Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Quote, Unquote!
I had a completely different post planned for today, but it’s Tuesday at 5:31 PM, this post is due in less than eleven hours, and I’m panicking, so we’re doing a fun one today. Next week I’ll give you the good one. I promise.
Anyway, I’ll be sharing a few of my favorite names with you today! These can be inspiration for character names, stuffed animal names, if you’re actually naming like a real live child, whatever you want.
I hope you enjoy.
girl names
Sadie
Sabrina
Sierra
Rose
Zoë
Sage
Elsie
Blair
Athena
Autumn
Marielle
Meghan
Fern
April
Caroline
Wren
Clara
Amie
Tessa
Alyssa
Rebel
Alayna
Kendall
Rylie
Cassandra
boy names
Curtis
Cooper
Carl
Timothy
Theodore
Remus
Oliver
Laurence
Mateo
Leo
Connor
Reuben
Travis
Levi
Zayn (One Direction fans please do not come at me)
Jaden
Pierre
Lincoln
Dominic
Callum
Erik
Lucas
Mason
Keith
Adrian
I hope that this list has inspired you, and maybe you’ll even bestow on me the highest honor you can: stealing these from me. What are some of your favorite names? Maybe I can steal them from you.
Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Quote, Unquote!
Before we begin, I just wanted to say a great big thank you! Quote, Unquote just hit 150 followers the other day. I can’t believe how far we’ve come! Thank you so much for all the support you’ve given to me and my little corner of the Internet.
I’m thinking that once we hit 200, we’ll do something special. A giveaway, maybe, or a Q and A–or whatever you decide. What would you like to see? Leave a comment letting me know.
Anyway, onto the official blog post…
It’s that dreaded time once again. The official first day of summer has rolled around, so it’s time for me to post my updates and goals.
I’m going to say something up front: I did not get much done. It’s been…rough lately. I’ve had horrible writer’s block for about a month or so, and I’m slowly trying to get back into writing. Life has been happening and I would rather it not, but I am still here and I’m still trying as much as I can.
With that disclaimer out of the way…let’s look at my goals from spring, shall we?
goals from spring
1. finish another edit of Shadows of Dreams
I’ve had two teams of alphas go through SoD now, and I’m partially finished with my second macro edit. So I’m not quite finished with the entire edit, but I’m getting there. I’ll give myself half a checkmark on this one.
2. make significant progress on Unwritten
This was left intentionally vague, and I think that I’ve accomplished it. When I said “significant progress,” I probably meant, like, 10K words in my brain, but if it had been left up to me, I probably would have written zero. I didn’t write zero! I made my own progress with about 5K words, I think. Which doesn’t sound like a lot, but is, considering how hard for me this story is to write.
3. post more writing on the blog
Heh. Heh heh heh. Um…
4. learn how to improve productivity by getting distracted less
I actually worked on this quite a bit. I’ve been researching different study methods and trying to implement tools to stay focused on my work. I’ve downloaded quite a few productivity apps on my phone and started using Notion, which has been a great help. I have to admit that I’m still working on trying not to be distracted as much, but it seems that the steps I have been taking have been working.
goals for summer
I’m choosing not to set extra-hard goals for this summer, as my summer is going to be absolutely nuts. I’ll be out of town quite a lot, and I’m not sure how much time I’ll have to write. That being said…
1. write for fun
I want writing to be fun again. I feel like I haven’t really enjoyed it for a long time, maybe because I’m putting too much pressure on myself. Whatever the case, I want to write something for fun, something just for me, something I’ll enjoy. I miss feeling like being a writer was the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and I want to reclaim that.
2. write two short stories
I have a few short story contests in mind that I want to enter this summer. The deadline for one is coming up, so I’m not sure if I’ll be able to finish the story in time, but I’d still like to finish it. Plus, writing short stories is so fun for me. As a bonus goal, maybe I’ll write some flash fiction to post here on the blog.
3. finish the next edit of Shadows of Dreams
I’m bringing back my goal from the spring and hoping I’ll finish this next macro edit of SoD. I may run it through another round of alphas just for the characters, but I’ll wait and see until I finish the edit. I’m proud of how far this story has come, though! Just a little bit ago it was a few scribbled pages in a blue binder. It’s looking better and better by the day.
