The Get To Know Me Tag (Writer Edition)

 

Thanks to Skye for tagging me for this! It was fun to fill out.

Vital States and Appearance 

Name- Elizabeth Egely (if you're confused how to pronounce my last name you're not alone, my family can't agree either. To add to the confusion sometimes my last name changes entirely depending on who you're talking to.)

This was his response to 'Are you Dimitri?'

Nicknames- Usually Liz, occasionally Lizzy, I may or may not have murdered the person that suggested Betsy when I was 8. No offense to anyone actually named Betsy. Although at this point, if I know you're talking to me I come to pretty much anything. Pavlov would have loved me.

Birthday- December 30th 

Hair length and color- Slightly past shoulder length dirty blonde hair. It has a bit of layering at the front which I really like. My hair is pretty thin so it's nothing major, but still.

Eye color- I have blue eyes although they change slightly depending on the day. Sometimes they look like grey/blue, sometimes they look ever so slightly greenish, but at the end of the day they're blue. 

Braces/piercings/tattoos-  I used to have my ears pierced but I need to get them done again at some point.

Righty or Lefty- I'm a Lefty

My secret is out

Ethnicity- As far as heritage goes, I'm a mix of everything. The family joke is that we're all mutts. I've heard that there's quite a lot of Norwegian, German, English, and Irish in us. I have a birthmark called a 'Stork bite' that is apparently a sign of a lot of Norwegian so there's that I guess. Although whether that's accurate information or not I have no idea.

Firsts

First novel written- I haven't actually written a novel, although technically I did enter the Rooglewood '5 Poisoned Apples' contest and that story was just under 20,000 words. 

First novel completed- Still not sure if it counts but my Snow White retelling is my longest story that I've actually completed. It's terrible, but I completed it.

Award for Writing- I won the first day of a 150 word short story contest in January. Nothing official and its's small but it meant a lot.

First Publication- Nothing yet.

Conference- Currently I've never been to a conference although from what I've heard Realm Makers sounds like it could be fun.

Query/pitch- Don't have one. 

Favorites

Novel (That you wrote)- I haven't written any, but that's what procrastination gets you. Currently my favourite one to work on is March Week.

Genre- My personal favourite is probably fantasy/urban fantasy. I love 'real' (or sort of real, like Ingary in Howl's Moving Castle, or Stars Hollow in Gilmore Girls) and then it has the possibility of magic or portals to other places. 

Author- Diana Wynne Jones, Maggie Steifvater, Dodie Smith, Neil Gaiman, Markus Zusak, Ray Bradbury...There's so many good authors

Writing Music- It really depends on what I'm working on, or what mood I'm in. 

Time to Write- Either after drinking coffee or at night. 

Writing Snack- Umm...I'm a very snack-ish person so as long as I like what I'm eating pretty much anything.

Movie- As of this moment Pan's Labyrinth, The Imitation Game, and Spirited Away

Writing Memory-

This is less physically writing related, but at one point I decided to do a Pinocchio retelling that was mostly set in a circus and I'd saved a couple Shakespeare quotes to a Pinterest board among other things. I'm still not sure why, I've never had any particular attachment to Pinocchio but anyways, I decided to do it and then for the next 2 days, I saw so many beetles and other bugs. After that I almost stepped on a green cricket, which by the way, I have never seen a green cricket in my life and neither had my grandma or anyone else in the family. I stopped seeing the weird bugs after the green cricket showed up so that may or may not have been related to him although he seemed like the type to make a dramatic entrance.

Following finding out that green crickets do actually exist, I was babysitting for my aunt and I took her kid with me to the park (where we went pretty much every day) and we stumbled across people setting up for a sort of suggestive-for-a-circus aesthetic for a food drive and there was going to be a group of people that put on Shakespeare's play 'A Comedy of Errors'. The coincidence was too much for me so I did something that I never do, I initiated a conversation with a complete stranger. One of the characters was a ringmaster and for whatever reason I told him how I had been planning on writing a Pinocchio retelling and had found a green cricket and now I'd stumbled across a 'circus' and how it was such a weirdly surreal coincidence and the fake ringmaster said 'Well it has to happen now!'

So if I ever finally write that Pinocchio story, I'm going to dedicate it to a green cricket, a fake ringmaster, and to Skye who was just as invested in this occurrence as I was when I told her about it. 

