I’m Amanda. I’m a writer, a paranormal enthusiast, a sagittarius. I believe the rain has magical properties. I spend every waking moment with my dog.
I enjoy good stories about strong women beating the odds, and of found family, and of scary things that are made less-so by the heartfelt meanings behind them.
I gain a lot of my inspiration from my favorite films: action adventures and whimsy. Bonus points for practical effects!
I write horror and romance and stories about lost people who find themselves in their work.
I was taught to knit at a young age by a woman that means very much to me, and I’m proud to say I’ll never stop.
I enjoy playing Dungeons and Dragons with my husband and talking to my mom about her big, beautiful garden. And mostly, I daydream about the characters and worlds I’ve dreamed up, and I give them swords to wield and big, beautiful gardens to tend and cozy dogs to love.
My Current WIPs:
The Spymaster - After meeting a mysterious woman after his late-night grocery shift, Jonas embarks on a two week journey he can't remember.
Synopsis: Sucked into the routine of a dead-end night-manager shift, Jonas yearns for the Good Ole Days, back when he and his two best friends used to break into abandoned buildings and do seances and EVP sessions. When he meets a beautiful young woman, she encourages him to get back into the Ghost Hunting gig to win her heart. Only his first date results in a two week time lapse of which he has no memories. Jonas, alongside his best friends, fight to uncover exactly what transpired during that fortnight. Can they find the mystery girl and seek justice for the horrors wrought on Jonas, or will the horrors he enacted outside of his conscious catch up to him first?
Setting: haunted houses, convenient stores at night, the glow under street lamps, dirty train stations, the comfort of a best friend having your back
Vibe: elder millennials, emo music, the waft of cigarette smoke, clean up on aisle 12, the pain of adult friendships, the stolen potential of lost dreams, curvy goth girls that appear and disappear in clouds of smoke, night-vision cameras
Touchstones & Inspiration: Project Fear, My Best Friend's Exorcism, Metamorphosis, Carmilla,
Characters:
Jonas - the grocery night manager who dreams of something more profound
Wayne - a sound engineer who is just worried about his best bud
Sammy - an exchange student turned physical therapist that would rather be anywhere but the seedier sides of town, but steps up for the emotional support
Unnamed Babe - the beautiful woman that lured a scrawny boy under her streetlamp and offered him a drag
Excerpt:
Jonas sighed, toes of his sneakered teetering over the precipice of the bread. Deep red liquid spilled between the cracks in scuffed linoleum. Shattered glass clinked beneath stiff broom bristles. More red splattered the cuffs of his khakis.
He dropped the CAUTION: WET FLOOR sign, and it wobbled on busted legs.
“Think I found the culprit, boss,” Brenda chirped, bubbled snapping between lipstick-stained teeth. She pointed one long, pink fingernail toward a kid’s soccer ball wedged between 24-packs of soda.
Jonas rubbed at tired eyes and nodded. Summer inventory was often the culprit of store-wide disasters. Last summer, a woman “tried out” a kayak in the middle of aisle 12, resulting in a domino of technicolor cereal boxes that nearly “crushed her to death”.
“Thanks, Brenda. Mind putting that ball back in seasonal while Aidan and I get this mess cleaned up?” He gestured back to the puddle of Pinot Noir.
Aidan swept in vain, corralling broken bottles and labels while the red continued to spread and splatter. From the adjacent aisle, one could probably guess someone had been stabbed her and was slowly bleeding out.
“No writing is wasted. Did you know that sourdough from San Francisco is leavened partly by a bacteria called lactobacillus sanfrancisensis? It is native to the soil there, and does not do well elsewhere. But any kitchen can become an ecosystem. If you bake a lot, your kitchen will become a happy home to wild yeasts, and all your bread will taste better. Even a failed loaf is not wasted. Likewise, cheese makers wash the dairy floor with whey. Tomato gardeners compost with rotten tomatoes. No writing is wasted: the words you can’t put in your book can wash the floor, live in the soil, lurk around in the air. They will make the next words better.”
