Tag: Writing

Britlit.

Sara Mazariegos

I recently started reading Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney. Immediately, I was captivated, but one thing sticks out to me as I read: the lack of quotation marks for the dialogue.

There are many U.K. idiosyncrasies in writing. Favourite, colour, kerb (?!) Whenever I discover one, I’m usually delighted. After all, I wrote “dialogue” in the paragraph above. I’ve been spelling it “theatre” my entire life. There are some British spellings that just make sense to me.

But I just can’t get behind not using quotation marks. Thoughts and spoken words are written out the same way, and the narration is also in first person, so I have to read sections a second time just to keep track of what was said.

Example:


Now, admittedly, I’m a dumb American. But since when are quotation marks not hip enough to be used in a novel? I’m genuinely curious. This reads more clearly to me:

“This is how privilege gets perpetuated,” Philip told me in the office one day. “Rich assholes like us taking unpaid internships and getting jobs off the back of them.”
“Speak for yourself,” I said. “I’m never going to get a job.”

‘kerb’ is just a silly British quirk to me, but the quotation thing is perplexing.

The waiting game.

Sara Mazariegos

In my experience thus far, there are three main steps to post-writing a novel manuscript:

  1. Elation at having finished! Everyone should know and maybe a bunch of friends should read it?! Such proud.
  2. Wait, wait, wait. This needs to be edited. Reread and edited more. Maybe it’s not as amazing as once believed… But you can make it so!
  3. Query anxiety. <– this is where I am. The manuscript is finished, but now you have to advertise it to potential representation. Crying at this stage is perfectly natural.

I joined a writing forum that seems quite helpful. I signed up for a writing advice newsletter. I shared my novel with some earnest beta readers. It seems like I’m doing everything the correct way.

My buddy Patience and I are just gonna have to get better acquainted.

It’s a process.

Sara Mazariegos


Tra la, la, la, la. Spring is in the air. And I’m a flower with nothing interesting to say. 

I think of this line from A Bug’s Life every spring.

Now that I’ve finished reading through my novel and giving it more little edits, I’ve sent it off to some more beta readers for their feedback. I went with some Nerdfighter volunteers, which makes sense to me because themes in my novel are based on the Nerdfighter community. It’s a novel about becoming an independent adult, finding your own path in an era where that seems almost impossible, and finding love and companionship along the way.

I learned from Ellen Brock that I’m an intuitive planner – that’s at least the closest writer “type” I align with. I have a book outline, but I’ve also been going with my gut feelings regarding the plot and flow of the story. I feel like I’m the same with everything in my life: I have a general idea/plan, but then I kind of go with how I feel in order to get there.

If that makes sense.

Nobody told me how much patience goes into writing a novel. That’s been the hardest part, for me. I keep having to remind myself that it’s a process. Steps have to be taken, and some of them take longer than others. Some of them aren’t as fun. But it’s all a part of it.

Killing My Darlings.

Sara Mazariegos

I’ve drafted my novel. I’ve taken a break from it, edited it, revised it, rewritten things, taken things out, dissected it, kept myself up late with worry about it, and let some of my friends have a look at it.

I set a goal for myself. I’m reading a chapter a day, as a final ‘edit now or forever hold your words’ read-through. My birthday is on Wednesday. After Wednesday, I’ll start submitting my manuscript to book agents.

Deep breaths.

I wrote my novel with a particular readership in mind. It’s for the Millennials who graduated college thinking everything would go as well as it did for their parents, only for everything to be ten times more difficult. It’s also a love story, because it’s dangerous to go alone.

I can’t wait for you to read it.

Plagiarism.

Sara Mazariegos

I first learned about plagiarism from my mom when I was eight years old. I authored a story for a school assignment that was The Pebble and the Penguin. I hadn’t discovered fanfiction yet. The funny thing is, I doubt I even changed the characters’ names or what happened.

Whenever the topic of plagiarism comes up, I always think Pebble and the Penguin as if in Pavlovian response.

Authors Supporting Authors.

Sara Mazariegos

As I’m hoping to publish a novel, I’ve been reading all kinds of novels in the same genre/niche area. “Romance” is such a broad category, and I think it’s often judged based on the old-fashioned, Fabio covers of the past. Not to say that there’s anything wrong with, as my mom calls them, bodice-rippers, but romance novels come in many assorted styles and themes. That’s why it’s still such a popular genre.

My particular niche in the genre is commonly labeled as New Adult Contemporary, meaning the characters are recent college graduates and it takes place in current-ish times. Aside from writing my novel, reading these comparable books has been my favorite part of the getting-published process so far. It’s been a joy to read other works from contemporary romance authors such as Sophie Cousens, Abbi Waxman, and Allison Ashley. What a fantastic way to find inspiration, reassurance, and a sort of camaraderie, even if only through the written pages of others.

This is something I’ve been contemplating a lot recently: although my novel is a romantic story about two young adults finding love, it’s also a love letter to the Internet communities that grow and support each other both online and off. If it weren’t for the Internet, many of my generation and younger wouldn’t have met the people who matter the most in our lives.

There’s an upcoming book that I’m looking forward to reading called Planes, Trains, and All the Feels by Livy Hart. The title makes me so happy. To share my excitement at preordering a copy, I tweeted at her. I’ve never been great at containing my enthusiasm for things I enjoy.

She replied that my tweet made her day. And, in tweeting that to me, she made mine.