Category: Writing

Beyond the First Draft

Leave a comment

It was September. I was unemployed, living in the bottom half of my cousin’s house in Houston, Texas because I moved from Missouri to Texas with hopes of landing my first big corporate job after college. I didn’t get the job and I moved for nothing. I was also having a major health scare—breast cancer. Two of my aunts had it; one living and one not. My father died from pancreatic cancer and my mother was in remission from leukemia. I was freaking out and the only thing that held me together was my imagination and my need to tell a story. 

By October, life was looking up. I didn’t have breast cancer but I did have a tumor. I booked a flight back to St. Louis because the whole breast cancer scenario scared me back into wanting my mom close enough to hug. Plus, I didn’t want to overstay my welcome with my cousin. Our relationship was on good terms and I didn’t want that to change but before I left Houston, I took three days to outline a book. Well, really it was four but one of the days was a none writing day. 

I’d been trying to write a book for nearly a year before then but could never get it together. It’s funny how functional you can become when you think you’re dying at 23. 

Anyway, by the time I landed in St. Louis, it was October and chilly. I started writing the first draft and hammered out 27,000 words. I got a job and attempted to take part in NaNoWriMo. Everything was going well with my word count until it wasn’t. My body and mind were freaking out over all the long hours. I’d come home from working eight and a half to nine hours and then I’d write for three hours. I needed to slow everything down. By the end of November, I had 50,000 words although I didn’t win NaNoWriMo. After a few days of rest, I felt energized again and decided to push forward with the story. I stopped at 65,000 words.

My first draft was finished, the new year was coming and I was ecstatic. I wrote my first draft in 3 months and although I was excited, I knew the second draft was going to be a beast. I loved my story, truly, but I also knew it could be better. Just by simply shifting the book from a plot-driven story to a character-driven narrative, I could tell a better story. I started thinking about all the things that needed to change and I began to feel overwhelmed by my own creation. And just like that, I was given a reason to procrastinate when I should have been striking while the iron was hot.

Someone I knew needed a ghostwriter for some articles so I volunteered my time and they volunteered their money or however that normally works. Before I knew it, I was also helping with papers and other things. Don’t judge me. The money was nice and it’s not like I was working on medical papers or any important skills. Plus, I never did it while I was in school because I had a stricter sense of morals back then, I guess. At first, I put the money in my savings account and then I decided to use it to pay off bills. Mainly, the money went towards the credit card debt I’d racked up during my summer of unemployment, interstate moves, and breast cancer examinations and screenings…because “America!”. 

The plan was to start the second draft in February but the months seemed to slip through my fists like sand. Before I knew it, it was May and my first draft was still sitting in my closet on the top shelf in a dusty black binder with notes crowded onto the margins, sticky notes hanging from the sides and multicolored highlights illuminating my favorite passages. It was waiting for me to finish it—to fix it. To make it presentable. It was waiting for me to stop letting other things distract me and keep me from what I really wanted. It was waiting for me to overcome my own subconscious fears of not being good enough. It was waiting for me to open it again and finish what I started.

I Wrote a Book in 3 Months

Leave a comment

While I was in school, I’d developed a film treatment and although all my teachers loved the idea, they all thought it was too big for a film. Some of them suggested that I write the story out in book form and then slim it down for a screenplay. I agreed with them. I told my friends and family members that I was going to write a book after graduation; it was supposed to be the story my teachers and I had talked about but a few moments before graduation, I started coming up with new characters and then my mind continued to wonder. What type of world would these characters live in? How did they come to be the way they are? What led them to this point in their lives? What types of problems would they encounter while they’re just trying to survive? What’s next for them? 