Full offense but your writing style is for you and nobody else. Use the words you want to use; play with language, experiment, use said, use adverbs, use “unrealistic” writing patterns, slap words you don’t even know are words on the page. Language is a sandbox and you, as the author, are at liberty to shape it however you wish. Build castles. Build a hovel. Build a mountain on a mountain or make a tiny cottage on a hill. Whatever it is you want to do. Write.
you're falling in the trap!! it will be read by many people, many times, and it will live on in their memories. and maybe no single other human will match you in time spent dedicated to your story, but as a collective we will outlast you. acts of creation only grow when they are shared
I am being so serious when I say: if you have the financial and time privilege to get a group of friends together and make an indie project, PLEASE do. Indie games, indie animations, indie comics etc etc
the art industries are kind of in the shitter. It’s not so much because of AI (though that doesn’t help) but because studios just aren’t hiring people and funding projects anymore. People who’ve been in the industry for decades are finding themselves struggling, and once you have a mortgage or kids it’s harder to do something as risky as making something on your own.
completing projects is hard. it takes a lot of time and effort, and most people can’t afford it. so if you CAN afford to make art, even at the risk of no financial gain, I strongly encourage you to be as resilient as you can. We’re at a point where these industries are not going to turn around by themselves, and waiting for jobs to open up again in order to get experience and portfolio work might not be realistic.
people have been making art and telling stories longgggg before we were getting paid for it, and people aren’t going to stop just because no one has hired them to do so.
for everyone else: support indie artists when you can!!!! That person who made that cool indie game or youtube animation or webcomic might be doing this full time! your support might be the only reason they’re able to keep doing it.
and if you have already started an indie project: you’re so brave and I’m very proud of you!!! in fact, drop a link to it in the reblogs if you want! 👇
This May I want to get back into writing. I’m not at all consistent. I’m at a point where I don’t feel like I can work on bigger things, because I can’t guarantee myself to keep working on it in a week from now. So I will take this month as a training month to get back into the habit of writing. I will do this by writing (or trying to write) 200 words every day. Topic is irrelevant. How great my writing is that day is irrelevant. Just 200 words written down. A habit taking 21 days to form was debunked, it does take a lot longer, but 31 days are a start I would say. These are already 140 words, so 200 words every day are hopefully manageable. You're more than welcome to join me if you like 😊
Drafting is a skill. And it's a skill you can learn. If you ever look at your first draft and go 'actually this is good' do not immediately go 'no it's can't be good it's a first draft'. If you've been writing for a while (like years) writing a draft that is perfectly serviceable and only needs some editing without a ton of cutting is like... fine.
I spend a lot of my time 'writing' and 'rewriting' drafts 6-10 times in my head and when they finally come out as my 'first draft' (or a second in some cases) it's already been through 2-8 revisions. The work has been done and the words I'm writing are the culmination of those revisions. I just didn't write it down.
Not all revisions have to take place in meat space or as text on a screen. Revisions happen as you play out scenarios over and over again in day dreams or bed time stories. Your first draft is not something that Must be conquered and tamed into something presentable. Sometimes you nail it because you've spent all the revision time already.
This is not something that comes to everyone. But it is something you can get good at. You do not have to agonize over a 5th rewrite if the first time you've put words to paper is already the 6th revision that's gotten better every time. There's a lotta 'you gotta suffer to make a book good' in writeblr I just don't agree with. You can just nail it the "First Time". Not every time. But you can.
i sometimes forget that this is everyone’s first time on earth too. like. this is my first time seeing a butterfly this color. but its that little girl’s first time seeing any butterfly, ever. and i accidentally left a bag of groceries at the store after paying and now i’m cursing under my breath and it’s like. there a thousand other people out there who did that today too. and a thousand more from yesterday. and. like. we’re not actually alone. and we’re not actually failing. at least not in a way that a few billion people haven’t before you
My writing used to be a sketchbook, a practice I came to for a creative outlet after a long day of hocking crap to suburban Moms. It was vignettes sketched into notebooks when algebra bored me to the point of delusion. It was windswept love stories and spy thrillers.
My writing was something compelled by the rain outside my window and the hope of something more than the existence I was living.
if someone asks you to read their writing and provide feedback, remember that your feedback should help them get as close as they can to their ideal version of the work. not yours. not capitalism's. theirs.
