Welcome, lurkers. As you may know, I'm a writer of speculative fiction and poetry. While I publish short stories under the name A.D. Spencer, feel free to call me Ariyana. Here you'll be able to read about my upcoming projects, learn about new releases from my favorite small publishers, and maybe even read a few free stories of mine.

Enjoy yourself, and feel free to leave a comment if something sparks your interest.


Monday, April 11, 2011

Ahh, Writing, My Old Friend

So, yes, I'm behind.

On what? Why, just about everything. And what am I currently doing? Trying to get the CW website to play last week's episode of Vampire Diaries (don't judge me). Anyhow, my point is, I actually have plans for "after" this horrid site finishes with me.

After chatting with Trish, I've decided that one of my YA stories, the one to be written in 1st person, might not require the full on outlining that I usually do for my stories. Though it's speculative fiction, it's raw and character driven. So in order to get more into the story itself, I'm going to focus on writing scenes with my FMC. Hopefully, once I get to know her, I'll get to know the world she lives in.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

YA Woes

When the real world becomes, in Marty McFly wisdom, too "heavy," I zone. I zone often, as you might imagine. And sometimes, zoning even gets in the way of my passion, writing. Why? Well, zoning leads to second guessing.

Currently, I'm working on several different projects. I'm making my first full out attempt to get a novel written for publication purposes. In fact, I've quite the goal in mind (inspired by my writing buddy, Trish, of course). I want a novel agent-ready by December. Sure, not an impossible task, but... We're talking about me here. I'm the girl who rewrote a first chapter nearly a dozen times because of my "second guessing."

So, here I am, formally announcing this little goal. And hoping that, by doing so, I'm not making a fool of myself.

As for the projects themselves, several of them are Young Adult. Which leads me to the subject of this fair blog entry: YA woes. I have moments, really dorktastic moments, where I stop thinking about these project entirely because I'm worried my stories have too much gore, too many curse words... Then I remember my favorite young adult novels. Almost all of them have deep, resounding themes, deal with death, deal with the monsters of both the real world and the fantasy one. And I realize that having a Young Adult audience doesn't necessarily mean that I need to take a step away from my story.

I started out as a young adult writing for myself. I was writing YA stories, whether I knew it or not. Writing YA isn't about toning down the volume. It's about cranking it up.

So, yeah, about those "woes"? Who needs them.

Hopefully, next time I blog, I'll be well into one of my projects, be it for an adult, child, or young adult audience. I try to keep you updated.