A Rant about Reading (and an Ode to YouTube)

I know I’ve mentioned this at least once, but I really don’t have time to read. I’ve got about 25 crisp new books, but not a minute to read them. This makes me sad. I would love to dive into Wicked or one of the dozens of new writer’s reference books I picked up last year, but my timeline looks something like this:

10+ hours of classes and homework
Various weekend hours, which are inevitably spent running errands, writing, or wasting an inestimable amount of time on YouTube.

And those seventy-some pages I managed to stuff into my current novel were the product of several weekends not infiltrated by YouTube. But so I don’t bore/annoy you with complaints about why I don’t have time to read, let me express my gratitude to said online labyrinth of videos for becoming a much needed online library. Honestly, I don’t know what I would do without YouTube. I would say about 60 percent of all my ideas came from watching videos of people playing games (and a few random videos here and there). Probably 30 percent comes from movies and the last ten from books. YouTube is my homework helper, and provides me with inspiration at the same time. If you think about it, there are some great old games that have some decent stories out there. I would even hazard that some video games have better stories than some “bestsellers” (Yeah, that’s right, I’m looking at you, Twilight).

Maybe the summertime will provide opportunities to read all those wonderful tomes I’ve collected. For now, I think I’ll stick to the inspirational goldmine that is YouTube. In fact, if you’re struggling to find inspiration yourself, search YouTube for videos of your interests. You never know what you’ll find–or where your next idea will come from.

Protagonist Predicament

 I’d like to say that writing comes easy to me, but I would be lying if I pretended I didn’t have difficulties now and then. One of them seems to be with protagonists. As I look back at what I’ve written and plan to write, I realize that each and every one of my protagonists is a female. Any and all males I place within my stories are either supporting characters or villains. The closest I have come to having a male lead character is in a novel where there are two characters who are seemingly both protagonists (at least for the time being). Needless to say, this recent discovery made me wonder, “Is this acceptable?” Has any successful author ever created several completely different novels where each protagonist was female? Am I supposed to alternate between male and female leads? How can I possibly write a male lead if my muse is screeching at me to create a female protagonist? Naturally, I began thinking of authors I knew or had heard of, searching for someone else who has done exactly what I am now afraid of doing. 

Of course, I then thought, “Well, why can’t I be known as the author whose female protagonists are, in a word, awesome?” Every author has to be known for something, whether good or bad. Moral of my story? If I want to write all of my novels with female protagonists, nobody is going to tell me I can’t (except maybe a publisher, in which case it might be a good idea to alter my tactics…). Besides, if my characters can stand out in people’s minds, then I’ve done my job as an author.

And I will be an extremely happy girl if I can get those characters to teach their readers something while they’re out there being awesome.