This. Your duty as a critique partner is first and foremost to understand what the author is trying to do, judge whether it's succeeding, and flag areas where it is or is not hitting the mark from your perspective.
Where things get tricky is when the author says that their goal is to sell the book to a publisher and become an upmarket commercial success, but that goal is at odds with their ideal vision of the work. That's something you can point out (if you're someone who's pretty familiar with the market, at least) but can't really do much about. They have to resolve that paradox on their own.
So for over a month and a half I’ve been told in my Creative writing MA class that my writing is too poetic and abstract to work in the form of a novel and that I need to simplify my meanings and sentences. I did as I was told and lost all interest in writing if I have to write in the same style that every other novelist does. Today I received this note from a classmate and didn’t realise how much I needed to hear it. Don’t change your art just because other people don’t get it. Don’t change your style to fit in with everyone else. It’s your story not theirs.
This post is 4 years old, but for anyone who needs to hear it I want to tack on the advice my Creative Writing professor told the class I was in: "Not everyone is going to get what you're trying to do. So a lot of the advice your classmates write on your papers might feel Wrong to you. If it feels Wrong and you don't think they understand your story, don't take their advice because they are not your audience."
Sounds like the initial advice for OP to tone down her natural voice was incorrect, but thankfully one of her classmates that was part of the audience wants to hear that voice.
Ahem. Look, a workshop environment may be helpful to some people, or it may be helpful at some times and not others, but I remain firmly in the camp that they are an awful way to teach writing. For every bit of useful feedback you get 10 things that range from unhelpful to harmful.
i miss y'all so damn much 😩 book deadline is crushing me, but i will overcomeeee! can i give y'all a lil sneaky peek??? ( will delete this later prob )
bloom like wildflowers [ wip ]
childhood best friends / idiots -> lovers
two best friends, two broken hearts, two weeks to
fix it all and find a second chance at forever
“Ellie wait,” Max choked out his voice strained, breaths falling quickly between us, his hands still pressed to my waist. “I have a girlfriend.”
I froze, my stomach dipping uncomfortably. “What?” fell out clumsily.
But it was obvious Max couldn’t bring himself to repeat it as he squeezed his eyes shut and leaned back against the car.
“You have a girlfriend,” I echo him plainly as if it’ll help my brain process what I’ve just heard, and I take a step back, anger swelling in my chest. “You have a girlfriend?” I repeat, unable to hide the frustration in my tone, heat creeping across my cheeks. “When were you gonna tell me?”
I was met with silence.
Max pushed a sigh through his nose and opened his eyes to finally look at me, his tongue jammed into his cheek like he did when he was caught and my anger flickered.
“You weren’t going to tell me? Oh my god.”
“Ellie, wait, it’s not like that–“
“Then what is it like, Max?”
He opened his mouth to try and conjure up some excuse, but the words wouldn’t come and he closed it again like a fish out of water.
“When were you going to tell me?” I ask again and his eyes drop to his feet.
“I was gonna tell you at Salty’s, but–” he shook his head and glanced back up at me. “I saw you and it was like nothing had changed, Ellie. You do that to me. Make me feel like no time has passed. Like we’re stupid teenagers drinking down at the lake, you know?” He reached out to grab my hand again and as much as I wanted to take it I pulled away.
“Yeah, well, the stupid still stands,” I shot back and watched as his expression fell, my words hitting heavy.
“Hey, that’s not fair.”
“What’s not fair? Cheating on your girlfriend?”
“Jesus, Ellie.”
“No, seriously. What’s not fair, Max?”
“You tell me, Eleanor.”
I flinched at his use of my full name, but he had only just started and it was like someone had opened a floodgate.
“You come back here every chance you get. Summer. Christmas break. Birthdays. Hell, a random Tuesday’ll do! And I get pulled along with you wherever you wanna go. The bar. The Post. The lake and then you’re back off to the big city to do important things with important people, but I’m the bad guy if I’ve moved on?”
“Moved on from what?” I throw back at him, feigning ignorance, but I know exactly what he’s talking about.
“You really wanna do this?” he challenges, heat flickering in his eyes, and god it makes me want the fight that much more.
