Before we get into the article/installment/chapter/whatever you want to call it, here's the Q and A section as promised! I absolutely loved reading all of your wonderful questions, and I hope my answers are adequate. Please feel free to leave more questions if you have any, and I will answer them next time. 

PrincessJadea

Who's your favorite author?

Okay, this is a question that I get asked a lot as a writer. It's also a question that's virtually impossible to answer. When there are so many phenomenal authors out there with unique books and writing styles, how can one simply choose a single one? My list of favorite authors when written out would be several miles long, but if I absolutely had to choose just one...it would be Rick Yancey. I'm not saying that simply because I like post-apocalyptic books about aliens (I do like post-apocalyptic books about aliens very much). I'm saying that because the 5th Wave probably contains the most well-orchestrated plot twists I've ever seen, and as anyone who has read my books can tell, I have a profound appreciation for the art of the plot twist. It is attempted by many, but mastered only by a select few.

Is getting your book published fun?

The process can definitely be fun! Looking at an old chapter that has been revitalized for publication might even be a more satisfying feeling than looking over a brand new chapter you've just finished writing. However, I won't lie, sometimes, editing can get tedious. Before getting your book published, you usually have to get it edited up to standards that are much higher than those of Wattpad editing shops. Trust me, I didn't know what a true edit was until I got my publishing deal. An excellent editor will scour your work for every minuscule thing that could possibly be made better, and present his or her findings to you in a long, detailed email. While performing these corrections can grow monotonous, it's all aimed toward the success of your book in the long term. In that context and with that result in mind, I'd say it's loads of fun!

What was it like when you found out it was getting published?

I received my publication deal in the summer, so I wasn't really doing much when it happened. I was just casually scrolling through all my new Wattpad comments on my laptop and replying to them as fast as humanly possible (a standard part of my summer day) when I decided to clear my spam folder because a break in the endless stream of comments left me with absolutely nothing to do in that moment. When I checked spam, I noticed an email from an unfamiliar address: it turned out that the manuscript I had sent in months ago had been accepted for publication. To this day, I have no idea why that message was in my spam folder, and I constantly think about what would've happened if I had simply cleared spam without skimming through it first...

Anyway, the first thing I did was make sure I wasn't being scammed, and that the person who contacted me really was the publisher.

The second thing I did was scream loud enough for the entire state to hear (which is pretty loud, considering how big Texas is) and send the news to every number saved on my phone. I spend nearly a solid five minutes texting streams of random capital letters to my closest friends.

The third thing I did was print out the publishing contract and start nagging my parents to sign it.

Yes, I was a bit overly excited, but it was the kind of situation that called for such excitement.

..................

"Wow, you have no childhood." 

Queen Saralee: And you, my most unwelcome guest, have no brain. Since you are probably not aware, that is the part of the body inside the skull which controls thought and both voluntary and involuntary body processes. 

As you can see, our dear Ice Queen has an even greater aversion to this statement than I do. 

I've heard this phrase more times than most, yet have only recently managed to make sense of its meaning. I figure this is because the phrase is rather misleading in the way it's worded. What it says is very different from what it actually means. I think that when people say this, what they mean is more like the following: 

"Your childhood was different from what I consider a normal childhood, and I cannot wrap my narrow, immature mind around that fact."

There are several decided problems with this notion, the most notable of which is its very premise: what is considered a normal childhood? 

The dictionary defines the word "normal" as "the usual, average, or typical state or condition." We all know how to calculate the average of a group of things: add those things together, and divide them by the number of things there are. Of course, this implies that you have clear, quantitative information about all the things in your group. So, that means, in order to figure out what a "normal childhood" is, one would have to survey every child in the world and average those childhoods out. No one has done that, and no one is ever going to. 

Where, then, do people get the smug confidence in the normalcy of their own childhoods that allows them to call others out on their different experiences? 

That's right, nowhere legitimate. The concept of normalcy itself was invented by average humans, for average humans. If you think about it, it was practically designed to dull both extreme ends of the spectrum of human thought (stabilizing selection if you will, my fellow biology people). Just give it a few moments of thought- is it really that important to be normal? 

Okay, I'm going to stop here with this subject, because normalcy warrants an entire book dedicated to removing its undeserved value in people's minds, and it is not meant to be the main focus of this post. Nerd rant over. 

Seriously, though, being made fun of on the basis of the "abnormality" of my childhood is one of the most irritating things I go through every day. That's saying a lot, since I was born with- or have developed, rather- a dry personality that finds most normal teenage behavior decidedly annoying.

I'm not here to judge or "roast" those who do tell me that I have no childhood (although Queen Saralee might be). That would be stooping to their level. I am, however, here to make a point. 

Yes, I never saw a TV in use until I woke up in the middle of an afternoon nap as a seven-ish-year-old and saw my mom watching a movie. Yes, I walked to the library with my parents every day as a preschooler. Yes, I read picture books long before I could walk. (Don't be calling me a genius, now. I did start reading and writing early, but I also started walking very late.) Yes, I had a vast collection of bedtime stories memorized before Kindergarten- in the simple language of a child, of course. Yes, I read so much that I have actually gotten in trouble for it. Yes, I have listed a book as my best friend on an elementary school "All About Me" poster. Yes, I genuinely did not know that YouTube could be used for things other than music and school until I met YourAverageGhost and themelonofmc in middle school. 

There it is: I've now said it into the limitless void of the internet for all the world to see. If that doesn't convince you that I'm not ashamed of it, I don't know what will. 

Now, I definitely don't want to hear the "aww, you poor, deprived little girl," speech in the comments. I've gotten enough of that in real life, and it's definitely not an appropriate reaction to my tale, at least in my humble opinion. That is the way one should react to the story of a girl who was raised in abject poverty, not to the story of a girl who was raised in the magical world of books and taught to follow her curiosity into the realms of math and science. 

I wasn't deprived of anything. 

In fact, my childhood gave me what is perhaps the greatest gift of all: the gift of words, of understanding them, creating them, and loving them.

And people feel sorry for me because of that. 

Just think about what that says about the mindset of the modern human. 

So, what's the moral of the story? Don't judge people by the way they were raised, or by anything, really. And if someone judges you, don't pay them any mind. After all, what one person judges may be cherished by another.