And before I knew it, I started writing that new story instead of the story idea my teachers all loved but things didn’t go as planned. I worked on developing the idea and the world and the characters. Then I started working on the outline but for some reason, I could never get it to work. The story was too big for one book. I had to move the starting point of the story further back so we could see how the characters got to where they were. I had to make changes to the world. I had to make so many changes. Eventually, I paused the project to think of ways to fix the problems and just when I was ready to write again, tragedy struck in my personal life and the creative muse escaped my grasping hands. 2017, the year I graduated, had slipped away from me and I didn’t have anything to show for it.

The beginning part of 2018 came and went the same way 2017 did and all my ideas seemed to crack and crumble when closely inspected. It wasn’t until September of 2018 that I realized the year was almost over and I still had nothing to show. So, I bunkered down and threw everything away except the characters that had been living in my mind for a year. I took a good hard look at my characters and wrote a nineteen page outline over the span of three days. In October of 2018 I wrote twenty-seven thousand words, in November of 2018 I wrote twenty-three thousand words and attempted NaNoWriMo, and in December of 2018 I finished off the first draft with an additional fifteen thousand words.

I was able to keep up the pace and finish the draft so fast because I was determined to finish a draft before 2018 was over with. I couldn’t let two years go by without having a book done, not after telling everyone I was going to write a book. And because I was so determined to finish, whenever problems arose, I didn’t allow it to make me stop. My outline was pretty solid so I didn’t have to change much but other things changed while I was writing such as the time period of the book. Originally, I went into this project believing it was going to be a dark fantasy so I’d set it in a medieval-like world but as I wrote, I realized a lot of the imagery I wanted to use would look before in a present day or a near future type of world, plus some of the themes fit better in a more modern world. I also changed the point of view in the book about eight chapters in. It went from third person to first with three different POVs (point of views). I got the idea from a very popular book I was reading at the time, in which there were like eight first person POVs in the book. The book was Into the Water by Paula Hawkins and I enjoyed how the POVs became part of the mystery as well. It was brilliant. And I also changed out the magic system of the story while I was writing the first draft but none of that stopped me from writing. My outline was solid enough to handle the changes and I was determined to complete the project.

IMG_3164

My First Draft

 

I was able to write the first draft of my book in three months and I feel like the experience changed me forever. It made me realize that if I put my mind to it, I can do anything. I’m going to apply that attitude to other parts of my life and hopefully get the same type of results. I’ll keep you updated on my writing journey, I promise. 

2018 Was…

1 Comment

2018 was a very memorable experience for me. I woke up to posts talking about all the negativity in 2018 and yet I don’t remember it. Sure, I’m very aware of the social and political issues of 2018 but in our individual lives, outside of those issues that may affect you personally, 2018 was not a bad year, in my experience.

From my point of view, 2018 was a year of hope and resilience. 2018 was the year that we conquered our fears, we stood up to bullies, and stood our grounds in support of the things we believed in. 2018 was a year of great losses but also a year of great victories. After every shadow that threatened to swallow us in sorrow, came a dawn of warm sunlight and positivity that made us believe in humanity again. Behind every viral video of injustice, there was a video of inspiration and love that helped remind me that the world isn’t so black and white. I was reminded that people are good and can do good when given the chance and the tools to change someone’s life.

2018 was the year that one of my aunts who is in her late 50s and a young lady I knew from high school, who is in her mid 20s, both beat breast cancer. 2018 was also the year I fold out I have a lump in my own breast and although it isn’t cancerous right now, my doctors want to monitor it for the next two years due to my family’s history with cancers. 2018 was the year I thought I had breast cancer. 2018 was the year that I realized that my life could end at the age of 23 and I was forced to ask myself if I was happy with myself, my achievements, and where I was in life. 

2018 was the year I dared to have dreams and hopes for the future.

2018 was the year I lost weight but gained a love and appreciation for myself that I thought I’d already had. 2018 was the year that I vowed to take my health more seriously because the thought of death by preventable diseases scared me.

2018 was the year I moved to a different state only to move back home three months later after the job fell apart and I’d nearly maxed out all of my credit cards.

2018 was the year I made the first move, romantically, even when I’ve been told that women should not. 

