#german ya

[teacherstudiies]

July 26 2021 | Seems like it doesn’t matter how old I get, well-written young adult will always be something I can get excited over. This genre is simply my comfort genre. Loved this one, 5/5 stars! 

Yes, I am aware my little tree is ready to find its home in some soil, I’ll get to it soon!

[gwendolynpurpleplum]

In English: “It was the hottest summer of the 50s”

Auf Deutsch: Es war der heißeste Sommer der 1950er Jahre

[kristin-briana]

Throwback to that day I held my book for the first time.

The fact that I wrote some words and then someone across the ocean translated, bound them, and put them in bookstores - that hasn’t fully sunk in yet. I don’t know I will ever really sink in.

I decided I was going to be an author when I was sixteen. I’d been a writer for years before that - I have vivid memories of force-feeding my family a series of portal fantasies that I wrote at age 10. But my junior year of high school was the year I decided to actually Be An Author.

I figured the decision itself was the hard part. I’d been writing books my whole life; it couldnt’ be that hard to publish them. Everyone I knew seemed to think they were good enough for Barnes & Noble, anyway.

But, spoiler alert: it was hard, and I was not good enough for Barnes & Noble. The first book I queried racked up over a hundred rejections from a hundred different agents.

So I wrote a second book. I wrote it in a fever, between classes, late at night and early in the morning. I stopped having friends because of that book. I failed a college class because of that book. I broke up with a boyfriend because of that book. In general, it was a deeply unhealthy way to live, and I don’t recommend it. (Except for the boyfriend part. I should’ve ditched that guy a long time ago.) But it worked. I wrote the book in two months, edited it in two weeks, and got an agent after a handful of carefully-curated query letters.

I thought this boded well for the fate of the book itself. I figured it would sell in a few weeks, tops.

Spoiler alert: it didn’t. I revised for nine months after signing with my agent; we subbed the book to over a dozen editors for another year and a half. I got the loveliest rejections. “You’re a great writer, but.” “I really like this, but.” But overall, the takeaway was this: my book’s genre was really hot about six months before I wrote it.

A couple things happened to me after my second book flopped. One: I started a new book. (Then I restarted it. Then I restarted it again.)  Two: I graduated college with a degree in English. I’d spent the last two months of my college career writing an essay a day on top of freelance work.

Something about this combination of writing books and writing essays and writing articles and writing writing writing writing… It broke me. After a few months of pedal-to-the-metal school and work and creativity, I suddenly froze. I didn’t know how to draft a book anymore. I didn’t want to. I was afraid of every blank page. Every day of putting words on the page was an act of self-discipline - gritted teeth and sweat and usually a panic attack or two.

So I gave up.

I didn’t say it like that, of course. I told my agent I was struggling with this draft. I told her that maybe I’d try something new for a while. I told her that it might be awhile before I finished anything, because I was just so busy. She told me to take my time; so I curled in a fetal position and cried about being a failure for approximately six years.

About the time I was ready to try again, my agent quit.

And that brings us to the place where this post begins: a stab of stubborn anger; a couple sample chapters; a lot of hope and a lot of squashing that hope back down. And then, a book. This book - the one that I just held in my hands.

Here’s the point of this post:

I did that super hard thing that I fought for these last ten years; and now I have proof of the labor. I have my words, bound in blue and silver and dragon’s scales. The thing is, I’m not done. I’m not even close to done.

I expected a sense of finality, a feeling of completion. I thought publication would be like the moment when you summit a mountain, and then you can stop to enjoy the view.

But it’s not like that. I’m not ready to rest after this first book, this first summit. There is a beast inside me, still hungry for stories. The moment I held my novel in my hands, I wanted another. And another. And another. I wanted a whole shelf of these bound blue-and-silver words that I wrote.

I have always had this greedy beast. Now I know I always will. And I’m okay with that.

The hard thing never ends for artists. You cannot satisfy the creative beast in you. At least, I hope you can’t - for your own sake. If you’re lucky, if you’re really lucky - that beast will stay hungry for many years to come, in spite of the inevitable failure and the long, slow slog up the hill.

[gwendolynpurpleplum]

Saphirblau Quote 3/? "I see,” I said, which was not entirely true. But it did seem to explain a bit of what I’d recently seen and heard. “Er . . . at this moment, are you kissing me?” “No, only almost,” murmured Gideon, with his lips just above my skin. “I mean, no way do I want to exploit the fact that you’re drunk and may be mistaking me for some kind of god right now. But it doesn’t come easy . . .” I closed my eyes and leaned my head against his shoulder, and he held me closer. “Like I said, you really don’t make things easy for me. You always give me the wrong sort of ideas in churches . . ."

Kerstin Gier, Saphirblau (Sapphire Blue)

["Ich verstehe", sagte ich, was nicht ganz stimmte. Aber es schien ein bisschen zu erklären, was ich kürzlich gesehen und gehört hatte. „Ähm. . . Küsst du mich in diesem Moment? " "Nein, nur fast", murmelte Gideon mit seinen Lippen direkt über meiner Haut. "Ich meine, ich möchte auf keinen Fall die Tatsache ausnutzen, dass du betrunken bist und mich gerade für eine Art Gott hältst. Aber es ist nicht einfach. . . ” Ich schloss meine Augen und lehnte meinen Kopf an seine Schulter, und er hielt mich näher. "Wie ich schon sagte, du machst es mir wirklich nicht leicht. Sie geben mir in Kirchen immer die falschen Ideen. . . ”]