Blaire Lauren's Literary Blog

Blaire Lauren. Creative Writer. Lover of Literature. I have been bitten by the writers' bug, and here is where I shall scratch.

[macrolit]

Reblog and tag your book lover friends for Valentine’s Day. <3

[vestriis]

[working on a new writing project] Definitely the hardest part of writing is getting started. [working on the middle of a project] Definitely the hardest part of writing is what happens between the beginning and the end. [finishing a writing project] Definitely the hardest part of writing is the end. [editing] Well well well, if it isn’t my old arch nemesis, editing… defiitely the hardest part of writing,

[slowspinningredemption]

[trying to think of a title] finally it has arrived… the hardest part of writing

[pivovarovah]

“All of one’s life is a struggle towards that; the narrow path between freedom and belonging. I have sometimes sacrificed freedom in order to belong, but more often I have given up all hope of belonging.”

— Jeanette Winterson, from “The 24-Hour Dog,” The World and Other Places (via lifeinpoetry)

[bookbaristas]

still heart eyes over these dreamt shelves in @her_bookshop! 😍 . . can you spot any of your fav reads?? 👀 i spy #EverythingINeverToldYou by @pronounced_ing! 📖 (at Nashville, Tennessee)

[poems-and-word]

[foreverlostinliterature]

[andhumanslovedstories]

Getting older and then looking at all these teenagers who have to save the world…..why did I ever think that was acceptable……..they’re so young….let Katniss sleep…….let Harry Potter have a normal school year……..Aang is literally 12, I’m twice his age and incapable of 1 percent of his plot duties, these poor children, these poor acne encrusted puberty enduring babies

[thatmattattack]

#honestly!!!#its really disconcerting like… being an adult now and seeing other adults not uh#question this or be uncomfortable with children in these situations#like even fictional ones?#i understand being a kid and not seeing it#but being an adult and looking at a piece of media about like#war or some shit#and being like ‘yeah putting kids in the middle of it is a great idea and message’#nnno??? (via @blazednarancia)

[graylibrary]

ok but did you forget what being a kid and reading/watching these stories was like? because actual real children do not live lives devoid of violence or responsibility or darkness.

kids have abusive families like Harry and live in poverty like Ron, they live in poverty as part of specific systems designed to keep them keep them there like Katniss, they live in situations that ask way too much of them like Aang and Harry and all of them.

My little sister’s graduating class had a lot of dead parents. There were all kinds of reasons, drug overdose and sudden illness and motorcycle accident and long battle with illness and ’….ehhh probably heart disease? they didn’t do a real autopsy…’. For the long battle with an illness category, Sarah’s mother got cancer not long after giving birth to her much younger sister. Not only did Sarah have to watch her mother slowly lose that battle over the last years of Sarah’s childhood but she had to basically raise that baby because her father was busy trying work and care for their mother. Sarah didn’t have to save the world but you don’t think it didn’t feel like it some times?

It’s like JKR has said, kids don’t hear these stories and suddenly realize monsters are real. They already know. These stories tell you monsters can be defeated. That you can survive. That it might get worse some times but you can win. And yeah it would be nice if in the real world kids never had to do it themselves but that’s just not true.

Harry Potter didn’t make me feel like it was fair or reasonable for teens to save the world, it made me feel less alone in my struggles. Reading about kids fighting the world made me feel like I could make it through too. One of the reasons these stories are so popular is that they give you hope, they give you characters to fight along side during the dark and hard moments in your own life–whether that’s imagining your math test as a Hungarian Horntail you have to get past, or struggling to leave your own abusive family like Harry having to go back to the Dursleys every year, or watching violence and drugs take your friends like the Battle of Hogwarts killed so many.

These stories don’t normalize kids saving the world, they tell kids who already have to that they can survive it.

[the-real-seebs]

This response is beautiful and I don’t think I have anything to add.

[buttonpoetry]

From Olivia Gatwood’s book, NEW AMERICAN BEST FRIEND. 

[wordsnquotes]

“Art and love are the same thing: It’s the process of seeing yourself in things that are not you.”

— Chuck Klosterman, Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story.

[helpingg]

[hooptedoodley]

“To see Jane Austen’s writing desk, you have to go to the British Library in London. It’s in a glass case in their Treasures of the British Library display, across from one of Shakespeare’s folios and a few cases away from some Beatles sheet music. It is a very small desk, and foldable, designed to be easily stowed away, which it must have been often; Austen wrote in her parlor and would hide her writing whenever callers stopped by. At the British Library it is open, with very small spectacles pinned to one corner and the tiny notebook that held the first draft of Persuasion lying on top of it, splayed flat so you can see Austen’s fine, precise handwriting. Under the shadow of that desk, the disciplined confinement of her novels acquires visceral force. This much space was she permitted, and no more. In the display case next to Austen’s desk is Dickens’s first draft of Nicholas Nickelby, in a notebook that dwarfs Austen’s entire desk, with generous margins and looping, scrawly handwriting. It is impossible for me to imagine what Austen might have done with that kind of freedom, that kind of certainty of her own right to take up space.”

— The Real Mr. Darcy (via msfehrwight)

[brokenlockets]

picked up some italian poetry from this dreamy bookstore that i discovered today!

[novelknight]

“When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people, not characters. A character is a caricature.”

— Ernest Hemingway

[byronicstudies]

currently reading for uni: pride and prejudice

i’m completely in love with jane austen and her writing style and i can’t wait for my lecture on monday!

[buttonpoetry]

“We were water. Nothing to obey but our own moving.”

— Amaris Diaz, “Ancient Parts”

[sparkitors]

Classic lit + Onion-style headlines = the mashup you never knew you always wanted. Click here to see all 14!

brought to you by our resident genius, @roonil-freakin-wazlib

[thejgatsbykid]

the real victim in Pride and Prejudice is Georgiana Darcy, bc u know her brother spent at least two weeks lying around in his Regency Jammies eating Benjamin and Jerrold’s out of ye olde carton feeling sorry for himself bc his crush not only didn’t like him back but tore him to shreds in the process and Georgie had to deal with that and then said crush shows up at their HOUSE and she has to live w both of them probably stealing lovelorn yearning glances at each other the whole damn day while knowing if she even SUGGESTS to her brother that maybe perhaps his crush doesn’t hate his entire guts anymore he’ll just be all tragic about it bc “you don’t KNOW her Georgiana she dESPISES me and i DESERVE it”

[madlori]

benjamin and gerrold’s