Shine and Soar with Bethany Aleshire

Here in the frozen tundra of Minnesota (yes, it's still snowing in May), most teenagers hunker down and play video games. Not Bethany Aleshire. This sixteen-year-old single-handedly developed, produced, and publishes a new online magazine called SHINE & SOAR. Grab a cup of java, sit back, and have a chat with this talented young lady.

Bethany Aleshire

Why would a teenager take on such a huge task for no pay? 

Making a magazine fulfills all the passions I have (okay, maybe not my passions for eating caramels and snuggling with puppies, but still!): designing, writing about all things God, life, and entrepreneurship, connecting with other creatives, coming up with ideas, and working with/making beautiful photographs. Honestly, it’s like creating your own little world. 

It also gives my team and I pressured accountability and space to practice skills that we need to hone. From working on leadership development to finding our writing voice, and from working on our design skills to being creative on a deadline…all skills that we need in our careers that we’re aiming for.

Where did the idea come from? 

I've had the name "Shine & Soar" in my idea book for a while as a name for a movement/conference for entrepreneurs. I was planning that I would bring it to life down the road when I was "ready” (aka when I felt like my life was together enough and I had "made it” enough with my business). But in 2012 God showed me that that time would never truly come. I will always feel like I’m not good enough or influential enough to start my crazy ideas and I just need to push through those feelings and DO it.

The magazine part came as I started graphic design classes last fall and was exposed to the programs that are used to design a magazine. It opened my eyes to see that I can actually design a magazine. Little, young me. But how could I possibly design and lead and run this magazine all by myself AND put it out more than once a year? I couldn’t, so I needed a team. That’s when I sent a very long email to Ciera, Mackenzie, and Sarah (girls that I met the month before at a retreat for young Christian women photographers) pitching them the idea and asking if they’d be on board for it. They were all beyond the moon ecstatic about it! And from there, we were off running.

What is the biggest challenge in putting out a quarterly ezine?

Gathering up content. It is a worthy challenge to manage 15+ writers and photographers (myself and my team included). Deadlines and time management don’t really jive with the right brain. The hour before we launched, I was still editing my main article I wrote, because it just didn’t seem right. But my team and I have to remind ourselves that it is progress not perfection that counts. Every masterpiece, book, creative venture, could’ve been better…but the point is that they launched it. We’re working on making the process more streamlined for our creative contributors and ourselves for the next issue and  beyond. 

In putting together Shine & Soar, what's one thing that surprised you about the process?

How hard it is to keep things consistent and of quality when you have a variety of writers and photographers contributing to it. My team and I saw other magazines that looked all over the place design wise and the quality of their articles bounced from great to not so much. We decided to go for quality over quantity and keep a consistent feel to the magazine…which is easier said than done. Even though I do love our Spring Issue a lot, we still have to learn how to make the magazine feel entirely cohesive while retaining the unique spin of each article.

What piece of advice would you give to other aspiring teen writers?

Put yourself out there! Share your work. You can have thousands upon thousands of words and a million ideas stored on your hard drive, but no one except you will know they exist. You don’t get paid to be your own client and reader, so you need to share your work. And the best way to share your work right now is to blog. You’ve got ideas inside you that no one else has, and the world needs to see them. Just remember, it’s about progress not perfection. Keep practicing and excellence will come.

What piece of advice would you give to aspiring teen writers' parents?

Support them in their pursuit of their passion, but know when to pull them back from it. Subconsciously, we’re hardwired to want our parent’s approval and it hurts a lot when we don’t get it from them. So definitely give it.

But, on the flip side, as writers and creators, we can get consumed with our work. Yes, it feels great to do our passion, but there is more to life than work. As a parent, you can help instill that balance in them now. Maybe it’s saying to your daughter after she’s been working a lot on her writing lately, “Hey, take a break from your work for a couple of days,” or “Let’s do something not related to writing tonight.” There are going to be some times when we need to meet a deadline or have an energy spurt for a couple of days and we pound out a lot of work, but there is a difference between working well and working too much. Give (and thus show) your kids the benefit of having a life outside of work. Building relationships. Going on little adventures around town. Being silly with the family. That is where true life happens.

