“Where are we going?” Miriam asked when they didn’t turn onto the road home. “Are we going to get a milkshake?” Her face lit up. “I want a strawberry milkshake. And a donut. Please Uncle Donny?”

“No, we’re not going to get a milkshake,” Don said. “Uncle Donny has to go and talk to a man. You’ll just have to come with me.”

Miriam stuck out her lower lip, which immediately started to wobble. “But I want a milkshake. I firsty Uncle Donny. Please?”

“No.” He was immune to the wobbly lip. Even though that pout was kinda cute on her. But no, he wasn’t going to be bullied into buying sickly pink milkshakes when he was supposed to be on a case. She’d just have to do without.

Huge tears welled up in Miriam’s eyes. “I wanna milkshake,” she bawled. Don watched in the rearview mirror as she proceeded to thrash her arms and legs like a fish on a hook, her face turning redder and redder. Her mouth opened wide and an ear splitting scream poured out. He winced, ducking his head slightly, as if that was going to help. She didn’t seem to need to breathe either.

Don made it forty five seconds before he gave in. “Fine. I’ll buy you one. But after Uncle Donny has done his work. You have to be a good girl though, ok?”

The tears magically stopped. “And a donut?” Miriam asked.

“Fine,” Don sighed. “And a donut. But you have to be very good.”

“I be good Uncle Donny.” Just like that, the sunny smile came back and Don knew she’d played him for a sucker. It was a depressing feeling, knowing that he had been outwitted by a six year old.

Some pieces of music are great for listening to while writing, perfect for playing in the background during a focused writing session. Others are full of inspiration for settings, scenes, characters or even whole stories. Today’s writing music is a beautiful song called Ashland’s Song, by my favourite acappella musician, Peter Hollens. This piece inspires both characters and scenes for me.

The lyrics of this song talk to me of a parental character who loves their family with all their heart. The song talks specifically of a baby, but I could imagine this character watching any aged child during a significant event in their lives. It could even be a grandparent looking at their child and their grandchildren, remembering when their children were young. So many beautiful family scenes could be crafted out of this piece.

What does this song inspire for you? Have you ever written a closely knit family? What’s your favourite fictional family?

Today we have a post from our third guest poster of the month. Sophie is a three time NaNoWriMo winner, and today she's going to be sharing the top five things which help her during NaNo. If you've missed the other posts in this series, you can find them all here.

I’ve been doing NaNoWriMo every year since I was ten, which makes this my fourth NaNoWriMo. In that time I’ve discovered several things that always help me have a successful month. Maybe they’ll help you too. Here are my top five tips to surviving NaNoWriMo:

1. Write with someone. It doesn’t matter whether I’m word warring or just writing at my own pace, having someone else writing at the same time as me always encourages me to write more.

2. Listen to music while you write. I like to listen to music that suits the scene I’m writing. My favourite kind of writing music is fast paced because my fingers try to keep up and I write faster. Of course not, everyone likes to write with music playing, and that’s ok too.

3. Take breaks every so often. A break helps clear my head. Don’t take too long a break though, because otherwise it’s hard to get back to the swing of writing. I like to set the amount of time I’m allowed to take a break for so that I know when I have to start writing again.

4. Close off other programs. If I have the internet or a game open while I’m writing I find myself getting distracted. Closing off all other programs helps me focus on my book only.

5. Set certain times in the day for writing. I have certain times of day that I always write in. Knowing I have a set time of day pushes me to sit down and actually get started.

I hope these tips help you with your NaNoWriMo, and that your month is going well. Do you have any tips to add? Leave them in a comment below!









Sophie is a teenaged writer and blogger from Australia. She likes making videos, reading, writing, taking photos, and designing blogs. You can find her at The Techno Maid, where she blogs about books, her life, and other amazing things.

November is always an incredibly busy month for me, and this year is no different. Between NaNoWriMo, music exams, concerts, and other commitments, I often feel tired. It’s easy to slip into a bad mood. But often, listening to just the right song helps me feel happier and encourages me to keep going. One song that’s been really helping me feel positive, especially about my writing, is Evynne Hollens’ cover of Happy.

I know that there have been a lot of covers of this song, but this is definitely my favourite. The funky arrangement is designed to make you smile, and it comes with a music video that just makes me want to smile at the craziness. Listening to the lyrics reminds me too, that it doesn’t matter what’s going on in the rest of my life. I can be happy whether I’m tired, overworked, or simply not having the greatest day. If you need a bit of a boost today, then you should definitely give this song a listen.


Need more positive songs in your life? Here are a couple of previous Writing Music Posts you might like:

Smiles for Life
I am Gold
Bink’s Sake
Kingdom Dance

What are you listening to this week? Are you doing NaNoWriMo? How’s your book going? What’s your favourite piece of happy music?

It’s time for another edition of Beautiful Books, the three month long link-up designed to help writers share and discover things about their books. It’s run by Cait from Notebook Sisters, and Sky from Further Up and Further In. If you want to join this month’s link up, click HERE.

