The Little Things.

It's raining and I'm so happy! I am wearing a big sweatshirt! And drinking tea! Yay! 
Oh, and speaking of rain, yesterday I was home alone and decided to write, but it was sunny and I wanted rain (and God answered my prayers HUZZAH). Sooo I went to this website and I am telling you, it is amazing. It's whole purpose is to make it sound like it's raining. And if you scroll down, there are beautiful pictures of rain. I mean, whoever created this is a freaking genius.
 Gosh, I knew it would rain, but I didn't know it would like, rain, rain! Last night I was at Hannah's with some people from school and we were running around in the dark in her giant backyard (they live on a ranch with horses and chickens and ducks... it's awesome) and there was a ton of lightning! And it was cold! I'm very happy, you guys. 

Alright, I know that usually, I come on here and blog and I'm usually hyper and sarcastic and I probably drive a lot of you crazy. I try not to blog if I'm moody or if I'm having a teenage girl, the-whole-world-is-out-to-get-me moment. I try to be at least a little bit entertaining, and that usually results in a lot of sarcasm and caps lock. But for today I'm gonna put that aside because something happened and it kind of made me want to cry and laugh and scream all at once. 

As you guys know, I send pretty much everything I write to Leslie because if not for her, I wouldn't be this hooked on writing. And she's an amazing writer and I trust her. I've been sending her my novel a couple chapters at a time and last week I sent her one. It was one that I put a little extra effort into because it was kind of a high point in the plot and I wanted it to be deep and meaningful and, well, sad. I was going for sad. But I was disappointed because it didn't seem sad enough to me and that was annoying, because it was one of the first scenes that I had thought up before I had even started writing this story, and I had been super excited about it. For pretty much the whole year, I couldn't wait to write it and I kept thinking about it and I just wanted it to be good. But when I finished it, I wasn't moved my what I wrote, but I was kind of done so I just sent it off to Leslie anyway. 
She wrote back immediately. 

The scene that I wrote that didn't move me at all? 

It made her cry. 

My story made someone cry. 

It seriously made me so happy, and I know that sounds weird, like, Oh yay, I made someone cry! But it means that I can be deep if I want to, and while it might not have moved me to tears, that's probably just because I wrote it and I've been thinking about it for months and months and so of course I know what's happening and it's not a shock to me. But it made her cry. 
This is big for me, you guys, because Leslie is *such* a great writer, and that fact that I moved her to tears means that maybe this story isn't hopeless. Maybe I'm not as bad a writer as my little shoulder demon's been telling me. 

I love reading books that make me cry. This one, for example, made me sob. It's one of my favorite books. I love the fact that someone can create a character and a plot, and write down a bunch of words about it, but arrange those words in such a way that it plays with the emotions of the reader and can make you feel how the character feels. It brings the story alive. 

I know I have a lot to improve on. But it's the little things that mean a lot to me, like if a scene makes someone cry, or if someone talks to me about my characters like they're real people. It's just things like that that keep me moving. 
--Abby