What's your goal for Shine & Soar? 

To reach, inspire and challenge young women, deeper than ever before. We just want to keep helping them and making a difference in their lives. For now, that means doing the magazine and blog on a consistent basis, but in the future we're hoping to bring it to print, host a workshop, and accomplish some other big dreams we have up our sleeves.

Thanks for stopping by today Bethany and readers. Great nuggets of wisdom and very inspiring...even to us old folks!

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Go Teen Writers!

Stephanie Morrill is a twenty-something living in Overland Park, Kansas with her husband and two kids. Her only talents are reading, writing, and drinking coffee, so career options were somewhat limited. Fortunately, she discovered a passion for young adult novels and has been writing them ever since. Stephanie is the author of The Reinvention of Skylar Hoyt series and is currently working on other young adult projects. She enjoys encouraing teen writers and do so on her blog Go Teen Writers. To connect with Stephanie and read samples of her books, check out Stephanie Morrill books.

Meet Stephanie Morrill. She's a gifted novelist who also shares her amazing skills through her writing blog--Go Teen Writers.

Stephanie, how long have you been writing?


Since first grade, when my class had special writing time every day. When we finished writing our stories, the school printed and bound them. I loved every part of the process except the illustrating. I've always been a horrible artist...

When did you know you wanted to become a writer?

Even back in the first grade when I was writing stories inspired by my stuffed animals, I thought this was what I wanted to do. I really caught the writing bug in high school when I took a creative writing class and started completing full manuscripts. I even submitted a few to publishing houses. I was crushed by rejections, but my English teacher--a wonderful but intimidating woman--told the whole class she knew I would be published someday. I really didn't want her to be wrong!

Tell us about your new site. How did you get the idea?

I've always naturally written for teens. It's just the voice God gave me. After my first book came out, Me, Just Different, I started receiving emails from girls saying they loved the book, and asking if I had any tips for young writers because they wanted to be writers too. Plus I was doing school visits and seeing all these teens who were taking writing seriously, doing NaNo. I was answering the same questions over and over, and thought, there must be more teens like this out there.

What drew you to want to help writers get started?

Because I knew no one and nothing--what's a genre? what's a literary agent? what's an SASE?--when I started down my journey. Everything I learned, I learned the hard way. I thought I would enjoy passing along what I'd gleaned.

Can you give us any statistics on how your blog is doing?

At first, the blog wasn't doing much. The people who were hanging out there really loved it, but after a year of blogging, the site had received only 4,000 hits and had 40 followers.

But I loved it too much to scrap it, and all the grown had been organic (none of the followers were friends or family) so I decided to start blogging more frequently, to offer contests, and to write about the novel writing process from the germ of an idea to the final polish. I started doing that about ten months ago. The site has received over 60,000 hits now and has over 240 followers.

Part of the growth is due to the changes I made, but I know a lot of it came from finally praying about it. I always viewed the idea as being inspired by God, but it's embarassing since I'm supposedly a mature Christ follower. I really didn't pray much about the blog until earlier this year.

How do you come up with your blog writing prompts?

Usually, they're opening lines that come to me, but without a story attached. Sometimes I'll think, that would be an intriguing opening line to a novel, but I have no idea what would happen next. The teens come up with wonderfully creative stories though!

Do you have a missions purpose with offering to share your writing skills?

When I first started Go Teen Writers, I honestly didn't think of it as a ministry. Just me passing along what I had learned to the next generation. There was nothing hard about that, in my mind, and I had this horrible mindset that ministry needed to be hard and that it needed to be run through the church.