Essentially this was the plot of it at the time

Childhood Book- 

I had quite a few... The Secret Garden, The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, a couple Jules Verne books, Tom Sawyer, I had an abridged copy of Anne of Green Gables and White Fang, Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys, The 20th Century Children's Book Treasury. I read pretty much everything we had several times over at one point, I would've read anything. I started reading the dictionary, a thesaurus, and even the directions on shampoo bottles on multiple occasions. The word-starvation was real and nothing could satiate me. For all of that though, I was surprisingly unimaginative when it came to coming up with my own writing ideas. I always felt so boring and everyone else doing literally anything just seemed so much more interesting. The first books that had an enormous positive impact on my writing came around when I was about 13? 14? with Joan Bauer's books 'Rules of the Road' and 'Hope Was Here'. Before that, my mom had a lot of G.A. Henty audiobooks and missionary novels, and I had essentially tried to write one of those  (and there was a playlist), had I known anything about Tolkien at the time I think I would have lost my damn mind.

Current

Reading- I've been in a bit of a reading slump, it's definitely not for the lack of anything good, I just can't seem to concentrate lately. There's the Book Thief (I want my blood to be made out of this book), I'm over 2/3's of the way through Agatha Christie's Autobiography, Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente, The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury, and I'm a couple pages into Brideshead Revisited. I have a couple more things scattered around all over the place but at this point I can't remember what they are.

Writing- I've been writing snippets for my 'March Week' story. I'm not completely sure what it is, I know what I want it to be, but the plot for a good portion of the book is simply 'How long can I get away with describing this sandwich?', 'the townspeople do something weird', 'Ridley (my protagonist) is both annoyed by people and also eager to see them as projects' and 'Someone threatens the people camping out in front of the Witchery before it opens with a broom'. It's a story (at least in my head) full of paper, and ink, desperate clinging to cataloguing memories, ridiculous magic, hopefully a bittersweet ending, and kind of insane people who are all convinced they know what they're doing, there's a place called the 'Witchery', and there's a weird storm that has been inconveniencing this town for years and it's not what anyone thinks it is.

'It had long been debated as to what the storm was or what it was being caused by. Some residents of the ocean-side town believed that maybe this was a punishment of some kind; perhaps it was the end of the world. Most people rejected this theory, as first, the idea that their town was the one being punished rather than the neighboring towns and cities put the idea out of most people's heads' already. And second, most thought the fact that they had been holding off and rescheduling the apocalypse for the last 10 years so they could set off fireworks was remarkably entertaining. While everyone who tried various magical ways to stop the storm from happening all secretly believed they could stop an apocalypse, the truth was, they couldn't.'

'And there it was, the look that always hit her like salt on a wound.'

'Ridley called him a pissant. He found that he quite liked that.' (the poor thing never has a chance in the world)

Listening to- It hasn't been for writing exactly but 'Folklore'- Taylor Swift, 'Rare'- Selena Gomez, 'Seelie'- CLANN, The Imitation Game soundtrack, Conan Gray in general, Hozier...

Watching-

Anime- The Ancient Magus's Bride, and then there's been a few others I've been casually rewatching like Fruits Basket, and Snow White and the Red Hair. Although I keep dropping things and forgetting about things a lot lately.

Movies- I've been on a bit of a Wes Anderson kick lately so there's been, The Isle of Dogs, The Darjeeling Limited, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Grand Budapest Hotel. (Honestly I've enjoyed them all. There's some bits I could have lived without, but overall I've liked different things about each of them) Duck Soup (The Marx Brothers really were Monty Python before there was a Monty Python), Pan's Labyrinth (I've been on the lookout for dark fairytale vibes), Amelie (the movie is gorgeous), rewatching Scream (perfect for coming into spooky season). I camped out in the backyard with my sister, fairylights, and fruit to watch Scream and A Cinderella Story because of a Darling Desi video.

TV- Untamed, Mentalist, re-watching Gilmore Girls, Vincenzo, New Girl, there's some others but it always depends on when I get the opportunity. 

Future 

Want to be Published- I would love to if I could get my act together.

Indie or Traditional- Traditional

Wildest Goal- Aside from actually getting published, my wildest goal is to become someone that lore is written about. Maybe the book I publish will end up with some weird conspiracy or something attached to it. One can only hope. 

I think pretty much everyone has been tagged for it by now, but if you haven't feel free to do it!

P.S.

I have to apologize profusely, I know a few of you have tagged me for things but my memory is awful, so I've completely forgotten which tags they are. So if you guys have something that you tagged me for that you would like me to do still, I'd be incredibly grateful if you could write it in the comments. I really appreciate you guys tagging for things, I'm just, again, crap at remembering things.