2018 was the year I learned a new skill: photography and tried (and failed) to start a photography business. But from this failure, I eased my foot into a different door of opportunity.

2018 was the year I finally got an “adult” job and although I’m still settling in, I can finally see how good it feels to be able to take care of myself financially. 

2018 was the year that I told myself I was going to write a book and so therefore I did. I wrote the first draft of a 257 page novel over the course of three months and realized the only thing standing between me and the things I desire is…me.

2018 wasn’t a horrible year for me. It was a memorable one. A year that taught me lessons I will take into 2019.

What did your 2018 teach you?

Hitting 50k, But Losing NaNoWriMo

2 Comments

This was my second year participating in NaNoWriMo and it was also my second year failing NaNoWriMo. This was definitely one of those “fail again, fail better” moments. Last year I was an emotional wreck and I barely made it past three thousand words. This year I was rolling off the high of writing twenty-seven thousand words in the previous month so I assumed I’d be able to hit the fifty-thousand wordmark inside of NaNoWriMo with no issues. After all, I was writing an average of 2,500 words per day. I was feeling so good about everything, I was even going to buy the winner shirt and one of the mugs from the NaNoWriMo website. Looking back on things, I’m thankful I didn’t.

During the first week of November, everything was good. I was even slightly ahead of the NaNoWriMo word count but by week two, I’d nosed dived. I kept trying to get caught up but life kept getting in the way. And by life I mean work; work kept getting in the way. I started a new job in November and it was my first full-time, salaried job. Sure, I’d worked a few eight-hour shifts here and there, before, but never week in and week out. My body and mind had to adjust to being so productive for eight plus hours and then also having to find the energy to come home and write. My daily word count dropped as the days went on, not just because of work but because of all the family activities I had to patriciate in such as birthday parties, cooking for the holidays, family members from out of state coming to visit, and yearly sickness.Screen Shot 2018-12-06 at 1.35.24 PM

By the third week of November I knew I wasn’t going to make it but I was still aiming for at least thirty thousand words and then by the fourth week, I was begging myself for at least twenty-five thousand words and I didn’t even make that but I’m not sad. I did the best I could and most importantly, I enjoyed the journey. 

Even though I didn’t write fifty thousand words in November, I did hit the fifty thousand word mark in my story on November 30, 2018 after just two months of writing. If December turns out to be another twenty-something word month, I’ll finish the first draft of my book in a ninety day span of time, which was my personal goal before deciding to participate in NaNoWriMo.

All in all, I hope this serves as a reminder to all the people who didn’t win NaNoWriMo that some words are better than no words. Any words you wrote in November went towards your story and that’s a victory within itself. 

When Life Is Going Great

Leave a comment

My last few posts were all kind of dark so I decided to take a step back and get my life together.

This is what that looks like:

1. I moved back to St. Louis.

I was in Houston, TX for three months before I came crawling back home but to be fair, I didn’t come back because I was homesick, I came back because I was broke. The job that I moved down there for didn’t work out and then the second job I was able to get was horrible and ended with me filing a formal complaint with the company’s HR department due to verbal abuse from my boss. I had such a hard time getting a job because I didn’t have a car. I had several interviewers tell me the reason they were not going to hire me was because I didn’t have a car. It makes sense, sort of, Houston is huge but I was even turned down on a job that was literally across the street from the house I lived in because I didn’t have a car and I was young and they were afraid that if they trained me for the position, I’d leave within the next ten years. No, I’m not making this up. Yes, they did really say this to me but they were also nice enough to give me temp work on the weekends. But the big defining reason why I came back home was that I was broke and in serious credit card debt.  For the majority of my three months in Houston, I lived on my credit cards and my credit score fell from 750 to 702 and now I’m about $4,000 in credit card debt. So yeah, it was time to come home.

