If I get published as an Asian author,
I will go ahead and prove that even Asians can write badly.
♪♪♪
For this video, I am doing a giveaway to celebrate the release of another YA book.
My general policy whenever I'm sponsored by a publisher is that I will not read or review the book to avoid bias.
But I am open to hosting giveaways, so that you guys can get stuff for free.
I'm looking out for all you broke bitches out there.
But if you enter the giveaway, you will have this entire box here.
This is what it looks like when you first open the box.
First of all, A Band of Shadows is a thick girl.
It's a fantasy debut novel about a girl named Scarlett.
She's been having reoccurring dreams about a strange-looking door, and then one day, she actually sees the door.
She gets thrown into another realm, which is called Avalon.
She finds out that she is a fae, which is a powerful race of people, whose population was nearly wiped out during the Shadow Wars.
This book follows her adventures finding out more about her past and also preparing for an upcoming war.
If you are interested in checking this out, I will have the Amazon link in my description.
And along with that, I have a giveaway of a self-care reading kit.
This includes DAVIDsTEA Super Teas and Press.
They have all these flavors here.
There's a little satchet here. This is basically a meditation crystal that was inspired by the book.
There's a journal and bookmark that says, "Anxiety is my superpower."
There is a Rituals facial mist and a bath bomb.
There is also the eucalyptus and santal candle.
And obviously the actual book, too.
Indie authors have to work twice as hard, so I really appreciate all the thought and care that they put into this reading kit.
Good luck to whoever gets chosen as the winner. Now, let's get on with the rest of the video.
Continuing from my first day in Houston in episode 1,
I was staying in Texas for the week to attend a work trip, where the Twitter offices from all around the world gathered together in one place.
In between the sessions, I tried to squeeze in the fifteen minute breaks we had to continue outlining the second draft of my novel.
Here is my update from the second night:
I was running on, like, five hours of sleep because I stupidly stayed up the previous night.
And because I was so sleep deprived today, I felt like I could barely think while trying to come up with new ideas for this outline.
I ended up outlining Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, and, now, Chapter 6.
That seems like it's a lot, but actually, I didn't have to write that many new notes for
half of the chapters because they were already written from the first draft.
The only notes that I wrote were just additional details.
This is where I am starting to slow down
with outlining because I got the general idea of
the basic setup for the main two characters, but
now, Chapter 6 focuses on the
background story of one of the other characters.
This is a character that I did not flesh out her background story at all,
so, now, I actually have to, like, think of
original ideas, and my brain is not capable of that.
She's supposed to have a really complicated family situation, and she is supposed to resent Amelia a lot
and I have to figure out "Why is she such a bitch to her?" "What's her motivation?" "Why is her life so shitty?"
Really, that's just what I've been doing for this entire book.
I've just been thinking about, like, "Why are all these characters' lives so shitty?"
"And how could I make each person's life shitty in a different, unique way each time?"
This other character's background story is more complicated to plan out
because, at least with Corin and Amelia, they're both humans,
whereas, this character is not a human, so there has to be
more fantastical elements that get incorporated about her lineage.
Unfortunately, despite me trying to write a fantasy, I'm not actually good at world building.
That has always been my weakest point.
If this book actually gets published,
I'm pretty sure that the main critique for this will be the
poor world building, so I'm just saying right now that
I already know it's gonna suck, okay?
I was the first critic before any of you bitches even got to read it.
So, all you haters need to get in line because I already know this is crap.
Just for fun, I will read, out loud, my questionable search history on Google.
'Cause, for some reason, I'm tryna make flowers significant in the story,
and I don't know why because I know nothing about flowers and the meaning of them and the symbolism behind them.
I don't even know where sunflowers grow, but here we are.
Oh, and the answer is, apparently, they grow anywhere.
I was hoping to have, like, some kind of unique place, where these flowers specifically grow, but nope.
It's just a basic bitch flower.
Just like my writing.
The second thing I Google'd was
This is how poorly developed my character was
'cause I don't even know what the fuck she is.
Like, is she a goblin? Is she a witch? Is she a demon?
I had to look up each of these creatures and determine which one made the most sense for her.
So, I was looking up goblins at first.
You know, I want representation for myself, too.
But, I don't think I'm gonna make her a goblin.
Because my third Google search was
And this is where things got trippy.
So, the characters live in their present world, but then there are other realms that exist that they can't see.
In this case, there is a demon realm, which is actually where this character's father came from
And so now I'm going through this rabbit hole about how this demon realm was even created in the first place.
So, then I start brainstorming and just writing, like, shit that doesn't make sense.
I will read a little bit of it out loud to you, so you can see how broken my brain is:
This is my stream of consciousness, okay?
First, I wrote, "There's death, and then there's realms."
"Realms can be created to avoid death. It acts as a middle ground."
"Realms are created through ceremonial magic, using an accessory to aid the creator,
usually a demon, and is influenced by the creator's heart."
"Therefore, the demon realm was a result of evil in several creatures' hearts, where they can be imprisoned at the bottom of the universe, hidden from the real world."