That’s all for now! What are you guys planning to do this summer?
Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Quote, Unquote!
I have a confession to make: I haven’t written anything besides blog posts for a few weeks now. I’ve been in a serious writing slump. I want to write, I really do, and I feel so guilty for not having written, but every time I sit down to write…nothing comes out. No inspiration, writer’s block, whatever you want to call it–it’s just so hard to get the words out onto the page.
But! Today, just before sitting down to write this post, I opened up my document for a Harry Potter fanfiction I had been working on a while ago. Suddenly, the words just…flowed. It was the oddest thing.
That inspired me, so today I’ll be sharing with you some benefits of writing fanfiction that you may or may not have seen before. Let’s go!
1. there’s no pressure to publish
Most fanfiction can’t be formally published because of copyright laws. (There are a few exceptions to this, such as books that have gone out of copyright or certain video games, like Minecraft.) One of the traps I consistently fall into with my original writing is thinking I have to make everything perfect so I can publish and market my books. I know it’s an unhealthy mentality.
Fanfiction helps me with that because I know that legally I can’t publish it and claim the characters or settings as my own. I might share a few chapters of my fanfiction online or with my friends, but there’s no way I can make money off of it as a printed book, because I’ll get arrested. There’s no pressure at all with this, and I really love that. It’s freeing.
2. there’s no pressure to create
The great thing with fanfiction is it can be as canon-compliant as you want (for those who don’t speak fanfiction: that means that it can be as close to what actually happens in the book as you want or don’t want).
For example, my main character in my Harry Potter fanfiction is Draco Malfoy’s twin sister. In the books, Draco obviously doesn’t have a sister, let alone a twin, but I thought it would be interesting to explore what a girl living in Draco Malfoy’s shadow would think and feel. Everything else is pretty much the same: the story is set during the first book, so the events of the actual series are followed in my story.
With fanfiction, you can use the setting or the characters or the plot or a combination thereof to create anything you want. There’s no pressure to make your own characters or make the plot as original as possible. You can quite literally do anything your heart desires.
3. you can stretch your writing muscles
This one kind of goes with the above points. When you don’t feel any pressure to publish or to create your own original story, you can try things you wouldn’t normally. Write in a different genre or style. Write a character that’s outside of your usual. Write whatever you want!
Fanfiction is a great way to practice so that when you’re actually writing something of your own creation, you can use the skills you’ve gathered from writing for fun. It’s also a good way to start writing if you’re new; you’ll be able to dip your toes in, so to speak, without getting too wet, and decide if writing is for you or not.
4. you can find a community
A while back, I had a Minecraft fanfiction that I loved to write. It was a snippet series that I posted on my writing community, the Young Writer’s Workshop, and I had quite the fanbase. Every time I posted a new snippet, my friends would comment and get into arguments over the story (cough cough hi Mia cough cough). It was one of the best things that has ever happened to my writing.
I really found a lot of great friends with that little fanfiction. Everyone who read it loved Minecraft and would not only talk about the story, but Minecraft itself and the mechanics. That was the best part: meeting people who liked what I liked and were willing to read about it. The community is one of the greatest things about writing fanfiction. You’ll find friends where you least expect them.
I hope that now you’ll be inspired to pick your favorite book series or TV show and write something based off of it! If you do (or if you already have a fanfiction you’re proud of), I’d love it if you sent it to me so I could read it. Just use the contact form in that little menu at the top of this post.
Thank you so much for reading, and I’ll see you next Wednesday!
Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Quote, Unquote!
One of the things I’ve been studying more in-depth lately is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, or MBTI for short. Basically, it’s a personality system that focuses on how you think and how you analyze the world–your cognitive functions. There are 16 types, and in this post I’ll show you how you can use them to develop your characters and really get inside their brains.
A brief note: I am using David Keirsey’s Please Understand Me II as my main source material for much of the quoted information in this post. If a quote is not from this book, it will be indicated otherwise.
a small history of the MBTI
By the early 20th century, many philosophers had already caught on that humans are born with “predispositions to act in certain ways….” Some believed that we all had the same driving force behind us, but of course Carl Jung, a Swiss physician, disagreed. He was among the first to suggest that different people have different motives that drive us, but that all humans fit into certain groups or what he called “archetypes.” He wrote a book about this titled Psychological Types.