2. I lost 10lbs in Houston

I wish I could say it’s because when I moved to Houston I truly did do one of those “New City, New Me” things but it really came down to money. I know what you’re thinking and no, I didn’t starve myself. I did the opposite. While In Houston, I stayed with my very affluent cousins. It was meant to be a stepping stone until I found my own place but when the big job fell through, it became apparent that I might end up staying with them for a much longer period than any of us had imaged. I bring up their money because it’s an important factor in health. They had enough disposable income to buy really healthy food (such as fresh fruits and vegetables) as well as higher grades of meat. So while I was down there, I ate my normal meals with the addition of fresh vegetables and I naturally lost weight. I lost about a pound a week and I feel great.

3. I’m more than 50,000 words (200+ pages) into my novel

I’ve been trying to write a book since I graduated in May of 2017. I’ve tried several times but for one reason or another, I failed. So while I was jobless and feeling sorry for myself, I sat down, scrapped everything but my characters and came up with a new story. I wrote a nineteen-page outline over the span of three days, in September, and started writing the book when I came back home in October. It’s December now and I’m more than two-thirds of the way into the first draft and haven’t made any significant changes. I’m pretty sure I’ll finish this first draft this month. I’m just so excited about this.

4. My first “real” job

In November, I landed my first “real” job a year after graduating from college. I now work at a library making close to triple the amount I made last year and I finally have health insurance. When I tell you life is going great, I really do mean it. I lucked up on this job. I flew home from Houston on a Saturday and by the following Monday, I had a job interview with a bank. After the bank job interview, I didn’t want to go straight home because I wasn’t sure If I landed the job and I didn’t want to think too much about it so I walked to my local library just to say “hi” to the librarians I grew up with. When I stepped in and told them why I was back In St. Louis, they told me they had a job opening and I should apply for it.

When I didn’t hear back from the bank the next day, I applied for the library’s job opening. A week later, I went in and did the interview and test for the position and was called back a few hours later. Because of how poorly I did on one section of the test, I assumed I wasn’t going to get the job. I assumed that they wanted to tell me that face-to-face because we’ve known each other for all these years. But when I arrived, I was informed that there may be an opening for a higher paying position and they wanted to know if I was interested. I told them “yes” and they told me I had to wait a week to have this new position approved by Human Resources. A week passed and I received a phone call from HR informing me of my new job position. I was elated beyond description. I’d been having such crappy luck, job wise, that it’s hard to believe this all happened this way.

I’m just super happy that life is finally going great.

Write With Me: The Joy of Writing

Leave a comment

Week 2

Day 8 (9/9/18)

So, it’s the beginning of a new week and I’m trying something different. I decided to write before watching TV. I’ve noticed that on days that I don’t work, I stay glued to my computer, watching television shows, youtube videos, or movies. So when I woke up this morning, I decided to write first and then binge-watch later so that even if I waste my whole day on Netflix, I’ve made sure to get my words done first. It sucked because it took me forever to get into the groove of things, but I got the job done.

Total Word Count: 4,258

Day 9 (9/10/18)

I took today to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, career-wise. Also, my hands need a break because apparently, my carpal tunnel wasn’t feeling the fact that I tried to play word count catch up on top of my workout routine. I had a very productive day, though, just not when it comes to writing.

Total Word Count: 4,258

Day 10 (9/11/18)

Can’t complain about the writing day. I finally made it to chapter 3 and was able to introduce the last central character of the story. This means I now have all three major parts of my world written. I introduced the gritty underground life in the first chapter, the law and order situation in the second chapter, and the higher magic situation in the third chapter. The world building is set-up but I still have about one or two chapters before the story’s catalyst happens and I still have a little more of the plot to set-up before that can happen.

All in all, it was a good writing day and I finished the first season of Daredevil on Netflix and started the first season of Jessica Jones. I’m watching all the shows (the Marvel Netflix Series) in that series in the order in which they were released because I know they all connect and you need to watch them in the order of the release dates in order to understand the overlaps and not spoil yourself.

