It’s that time of year again! Literally, the very beginning when goals are made and determination to achieve is high. However, it’s no secret that goals made at the new year are more often than not quickly abandoned. To help my writing goals stick, I’m going to share them. *Full disclosure, I am working in uncharted territory. While I’ve submitted and had two short stories published, this is the first time I’ve completed a first draft of a novel. And it was a long one. So yes, I plan on keeping my goals to the best of my ability, there’s going to be a lot of reevaluating as I discover my process. Here are my goals as they stand now: Cut 75k-95k words Finish the second draft by the end of March Final draft for book 1 done by the end of the year Start book 2 in September FinishRead More
Summer has officially started! And with that comes all the fun and craziness that makes life the fantastic, chaotic ride it is. Luckily, I’ve made some progress in between everything going on. Intensity is building in my story, and I can’t wait to see how it all comes together on the page. Progress aside, I do have to make a confession. There was an unrelated creative itch that I had to scratch. I stole quite a few evenings this month to explore an unrelated project. Long story short, I have a character in another medium that was begging me to explore her memories. A handful of them came to me so strongly and suddenly that I was having a hard time focusing on other tasks. Finally, I gave in and wrote them out—by hand—oddly enough, even going back to my original method of pencil and paper. Through this entire “project,”Read More
Just in time for the Halloween season! After months of preparation and delays due to COVID-19, my short story “Night Watch” is now available in the Utah Horror Writer’s anthology, They Walk Among Us! It has been strange seeing my name printed alongside more established Utah authors, some who I’ve seen at writing conferences over the past couple of years. Even stranger, I noticed that “Night Watch” was referenced once or twice in the description on the back cover. That has flattered me beyond belief. For those who want to feel their spines tingle in the spirit of Halloween, They Walk Among Us is now available on Amazon in paperback. In this anthology there is a flavor of spooky for everyone! As far as I know, the publisher has changed plans and not released a digital version, but I will let you know if that changes. Since the finished versionRead More
I am happy to say that my entire time in quarantine and working from home hasn’t gone to waste. Truthfully, the first few weeks were difficult (as I mentioned in earlier posts), but after that I was able to spare some of my mental energy for writing and plotting. Speaking of plotting, I want to share a personal achievement. While working on The Lost Colony first draft, I have been simultaneously plotting, and a few weeks ago I finished—all 152 scenes! This plotting project has been quite the major undertaking, from buying and gluing the foam trifolds, painstakingly drawing and redrawing lines and boxes, to writing out all 152 scenes on individual 3×5 cards. Now, I know that I will be even more proud when the book is finished, but I couldn’t help but feel satisfaction seeing my plotting board completely filled in. For those who haven’t read my earlier posts, IRead More
I was completely unprepared for the email I received Monday morning. First, a quick recap. If you’ve read my previous posts, then you’re familiar with the fact that I’ve recently written a short story titled “Night Watch” that I submitted to the Utah Horror Writers for their upcoming anthology. When I emailed them the story on Halloween, I received a response a few days later that a decision would be made in a few months. So I waited, and planned on waiting for quite a bit longer. But it turns out that my wait was going to be a lot shorter than I expected. Monday, while I was waiting for an appointment, I glanced at my phone. Seeing that I had gotten an email during my drive, I clicked on it. Moments later, my brain caught up with my eyes, and I realized that I had just been sent anRead More
The first book in The Baronessa Chronicles is just a bit closer to completion thanks to my novel writing class this semester and NaNoWriMo. As much as I hated that daily word count sometimes, I am grateful that I had motivation pushing me to keep working. Especially working through the throes of prepping for finals and graduation next month. And yes, I did win NaNoWriMo this year! I was only able to reach the goal of 50,000 words because I dug deep down and used every spare moment I could to write. For a while I’d not considered the train a place that I could write it, but with some strategic seat choosing, I found ways to make it work. Having time to write has been one of the few good things to come out of my four hour round trip commute. Reaching my goal also came about because ofRead More