The ideas of old philosophers were pushed aside, so to speak, and Jung’s ideas, coupled with Ivan Pavlov’s, came to the forefront of the psychological field. “Behavior was explained as due to unconscious motives or to past conditioning, or to both.” Then, at mid-century, a woman named Isabel Myers (who had had no formal training in psychology at all), and her mother, Kathryn Briggs, “devised a questionnaire” for determining where the average person fit into Jung’s archetypes. Just like that, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator was born, and by 1990, over a million Americans were taking it each year. It continues to be a popular science to this day.
how does the MBTI work?
Honestly, I can’t think of a way to word this that would not sound like a raving, rambling lunatic, so here’s what Keirsey says:
Instead of naming her sixteen types of personality with descriptive words, Myers elected to label them with a combination of letters, chosen from four pairs of alternatives, E or I, S or N, T or F, J or P, as indicated above. The letters represent the following words:
E = Extraverted or I = Introverted S = Sensory or N = iNtuitive T = Thinking or F = Feeling J = Judging or P = Perceiving
Myers found these words in Jung’s Psychological Types, but in adopting them she put her own spin on them. So let us consider what Myers actually meant in using Jung’s words in The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.
E = Expressive or I = Reserved S = Observant or N = Introspective T = Tough-minded or F = Friendly J = Scheduling or P = Probing
Please Understand Me II, page 12
Basically, what this means is that each personality type is made up of four letters, with a total of sixteen possibilities. “Myers regarded the eight letters and the traits they represent as the parts or elements of personality, independent of one another.”
An example might help, so let’s use my type, INFJ. The “I” means I’m introverted or reserved, the “N” means I see the world through intuiting my surroundings, the “F” means I follow my heart rather than my head, and the “J” means I like to stick to schedules and planning. Whereas the opposite of my type, ESTP, would be more extroverted, experience the world through their five senses, use their head rather than their heart, and be more spontaneous and adaptable.
Got it? No? Well, we’re moving on anyway. I apologize. There’ll be more resources to peruse at your convenience listed later.
so how can this help me?
The MBTI is unique from other personality systems in that it explains how you process the world. The examples above can help you see that; it will be especially obvious in the Sensor/Intuitor divide. If you have assigned your character(s) an MBTI personality (or if they have assigned one to themselves), once you study their personality and their cognitive functions, you can use that as a general guide to how they would make decisions and how they would react to their surroundings.
If, for example, your character is an ESFJ and they’ve just gone through a bad breakup, you can simply Google “how would an ESFJ react to a breakup” and Google will give you answers. You can even look up, say, “ISTP and ISFJ relationship” and Google will tell you how ISTPs and ISFJs act in their relationships with one another. It really is quite handy.
And if you can’t find an answer on Google, find someone who is at least semi-knowledgeable in MBTI and who is also the type that you need and ask them how they would react to the situation that you’re dragging your poor characters through. Voila!
some resources
I sincerely apologize if this post baffled and confused you. It should have made some sense, but honestly, I don’t know if it did.
Oh well! Here you have some resources to help you if you were baffled and confused.
16personalities.com (a good place to start if you’re a beginner, but definitely supplement by learning about the cognitive functions and take the info found here with a grain of salt. 16p mistyped me, so I would recommend doing your own research after taking their test.)
personality-database.com (fictional MBTIs: crowdsourced; take this information too with a grain of salt)
my personal MBTI document–this contains my own information and research on MBTI. Most of the descriptions on there are by my friend Julianne Post; her Instagram handle is next to everything accredited to her.
Thank you all for reading! I hope you’ve gained something from this. And if you haven’t…please come back next Wednesday. Don’t let this scare you off.
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Quote, Unquote!
Today is June 1st, also known as the beginning of summer. Yes, I know that it’s not technically the beginning of summer yet, but I’ve never been one for technicalities.
Now that summer’s rolled around, you probably have a lot more free time than you did during the school year. (Sorry to the adults who read this who have to work.) This means you’ll probably be reading a lot, which means you’ll run out of books really fast, which means that you’ll be desperately searching for new books to read, which means that you’ll need book suggestions from yours truly. Right?
