Inspiration

Today has been the best day of my summer and possibly the best day of my year. I met my favorite author, Maggie Stiefvater. She wrote my favorite book, Shiver.
Most of you by now know that my biggest dream is to be a published writer...with fans of course :) I was so happy to share this experience with mom especially, because we both discovered and read the books together from the very start :) Love you mom!
Lately, I haven't been writing as much as I used to because I haven't had any inspiration. Seeing her today and re-realizing that in order to keep chasing this dream, I'm going to have to REALLY work hard,  inspired me.
I've always known that it won't be easy, Paige has been my biggest motivator in my writing and I love her so much for that! Since I was a little girl I've been making up stories that, as I've grown, have improved as my style has. I don't know what my signature style is, I'm still working on it, but I'm working on an old story now that Paige liked :) In fact, her telling me in the car today that she wanted to know what happened in the story confirmed my decision to pick it back up again.  So thank you, Paige! For inspiring even more. I think I'll name a character after you one day :)
And thanks, Maggie for being an awesome role model!

Coffee Monster?

My mom bought me a Java Monster Loca Moca weeks ago and I forgot I had it in the fridge. So, on one of my I'm-hungry-but-not-sure-what-I-want-so-I'll-eat-everything raids today, I found it :)
I have to admit, I was skeptical at first. This is coming from me who will eat just about anything except turkey burgers without questioning it. I have a very open mind when it comes to food and drinks :)
And guess what? IT WAS AWESOME!!!! :) Pretty much just like an iced coffee with a zingy after taste that reminded me of medicine, but still good..in a way! Now I'm all jittery! WOO! :D

Tomorrow at the library.. :)

If you're in the Nashville area tomorrow and feel like stopping by the Nashville Public Library, you should! Why? Maggie Stiefvater, author of Shiver, Linger, and Forever is doing a reading! I, myself, love her writing style and one day I hope to be as good as she is! I definitely recommend this series to anyone who loves music, wolves, and crying :) I cried in book one and two but not in three for some reason. And three was really sad!
So tomorrow, I'll get to meet one of my favorite authors with Kimberlee and Paige! I can't wait!
Other authors I would love to meet include:
 J.K. Rowling, no need to tell you what she wrote :) *cough* favorite book series of all time
 Cassandra Clare: Author of the Mortal Instruments series :D
Suzanne Collins, author of the Hunger Games series
Jay Asher, author of Thirteen Reasons Why
Ally Condie, author of Matched
And so many more! :D
                                                                 

Lord of the Flies

Chapter eight and nine in Lord of the Flies really creeped me out. When it comes to books and movies, am I easily scared? Yeah, but something about the talking pig head really disturbed me. Which is why I'm blogging! Because I couldn't sleep. Sure I have a hair appointment in the morning and Kimberlee is coming over in the afternoon, but if I go to sleep right now, I know I'll have nightmares! I was texting Dylan and I guess somehow I misunderstood because I thought I was reading chapter 11, when I was actually reading chapter 8... Now I'm depressed. In all honesty, this book had a great theme, but I hated the way it was written.
When it at last got to something creepy that caught my attention (creepy talking pig head) I thought it was the end of the book. I'm sleepy and reading on my Kindle, it's sort of hard to tell how far I am into a book.
Therefore, now I'm bummed because there's still more of this stupid book to read.
I love books, don't get me wrong, but this book is just ridiculous. The thing with me and summer reading lists is, I hate being told what to read and I hate having a deadline. I know I should just get used to that happening in college and stuff, but man do I hate it.
We also had to read The Hunger Games. Fantastic book. If you haven't read it, you should. I've read it three times now and still find things I didn't quite catch. Since I had already read that book before, I had high expectations for Lord of the Flies.
I understand why people think it's a great book and why it's a classic. It teaches a good lesson and has several very good plot points. Overall, it's not exciting. I'm sorry if a bunch of bratty little boys being stranded on an island isn't my cup of tea. My favorite character was Simon and they killed him off so now I care even less, if that's possible.I'm sure I'll finish tomorrow or the next day...

~Sara

Why?

Recently I've been trying to become more involved in the blogging community. It isn't easy because just about everyone is a critic. I can take constructive criticism, I mean, if you can't then you should learn right?
What I'm talking about, are the people who set out to bash other people's blogs. Why make someone feel bad about themselves? I mean, at first I let this get to me because I thought, If they didn't like it, then who will? It's true that I said in one of my first blogs that I was only doing this for myself, and I still am, for the most part. I would love to have readers that actually get what I'm talking about. No, I don't care if you're a teenager or if you're fifty-something. I just want legit readers, not the kind that follow me so I'll follow them and then never read my blog. This blog is only a month or two old, obviously it's not going to be the best. It's my project! I want to keep this blog updated all the way through college and maybe even after that just so I can look back on everything that has happened. I want to find other readers who have the same interests as me. So why bash people?

The Internet is full of insensitivity and straight up cruelty. Most of it centers, unfortunately, around teenagers.
I just don't understand why people are so mean to others when everyone could just get along and have fun. Not just on the Internet, but in real life as well.
How can we say that we want world peace, when all we do is hate?
Are we really that immature? And stop hating on teens! Sure we screw up a lot and might not make the best choices, but you were one once.

The Internet and I will always have a love/hate relationship.