[snickers]
Bitch, what? [laughs]
This whole book will probably sound like I wrote it when I was high
When I say that I am in the outlining process,
I really mean that I am in the process of just trying to figure out what the fuck is going on in the story.
And obviously I still don't know.
This is just emphasizing even more why writing these flashback chapters is so important, even if they don't get used,
because it forces me to actually think about the characters' background stories and where they come from,
instead of just throwing them in present day and hoping for the best, which is what I did in the first draft.
That's my progress so far.
I feel like I have been going at a snail's pace, but I guess some progress is better than none.
It's definitely really hard to try to make enough time to write this stuff while juggling a full-time job
and this whole weeklong event.
And then I stupidly made it even harder for myself by not sleeping enough hours as I should be
and so that has really been kicking my ass the whole day.
I just have some days where I feel down, and I don't wanna like, deal with life, or people, or anything.
It's just like, you know,
I dwell a lot on negative thoughts. It makes it hard for me to focus on the things that matter.
And that's what I noticed was going on in the middle of the day.
Most of the time I was just out of it.
I don't know if I'm comfortable yet to elaborate further on why I've been feeling this way, but I have been for a while.
It's not work related, it's something else.
I had to remind myself to re-center everything and remember what really matters.
Part of that is writing this book.
I have always loved writing stories since I was a little kid.
Part of me trying to get back into writing again and trying to finish this novel is
because this is like almost a tangible way for me to re-focus on what matters most to me.
That way I'm not spending so much energy and thinking onto things that make me sad.
I would hate it if my life was cut short and I spent most of it dwelling on something that I couldn't change anyway.
But what I can do is write this shitty story. Like it may be shitty but at least it's something that I thought of and is something that I had fun thinking about.
It's also kind of a coping mechanism for me too.
Sometimes when I feel like reality can be tough to deal with, I like to make my brain drift off into a fictional setting,
where I think about somebody else's life.
This is something that Amelia often does. Even though she has a good life as a princess, she only wants things that she can never have,
like these imaginary worlds, and these imaginary people.
So the good thing is, Amelia feels more like a real character to me because I'm inserting parts of myself into these characters.
They're just different parts of me that I have incorporated in a way where I would hope that they feel real,
and I would hope that the things that they experience might be universal to some readers too.
That is the update. We got a little sentimental over here,
but I'm gonna ditch away that genuine human emotion and go ahead and drown my sorrows in food and drinks tonight.
I'll bring you along with me to whatever is going on at the social event.
On this night the social event was a giant block party
which took place at an outdoor area filled with a bunch of food trucks.
I ate so many Korean tacos and pecan pie that I couldn't even film the food I was eating because my hands were full.
That's how much I ate. I had a food coma and everything, it was crazy.
Then on the last day of my work trip we brought in activists from all over the world who use Twitter as a platform for social justice.
In particular I really enjoyed listening to the story behind the Bring Back Our Girls movement in Nigeria.
It was really inspiring to end this work trip by listening to all these amazing people who are making a difference in the world.
And speaking of which, we had the whole afternoon of free time to ourselves and I used this time to volunteer at the Houston Food Bank.
Besides writing a novel, my other resolution for this year is to volunteer more
because I feel like I have so many privileges that other people don't have and I want to make more of an effort to help other people who aren't as lucky.
Plus I've been feeling depressed and volunteering kind of helps distract me in a productive way while giving me better perspective.
After I was done volunteering I took a fat ass nap before I dragged myself to the closing party which was at the Astros Stadium Park.
There was a lip-sync battle where a bunch of people got together and went all out in their costumes to perform and sing.
I do not have the stamina to partake in this so I mostly just shoved hot dogs and nachos in my mouth before going back to my hotel.
So now here we are with my closing thoughts at the end of my Houston trip.
It is midnight. I am tired but I will try to recap with the last two of my braincells.
Last night I wrote a brain dump about her family lineage and how she was born and her shitty childhood and all of that stuff,
so I have like the basic idea in bits and pieces, but I don't quite know how to fit them together.
And to make her have this connection with Amelia later on because she is going to fucking hate Amelia and thinks she's a straight up privileged bitch,
which is true. [laughs]
I'm trying to figure out like how do their paths even cross in the first place
and I still don't know because my brain is dead and instead of thinking about it I just take a nap instead.
It's tough because her background story is a little bit more complicated than the main characters.
Like the main character Corin, she's just a simple poor bitch. That's it.
I gotta figure it out, I think the problem is I just haven't had the time to sit down for like, an hour, and just brainstorm,
like truly brainstorm, how this is going to work out.
And I could have done that had I not taken a nap. And yet here we are.
So I woke up from my nap and I looked at my blank document
and then I beat myself up mentally for being, like, a lazy piece of shit, and then I went over to the closing party.
I did snag some cotton candy that I will save for tomorrow.
I wanted to eat it tonight but I realized that I ate ice cream too fast and then I got a tummy ache so I gotta pace myself
because at this point I keep on killing myself with all the food that I'm cramming in my mouth.
You know who can't relate? Corin, my main character, cause the bitch is poor.