But then I started hearing from girls about how much they loved Go Teen Writers, and how it was the only place they could come and be encouraged in their writing. And then they started connected with each other on the blog, responding to each others' comments. Now we have Christian teens and teens who are far from God. It's only been in the last few months that I've realized it's a ministry, and that's the reason it doesn't feel hard--because God designed me to do this.

Are you discovering some talent blooming among your young writers?

I'm regularly blown away by the creativity of that group. We did a free-write contest where everyone was allowed to submit the first 150 words of their manuscript. With a bunch of those entries I wanted to say, "Can I read the rest? This is so good!"

What I've also discovered is how polite and respectful and appreciative teenagers are. Or at least the teens hanging around Go Teen Writers. It took me a long time to convince them it was okay to call me Stephanie rather than Mrs. Morrill. And they regularly thank me for running contests and advising them and bringing guest authors on. Which is great, but I get all the thanks I need from just hanging out with them.

Interview conducted by Julie Garmon.

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Word Count. . . Sanity-Robbing Obsession or Necessary Discipline?

Kimberley Woodhouse is a wife, mother, writer, and musician approaching life with a positive outlook despite difficult circumstances. A popular speaker and teacher, she has shared at more than 750 venues around the country. Her previous book, Welcome Home: Our Family's Journey to Extreme Joy, chronicles her daughter's extremely rare health issues and how the Woodhouses received an amazing gift through the ABC television program Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Kim and her husband have two children and live in Colorado.

Kayla Woodhouse is a teenage author whose life-altering medical condition (a nerve disorder that prevents the body from regulating its temperature or sensing pain) has not stopped her love for swimming and other adventures. No Safe Haven is her first novel and makes her the youngest published full-length novelist from a royalty-paying publisher.


WORD COUNT

For those of you who are (or who have hung around) a writer at any point in time, you've probably heard the terms "word count."

“What’s the word count on your latest novel?”

“What does such and such a publisher look for in a word count for such and such a genre?”

“What’d you get on you word count today?”

Those two little words can send an author into the stratosphere of jubilation when the muse is flowing and words pour onto the page. The same two little words can turn an otherwise sane and happy author into a throw-everything-out-the-window-grab-a-baseball-bat-to-smash-it-all-then-stomp-on-it type person.

Yep. We writers are always striving for that elusive number.

Word Count.

Be it a daily goal or the completion of a manuscript, wordsmiths sure do seem to place a lot of importance on numbers.

And a lot of writers will admit that they hate numbers. Many of them hate math in general. So what is it with this obsession we have with numbers?

After much pondering (not really), I've decided to share my thoughts (or lack thereof) on this subject.

1. We need numbers. Life, and thus our stories, would be boring without numbers. (Who would be interested if the reader didn’t know how old our characters are, what year they live in, or how many half-decaf-caramel-lattes they drink each day?)

2. Numbers help you exaggerate in order to make your point more meaningful. (She rewrote the scene for the 5-trillionth time.)

3. Numbers help us with deadlines and parameters. (You'll never have a publisher ask you to deliver a manuscript of unlimited word count whenever you feel like it.)

So now that I have shared my abundance of wisdom on this matter of numbers, I must get back to my own word count after teaching my kids that "yes, you still have to do math even if you want to be a writer."

NO SAFE HAVEN

Jenna Tikaani-Gray and her twelve-year-old daughter, Andrea, are on their way home, hoping for a fresh start after a lifetime of medical trials and great sorrow. But when sabotage brings their small plane down, they find themselves fighting for their lives. And they don’t know what’s more dangerous: the weather and terrain of Sultana—one of the most hazardous mountains in Alaska—or the armed men chasing them.

Hardened by the loss in his life, Cole Maddox knows the best path is one he walks alone. No one to care for—or about. That way he can focus on what matters: getting a secret technology safely into the hands of the US Military. But when the plane he’s on with Jenna and Andie crashes, it will take all his skill and strength to get them out alive—and all his determination to stay in his self-imposed solitary confinement.

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