As you’ve probably noticed, I’m a huge fan of interviewing authors. I think it’s awesome to hear writing tips, stories and thoughts directly from the authors we love. Each time I do an interview, I get a little burst of inspiration to keep pushing forward.

When I re-launched this blog back in September, I asked for suggestions of what to post about in the coming months and Tessa gave me an awesome idea. She said:

Interviews! And I don’t mean guest bloggers. I mean interview other writers who are struggling to become published authors.

I thought this was a fab idea, so here we go! While we all love to hear from published authors , we can also learn a lot from our un-agented and not yet published friends. After all, many of us are in the same boat. Hopefully, we can find other writers to bond with/join critique groups/chat about writing/etc.  I’m not sure how often I’ll do this but I’m thinking maybe a few times a month. If you’d like to be interviewed for the blog, just shoot me an email! Also, if you have any clever ideas for what we can call this fun new feature, leave your suggestions in the comments!

And for today’s very special first guest…Laina! Laina is part of the fabulous blog YA Lit Six and also blogs on her own here.

You are part of the group blog, The YA Lit Six. What’s the purpose of this blog and what’s your favorite thing about participating in it?

The YA Lit Six blog was actually my friend Harmony‘s idea, one of her many projects. She invited me along with five other girls to write at it because she saw that while there are a lot of group writer blogs, there weren’t many, if any, group writer blogs written by young writers. In Harmony’s words, the blog is our place to share the various highs and lows of writing, to support each other, and to connect with, inspire, and hopefully help other writers out there.

My favourite things about it is that I can talk about my writing which I don’t do very often on my book review blog. Not sure why, I just don’t. And I like being part of something, you know?

You’ve been reviewing books for a long time on your review blog. How has reviewing books made you a stronger writer?

I think since I’ve been reviewing, I notice more what I like in books and what I don’t like, and I try to avoid doing things I don’t like in my writing.

Are you an outliner or do you prefer to jump right into writing?

Both? It depends on the story. One of my books I wrote with somewhere around three scenes and no idea where I was going right up until I typed the end. But right now, since I’m NaNoing, I had a good two weeks to think about things and I did outline a lot of it. (Scrivener, by the way, is great for outlining. Index cards and spreadsheets work well, too.) I’m actually coming up on the end of my outline sooner than I expected and I’m debating whether or not to just keep going or outline more.

How do you feel about NaNoWriMo? Insanely awesome or utterly stupid?

NaNoWriMo is utterly awesomely insane. I’m almost 12k into it and really enjoying the challenge and the community. I don’t go on the message boards but a ton of people I know on twitter are doing NaNo, too. I don’t think I could do it alone, but with so many other people doing it, it seems possible.

What are you currently working on?

I’m working on my NaNo novel. It’s about a girl and the boy she used to date and a lot of other things that I suck at telling about because I am not a good summarizer. If you notice, I don’t do it on my review blog very often, either. 😛 I’m also revising (but not during NaNo, because that would be insane. And while I never claimed to be sane, I like what shards of my sanity I have retained.)

What are your goals for the next few years in terms of your writing career?

I’m currently revising a novel that I hope to start querying next spring or summer, depending. Of course, I’m horribly impatient to get started on that, but I know you shouldn’t query before you’re absolutely ready, so I’m being patient. Kind of. Right now, I really, really like my NaNo novel, so I’m hoping that goes well enough to maybe someday get out there in the world, too.

Favorite book of all time?

Harry Potter, of course!!

Thanks so much for being here today, Laina!