Total Word Count: 5,387

Day 11 (9/12/18)

Didn’t write today. Good news is I was approved for unemployment and I figured out what my career path will be. Finally! It almost feels like I’m an adult now. I have an event to go to today. Super excited.

Total Word Count: 5,387

Day 12 (9/13/18)

I wrote a little. I couldn’t focus. I thought having such a detailed outline (chapter by chapter) would help me write faster but I’m starting to think my issue was never coming up with ideas, but maybe it was not allowing my emotional state or events that are happening around me to distract me from my writing. 

Total Word Count: 5,557

Day 13 (9/14/18)

Didn’t write at all but I did finish the first season of Jessica Jones. I disliked so many of the characters on that show, which made me sad because I was really looking forward to it. Well, it’s on to season 2 of Daredevil.

Total Word Count: 5,557

Day 14 (9/15/18)

Today was a word catch up day. I woke up and didn’t watch anything until I had at least a thousand words written. After every thousand, I took a break so I could make sure I didn’t burn myself out because I knew I had to catch up. If I didn’t, I’d end up with a daily word count too big for me and I’d eventually miss my deadline. Also, today was a fun day. I remembered why I wanted to write this story. I remembered why the idea for this story stayed in my mind for over a year. I’ve been letting all the stuff around me distract me from the joys of writing but that ends right here and right now. Plus, I really like the second season of Daredevil. 

Total Word Count: 9,276

Write With Me: That Didn’t Go As Planned

Leave a comment

Week 1

Day 1 (9/2/18)

Today is the first day of the three month period I gave myself to write this novel and I didn’t write anything. I’m still recovering from a cold and the medication had me sleepy all day but that’s still not a good enough reason for a no-words-written day. I have a well-planned outline but the prologue was the only chapter of the book that had a one-sentence description. I didn’t do a very detailed description because I already knew the most important things: where it took place, who was there, and what happened but I guess I didn’t think I’d get white page fever. Well, we’ll always have tomorrow. 

Total Word Count: 0

Day 2 (9/3/18)

I wrote a little. I finally decided how I wanted to write the prologue. I wanted to introduce the readers to the magical side of the story but I hadn’t decided how the magic would work in the story. I knew the rules and limitations already; I’d created them when I was world building and for the more complex magic, I’d already created a detailed explanation for it. But the simpler magic, the magic a lot of the character would have, I hadn’t done that so I had to do a little research for that. Since the bulk of the magic is based on the elements (earth, air, fire, and water) I had to define what that meant and what that looks like.

Total Word count: 563

Day 3 (9/4/18)

I wrote a little bit today as well. It’s so weird. I’m used to writing about 1,300-2,500 words per writing session but I haven’t been able to do that because of my job. I’m used to working and writing but I’m currently working a physically demanding job, so when I get home I’m exhausted. I normally find myself falling asleep just from sitting and when I’m not napping, I’m trying to relax my body and mind. My writing windows, times in which I’m energized and have time to write, are disappearing. I need to figure out something or else I’m going to fall really behind in my word count and it’s going to be too hard to actually write the book in the amount of time I’ve given myself. I can’t wake up earlier because I’m already waking up around 6 am for work and I’m not a morning person. That’s just going to lead to me losing my job because I wouldn’t even be able to fake cheerfulness. Plus, it’ll make me despise writing and I never want to do that. I did finish the prologue and I like it. I know when I do the second draft, I’ll probably change it a bit but I really like my opening paragraph. The opening lines are always the hardest to write.

Total Word Count: 1,017

Day 4 (9/5/18)

I didn’t write today because something really important happened today. I was fired from a job for the first time. Now, before you jump to conclusions no, I’m not sad and no, I didn’t do anything wrong. I just recently moved to a new state and I took the first job I could get because the job I had in St. Louis ended up not transferring down to Houston. Anyway, I took the first job I could get and it was something I’d never done before. That, plus the bad management at the job, made me really hate it but I couldn’t quit because everyone around me told me I couldn’t. Everyone around me told me I needed that job even if the pay was low, the hours were short, and the management was bad. Everyone believed some money was better than no money and I was still looking for jobs.

