{"id":7148,"date":"2013-01-15T11:00:47","date_gmt":"2013-01-15T17:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/?p=7148"},"modified":"2013-01-15T11:00:47","modified_gmt":"2013-01-15T17:00:47","slug":"learning-to-dream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/?p=7148","title":{"rendered":"Learning to Dream, One Book at a Time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The books I read as a child and teenager shaped my perception of the world and molded me into who I am today. From those books I learned friendship. I learned to dream. I learned love. I learned sorrow. I learned happiness. I learned that no matter what happens, as long as there are still books in the world, I will never truly be alone.<\/p>\n<p>Hopefully the books I write will create that same sense of yearning for adventure in other children. Even if I don&#8217;t accomplish that goal, my writing brings me back to those days of discovery.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I like the freedom that writing fantasy brings. I am able to create new worlds from my imagination. If I write in familiar settings, I can twist the details to fit my needs, I don&#8217;t have to worry about being accurate to the exactitude of the setting, because things have changed to fit the demands of my story. I also really enjoy world-building. I&#8217;m complete pants at writing description, something I really hope to work on in my edits, but world-building isn&#8217;t just in description.<\/p>\n<p>Creating a new world, one that young adults can relate to, begins with understanding the type of people that live in the world. It involves creating a world that is believable for the characters to exist in. It would seem strange to drop a medieval knight in Central Park just as it would seem strange to have cell phones in feudal Japan. When world-building, these are all things I have to take into consideration. I either have to design the worlds in such a way that these things seem natural, or I have to have an excellent back story for why they&#8217;ve suddenly appeared in that world.<\/p>\n<p>I suppose another reason that I write young adult novels is that the story is less complex. There is generally a main plot with only one or two hidden agendas. It is easier for me to keep track of that sort of storyline than one that branches out in every direction. I want to write my story, not have my story escape from me until the point that I discover I don&#8217;t know where I was originally going with it any longer.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe once I&#8217;ve written more, I&#8217;ll graduate to more complex novels.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe I won&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe I&#8217;ll find that those types of novels have a place in young adult literature after all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The books I read as a child and teenager shaped my perception of the world and molded me into who I am today. From those books I learned friendship. I learned to dream. I learned love. I learned sorrow. I learned happiness. I learned that no matter what happens, as long as there are still [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[390,454,1291,1294],"class_list":["post-7148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-process","tag-fantasy","tag-genre","tag-ya-fantasy","tag-young-adult"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}