This month, I’m working on Siren my sci-fi superhero retelling of The Little Mermaid, which is the third book in a series of retellings. I’m writing it for NaNoWriMo and having great fun while doing so. In case you’re interested, here is the synopsis:

Since his last defeat, Hector, leader of the mutant rebellion, has vanished. But when mutant berserkers start attacking the city, the team knows only he could be behind this. Meanwhile, Eric is dying. Despite all efforts to find a cure for him, every attempt has failed. Frustrated, Nicola strikes out on her own, determined to find a cure, and a way to stop Hector’s evil plans, before it is too late.

1. Be honest: how is your writing going?
If I’m honest, pretty well actually. I’m enjoying myself, the book is making some sort of sense, and I love working with this group of characters again. That’s one of the great things about writing a book in a series. Writing the book is like going to visit a group of old friends. I’m pretty much on target to him my planned word goal of 60k for the draft too, which is amazing.

2. What’s your first sentence/paragraph?
I am the first to admit that beginnings are not my strongpoint. It always takes me several to really get into the swing of the book. So while I’m willing to share my first paragraph, I will warn you, it’s not particularly interesting, and definitely not very well written.

Life in the mutant team was a weird mix of overly exciting and busy times, and really, really boring ordinary ones. Right now it seemed that they were stuck in one of the ordinary ones, and Nicola couldn’t stand it. Even her morning swims in the lap pool couldn’t make up for the fact that nothing was happening at all. No investigations. No mutants to go and arrest. Even Hector, who was leading a rebellion against the government and their proposed laws against mutants hadn’t done anything in a while to cause trouble for them. Yep, Nicola was thoroughly fed up. If only something would happen. Now, in the cool waters of her swimming pool, she pounded her frustrations out with violent pumps of her muscular, mutant tail.

3. Do you have a book cover, and/or pictures that reflect your book?

Having an artistic sister is awesome because it means that someone will draw pictures and covers for me in return for chocolate. (Plus she seems inexplicably interested in my series, so she drew me a lot of pictures for fun). So, here is the amazing cover she designed. Is it not a beauty?




4. Do you have pictures of each of your characters? If not, describe them for us! (Be as descriptive as you can.)
The artistic sister strikes again. As well as drawing me a beautiful cover, she also gave me a picture of every single one of the major characters for the entire series, including some characters I haven’t even introduced yet. The main characters for Siren are the girl with blue hair, Nicola, and the boy in the black hoodie, Eric.





5. What scene are you most excited to write?
My book is a retelling of The Little Mermaid, with Nicola as said mermaid, so the scene I’m particularly looking forward to writing at this point in time is probably the one where Nicola makes a deal with the Sea Witch. The Sea Witch herself is rather a tricksy character who tries to fool Nicola while making the bargain, so that should be a very interesting and fun scene to write.

6. Share a snippet or a scene that you really enjoyed writing.

This is a first draft, so the writing's not epically good, but I really enjoyed writing the similies in this little excerpt.

Losing control of his powers frankly scared Eric. Not in the I-might-fail-a-maths-test kind of way. More like the kind of scared when you’re standing in front of an oncoming train and your feet are glued to the ground. The idea of turning his friends into human icy-pops didn’t really appeal to him. Most of the time he felt he was doing pretty well, but then he’d have an episode like this, and he’d feel like he was right back at the beginning again.

Controlling his power enough to shut it off was the hard part. It was like trying to catch a waterfall in a thimble. A futile task. Ever since he’d nearly burnt his power out and fried his brain when fighting against Hector, he’d been pretty ill. Still, everyone was pretty hopeful that he was getting better, and who was he to say anything against that?

7. Now that you're writing, have any of the plot details, or the process itself, turned out different from what you planned or imagined?
My plots always change a lot as I write them, so it’s no surprise that a lot of the plot points have shifted round for this book. Nothing is drastically different at the moment, but some plot points have been omitted, some have been rearranged, and other bits have been added. It all makes sense to me at the moment, so I must be doing something right.

8. Is there a character or aspect of your plot that's difficult to write?
I’m finding it hard to write a part in my plot where one of the characters is supposed to be dying. The emotion is hard to portray, and it’s difficult to work that into the plot without making the character become weak and unable to take much part in the story at all. As he’s rather an important character, this is a delicate balance. I can tell it’s going to need a lot of editing later on.

9. What’s your favorite aspect of this novel so far? Favorite character?
My favourite aspect of this book so far is actually all the sciency stuff that’ll never make it into the final draft. I’m really bad at working out how the science works in a sci-fi novel, so I’m really pleased with myself for making my sciency stuff actually follow some sort of logic. I don’t think I can pick a favourite character at this point though. (It’s kind of like favouritism anyway).