[fake sobbing] So sad.
Bitch we get it, you're poor. Get over it.
I feel like if I continue this writing vlog as a series, it's just going to be me updating about all the various ways I make my characters' lives shitty.
But isn't that all authors? In a nutshell?
Since I don't have any writing updates for today, instead I will trade in content with talking about my depression.
'Cause we need the content.
I had received a comment on one of my videos. This person said that the way that people have nitpicked me and criticized me
but at the end of the day people will always have a problem with an Asian woman being as outspoken as you are.
And that comment was something that I actually have been kind of lowkey wondering about
but I just never have said it out loud because I wasn't sure if I was just overthinking it or not.
I feel like there are so many other sassy booktubers out there like Jordan Harvey and Kat from paperbackdreams and LilyCReads.
They're all like this snarky sassy personality. They make rant reviews. A lot of the rant reviews are about bad romance books.
People really like them and they think it's funny 'cause they know that it's all in good fun and it's not, like, supposed to be anything serious.
When I do it, I get subtweets and assumptions about my character.
Sometimes I feel like I get treated a little bit differently so I mentioned that
and the commenter replied in their opinion race always plays a role in any white dominated space whether it's intentional or not.
I grew my channel really fast which means that I became very visible and public really quickly.
Another anomaly is the fact that I am not white and I am not super feminine or conventionally pretty or even well-behaved.
Not everyone wants to watch somebody who acts snarky or sassy, that's totally fine,
but then I notice that there are a lot of white girl booktubers, like Kat and Jordan and Lily, who are equally as snarky and sassy,
but it doesn't seem like they are criticized as heavily as I have.
I remember taking an Asian Studies class in college and we learned about this concept called Yellow Peril.
This is basically the resentment towards Asians for taking over your space.
It comes from this subconscious belief that Asians are foreign outsiders, they are intruders and you don't belong here.
I have seen people discuss about how I deliberately came on this platform to try to get bigger and I write tweets that will purposefully go viral.
and I do all these things very deliberately in order to get bigger.
And now coincidentally I happen to be writing a novel, which is like a way for me to capitalize on my success from booktube.
There were these assumptions that all of this was like a very deliberate tactic.
Even though I have written books for a really long time and I didn't join booktube until very recently.
Nor did I expect to get bigger from booktube.
But the way that people have talked about it seemed like I was, like, planning this whole thing, and trying to take over,
and it was very weird to be described like an invader.
Sometimes it kind of feels like part of why people view me negatively is because of race. I don't think it's the whole story,
but I do think that it might be some factor in it. I decided to tweet about it.
A lot of women of color responded, saying that they believe race always plays a part into things
and that women of color on the internet get scrutinized a lot more critically than their white counterparts.
When I read those responses, it reaffirmed what I had been lowkey thinking of and maybe even lowkey afraid of.
I thought I was just having fun and goofing around but then there are some people who will subconsciously view me in a negative light because I might not fit the mold that they want.
If I were to ever be published as an author, I feel like that's a whole other can of worms.
The publishing industry is also very white dominated. Authors of color are scrutinized at a different level than white authors.
With Asian authors, there's this expectation that they will write Asian stories, when the fact of the matter is I don't even know if any of my characters are Asian.
I don't really specify the race of any characters. I do know the main character and her sister are dark skinned. I know Amelia is light skinned.
But I don't specify what their race is and I don't really see this as, like, an Asian novel.
I feel like if I don't write about Asians then people will be disappointed, but then if I do write about Asians, then that's kind of, like, just another check mark for diversity.
I want to leave the characters' race ambiguous and up for interpretation, especially if there are some characters that you feel like you might relate to.
I think that's a great way for you to see yourself represented by that character without explicitly stating the race of that character.
But I feel like when you are a person of color and and you publish a book, there are certain expectations for what the book should be.
However, I will say that there are several white authors that have so many mediocre books
and if I ever get published I can guarantee you that I will have a very mediocre book.
And some people might be disappointed by that. They might be super excited that they can read more diverse authors.
And then they read it and they would be like wow I'm disappointed that it turned out mediocre.
But I would argue, isn't that true equality?
If I get published as an Asian author, I will go ahead and prove that even Asians can write badly.
Basically, in short, I did not write today and I'm feeling kind of sad but I'm working on it.
And tomorrow I'll be flying back to California.
If you actually listened through all of this crap [laughs] thanks.
And I'm going to go to bed now. Bye.
[Ember Island - Sad Machine]
♪♪♪ (I typed out the lyrics don't worry)
♪♪♪ Who survived? Somebody new ♪♪♪
♪♪♪ Anyone else but you ♪♪♪
♪♪♪ On a lonely night ♪♪♪
♪♪♪ Was a blinding light ♪♪♪
♪♪♪ A hundred leaders would be borne of you ♪♪♪
♪♪♪ And though I know, since you awakened her again ♪♪♪
♪♪♪ She depends on you, she depends on you ♪♪♪
♪♪♪ She'll go alone and never speak of this again ♪♪♪
♪♪♪ We depend on you, we depend on you ♪♪♪