Guest Post: Leah Cypess

Thank you for all of your guys opinions on yesterday's post! Currently, I'm thinking of possibly arranging short celebrations for both, around two weeks long... but I'll decide later and keep you updated.

Back on the point, this is the post that officially marks the end of Leah Cypess week. This was a lot of fun for me, especially because it was my first long author feature and Leah was great to work with. Congrats again to Leah for getting some great reviews, a starred review from Booklist, and, most importantly, her YA debut!!

So, I'm now turning over the post to Leah... *cue applause*

Jenn asked me to finish up the week with a guest post having to do with my writing process. This left me a little stuck because, well, I don’t have one. I know some writers who sit in a specific spot and listen to a specific playlist and sip a specific drink, but I tend to write whenever inspiration strikes (or whenever I have the time). I wrote much of Mistwood on the subway, and revised most of it on the playground.

So what IS crucial to my process? The basics: a notebook and pen. I do tend to fixate on a specific notebook and refuse to write in anything else. In high school, it was the GreenCycle recycled paper two subject notebook. In college, it was the Top Flight wireless notebook.

And in law school, my friend Randi Goring introduced me to something entirely new. Randi was a Japanese Studies major who then went to law school (as Japanese Studies majors, I suspect, tend to do); the summer after our first year, she went to Japan and brought me some notebooks that look like this:

These are awesome. They are super-thin, they fit perfectly into my little backpack, and the lines are slightly closer together than those in American notebooks. Mistwood was written almost entirely in these notebooks:

(if you look closely, you can see that one of the characters had a different name in my first draft...)

Of course, Randi bought those notebooks for a couple of cents in some random drugstore in Japan, whereas I spent hours searching the web to find someplace that sells them, and now I pay tons in shipping to order them from Muji.com in England. Which is why I no longer speak to Randi. That, and because she’s not on facebook.

Oh, and in case you were wondering: I am also weirdly specific about which pens I use. But that’s a post for another day…

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Thank you, Leah! Haha, I am definitely not brave enough to write in pen, I would be crossing out sentences like crazy. But those notebooks? *want want want* Now I just have to find some way to go to Japan...

That about wraps things up. Remember, today is the last day to enter the giveaway for Mistwood, so if you haven't yet, just follow the link or picture above. (Leah has also graciously made it international, for those international buddies out there!) Also, in honor of her last day here, Leah will be stopping by later to answer any questions that YOU pose for her. So fire away! ;)