So I’ve compiled a short and by no means exhaustive list of some fluffy, happy, contemporary YA romance books that just feel like summer to me. Here you are; you can stop panicking now.
100 Days of Sunlight by Abbie Emmons
When 16-year-old poetry blogger Tessa Dickinson is involved in a car accident and loses her eyesight for 100 days, she feels like her whole world has been turned upside-down.
Terrified that her vision might never return, Tessa feels like she has nothing left to be happy about. But when her grandparents place an ad in the local newspaper looking for a typist to help Tessa continue writing and blogging, an unlikely answer knocks at their door: Weston Ludovico, a boy her age with bright eyes, an optimistic smile…and no legs.
Knowing how angry and afraid Tessa is feeling, Weston thinks he can help her. But he has one condition — no one can tell Tessa about his disability. And because she can’t see him, she treats him with contempt: screaming at him to get out of her house and never come back. But for Weston, it’s the most amazing feeling: to be treated like a normal person, not just a sob story. So he comes back. Again and again and again.
Tessa spurns Weston’s “obnoxious optimism”, convinced that he has no idea what she’s going through. But Weston knows exactly how she feels and reaches into her darkness to show her that there is more than one way to experience the world. As Tessa grows closer to Weston, she finds it harder and harder to imagine life without him — and Weston can’t imagine life without her. But he still hasn’t told her the truth, and when Tessa’s sight returns he’ll have to make the hardest decision of his life: vanish from Tessa’s world…or overcome his fear of being seen.
100 Days of Sunlight is a poignant and heartfelt novel by author Abbie Emmons. If you like sweet contemporary romance and strong family themes then you’ll love this touching story of hope, healing, and getting back up when life knocks you down.
Content warnings: cursing (a small amount), some bullying and body shaming
You Have a Match by Emma Lord
From the beloved author of Tweet Cute comes Emma Lord’s You Have a Match, a hilarious and heartfelt novel of romance, sisterhood, and friendship…
When Abby signs up for a DNA service, it’s mainly to give her friend and secret love interest, Leo, a nudge. After all, she knows who she is already: Avid photographer. Injury-prone tree climber. Best friend to Leo and Connie…although ever since the B.E.I. (Big Embarrassing Incident) with Leo, things have been awkward on that front.
But she didn’t know she’s a younger sister.
When the DNA service reveals Abby has a secret sister, shimmery-haired Instagram star Savannah Tully, it’s hard to believe they’re from the same planet, never mind the same parents ― especially considering Savannah, queen of green smoothies, is only a year and a half older than Abby herself.
The logical course of action? Meet up at summer camp (obviously) and figure out why Abby’s parents gave Savvy up for adoption. But there are complications: Savvy is a rigid rule-follower and total narc. Leo is the camp’s co-chef, putting Abby’s growing feelings for him on blast. And her parents have a secret that threatens to unravel everything.
But part of life is showing up, leaning in, and learning to fit all your awkward pieces together. Because sometimes, the hardest things can also be the best ones.
Content warnings: Cursing, injuries in detail
Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen
It’s been so long since Auden slept at night. Ever since her parents’ divorce—or since the fighting started. Now she has the chance to spend a carefree summer with her dad and his new family in the charming beach town where they live.
A job in a clothes boutique introduces Auden to the world of girls: their talk, their friendship, their crushes. She missed out on all that, too busy being the perfect daughter to her demanding mother. Then she meets Eli, an intriguing loner and a fellow insomniac who becomes her guide to the nocturnal world of the town. Together they embark on parallel quests: for Auden, to experience the carefree teenage life she’s been denied; for Eli, to come to terms with the guilt he feels for the death of a friend.
In her signature pitch-perfect style, Sarah Dessen explores the hearts of two lonely people learning to connect.
Content warnings: cursing (a small amount), teenage alcohol use
Along for the Rideis out now as a Netflix movie!
Open Road Summer by Emery Lord
After breaking up with her bad-news boyfriend, Reagan O’Neill is ready to leave her rebellious ways behind. . . and her best friend, country superstar Lilah Montgomery, is nursing a broken heart of her own.
Fortunately, Lilah’s 24-city tour is about to kick off, offering a perfect opportunity for a girls-only summer of break-up ballads and healing hearts. But when Matt Finch joins the tour as its opening act, his boy-next-door charm proves difficult for Reagan to resist, despite her vow to live a drama-free existence.
