1. Kitten videos on Instagram. Always.
2. Lip liner.
3. Kiddos.
4. Young people who are passionate about writing.
5. Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.
6. Rewatching SVU with my roommate.
7. 4096.
8. The Chronicles of Narnia. Over and over and over again.
9. Poshmark.
10. The rainstorms earlier this week.
11. Banana-Nutella smoothies.
12. Ativan.
13. Scripture.
14. CPAP.
15. Possibility.

Hi friends from the Northwestern Christian Writers Conference!

As promised, here is the link to my presentation: Topics in YA Lit.

Feel free to look around my website. Here are a few suggestions of places to start:

Truest

Why Christians Should Write

Query Letters & Literary Agents

Writing: Getting Started

Writing: Query to Contract

Writing: Publication

OCD

I want to be honest on my blog, but I feel like this year has been so difficult that I sound negative, and I want this to be a place of hope.

To be clear, I DO have hope. Lots of it.

But there’s also been a lot of darkness this year.

Today is a day when I’d love to write a post called “Raw.”

Instead I’m writing one called “Balance.”

Any ideas?

For now, I’ll do with this homemade look. In a couple months, I may design something on the computer once I see if there are any changes I’d like to make.

There is daily reflection and weekly reflection.

It is crazy what a night of great sleep can do.

Today I am motivated, refreshed, full of ideas.

Thank you, Ashley, who volunteered to rescue me; my parents, who planned to drive an hour just to help me clean; all my dear friends who remind me of my accomplishments when I feel like a failure; medication, for abating my inflammation; and my CPAP, for letting me get 8 solid hours of good sleep.

Today I am cleaning, planning my workshop, and creating a customized planner … wanna see?

(I’ll probably show you regardless ha!)

Tell me something good, friends.

This is just a gripe session, so read at your own discretion.

I feel crummy, and I know it’s because I’ve eaten too much sugar this week, and yet I still want to, oh, say, eat Nutella with a shovel. Instead I will eat a salad.

I went to my university’s library to pick up the books I’d reserved to prepare for the workshop I’m teaching (IN A WEEK … procrastination is not your friend, peeps), and the library closes early in the summer, so I missed it by SIX MINUTES. I feel stupid.

I stayed up late watching SNL videos on YouTube. Another slick move, especially knowing how important my sleep is when I feel this way.

My room is a disaster zone, and I keep thinking of how the Queer Eye guys say that sometimes our space is representative of the chaos going on inside us. Hear, hear.

It’s hot.

Remember the guy “Ben” who ghosted me last summer? And then again in January? All of you said NO NO NO, NO MORE CHANCES, but we’ve been talking a ton and last week he said he wanted to get together this week. It didn’t happen. Of course. I should have known, but I’m sometimes too hopeful for my own good.

Too hopeful? Too self-sabotaging.

Okay, enough complaining. I’m going to go make a life plan.

Wish I looked this good while annoyed

Happy Independence Day!

First, I am always, always so grateful for the exposure therapy that let me experience my first taste of freedom back in 2008. Here’s to 10 years of being master of OCD and not mastered by it.

Secondly, I will say, though, that I am scared for America. We have a rough history of colonization, slavery, and abuse, but I do believe that many here understand that diversity and freedom make our nation something beautiful. My prayer is that we will never concede to the horrendous forces that try to destroy diversity or freedom.

Thirdly, baby, you’re a firework.

Oof.

I want to shake things up, change the world, write stories that move hearts. But I also want naps.

I’ve survived a civil war with my own mind; now I engage in one with my body. Winning and losing have lost their definitions.

I’m thinking about so many things today: bioethics, Salt Novel, choices and death, the drivers behind attraction, myofascial massage, story structure, online dating, the writing workshop I am teaching in two weeks for which I am not sure I have enough to say.

I just want to curl up in strong arms that feel like a battery charging station, even if that’s not really how love works.