~Sara

People who love me...buy me sour straws :)

Ahhh, the little joys in life :) haha

My favorite candy ever is Sour Punch Straws :) I just love them! If my mom and dad see some, they usually get them for me :) I'm not a big chocolate person, mostly I just like brownies and cake in that category, which is why they get me sour stuff when they get me candy :)

Things that don't go together with sour straws:

1. Any sort of coke
2. Coffee
3. Pretty much everything tastes weird if you just ate a sour straw

Well, I got my new schedule yesterday... not happy with it. All I'm looking forward to in first semester is yearbook and guitar class. I really love playing the guitar, but I'm sort of worried about being in a class with other guitar players. Does that make sense to anyone? Haha :)
What I mean is, I was in the actual band that we have at our school for a semester in seventh grade. I quit because #1, it wasn't really my thing although I was pretty good at playing the clarinet. I would love to have a clarinet now! But what I didn't like about it was a few of the people. It's marching band people, it doesn't have to be so dramatic. Especially then, I didn't need any more drama.
I have a great feeling about this year, although it looks like who ever made my schedule put my hard classes all together in last semester. Wonderful.
What I don't have a great feeling about are a few choice people who I know are going to annoy the snot out of me. I'll save that for another post though :) Ah, high school.

~Sara
p.s.- That little "~"? It's my favorite key on the keyboard :)

Sleep!

Here's a very "Inception" style picture I took when I was on the boat in Destin :)

I really wanted to go to sleep, but then I realized that I hadn't blogged all day! And since this has become somewhat of an addiction, I had to :) Now you get a slightly sleep deprived post from me, but that's cool :)
Anyone else hate when it when you really want to go to sleep but you can't turn your brain off? That happens to me all the time. It doesn't help at all that once I do fall asleep, I have very vivid dreams. I always remember my dreams, it's sorta sad knowing that a lot of people barely remember anything from their own dreams.
I know Kimberlee probably thinks it's weird that when I have a really detailed dream, I write it all down in a spiral notebook. Sometimes they take up about four pages front and back or more.
I love dreaming because you feel like whatever is going on, even if it's completely impossible, you believe it in that moment.
Well, before I close my eyes, I'd like to say thanks for still reading this y'all :)

~Sara

Ten happy/encouraging songs that you should listen to :)

I love every one of these songs :) They make me smile! Go ahead and listen to them all! Or a few :) It's up to you :)

1.  1234 by: Feist

2. You and I by: Ingrid Michaelson 

                                                                                               

3. Fidelity by: Regina Spektor...okay, it's not ALL that happy, but it has a happy beat :)

4. Everything Will Be Alright by: The Killers

5. Everybody by: Ingrid Michaelson... I know I already listed one of her songs, but I just love her!

6. Yet again, Here's Ingrid Michaelson's song: Be OK :) She has so many great songs!

7. She Is Love by: Parachute :) Love this band!

8. We've all heard this one :) Accidentally In Love, Counting Crows version :)

9. Haven't Met You Yet by: Micahel Buble, I love him!

10. In the spirit of Smosh, Here's Firetruckin' Perfect by: Pink :)

There you go! I hope you liked the songs :)

Middle School

Sure this picture is from 8th grade year, but I still love it!

My little brother is going into the sixth grade in just about a week and he's worried about it.
I'd love to tell him that it's a great year and he'll have tons of fun, maybe he will, but I wouldn't be speaking from experience.
Sixth grade was the worst year of my life. I had no real friends and I was picked on pretty bad by a few girls. I won't say who they were, most of my close friends already know. Over the course of that year, I even had to see a psychologist. One of the reasons I want to be a psychologist, is how much she helped me through such a tough time. Everybody deals with things differently, I just didn't handle such a new atmosphere very well. Add on the fact that I'm very anti-social, and you know it's a recipe for disaster.
I wasn't always like that though. My friends know that once you get to know me I come out of my shell. I'm actually pretty fun sometimes :)
I don't understand why kids are so mean. I seriously hope that Nate deals with everything better than I did.
The same girl that called me a whore also spat on my shoes and picked on me all that year. Did I deserve to be called a whore? No. I didn't even have a boyfriend, but she said it anyway because she knew it would upset me. Gotta love middle school girls.
Things eventually got better for me, in the first semester of eighth grade when I found the group of friends that I have now. Thank God for them too, because without them, I honestly don't know what would have happened to me.
Hopefully, Nate will have a great sixth grade year. Maybe he'll have friends that aren't backstabbers.
I have a feeling that Sophomore year will be awesome! :)

Broken Wings; Shattered Shells

So many dead butterflies line the side of the highway. When I'm running I see that. The longer I dwell on it, the sadder I get. I'm pretty sure most people wouldn't even take much notice of something as seemingly simple as a dead butterfly on the asphalt, but then, I've always been sort of different.
The cars have to be what kills them. Never in my life have I ever seen so many dead butterflies at one time than on the side of any highway. Some of them have chipped wings or are missing wings all together.
Today on the highway, I saw the shattered remnants of an armadillo's armour. For some reason the individual pieces of almost indistinguishable shell reminded me of puzzle pieces. As if put back together, a complete armadillo would appear.
Step, a piece of a tail. Step, a butterfly's wing. Step, some part of the armadillo.
That was all that was left of the poor armadillo. Just pieces of it's armour and shell.

I haven't written on one of my stories in forever. I've just been distracted by some of my old ideas that I've found, and a few new ones that won't stop springing up. I'll write more later though.

~Sara