This summer, Reagan and Lilah will navigate the ups and downs of fame and friendship as they come to see that giving your heart to the right person is always a risk worth taking.
A fresh new voice in contemporary romance, Emery Lord’s gorgeous writing hits all the right notes.
Content warnings: cursing, teenage alcohol use
Love and Gelato by Jenna Evans Welsh
Lina is spending the summer in Tuscany, but she isn’t in the mood for Italy’s famous sunshine and fairy-tale landscape. She’s only there because it was her mother’s dying wish that she get to know her father. But what kind of father isn’t around for sixteen years? All Lina wants to do is get back home.
But then Lina is given a journal that her mom had kept when she lived in Italy. Suddenly Lina’s uncovering a magical world of secret romances, art, and hidden bakeries. A world that inspires Lina, along with the ever-so-charming Ren, to follow in her mother’s footsteps and unearth a secret that has been kept for far too long. It’s a secret that will change everything Lina knew about her mother, her father—and even herself.
People come to Italy for love and gelato, someone tells her, but sometimes they discover much more.
Content warnings: death of parent, pregnancy out of wedlock
Love and Gelato is coming to Netflix on June 22, 2022!
Love and Olives by Jenna Evans Welsh
Liv Varanakis doesn’t have a lot of fond memories of her father, which makes sense—he fled to Greece when she was only eight. What Liv does remember, though, is their shared love for Greek myths and the lost city of Atlantis. So when Liv suddenly receives a postcard from her father explaining that National Geographic is funding a documentary about his theories on Atlantis—and will she fly out to Greece and help?—Liv jumps at the opportunity.
But when she arrives to gorgeous Santorini, things are a little…awkward. There are so many questions, so many emotions that flood to the surface after seeing her father for the first time in years. And yet Liv doesn’t want their past to get in the way of a possible reconciliation. She also definitely doesn’t want Theo—her father’s charismatic so-called “protégé”—to witness her struggle.
And that means diving into all that Santorini has to offer—the beautiful sunsets, the turquoise water, the hidden caves, and the delicious cuisine. But not everything on the Greek island is as perfect as it seems. Because as Liv slowly begins to discover, her father may not have invited her to Greece for Atlantis, but for something much more important.
Content warnings: potentially triggering panic attacks and disorders
Instant Karma by Marissa Meyer
Chronic overachiever Prudence Barnett is always quick to cast judgment on the lazy, rude, and arrogant residents of her coastal town. Her dreams of karmic justice are fulfilled when, after a night out with her friends, she wakes up with the sudden ability to cast instant karma on those around her.
Pru giddily makes use of the power, punishing everyone from public vandals to mean gossips, but there is one person on whom her powers consistently backfire: Quint Erickson, her slacker of a lab partner. Quint is annoyingly cute and impressively noble, especially when it comes to his work with the rescue center for local sea animals.
When Pru resigns herself to working at the rescue center for extra credit, she begins to uncover truths about baby otters, environmental upheaval, and romantic crossed signals―not necessarily in that order. Her newfound karmic insights reveal how thin the line is between virtue and vanity, generosity and greed . . . love and hate… and fate.
Content warnings: cursing (a small amount), teen alcohol use (a small amount)
I Now Pronounce You Someone Else by Erin McCahan
Eighteen-year-old Bronwen Oliver has a secret: She’s really Phoebe, the lost daughter of the loving Lilywhite family. That’s the only way to explain her image-obsessed mother; a kind but distant stepfather; and a brother with a small personality complex. Bronwen knows she must have been switched at birth, and she can’t wait to get away from her “family” for good.
Then she meets Jared Sondervan. He’s sweet, funny, everything she wants and he has the family Bronwen has always wanted too. She falls head over heels in love, and when he proposes marriage, she joyfully accepts. But is Jared truly what she needs? And if he’s not, she has to ask: What would Phoebe Lilywhite do?
Content warnings: mentions of sex out of wedlock
That’s all for now! If you were looking for some beach reads this summer, consider yourself informed.
This is not the last booklist of this summer! Keep an eye out for more suggestions over the next few months.
Quote, Unquote 