Welcome to my blog! As my site grows and develops, I'm finally adding a blog to it. I've thought about doing it for a long time, and after talking it over with a fellow author, I decided to take the plunge! It'll be a landing spot for interviews with authors to talk about their books and learn about their process, how-to's for writers to use some of the tricks I've used to make great social media posts, and more in-depth updates about my current writing projects. Mostly this will be a blog that can be a resource, if you like to write, or are interested in hearing about it, you might like to stop by from time to time! I'll post things that I've learned to be useful over the years.
FINDING TIME
For my first blog, I'm going to talk about how I find time, because I get this question/comment all the time: How do you find enough time to write a book? Aren't you already so busy with life? Three kids, a demanding job...it's a lot! And it's true, I'm a busy mom involved in my kids' lives. Right now I work from home, and it's all of us together, all the time. Finding time for myself isn't easy, but the truth is, I love to write, so I make it happen. Also my husband helps me sometimes on the weekends by watching the kids and I write with my writing buddy doing online sprints.
And here's the first way that I got through draft 1 of my first book when it all felt so daunting to even start, I followed Chuck Wendig's advice. His TERRIBLEMINDS blog is fantastic, and chock-full of great tips and tricks for getting that novel written. It also helps that he's funny as hell, albeit he swears a lot. Personally, I don't mind the swearing and found I actually paid more attention to his post because I laughed so much. But the basic guideline is: Write 350 words a day, 5 days a week. Boom. So simple. After a year that's a 95K word novel. Many times it would be hard for me to get through 350, it felt like I was rowing against the current. Other times I would sail through, write double, even triple that. I say take the good days, and don't let the difficult days get you down. Writing 350 words doesn't really take all that long, as long as you know approximately what you're going to write!
Look for his link in the comments below!
Making a rough outline can help, or using handy ways of jotting down notes when you're out and about. I can't tell you how many times an idea would strike when I'd be away from my computer. I started using Trello to drop these ideas into it when they would come to mind. I used to just use notes on my phone, but they would easily get lost down the list. Trello helps to organize them into boards, and you put cards under the boards (think of them like sticky notes). I have boards for each book, with lots of columns where I can put my notes in the proper place. Trello also has a website that syncs to your app, so you can use it on your desktop. And? It's free! Basically, even when I'm not writing, a lot of times I'm thinking about it. I put my brain to work when I have some space to do that (sitting in traffic, folding laundry, washing dishes...) I multi-task so that when I do sit down to write, I (hopefully) have an idea of where I'm going. Many times I write early in the morning, before anyone else is up. It's my quiet time before the day gets hectic. Plus I love the idea that I'm writing just after dreaming, the clutter from the day hasn't filled my mind yet. There's something magical about that.
FAMILY TIME
My kids and I love doing art projects and science experiments together. This was a fun one we did recently, we used food coloring to dye white roses. We wanted to see which one worked best by putting it in the water and letting it drink it up overnight. Teal was the only one that worked! Then we dip dyed them, and wow, purple turned out so cool.
DRAFT PROGRESS
Vale Born Book 3 is about 80% complete and over 60K words now! I'm writing a really great part with lots of tension, surprises, twists and all kinds of payoffs that I'm just loving right now. It feels great, it wasn't too long ago that I was writing a section that I found really hard to get through. It's exciting to finally reach the climactic point of the story that I have had had in my mind for quite some time. It ties together set-ups from Book 1 and the novella, very fun!
ON MY SHELF
I'm currently reading Crown of Gilded Bones by Jennifer L. Armentrout. The third book in her Blood and Ash series, the super prolific JLA does it again with yet another stunning read. Definitely an adult book, and it has all my favorite elements: fantasy, mystery, intrigue, romance, and humor. I'm about 25% of the way through, and loving it so far. Follow me on my Goodreads page and see my review there when I'm done!