Hello, beautiful people!
IT’S FRIDAY! Which, for most of you that means ‘the weekend’. Not the band. Me? Well, usually that’s when I work the most but I still mentally process the weekend as leisure fun time. When Monday comes along, I feel the pressure to be productive and get stuff done for my business and other ventures. Anyway, enough of that. Hope everyone has a fantastic weekend.
My last couple blogs have been emotional, “eureka”, self-empowering realizations and declarations. I mentioned fighting for my dreams. I spoke on pushing aside pesky doubts and fear and just diving in to do it, even with the lingering voices trying to steer you away.
Well, I’m here to report…I’m writing. My soul is happy. The little Powerpuff Girl inside who was raging is back to being all ‘sugar, spice, and everything nice’.
A few blogs back, I shared with y’all the different Works-In-Progress I had on the shelf and the order I was planning to work them. Well…throw that whole plan out the window! Everything has changed.
My Young Adult post-apocalypse story is going to take a backseat for some time. I have some MAJOR plot shift ideas I want to work through and think that my attention needs to be spent on a different story and genre right now. I passionately love that story and the characters but I’m planning that as my second released project.
When it comes to self-publishing, the market is largely steering in certain directions. Though I’m taking this into consideration, I am not writing what’s momentarily high in demand and you shouldn’t either. The market shifts all the time and is completely unpredictable. You need to write first for you. You need to write the story that is genuinely speaking to you in that season. Once it does, you need to commit to it. In the end, you need to follow your gut and trust it, which is what I’m doing now. It’s been months of thought so I’m not making an irrational or emotional decision. That just wouldn’t benefit my story.
I technically never mentioned this project to y’all because I thought it would be FAR down the road before I even drafted it but here we are and my MC’s voice is speaking loud and clear. I’m also loving every minute. We’re gonna just say her name is, “G”. It’s a Romantic Comedy. It’s contemporary and the characters are adults. Just because I’m a cheese-ball and love visuals, here’s an unofficial teaser image of my WIP.
Making this and then getting a stamp of approval from some close critique partners was very surreal. It made the prospect of sharing this book with y’all one day (hopefully in the near future) very, very real.
How something so simple can hit you in the chest, squeeze your heart till your eyes threaten to leak. Pfft. Or maybe I’m just more emotional these days, which is very likely.
The title is still a work in progress. My goodness, I suck at coming up with titles. I feel such pressure to make them epic and catchy. I’ve drafted the first couple chapters and have outlined the first two ACTs. I mentioned previously how it’s been a bit hectic juggling my “day” job, my small business, writing, plus my marketing projects for the last two. Life took a large left turn on me and hit me all at once with an upgrade but not to fret! My trusty planner has become my BESTIE. I’m focused on getting better at time management.
Normally, I hit large word counts through binge-writing-sessions. That’s when I had larger gaps of time available back in the day. Now, if I’m going to finish my books, I’m going to have to be intentional about my writing time and making progress.
I decided I am giving myself a thousand words a day goal. I’m calling it,
My goal is, hopefully, to make steady progress even if it’s just 1000 words a day. Before I’d have 5-10K word days and then a few days in between of nothing. I want to create a habit of being consistently immersed in my story even if for only 2-3 hours a day. For some, I get that may already seem like a lot. I’m just going by my previous process and what works for me now. It’ll look different for everyone.
I’m excited to explore G more. She’s bright and fun to write but definitely more complex inside. She doesn’t show people the true inner workings but she’s got a couple fantastic besties to help steer her along this new phase in her life which, she is MASSIVELY struggling with. She decides to focus on the wrong thing, hoping it will be the answer, the necessary shift for her life. I can’t wait to write all the shenanigans that will then lead to her needing to face what really has been the struggle in her moving forward.
That is my writing update, folks! As I make progress, I’ll be happy to jump on here and share with you all the ups and downs along the way. Currently, we, at Coffee Reading Writing are on a “WRITING” theme video train. Many requests for videos on different aspects of the writing process have been made so we’ve been having fun making those. Feel free to head over to our YouTube channel (video below) and check them out!
Till next time! HAPPY FRIDAY!
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