Novel Completed and Other Things

Today I ordered my finished books!  I'm sooo happy!  I'm so glad that I get to have a physical item to show off my accomplished work!  Alright, alright, I shouldn't "show it off."  But I'll be so glad to have that so I can really be happy with myself!

I've thought of something lately.  See, I stopped bending over the corners of pages on books because, you know, that's bending the book, and you don't want to do that!  But then I started leaving turning them upside-down and leaving them open that way.  I keep thinking, "It's totally fine, I'm not damaging it or anything."  But Caden (yes, Uncle Caden) pointed out that when you do that, it stresses the binding and weakens it.  I kept thinking, "Well, whatever, that'll happen eventually anyway."  But then I thought of something else.  I'll be lending out my copy of my own novel and I want it to be treated nicely.  I realized that I wouldn't want it to be bent open like that, or have any bent pages, or anything like that; so shouldn't I treat other books nicely, too?  Sure it might be a pain to go hunting around for a bookmark every time I open a new book.  But it'll be worth it to obey the golden rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."  If I want my books to be treated well, I had better treat everyone else's books well.

Today is Youth Conference.  Instead of going up to a big camp for Youth Conference this year, or even camping at all, we're doing activities in the evening on Friday and doing activities all day on Saturday.  Today we went to the temple and now I'm at home waiting to go to our neighbor's house for dinner and an early fireside.  Tomorrow morning, I have to wake up before 3am so I can get ready to go on a hike at 3:30 with the youth and our leaders to see the temple lights turn on at 4:15am.  Then we have other things planned like swimming and tubing and cleaning the church and putting together hygiene kits and on Sunday we're going to have testimony meeting during the 3rd hour.  I'm so excited!  Aaaand not excited at the same time...  See, in my ward, I don't connect with a lot of people... at all...  Just one.  And we are good friends, best friends even, but not BEST best friends.  So for me, it's a great experience to do all those things but it's also just sooo awkward...  It's one thing that homeschoolers struggle with, I think...  We manage, though.  :)

I don't have much else to say but that I love you all.  Forever and ever and throughout eternity.

Ma

A Novel

A long time ago, in a galaxy far away... not really, it was just in November of last year and it was in my house... I wrote a novel.  I added a title page, chapters, page numbers, a pronunciation guide, everything.  I edited it on numerous occasions and went through several revisions, one of which was a really big one that added thirty pages the work!  I had been working on it with Luke, one of my best friends.  But what we wrote together was just the middle of it.  In November I participated in an event called NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month).  NaNoWriMo is an event in which everyone that participates sets a word-count goal for themselves and then writes.  They write and write and write and if they reach their word-count goal, they are a NaNoWriMo winner and they receive five free copies of their novel!  And so I did it, and in fact exceeded my goal of twenty-thousand words.  If I had written ninety-three more words, I would have reached forty-thousand words!  But alas, I only wrote thirty-nine-thousand-three-hundred-seven words.  Ah, well.  It was a bucket of fun.  I have spent the last six months working on it and this Wednesday (tomorrow!) I will send it off to the publisher and they will give me my five free copies.  I feel almost finished.  As soon as I get those copies... I can't wait until they come in the mail and I squeal for joy!  I am, of course, keeping my own copy.  I am also giving one to my parents, one to Luke, one to Aria (my very best friend!), and one to Olivia (my favorite cousin).  I can't wait!

The novel is about me.  Only it's about me in a different dimension and in a different time period and my character in the story is actually an "improved" version of myself.  Somewhat improved.  She has all of my good qualities.  *snicker*  The story is about my character's adventures.  I intend to write a series of novels about my character.  I've already started on the second one.  I'm so glad!  But I need a break from the characters in the book, so as soon as I get my novel finished, I'll either write something else or I'll just go read for a while.

I love being an author.

Author Amory McKay

The Beginning

Once upon a time...  Just kidding.  That's a silly beginning.

I have created this blog so that you, my darlings, can read about what I think of sometimes.  Maybe you can learn more about me by reading about the way I think.  I love you all.  I can't wait to meet you.  And I can't wait to see what you are like, who you turn out to be.

Ammie-Mom