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
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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
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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
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As a new writer and author, I’m still learning a lot about the trade. Both on the creative and business side. Today, I learned more about an author’s rights to their published work. When I published “Monsters in the Woods” with Metaphor, I’d assumed that they held the rights to the story–either permanently or over a period of time. I only learned that this is not the case because I asked the new chief editor when I would get the rights back to my short story. I discovered that the rights reverted back to me as soon as the piece was published. All I have to do in the future is mention that my story is a reprint. This is exciting because I’ve been wanting to find a new home for “Monsters in the Woods,” so finding out that I didn’t have to go through any special rigmarole or waitingRead More
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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
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Balancing Act Summer has officially come to a close, at least for me. As excited as I am to be a week into my last semester, it’s been hard saying goodbye to one of the most fulfilling summers I can remember. After a week or so of consistently surpassing my 1,000 w/d goal, I’d chosen to increase it. It was elating to feel that I had a handle on the balancing act. Life, work, and play all had a time and place. Between the amazing progress I’ve made through the rough draft of Chasing Freedom and a week in Las Vegas, it’ll be a challenge to top the amount of fun I’ve had this month. When school got back underway, I had to reevaluate my plan. Time in class, commuting, and the nonwriting workload for one of my writing classes caught me off guard. These things, in addition of personal lifeRead More
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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
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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
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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
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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
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One of the few reasons I love summer and will brave the summer heat is because of the abundance of writer’s conferences. Last week was the Summer Writers Symposium, this week it’s Fyrecon; three full days of writing presentations, panels, and round tables! There is a small amount of pride I feel knowing that my university has teamed up with local authors and artists to give emerging individuals a chance to learn from those who have ‘made it.’ Go Weber! I won’t be able to post everything I learned over the weekend, but I’ll share some highlights from the conference. As I’ve listened to writing instructors, writing podcasts, and read books on the craft of writing, I’ve been told to use my second and third draft to improve the story I’ve written. While at Fyrecon, I had the chance to see a step by step example of one way toRead More
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I’ve always agreed that Logan, Utah is beautiful, an eclectic historic city framed by towering green mountains. The Utah State University campus was no exception. It was nothing short of refreshing to spend a day at this lush location learning with other writers how to improve our craft. The 2019 Summer Writers Symposium was a success! I will definitely be marking my calendar for next year’s installment, and I highly recommend it to any writers in the Utah valley area looking to connect with other writers. There were so many amazing tips given and advice said that I almost couldn’t keep up while taking notes. I am more than happy with what I got though, and I plan on referring to them when the need arises. Star Coulbrooke, the poet laureate of Logan, gave the keynote speech for the symposium. Her poetry was engaging to say the least. Each pieceRead More