Anya Bast

A dozen strong beliefs I hold:

1. I believe personal growth and development is won in the moments, in how you treat others and in the love that you show.

2. I believe it’s better to be able to bend once in a while, otherwise one day you will break.

3. I believe that being kind and having compassion are strengths, not weaknesses.

4. I believe it’s important to have tolerance for everyone, even those who are intolerant. (This one is very hard.)

5. I believe we create our own reality.

6. I believe we all change every single second. I am not the same person I was yesterday, or even two hours ago, not exactly.

7. I believe we are all ultimately responsible for our own happiness. No one else can provide this for us. We make choices about how to perceive ourselves and our lives.

8. I believe that some of the most hurtful and challenging people in my life have been my very best teachers. They have helped shaped me into the person I am.

9. I believe you can’t change the past and the future is made in the present. So it’s important to really be present.

10. I believe there is always something to learn.

11. I believe that while it’s fine to strive for “more,” it’s important to be content with what you currently have and not take it for granted.

12. I believe in keeping things simple.

Please take a few minutes to tell me something you strongly believe in the comment section.

Cross-posted from Between Fire and Ice.

We’re headed to the beach today. Oddly enough, it will be cooler there than it is at home. After suffering through many, many days of 100+ temperatures, a slightly cooler ocean breeze will be welcome.

The ocean, also, is a very cleansing place for me. Being near the ocean always makes me feel peaceful and raises my spirits. These days, I could really use that. So, even though my body really isn’t made for beaches (bring on the sunblock, SPF 200,000!!), just being near the sea will be a good thing for me.

While it will be nice to escape the heat a little, the temperatures haven’t managed to kill off my garden. Below is a picture of just a fraction of the veggies we’ve been able to harvest.

Eggplant, zucchini, green peppers, peas, green beans, tomatoes and potatoes. They’ve all been plentiful. I had enough here to make a dinner for 8 people, most everything harvested ourselves.

There’s something really satisfying about growing your own food. This year was a learning for me and I’ll do things much differently next year, but I think I’m officially addicted. Next I need to learn how to preserve things.

So, since I’m off to the beach, a place that heals me, I want to ask YOU. Do you have a location you go to that hits the “reset” button for you, chills you out, makes you peaceful, raises your spirits? If so, tell me in the comments. I’d love to know.

This morning I heard an author on NPR (don’t know who, sorry) say something to the effect that a writer should always put themselves in the place of their audience when writing. I got me to thinking (this is the part where you should run away and hide).

I do think of my audience when I’m writing, but it’s usually before I start a novel, when I’m the plotting/outlining stages. For example, I write paranormal romance. That means an HEA is a must or I will be strung up by my neck by my readers and left to die a slow, choking death. There also other considerations when crafting a story for the romance reader that I always take into account when plotting and planning. Sexual tension, placement of love scene, character development, ect…

But once I start writing, I’m really not thinking about y’all anymore. 😉 At least, not when I’m sitting there looking at my MS. When I write, I’m not in the head of my audience; I’m in the head of the POV character I’m writing at that moment.

Creative visualization is a must-have tool for a fiction writer. The ability to place yourself in the environment your character is in, to smell what they smell, see what they see, hear what they hear. The hardest thing about this is, of course, thinking the way they think because those characters are not you. They have different backgrounds, different ways of seeing the world, are driven to make decisions differently than you would. The mark of a skilled writer is getting the reader to believe the characters, but in order to do that (in my opinion) the writer has to be fully in the head of the character, not the reader, when they’re writing.

This is on my mind right now because I’m writing an especially tricky character. It’s easier when a character is sort of like me. I can name a few of my heroines to whom, were they real people, I’d probably relate pretty well. Then there are characters like, oh, Daria from The Chosen Sin, who are so different from me that they’re a real challenge to write. That’s okay, I like challenges. Prefer them, in fact. Makes the experience more interesting.

Sometimes people tell me that my writing is personal wish fulfillment. This is the comment non-writers make. My characters are not fulfilling wishes I have. They are entities unto themselves, living out their lives in my imagination. I see the world I’ve created from their perspective which is usually pretty different from my own.

So, you see, as much as I love you all and appreciate the absolute hell out of you and HOPE like a crazy person you like the end result, I am not thinking of you when I’m writing. Or of myself, for that matter. I’m only thinking of the fictional character on the page and trying to get them right.