finished!!! My goal was suddenly much nearer. I had a story good enough to publish—so I thought. And I had fangirls and a writing club. I was blissfully happy. I kept writing until I was at 45,000+. I couldn't figure out how to end it, so I sent it to alpha-readers—and when I got their response, I realized my book wasn't good enough to be published yet and was full of flaws. I was intensely discouraged and I stopped writing in it. In May or June a sweet friend read my book and left me a ton of compliments and fangirly comments. I found that there was good in my story and I was happy—but I still didn't write.

Then, in Camp NaNo July, I started a random short story, was very uninspired, plowed through, and then randomly decided to finish Chords. I dreamed of reaching 45,000 and this story fulfilled that dream, topping out at 46,526 words. 

I edited this story and sent it to beta-readers. I also edited a Christmas short story and gave it to friends to read, and a well-known published author (!!!) loved it and asked me to publish it so she could add it in her Christmas book recommendations. (A post on a well-known blog about my little story. Can you imagine?!) I was even able to have a proofreader read it and I made it available to the world. 

I was blessed beyond measure. My old dreams were becoming real. I had a (sort of) published book, I had a fan club, I had almost reached my dream of a 50,000 word book. And that’s when God decided to bless me even more. 

I started writing a new story. Like Chords, it went from a short story to a novel. It passed 19,000 words and it still wasn’t anywhere near done. I decide to finish it for NaNo and then work on some other WIPs I had. 

NaNo began. Broken passed 30,000 words—40,000 words—45,000 words—and my dream came true. As of 2:14 p.m. on November 14^th, Broken sits at 50,245 words. 

NaNo is not yet over. I have passed the halfway mark—I’m currently at 26,140 words. I’m writing more than the necessary 1,667 words a day, averaging at 1,800 words a day. I’m on track to reach that dazzling 50,000 words goal and I might even pass it. Broken is still not done and might end up at—who knows?—that gorgeous 60,000 words. I don’t know ye.

But I do know that I have been blessed. And I know that it was worth surrendering my dreams and aspirations to God. And I know that with time, perseverance, and hard work, dreams can come true. 

I’m writing this post for you, the young teen who wants to become an author. I’m telling you, learn all you can about your craft. Write as much as you can. Pray about your writing and surrender it to God. Don’t compare yourself to other writers. Write what the Lord would have you write. Accept when He gives you seasons of little or no writing. Keep working. Don’t give up. Don’t neglect your responsibilities or miss out on life.

God is good, and if it is the right thing for you, He will make your wildest dream true. Trust His timing and rest in His promises. 

Because the Lord is good, and worthy of trust. 

Let We Forget: Remembrance Day 2019

© R.L. 

Today is the day we set aside to remember, acknowledge, and thank the heroes of Canada. 

The Indian, French, and English Canadians who threw aside the religious and cultural differences and fought the invaders in 1812. 

The Canadians who dropped everything and went to the trenches, the planes, or the ships in 1914, who fought and died for freedom for five terrible years, who gave everything to protect their land and their people. 

The Canadians who banded with France and England and the rest of Europe against power-hungry countries in 1939, who fought the enemy in planes and ships and submarines and tanks and trenches, who endured a gruelling six years of horrible warfare. 

The Canadians who fought for peace and safety in Afghanistan in 2001. 

The Canadians who have died for their country, in any year.   

We will never know the names of all these heroes. But we will never forget their sacrifice, nor what they fought for. We will stand by our mother country. We will accept our cultural differences. We will embrace the vastness of this country and the tremendous differences between its people. We will stand united, as Canadians.

And we will pray for our country and our people. May the sacrifice of these heroes be not in vain.  

“With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,

England mourns for her dead across the sea.

Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,

Fallen in the cause of the free.

“Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal

Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.

There is music in the midst of desolation

And a glory that shines upon our tears.

“They went with songs to the battle, they were young,

Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.

They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,

They fell with their faces to the foe. 

“They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

“They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;

They sit no more at familiar tables at home;

They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;

They sleep beyond England's foam. 

“But where our desires are and our hopes profound,

Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,

To the innermost heart of their own land they are known

As the stars are known to the Night; 

“As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,

Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,

As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,

To the end, to the end, they remain.”

My 5 Favourite Bookish Clichés || Clichés & Twists 01

Hello, everyone! Today we're going to have a bit more of a writer/bookish post where I share about my five favourite clichés! We're also starting something that will hopefully become a series... ;) 

We all know what clichés are. (<< please note the accent on the e. "Cliche" is not a word.)  They are the things that show up a lot in books. They are the things that writers are often told to avoid "like the plague." They're like stereotypes. 

My opinion on clichés is divided. On one hand, I like certain clichés. (That's what this post is about). I like certain phrases that tend to come up a lot. "Like the plague," "sadder and wiser," "teeth like pearls," etc, etc. I like those because they're very descriptive. On the other hand, I also like cliché breakers. The description that points something out in a way I've never seen it before. The character that breaks the stereotype. The story plot that twists and turns. 

Clichés can be annoying if they're overused. But they can also just be comforting sometimes. Yes, I read books to learn. To see things through other people's eyes. To find out what it was like to live in those circumstances. But sometimes I read books to escape reality. Sometimes I want a happy little story where everything ties up in a pretty bow. A satisfying story. We need both books. We need books that will show new POVs, new settings, new characters, new storylines, new countries... but we also need the books that just make you go, "Ahhh ^_^." The ones that divert while they bless you. 

And now that I've wandered away from my subject a little and probably got a bit confusing and rambly... on to the clichés! These are things that make me happy when I meet them in a book, no matter how popular they are. 

1. Beau idéal of a hero.
*coughs* It's true. It's always delightful to know that the male half of your character ship is handsome. I like to have my heroes big and manly and handsome and courageous and skilful with his weapons and all that kind of lovely thing. 

2. Beautiful heroine.  
This ties in with number one. I've seen people complain because L.M. Montgomery's heroines are always beautiful. But I like when my heroine is pretty. I love pretty things. I love seeing beautiful people. Why begrudge a non-living *coughs* character her beauty? 

3. Predictable romance.
I like being able to ship characters. I like being able to pick out early that they're going to be married. I love when Henty introduces me early to the hero's better half and it annoys me when he doesn't. Happy love stories are beautiful, and I love to see them. 


4. The hero gets out of scrapes often & easily enough.
Henty is very guilty of this cliché. But it's very comforting to know that Malcolm will be sure to get away from the robbers and get back on them. That there's no way Ronald will get killed by the Duke. That at the worst Harry will get a ball through his body or lose a finger, but he's certain not to be hors de combat for life. It's nice not to have to worry over your babies. ;)


5. Happily ever after. 
The kind of book that just ties everything up in a pretty bow. The kind where the characters you care about live. Where the couple you shipped get married. Where the mystery is solved satisfactorily. Just a happy ending. One that makes you smile. 

You might have noticed a theme with these clichés that I love. They're all a bit... unrealistic. Storyland-only. But they're also just happy. "All end's well" type. It's a bit like an ice cream cone. Familiar and refreshing and just happy stuff.

Stay tuned for part two: My Five Favourite Twists! 

~ / / ~

That's why I say, don't always eschew clichés. Some have been around for years for a reason. This is my opinion, and I understand that it may not be everyone's. What are your thoughts on these clichés? Have you some pet clichés?