Armchair BEA Discussion Post: Fiction and Development

Blogger development…

I am not yet in a position to mentor anyone on this subject as I am still in the early stages of blogging even though I have been blogging for 2 years. I have had troubles keeping up due to a very chaotic few years.

I am NOT an organized person! I am, in the deepest sense of the word, a “free spirit”. While I do take pride in this, it doesn’t come without it’s inconveniences. Over the years I have tried to turn myself into someone organized and focused. But with every try I failed, so I recently came to the realization that it is part of my personality… It is WHO I AM. I came to accept that that and when I accepted it and stopped trying to be someone I am not I suddenly found my kind of organized chaos easier to manage. To have a blog is to be organized, and if I want this blog to grow along with me I need to be organized. I am no longer trying to be someone I am not but I still try to set goals and keep them. And I have succeeded more lately. The difference now is that I don’t beat myself up if I don’t end up achieving a certain blog goal and then, most importantly is tat I have made fellow book blogging friends. Before I met them I was kind of a mess. I hadn’t posted anything in months. But in the past 2 weeks they have helped me get my act together. I couldn’t be a blogger at all without them. They motivate me, encourage me, make me feel better about myself and best of all, they make me smile and laugh! That is what friends are. I may not have met them yet but I will one day!

Bottom line is; in this book blogging world you need allies, you need friends, you need support to grow and develop your craft. Because book blogging is a craft that us book addicts have developed to connect to others like us.

Also I am hoping to find a co-blogger who would help fill the empty days. Let me know if you’d be interested!

My Book BFFs:

Melissa @ Harley Bear Book Blog
Angela @ Reading Angels
Lindsay @ The Novel Life
Rie @ Mission To Read
Kathrin @ Stacked ‘n’ Painted

Discussion on Genre: Fiction

Fiction! It’s anything from contemporary (YA and Adult), romance(YA and Adult), paranormal romance(YA and Adult), historical romance(YA and Adult), Urban fantasy (YA and Adult), dystopian (YA and Adult), horror (YA and Adult)…. The list certainly goes on and on! I am mostly a YA reader. As I mentioned in my Intro Post that I am nearing my mid twenties (at an alarming pace I must say) and I have a child and trying for another. Now, you fellow bloggers understand how YA is amazing, but my real life friends and family never did. Believe it or not, before I was 17 I read mostly French YA (yes, I read the first 4 Harry Potter Novels in french and pronounced Dumbledore’s name wrong until the first movie came out). Then when I was 17, I went away to college (dropped out in my first year) and there were no french YA books… I randomly picked up some book that had two hands holding an apple on the cover and I was done for. After that I read some Tamora Pierce, Julie Kagawa, Libba Bray, Scott Westerfeld, Christopher Pike, Melissa De La Cruz, Phillip Pullman… Before I knew it I was 22 and reading YA.  YA was (and still is) my home.

My family told me that at my age I should be reading REAL books. That enraged me but I still tried to branch out, So I picked up some PNR (Black Dagger Brotherhood and Catherine Asaro’s The Lost Continent series)… But somehow that still wasn’t good enough so my mother said: “read books that are going to teach you things” and shoved a bunch of philosophy books on my lap. Philosophy can be interesting, but it’s  nothing that can make my heart soar and my eyes tear up, it didn’t make me laugh, it did make me angry but not for the right reasons. And who says you can’t learn from fiction?? I’ve learned a lot! Have you?

What is your take on Fiction and Development? Comment and let me know! xoxo