Advice to Writers: John Updike

You Are Full of Your Material

You are full of your material—your family, your friends, your region of the country, your generation—when it is fresh and seems urgently worth communicating to readers. No amount of learned skills can substitute for the feeling of having a lot to say, of bringing news. Memories, impressions, and emotions from your first 20 years on earth are most writers’ main material; little that comes afterward is quite so rich and resonant. By the age of 40, you have probably mined the purest veins of this precious lode; after that, continued creativity is a matter of sifting the leavings.

-JOHN UPDIKE

This is every true. Many authors are full of material, it's just a matter of writing it. I find myself filled with so many storylines I don't even know which one to begin with. I even find myself writing 3 projects at once. Sometimes the things that happen to us in our lives do make a good story. It's just a matter of writing it into something people can relate to.

My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult

Anna is not sick, but she might as well be. By age thirteen, she has undergone countless surgeries, transfusions, and shots so that her older sister, Kate, can somehow fight the leukemia that has plagued her since childhood. The product of preimplantation genetic diagnosis, Anna was conceived as a bone marrow match for Kate—a life and a role that she has never challenged...until now. Like most teenagers, Anna is beginning to question who she truly is. But unlike most teenagers, she has always been defined in terms of her sister—and so Anna makes a decision that for most would be unthinkable, a decision that will tear her family apart and have perhaps fatal consequences for the sister she loves.






The story plot is simple. Brian and Kate, two loving parents of a son and daughter, discover that their two year old daughter has leukemia. Since no one in the family was a match for her they have a baby made with the same DNA so that that way Anna could donate to her sister everything she needed. When it comes to Anna having to donate to her sister a kidney, that's when Anna sues for medical emancipation from her parents. 

This book was assigned for summer reading. I was skeptical to read it at first, but I read it, and I absolutely love the book. It's so heart wrenching, the plot is just so addicting I could not put it down. Reading this book it made me realize I take my sister for granted, and that a person does not really value their family until it's too late. I highly recommend this book.

Advice to Writers: Virginia Woolf

Write What You Wish to Write

So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its color, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery.

-VIRGINIA WOOLF

I really like this. Write what you want to write. Many greats in the literary world did that. Stephen King is the prime example of that. He didn't care what people thoughts were of his writing, he wrote what he wanted to write and now he is one of the most literary legends in literature. One of my problems with my books is that I'm taking what's already out there and putting in some unique twists to the themes, so the thought of the rejections is mind blowing.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

Guys you know what a big freak of Harry Potter I am. I go psychotic whenever I see the trailers for Harry Potter. I just saw the movie, and it totally lived up to my expectations. They kept the movie as close to the book as possible. I loved the movie! See the trailer!