Grier Cooper's Blog, page 8

Ballet Career Highlights: The WISH official Countdown

The piece of Indigo’s ballet journey that readers witness in WISH is just a small part of a dance career. Many (although not all) dancers begin taking ballet classes when they are quite young and study for years before auditioning for a summer intensive with a professional ballet school. While this is a big step, it’s still just the beginning of the professional path. If all goes well, a dancer is accepted in a summer intensive and later becomes a permanent student. Even then a real career is...

Life Lessons Learned From Ballet: The Official WISH Countdown

One of the first pieces of advice I ever heard about writing was to write what you know. It was natural to set WISH in the world of ballet since it’s defined who I am today. Aside from the obvious things like good posture, body mechanics and spatial awareness, ballet works on a subtle, character-building level. Here are some of the ways ballet helps dancers grow:

mistakes are a good thing

Ballet class is an ongoing experiment for any dancer; a place to try new things, fine tune others, maybe f...

Debunking Ballet Myths

While many people admire ballet as art form, it’s also often criticized. Unhealthy body image is one of the most common complaints. But are these criticisms based on reality or myth? Let’s examine some of the most common ballet myths and see what’s real:

1. All ballet dancers are anorexic.

The average professional ballet dancer spends anywhere from five to eight hours each day dancing their butts off; imagine how slim you would be if you exercised that much! Ballet also naturally creates longer...

Bunheads 101: How to be a ballet dancer…or just look like one

It’s easy to pick a dancer out of a crowd. You know what I mean: dancers have that certain je ne sais crois, key traits like grace and poise that separate them from everyone else.Whether you’re a ballet dancer-in-training or simply wish you were a dancer, here’s how to get the the look.

The posture: Imagine you have a metal rod running through the core of your body that keeps the spine ramrod-straight. Reach the crown of the head towards the sky to create length in the spine while keeping the...

Truth or Fiction in Writing: WISH countdown day #5

A lot of writers include details from their lives or use them as reference when they’re writing fiction. Haven’t you ever wondered where some ideas come from… or if some of the stuff was real? Here is a taste of some of the complex moments of WISH and the breakdown of whether or not I’m telling it like it really happened.

Indigo runs into a beautiful boy in the most embarrassing way. There were plenty of times I ran into a boy in an embarrassing way but never in this particular way. Like Indig...

Writing Process: WISH book launch countdown

When I tell people I have a book coming out, one of the first questions they ask is, “How long did it take you to write the book?” There’s not a simple way to answer that question because I’m never sure if they mean the first draft, or the whole process from start to finish, which is a lot more complicated, since there were multiple edits involved…and then, do they mean actual total hours logged or the amount of time between the day I first put pen to paper and the day I release the book… The...

Classical Music That Will Rock Your World

This WISH playlist doesn’t read like a typical YA playlist, but just like Indigo, the main character, I grew up submerged in classical music – it spoke to my heart. I had a few crushes over the years but Tchaikovsky was my first true love. Indigo listens to this type of music a lot, not just because she needs to know the music she’s dancing to intimately but because the music is achingly beautiful. It may not get any airtime on MTV or go viral on YouTube, but classical music has topped the ch...

How to Survive Auditions: The WISH Guide to Surviving Auditions and Other Stressful Event

Auditions are one of the more excruciating examples of moments in life when you have to reach outside of your comfort zone and perform. Not only do they test your ability to keep it together under pressure, they also force you to adapt to a new environment. None of this is easy but you will have a much easier time if you have a system in place. In one scene fromWISH,the main character, Indigo, experiencesthe most important audition of her life. Here are a few of the things that work for her:

R...

Naming Characters

Choosing a name for your characters isn’t always as easy, especially if you have a lot of names to come up with or one of the characters is from a specific place, like Iceland, for instance. At these times you have to dig down a little deeper into the well of creativity to come up with a name that works. In the past I’ve consulted old school directories, combed through my personal memory archives for people I’ve met in the past or (when I needed a Brazilian boy’s name) researched names online...

The Rules of Ballet

Every dancer knows there are rules in ballet. They aren’t written down anywhere but they absolutely exist – and they are ironclad. Miss Roberta,Indigo’s ballet teacher in WISH, is very outspoken about a lot of things, including personal hygiene and what dancers should and shouldn’t do outside of ballet classes. Ssince she was a professional ballet dancer herself, she knows what it takes to be a ballet dancer and how hard it is to make it. This is the manifesto she shares her manifesto with al...