Formulaic. This is a word I’ve found to be taboo in the minds of many writers. The fear of one’s writing being predicable or unoriginal even had me steering clear of plots or character types that smacked of being overly used or cliché. To that end, I hadn’t even considered using structures such as the three act or the hero’s journey. Earlier this year, I’d heard about something called Save the Cat!, a type of plotting often used in successful screenplays and movies. I didn’t give it too much thought, thinking that I would never take the time to look into it. I was completely disinterested. Meanwhile, I continued to try and plot my story. There were a lot of good things that came from trying the seven point plot structure, but I was still struggling to get a hold on this unwieldy story that couldn’t decide what kind ofRead More
It feels like forever since I last posted. A month in blog time seems to be quite a bit longer than normal time, in my opinion. First, I’ll share some updates about the projects I’ve been working on. I’m sure it’s been obvious that I’ve not had the time to write as much. I know it’s been a few weeks since I’ve updated the progress bars. However, this has not been an entirely accurate representation of what has happened. My short story “Night Watch” went through another critique with my advanced fiction class last Wednesday. The feedback was good, but there were a few issues that everyone felt needed some work. I know that with the 5,000 word count limit I won’t be able to please everyone. The first step in my plan is to finish two separate rewrites since there were a lot of conflicting comments. I would likeRead More
Putting things on the internet can sometimes be frightening. Once it’s out there for other people to see, it becomes permanent. For the most part I don’t mind, but what gives me pause is knowing that putting my thoughts and my decisions into the world makes me accountable. That said, I’m still going to share a goal that I have set for my current project, (working title) Chasing Freedom. I’ve never considered myself a math enthusiast (okay, I’ll be honest, I’ve avoided math like the flu my entire school career). I think math is beautiful and necessary, I have just never felt confident in that subject. However, for some reason I have this inane drive to calculate schedules, percentages to completion, things like that. Using that weirdness, I have made a goal to finish the rough draft of Chasing Freedom in 150 work week days. That means I plan toRead More
After my feast of writing conferences and LUW meetings this summer, my time has suddenly been taken over by family obligations and vacations. None of these are bad things, it just means that I’m finding it harder and harder to update you guys every week. I’m thinking for the summer I may change my schedule to either a biweekly update or a monthly update. I am still working on the first draft of Chasing Freedom (working title), and I’ll be starting on the third draft of “Night Watch” soon since I’m submitting it in October. Other than that, I’m trying to find a schedule and working location that is best for me. More to come on that once I get everything figured out and settled. Another thing I need to keep in mind is that I start my last semester of school next month. I am so excited! I loveRead More
Instead of rewriting the entire post, I’m going to break it up into two parts. The first part will be what I wrote earlier in the week, the second half came a few days later. Plotting On The past couple of weeks have been busy in some odd ways. Summer is busy because of vacations, family get togethers, holidays, and so on, but that hasn’t been the only thing that’s kept me from my weekly updates. When July started, I decided that I was going to take a week and plot out the book I wanted to work on. The plotting itself wasn’t bad, I actually finished ninety-nine percent of it before the week was out. Now character plotting–that’s been the hold up. While I was at Fyrecon, I was introduced to character interviews. I’d already heard of them, but a presenter showed us templates to use. I thought itRead More
After a month of work, the second draft of my short story went in for critique! It was a good feeling finally having the story at a point where I felt comfortable handing it off to a group. I knew it wasn’t perfect (not even close), but I got a few great suggestions from my fellow writers. I wasn’t able to get as much feedback as I’d have liked because I hadn’t yet been added to the Facebook page. It turns out I should post the story about a week or so before we meet for a more in depth critique. But now I know for next time! I’m still grateful for the advice I got though, the story already flows better. I do think that I’m going to let the story sit for a week or two before I come back to it. After a while, I struggle toRead More