Booksie Plan

Bonjour!

I’m Alice Oiseau (last name pronounced ‘Wah-Zoh’). I’m just your ordinary teenager who loves to write – and that’s why I started to look for sites like Booksie.

My tale begins when I was about thirteen years old. I was writing my first novel and I wanted my friends to read it. Prior to this I had always just written for myself (since third grade to be exact), but I thought I would try letting people read my writing. They supported me and said they would love to, but when they saw it was approximately two hundred pages they backed down.

So I went back to writing for me, myself, and I.

I wrote because if I didn’t, I would probably lose my mind since at the time I was in middle school and life was rough. Writing was my way of escaping from the bad and ugly of life. It was my way of finding peace and taking a breather from the stress. No one really understood how much it meant to me, thus often my family would discourage it.

When I told my mother that I wanted to be published one day, she of course smiled and nodded. Word got to my father… and well, he basically said that it was a foolish, childish dream that would never come true. He said it was a "phase" and I would grow out of it and become the engineer that he always wanted me to be and go to Harvard or some snazzy school like that. Yes, that was what he said and in fact still wants. He doesn’t take me seriously (along with several friends). I was pretty crushed when I found this out.

Did I stop writing?

Heck no.

Believe in your dreams, pursue your goals, and live for your passion – that is my philosophy. I picked up a pencil and sat down with a piece of paper and made a sign to put above my writing desk:

"Writing gives me wings and with these wings I will fly"

I rolled with the punches as they came. I wasn’t going to give up everything over a comment that hurt.

After that I promised that I would prove him (and the friends that doubted me) wrong. I wasn’t going to give up so easily. I wrote more, I wrote stronger, I worked harder. I tried to stretch my imagination and finish my novelettes that way I could print them out, put them in a binder, and drop it on his deskas a way of saying "take that".

My advice to you: don’t ever give up on something that you love and believe in.

And then one fateful day over spring break, I was browsing Facebook, looking for writing groups to join because I wanted to find people that were like me. I’ve always been the oddball of the family. I never fit in because I am the artsy, creative, tree-hugging writer whereas both parents are engineers and both siblings plan to find careers in mathematics and science. I wanted to find a place where I belonged. And then I found this one group where a person commented about a website called Booksie… :)

I thought for a moment and decided, why not give it a shot? So I signed up and within a couple of minutes of joining, I already had about three welcome comments, one of which was XBrokenHeartedX, also known as Zoe. She became my first Booksie friend and then one by one I met more people. Thankfully it was spring break and I had nothing better to do than procrastinate on homework. So I had plenty of time to read stories on Booksie and meet many new people.

I had never felt so welcome before. It was like suddenly I belonged. I was in a place full of writers, people just like me – and everyone was so friendly! Not only did I feel welcome, but I felt safe. Some sites make you uneasy because you hear all those horror stories about them… but with Booksie, I feel like I can trust the site.

Booksie has done so much for me. I’ve had some long, hard days and I’ll come home, get on Booksie, and suddenly it’s all better. That lovely orange box will pop up below my picture and I’ll get excited and go to read what people have said. There are so many sweet and flattering comments that brighten my day and make me smile so big!

Also, Booksie has also made me a stronger writer! I’ve gotten some good, solid feedback and constructive criticism from here that I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere else. And they are real friendly about it! I soak up the feedback and apply it to my next piece that way I can improve. I’ve grown so much as a writer and you can tell if you read my older works (but don’t because they are bad – haha!) This is a place to grow, a place where you’ll meet some of the nicest people, and a place where you can learn from others.

I am extremely grateful that I found Booksie because I would probably lose what little sanity I have left if I hadn’t found it. The people on here are fantastic and I’ve read some of the greatest stories and poetry here.

We are writers and we help each other. We share something that not many people understand. And that is the ability to put our hearts and souls onto the page before us. We can set the emotion free and let it run wild among the ink and create characters that become so real that it’s unbelievable – we can suddenly escape into the depths of our imagination and step aside from the worries that plague us in reality. That is the gift and beauty of writing and it’s something that all of us can connect with.

And now I welcome you to Booksie! This is a wonderful place and there’s no better place in my opinion. Everyone supports one another and everyone is more than happy to give a helping hand. You are part of the family now – make yourself at home and have a great time! Now it's your turn to fly ;-)

Happy Reading, Writing, and Publishing!

-Alice