But today my manager made my decision pretty easy. He refused to clock me in today (so basically he wanted me to work a seven-hour shift for free because that what would have happened if I’d worked without being on the clock). Why was I even there? I wasn’t supposed to work today, but he asked me to take on a shift and I agreed. He was angry when I walked in because the people who closed didn’t do what they were supposed to do so he took it out on me. This was nothing new. For the past week, I’ve been dealing with bad treatment and verbal abuse because I refused to work the night shift (a shift he told me after my interview I wouldn’t have to work). After I refused, that’s when the bad treatment started. 

But any, the way the computer system is set up, if you’re not scheduled to work that day or if it’s not your scheduled time to work, the computer won’t let you clock in or out. The manager will need to do a manual override to clock you in. At first, he lied and said I was clocked in and then when I realized I wasn’t, after close to 30 minutes of working, I asked him to clock me in. He refused and told me to get back to work. So I walked out. I don’t work for free and I wasn’t being treated like a human at that job. I value myself too much to let someone degrade me and so when I walked out, I walked with my head held high and a smile on my face to my manager’s dismay. He told me walking out was an automatic termination. And I smiled and waved goodbye.

I recently had a cancer scare. I have a mass in my left breast but the doctors don’t believe it’s cancerous. The doctors want to monitor it for the next two years because of my family’s history with cancer. My father died from it and my mother is currently in remission. During that period of not knowing whether or not I had breast cancer, I vowed to myself that I would cherish my life more and if I didn’t have cancer I would try to live my life as if I could die any day because it’s true. Life is short and it’s not guaranteed. I vowed to never do something I didn’t want to do. And I really didn’t want to work there with him. So I walked out, knowing he’d fire me but I didn’t care.

I spent most of my day at a workforce facility looking for work and I applied for unemployment. When I got home, I ate and finished the Korean drama I’ve been watching (it was the final three episodes) and then I showered and pulled out my computer, ready to write, only to realize 12:00 am had passed. It was a new day and I hadn’t written any words. But since I don’t have anything to do tomorrow except applying for jobs, I guess I’ll write.

Total Word Count: 1,017

Day 5 (9/6/18)

I wrote a little but I spent most of my day applying for jobs. I found out I have a preliminary interview with a staffing agency tomorrow so that’s great. I also found out what the difference between a staffing agency and a temp agency is. Temp agencies usually place you in very temporary jobs and they take a percentage of your paycheck as payment for their services. A staffing agency will place you in a more stable position although they are not permanent. It’s usually up to the company they place you with if you’ll get hired on to a permanent position. And if a staffing agency places you at a company, the company pays them a fee for placing you, so you don’t pay them. These are just a few things I’ve learned while in search of a job.

Total Word Count: 1,310

Day 6 (9/7/18)

Today was such a good writing day. I’m finally getting back to my average word count and I had a good personal day as well. But anyway, back to the writing. I finished the first chapter and I love it. I love the way the characters seemed to spring to life with their distinctive voices and the way that the first chapter brings the reader into this illicit world of blood and magic. I’m so amped right now.

Total Word Count: 2,586

Day 7 (9/8/18)

I didn’t write anything today. I opened my Scrivener document but never typed a thing. I started watching Netflix and nearly finished a whole season of a show in one day. Also, I finally bought a tripod so I started tinkering with that and my camera. I promise next week will be a better writing week than this one. I hoped I would reach 5,000 words this week but that didn’t happen but I did write a killer opening for the story. Let’s focus on the positives. Tomorrow, when I wake up I’m going to write before I do anything else so that I can make sure to get my minimum word count in for the day. I refuse to not meet my deadline. 