10. Have you drawn off of any life experiences or people you know to create your novel and your characters?
I draw off parts of life for little things for my characters. One character hates paperwork, like me, or enjoys running, or hates stairs. I base a lot of their likes, dislikes, and little traits like that off things I’ve seen in real life. But I don’t normally made a conscious decision to use anything from my real life in my book. I’m sure little things creep in while I’m not looking though.

11. Do you have a playlist or certain song for your novel and/or characters?
Sadly not. I’ve always wanted to be one of those writers that is able to find the perfect song to match a book or a character, but I’ve never been able to do that. Instead I just listen to whatever sounds most appealing at that point. One of these day’s I’ll manage it.

12. Let’s have some fun for a moment: imagine you are somehow transported into your book’s world. Which character are you most likely to be found hanging out with?
I would love to hang out with Nicola for a while, but I think she might end up being a bit too energetic for me. I’d probably enjoy a bit of quiet time with Jonathon, the genius, and all his interesting gadgets, and I’d probably get on quite well with Bethany, the empath, who basically runs the household. Introverts unite!

13. How do you keep yourself motivated to finish your daily wordcount? (Pinterest? Internet breaks? Chocolate?)
Sheer determination most of the time, and copious amounts of tea. No writing session is complete without many, many cups of tea. And it’s NaNowriMo, which always motivates me to write more. I hate to finish my day without writing all my daily word count.

Did I mention the tea?

14. What your favourite writing quote or piece of writing advice?


I have lots of writing quotes I love (I may or may not have a 12 page document of them), but the one that is my favourite for NaNoWriMo is this one:


15. How does this book make you feel so far? Are you laughing? Crying? Frustrated?
I feel differently about this book every time I start a writing session. Sometimes it makes me laugh. Sometimes I’m excited at the way the adventure is turning out. Sometimes I’m gleeful about it (mostly when I’m doing mean things to my characters). It’s been a great journey so far.

Now it's your turn. Tell me about your book. Are you doing NaNoWriMo? How's it going? What's your favourite writing quote?

Laura Mizvaria is a 19 year old Christian girl in her junior year of going to college online. She wrote her first book at age 12 and has explored many areas of writing ever since--from poetry to screenwriting. She has many other interests such as reading, digital art, photography, and cinematography and some of her favorite things are the great outdoors, Narnia, tea, places overflowing with books, classic movies, and Steampunk fashion. Laura runs a blog at Mizvaria.blogspot.com where she posts writing tips, inspiration, and more. You can also find her on Pinterest, deviantART, and Twitter.

Being a music lover, I always enjoy exploring new genres of music. This week, I’ve been looking into the world of video game soundtracks. One of my friends introduced me to it as an excellent type of music to listen to while writing. I don’t play a lot of video games, so I don't normally listen to their soundtracks much, unlike movie scores, but now that I’ve start listening to them, I wish I’d tried them earlier. They make amazing songs to write to. Today’s piece is Dancing Mad, and it’s been perfect for the dramatic, scenes that I’ve been typing in my NaNo novel this week.

Dancing Mad is a very dramatic piece that alternates between softer sections of amazing organ music and louder, more frantic electronic music. It would be well suited to an explosive showdown between characters or a scene where the cast are going into battle against enormous odds. It would also suit a scene of high energy or tension. If you’re looking for a piece with a bit of drive, why not give this one a listen?


What music are you listening to this week? Do you listen to video game soundtracks? What’s your favourite video game?

 Today we're kicking off our series of guest posts for the month. Our first guest is Gemma-Rose, a three time NaNoWriMo winner, who shares her experiences with NaNoWriMo.

My sisters and I love to write. We also love NaNoWriMo. We've been doing NaNoWriMo for three years now. When I did my first NaNoWriMo, I was not much of a writer. I thought writing one thousand words in a month was impossible. Every day I sat down at the big, slow desktop computer and laboriously wrote one hundred words. Some days I was doing so well I managed an entire two hundred!

Nowadays I can write a thousand words in one day. This year I’m aiming for thirty thousand words. It is a lot of words for me, but my family always helps me keep up. Imogen organises word sprints for us with cool music. She sets the timer to ten minutes and we race to see how many words we can write. It’s always fun to see how many words each person has written at the end.

NaNoWriMo is a brilliant event, if very hard to do. It is a lot of fun doing NaNoWriMo when everybody joins in because then you can share funny quotes out of your novel. Whenever somebody falls behind in their novel, Imogen will quickly organise a word sprint and help them catch up. When I get to my word goal after being behind, I always feel really good.

I always write one of the messiest novels ever to be sure, but as Imogen always says in her blog posts “It can be edited”. NaNoWriMo is awesome and it always is very fun. I am glad that I have so many sisters to do it with! NaNoWriMo is always way more fun if you write with other people.

Are you doing NaNoWriMo? How many words are you aiming for?




Gemma-Rose is a ten year old writer from Australia. She likes NaNoWriMo, fantasy books, listening to super-awesome music, and playing with her excitable puppy, Nora. She occasionally blogs at Gebbles Writes.