Favorite Books & Good Inspiration

There are a lot of books that I look to when I'm wanting inspiration. On both writing style and how to write a good novel.

Some of my favorite books include The Hollywood Nobody Series by Lisa Samson and anything by Mary Connealy, Jenny B Jones, and Rachel Hauck.

I really like the Hollywood Nobody Series because they're set in the first-person, present-tense and they're really easy to follow. They're fun and quirky and that's something that I really enjoy putting into my stories.

The books by Mary Connealy, Jenny B Jones, and Rachel Hauck are usually in third-person, past-tense. Again, easy to follow and something that I hope to be able to write in my books someday. I usually have trouble with third person because I used to always write in the first person tense. So I like to read well-written third-person books as inspiration for stories.

Another thing that really inspires me to write is music. Usually any kind of music helps me, but usually I have country music or pop music playing the background. I'm not sure what it does, but it sets the mood for me writing and usually gets my creative juices flowing.

Anyone else have anything that brings them inspiration while writing? I'm curious to know.

Leave a comment and let me know what you're favorite books, and best inspiration for writing is!

~Ashley

How much more of this story do I need to write?!

I've decided to make A World Without Sound my senior project. What I want to do is finish writing it, type it all up into a Word Document, format it and then get a few proof copies of it that I can actually hold in my hand.

But that entails a few things:

1. Finishing the book.
   Because I'm unsure of how long the story is so far - since I'm writing on paper, not in a word doc -, I don't really know how much more I need to write. From what I can tell, I need about 30,000 more words. This I can do. :)
2. Typing all of it up.
   I don't know why, but I dread this. Writing is SO much fun, but then having to pretty much "rewrite" it to get it onto the computer, is a pain. I hate it so much. Oh well, this needs to be done.
3. Format it into chapters, and break it out into better sections.
   Writing is my forte, breaking things out into chapters/sections, is not. I prefer to write without worrying about that.
4. Make a back cover for my book.
   I have a cover that I love for the front, but as for the back? Nothing thus far. I need to decide what kind-of picture I want on the back, and what I want the summary of the book to be. Another thing I'm not particularly good at.
   
5. Upload the book, the front cover and the back cover (is that what that's called?) to createspace.com so that I can get my proof copy.
   I have never done this before, so I'm not sure exactly how it works. If any of you know, maybe you could shoot me a quick email explaining this to me?
6. Wait patiently for my book to come in the mail.
   Patience is a virtue. A virtue that I wasn't born with.

~ash