Paper Hearts – Heart Full of Books

Paper Hearts by Beth Revis
Genre: Writing Advice, Non-fiction
Published by: Patchwork Press
Pages: 342
Format: e-book
Rating: Helpful!

Bee and I both study Creative Writing at university, but the nature of our course means that we don’t get to look into writing genre fiction until our third year. I’m always up for listening to writing advice, especially if it comes from a published author like Beth Revis, who wrote the Across the Universe series, and The Body Electric. Getting to read this book gave some excellent specifics about what is need when writing a young adult book, and it’s definitely geared towards YA, as that’s what Beth writes herself. It was basically all I wanted to read about writing YA that was missing from my university course!

Continue reading “Review: Paper Hearts: Some Writing Advice by Beth Revis” →

I N T E R V I E W:

To celebrate the release of Beth Revis’ latest book ‘Paper Hearts’, completely dedicated to inspiring aspiring writers, we got the chance to ask Beth some questions about the book! (And if that wasn’t exciting enough, there’s also a giveaway you can enter here!)

Maddie and Bee: You discuss a lot of controversial tips for writers in Paper
Hearts, which piece of classic writing advice are you most opposed to and
why?

Beth Revis: “Write every day.” That one piece of advice was very damaging to me,
personally, and it’s one of the most pervasive in literature. You hear it
over and over when you start out and it’s just wrong. I have never been
the type of person who can write every day. My writing schedule usually
means that for three or so days of the week, I can write between 2k and
10k words, averaging out to about 10-15k per week. But when I do those
really big bursts of writing, I almost always take one or two days off.
And that’s fine–the book gets done, often at the same rate as someone who
writes every day. It doesn’t matter how often you write, as long as you
write consistently and progress toward completing the novel.

“Write every day” is the kind of advice that has a good heart. There are a
lot of people out there who like the idea of writing, but don’t actually
write. But if you’re not one of those people, forget this advice. Write
the way you write to finish a novel. That’s all that matters.
Continue reading “Interview with Beth Revis, author of Paper Hearts Series!” →