Total Word Count: 2,586

Write With Me: Intro

Leave a comment

Last year I tried to write a book…and I failed. I had the idea for the book while I was in college but I waited until after I graduated because I spent most of college writing films and I just couldn’t fit another story into all of that. So, at the end of May 2017, I started developing that story idea. Everything was going great: I loved my characters, I was having fun developing the world, and I’d completed an outline for the story. I started wiring and even started doing blog posts about the writing process but around the 30,000-word mark, I hit a wall. I realized that my story was too big for one book and even if I were to write multiple books (such as a trilogy) the story would still be too big and have too much backstory. So I took a break from writing and during that break, I tried to come up with ways to fix this problem. During this break, a good friend of mine died and I became very depressed. During my time of mourning, I couldn’t bring myself to write or even brainstorm. This period lasted for about 5 months.

By the time 2018 came around, I was feeling a bit better…maybe even a bit inspired because I’d been reminded yet again that life is very short and I want to do everything I desire before it’s my time to go. So, I started thinking of ways to fix the problems I had last time I tried to write. The story was too big. How do you fix that? Most people start their stories too early, so they end up with first acts that tend to drag because the story doesn’t start to halfway through the second act. My problem was that the story started too late. Like, I kind of started the story during the final act of the story and that’s why it had too much backstory. I needed to explain too much in order for everyone (readers) to catch up with what has been playing out in my head for the past four years. The easiest way I could fix this problem was to start the story earlier. 

I took a look at my characters and asked myself, where would my characters have been two years before this happened? What would they have been up to and what would their world look like? So, that’s how I fixed that. The other issue I had, although at the time, I hadn’t considered it to be an issue, was my world building. The world I had created was really cool but my story was conflicting with it. There would be times where something could have been made easier had I not set the story in the world it was set in and I was always worried about world building holes that would distract readers. So I decided to create a simpler world, closer to real life and that also helped me figure out what genre I was writing in. Plus, I simplified my magic system. So basically, if you’re having trouble with your writing, take a step back and then simplify everything.

I also figured out how to outline my book in a way that works for me. That’s the stage I’m in right now. I’m outlining. I’ve been writing for a long time but it wasn’t until I went to college that I was forced to outline. Since then, I’ve developed a fondness for outlining but I had never outlined a book until that first try last year. This year my outlining process has changed so much and I think that has also helped with “fixing” my story. I’ll probably do a tutorial for how I outline now because it’s so effective for me.

Regular writing posts will start as soon as I get further into the book.

Until next time, peace…

Back At It Again

4 Comments

I know that some of you started following me because this started off as a blog about writing, and then it started talking about traveling with a little bit of lifestyle content thrown into the mix. And then all of the sudden, the writing content stopped. There was a little travel content here and there, but it mostly became a lifestyle blog.

Let me tell you what happened…

My friend died.

Some of you who started following me because of my writing content may have noticed I haven’t done a full blog post about writing since around August or September of 2017. At that time, I was growing frustrated with my “current” work in progress because I was overwriting. My original word count was supposed to be around 85,000 words but I was starting to believe the story would really end up being around 110,000 words.  Yeah, that was a big baby. I know. But the real issue with the story was that there was just too much content. All the stuff that was there was needed information told in a way that wasn’t direct exposition. I was introducing too many of my plots at once. So I decided to take a month off from writing. I was supposed to use that time to figure out how to trim down my bloated first act or simplify the entire story.

By October, a very close friend of mine had died. His death was life altering for me because I always felt he was the one that got away. I live in North America and he lived in South America. We met during his high school study abroad experience. We became friends the moment he sat down next to me in French class. We started walking to and from school together because of how close we lived to each other. We became inseparable that year, with all of our inside jokes and shared curiosity.

Over the years, throughout high school and college, we stayed in touch. His death destroyed me because he was my biggest regret. I regretted the fact that I wasn’t brave enough to let him know how I felt when we were younger. By the time we were in college, we’d talked about things and even tried to visit each other once or twice. But he was in med school in Brazil and I was studying film in the U.S.

