What's Up Wednesday: The Shiny New Idea

What’s Up Wednesday is a weekly blog hop created by Jaime Morrow and Erin Funk for like-minded writers to meet and encourage one another. Everything you ever wanted to know about it (now, with 50 percent more!) is right here.

What I’m Reading:

I am an insane fan of Jenny Han’s The Summer I Turned Pretty series (if you haven’t read it, please do—it’s wonderful) so I’m super excited to read her latest, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. I’m only partway through, but already loving it. Lara Jean is such an adorable narrator, and her home situation is so well done. As much as this is about love, it’s also about family, and Han does such a great job with Lara Jean’s relationship to her sisters and to her father.

Sometimes I read YA books and I’m struck by how different my teen years were—how tame my life was compared to some of these YA characters’. That is not the case here. I instantly connected with Lara Jean, who has a strong, loving family and didn’t need crazy home-life shenanigans to keep me reading. Don’t get me wrong, I love reading about crazy home-life shenanigans (hence my love for Katie McGarry books), but it’s refreshing to read about someone who comes from a good home, who makes good decisions, and is dealing with problems that seem insignificant in the long run but all too real when you’re a teen. (Or when you’re an adult. I’m not sure I’d find the situation any less disastrous if all of my previous crushes received old love letters from me.)

What I’m Writing:

I’ve been toying with this shiny new idea like a cat with a red laser dot. I have so many thoughts and ideas, yet the plot part of it is always slightly out of my reach. (Just the plot, no big deal…)

I’m also more than moderately fearful of writing this story because it’s fantasy and majorly intimidating, what with creating an entire world and all. I spent a ton of time world-building my YA sci-fi mystery, which takes place in 2050. Even so, the world is based off the America I know. So, yeah, pulling a fantasy world from between my brain folds kind of scares me.

Whether I tackle writing this next or another YA sci-fi I have already plotted is still a big question mark. I’m almost obsessing over this fantasy idea, but it needs much, much more work. (See “missing plot” above.)

What’s Inspiring Me:

When I’m in this stage of planning—the throw-everything-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks stage—I find much of my inspiration from Wikipedia (generally following a rabbit’s hole of information until I’m on idea overload) and photos. I’ve been keeping an inspiration board on Pinterest if you’re curious.

What Else I’ve Been Up To:

So you may or may not have noticed that I’ve been a bit MIA. I blame this on the fact that I’ve had serious wrist pain for a couple weeks. I took some time away from the computer, only typing for work. I learned a few things: A) I’m hopelessly addicted to Twitter and staying away was almost embarrassingly difficult and B) wrist pain is like kryptonite for writers.

I’m not 100 percent yet, but thanks to my most stylish wrist braces I’m feeling a little better and can at least type without pain. Still, I’m taking a good month off working on polishing my YA sci-fi mystery before doing my last revision. I figure I’ll need optimum hand coordination for that job.

What are you working on?