Hello and welcome

Hi there, I am Jessica. Known online as Drifting soul. I started this blog because my forum buddies seem very interested when I talk about my writing. So like any good writer, I saw the potential for something good to write about.
I guess I should start with a bit about me. I'm 20 and I live in Bath where I'm studying for a Creative Writing degree. I grew up in Margate (the less said about that the better) and I have a boyfriend who lives in Finland. I mainly write fantasy novels for teenagers and older children but I also like romance and comedy and I write scripts now and then too.
Like most fantasy writers, I'm a total geek. My spare time is spent messing around on the internet, playing RPG games, watching anime and reading manga. I'm a huge film fan too.
So that's all you need to know. Let's get to the important stuff.
Term is dwindling to a finish right now and everyone is packing up and heading back home for the summer. It's nice to have so much free time after all that hard work. But having some time off means it's hard for me to get back into the game. I'm not getting any ideas or inspiration for my books right now.
Yesterday I had my writing for young people tutorial. My marks weren't as high as I would have liked. The written pieces were fine, I got a 2:1 for those, but I left the essay a bit late. I've learnt my lesson...
But the feedback is the most important thing. My tutor out of the three pieces I submitted, the fantasy was the strongest. I was very happy about that. I had been worried that it would be the weakest. Since it contains things that don't exist in the real world, I always worry that I haven't described it well enough or the reader won't understand. But as it turns out my fears were for nothing.
The picture book apparently needs more 'energy and quirkiness.' Picture books aren't really my thing, I just wanted to try it out. So I understand that it wasn't brilliant.
A big problem I keep having is with my teenage novel. All my tutors say the teenage boys don't speak like teenagers. This I understand. I can write about 20 year old guys just fine since I'm around them all the time but I'm hardly ever around 15 year old boys. One solution is reading books aimed at teenage boys. I'll have to look into that a little before I continue with this story. It's a shame since other than that, there weren't any problems with that piece. Just the voices let it down. It's hard since I want these characters to have unique voices that are unlike normal teenagers, but my voice keeps coming through.
This isn't always a bad thing though. Last night I finished a romance fanfiction and have gotten some great reviews for it. That always makes me feel good.
I know some people say fanfiction isn't a proper literary form and is only for ameuters. You know what I say? I don't care! Writing fanfiction makes me happy and it makes the people who read it happy. When somebody says my story made them laugh or cheered them up, I feel my job as a writer has been accomplished and I don't care that I won't get any money from it.