The Insanity of a Wallflower

Questions and Answers

And my ALL time favorite, though not poetic at all:

-"'Why are they all staring?' demanded Albus as he and Rose craned around to look at the other students.

'Don't let it worry you,' said Ron. "It's me. I'm extremely famous'."

I only want to rewrite these and reiterate this to my readers that you shouldn't stand for only junk/bland novels, (*though I will admit sometimes you just want "junk food" in book form). But as a whole, I believe that a teenage girl has every right to not speak in "text" lingo, or reenact every cliché way of speaking most movies have put down on us.

I was never like that, a vast majority of girls are not like that, but in most novels we all seem to be like that. I'd rather not reinforce what is essentially dumbing down the youth. I wasn't dumb, and I doubt any of you are. True, Alys had to grow up faster than most people, but her way of speaking shouldn't be unbelievable. More than likely, she grew up reading Tolkein, Pullman, Rowling, L'Engle, and so on so forth. ALL considered Children's novels. All with more vocabulary than most of the Y/A that's out there. So, I plead with other novelist to stop watering their character's voice. If a children's book can entrap us with "Tom Riddle hit the floor with a mundane finality, his body feeble and shrunken, the white hands empty, the snakelike face vacant and unknowing"... a teenage girl/boy should be able to speak with similar tongue and not be told they sound "too mature" and "unrealistic". When a child's novel has more vocabulary than most Y/A fiction, THAT's the problem.

Let me insert one last beautiful quote, this time for The Dead Poets Society.

"Avoid using the word 'very' because its lazy. A man is not very tired, he is exhausted. Don't use 'very sad', use morose. Language was invented for one reason, boys- to woo women- and, in that endeavor, laziness will not do."

Woo yourself, my friends, as I try to. I love writing, and I will always fight to not be lazy about it. If your vocabulary isn't that colorful, it isn't you, it's the material around you that has failed you.

Q: How long did it take you to research everything related to your characters?

A: Luckily for me I had a good foundation in most aspects of the plot to know how things work. I am familiar with people who have ticks, and know how varied they can be. Ticks fall into common categories, but no two are the same. Its involuntary, but a lot of times it can be almost sophisticated (detailed patterns that can't be broken, like blowing on fingers, running three along your leg swiftly, and whistling while doing it). I also live in the foster capital of America so I am overly familiar with the foster system. Alaska (where I'm from) has more foster children per capita than any other state. I was lucky to have a wonderful mother and father but sadly a lot of friends in school were in the foster system. I heard their horrors first hand, and sadly also heard how our state (so overcome with the amount of children) swept most of them under the rug.

For the mental illness part, I was able to pull some of my own issues for reference, though Alys truly is in her own playing field with hers. I won't get into details about my personal life but it helped me understand my character and give her a voice.

As for what I didn't know, I researched and read about it. Google was/is my best friend for sure. Truth be told I am still fact checking and ensuring I'm within a fictional but possible plot line. So I'd say I never stopped researching. For their basic profiles, I deigned them in a day. I knew Alys was going to be one of the greatest painters of her time, I knew her and Hayden would have dark times in their past that would lead to how they handled their future. And I knew there would be this breaking point where you're either born again or consumed into the ashes.