199 Posts on the blog...

199 blogposts. Take one down, pass it around. 198 posts on the blog!

Whew. 199 posts. I've been blogging for over 2 years now and my next post will be 200. Stay tuned for a fun giveaway that includes artsy stuff, gift cardsy stuff, and a signed YA novel.

First, though, Carol is having an awesome contest on her blog (maybe even a little cooler than my 200 posts giveaway). I mean, she's giving away ARCs for Matched and Torment. I want them both...

Okay, since the next blogpost is going to be a contest/giveaway, I'm going to write 199 things you don't know about me on this post.

Ha. No, I'm not. I'm not sure I know 199 things about myself. Instead, I'm going to post my top ten favorite posts. Here they are, although not necessarily in order of favoriteness.

1. The Top Ten Worst Excuses for Not Doing the Dishes

2. To the Real Me...


3. All I Really Need to Know...


4. The Island of Yesterday


5. To Me From My Shadow Self


6. A Dear John Letter to A Soda Pop


7. What I Learned about Life from NaNoWriMo


8. 30 Things I Believe


9. Bucket List #55: Flamenco

10. Naming Ourselves

There you go: 10 blogposts that don't totally stink. If you have a few minutes, I'd love for you to read some of them.

What is one of your blogposts that you're proud of? If you leave a comment with a link to the post, I would love to read it!

Got my blanket and my book...

So I'm ready for the Once Upon a Read-a-thon!

I loved read-a-thons in elementary school. Who doesn't, right? So, I decided to join in on this one. It's from July 12 to July 14. They're even going to have some activities and *crossing my fingers* some prizes! Woohoo!

Here are some of the books that I'll be reading (hopefully it will be more; it just depends on how crazy the next few days are):

Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl:

Once Was Lost by the lovely Sara Zarr (truly, she's a lovely, amazing person as well as an incredible writer):

I know you want to join us. I mean, doesn't a read-a-thon just shout "super-cool"? I think it does.

Why I write

Back in May, I read a blog post by the amazing Kelly Rae Roberts and watched a video she wrote about. The video was geared towards business people and how they need to understand the "why" of their product. After watching it, I decided that I needed to figure out, for me, the reasons that I write. So, I did.

Then, last June when I was at the Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers (WIFYR) Conference (which was totally worth the $), Jennifer Hunt, the editorial director of Little, Brown Books for Young Readers told us in a plenary talk that we should figure out why we write.

Then, my friend Amy Jo, created a Why I Write meme, so I decided to write a post about it. And so, here are 5 of my reasons for writing. (My list is much longer than this, but I'll limit myself to 5.)

• Writing is sanctioned day-dreaming.
  
• When I write, I'm in control.
  
• When I'm writing, I feel like the real me. So many other times in my life I feel like I'm faking who I am.


• My writing will never deceive me. It will never turn in a poem by Shel Silverstein for an assignment and claim that it wrote the poem itself.

And here's the last one. This is one that I actually discovered at WIFYR.

• I write because I need to tell stories of girls and women who save themselves.
  

That's it. There are 5 of my reasons for writing.

So, why do you do what you do?