He was only 21 and cancer had stolen him.

Unbeknownst to him, he had leukemia.

My mother is currently in remission from the same type of cancer that killed him.

He was almost done with medical school.

He’d just delivered his first baby in May 2017. I can still see the photo of him smugly grinning as he carefully cradled a newborn baby; he and his instructor dressed in matching light blue scrubs and hair caps. That image will forever be burned into my mind because it’s the last smiling image I saw of him before the waves of “condolences” and “gone too soons” crashed against my computer screen, sending me into a black hole of depression that made me abandon social media for two weeks and writing for five months.

I failed NaNoWriMo not because I was busy, but because I couldn’t write. I had no creativity left in me. The story was dead. All I could think about was what this world had lost. We’d lost someone who was trying to do something good for the world. We’d lost someone who knew what he wanted to do and how to do it. I’d lost someone I’d loved and I knew I’d loved him because, outside of my father’s death, I’d never felt so hollowed by the news of death.

And so, after five months, I finally seemed to have recharged. For the first time in five months, story ideas are organically germinating in my mind. For the first time in five months, I feel like I have agency in my life and I’m not faking it.

 

Winter Update: Writing, Pinterest, ​and YouTube

Leave a comment

What I’ve Been Up To

If you’ve been wondering why I haven’t posted much this December, it’s because I’ve been very busy. I’ve been working on myself. Improving my mind. Expanding my knowledge. I’ve been working on building steady traffic for this blog, which means I had to learn more about marketing. So I’ve done that and have seen a steady rise in organic traffic for the blog. Although my numbers are nothing to brag about, I’m excited anyway. This proves that what I’ve been doing is working and that I should keep at it.

I’m a very visual person so I created a Pinterest account. If you have free time or already use Pinterest please check mine out. The link can also be found at the bottom of the screen next to the other social media icon(s). I have boards on things I’m interested in such as writing, world building, traveling, beauty, etc. I’m just getting started and once I really get the hang of it, I’m going to go crazy on there. I even used it a few days ago to get ideas for a work Christmas party that I’m going to.

YouTube

I’ve also been very busy because I decided to start a Youtube channel. I don’t have that all planned out yet, but I do have a few videos up. This all came about when I was sitting at my computer, avoiding my writing and I started looking through all the documents on my computer. I recently did a big software update so a lot of my apps on my computer still had the blue dots hovering just above the icon because they hadn’t been opened yet. Since I was already killing time, I decided to open all the apps and see what was new. One of the apps was iMovie, where I have all the footage from my study abroad trip. I started watching some of the footage and found myself reminiscing. I decided it was finally time to edit the footage and finish what I started. After I had two videos edited, I decided I should post them. That’s when the idea for a Youtube channel started.

Right now I have a few Vlogs up and they’re all about various trips I took why I was in Europe but as I create more content, the Youtube channel will look much like this blog. The content will be split between writing, travel, and lifestyle. I might start posting videos on the blog as well, but they will always be accompanied by text. Most cases, there will be a companion article post with the video. The video and text will be similar but they will not be word-for-word because no one wants to read a transcript for leisure. Sometimes, particularly for my Traveling Thursdays posts, I might post a video with a paragraph or two explaining the video and summarizing what is happening in the video but it will not be text heavy.

Writing

I haven’t done any posts about writing in a while and that’s because I stopped writing for a bit. My personal life became really complicated, my professional life became really complicated, and I just couldn’t get my story together. So I stopped. I was planning on forcing myself to do NaNoWriMo but I was hired to do some technical writing so November did not go as planned. After that happened I decided to take a step back and just start a brand new idea. I kept my three central characters because they were completely developed and I didn’t want to waste them. But I’ve been spending December coming up with ideas for stories. This means I’ll be back to writing in January and the writing posts will return.

What have you been up to, lately?