It is the beginning of June, and my second month as a full-time author. So did I achieve my May goals? How was my first month writing full-time? I’m sure you are full of questions. I am too. So, without further ado, let’s look at how the month went.

How did it go?

I got a lot done on the Dragon Book. I edited the first quarter of the book and started re-writing the middle. The month started off strong, then got a little bogged down in the middle and have figured somethings out at the end of the month and the beginning of this month that I think will be helpful long term.

It is a little rough transitioning from working for someone else to working for myself. I have been gainfully employed since I was 11 (if you count babysitting). So it has been a little bit of a mind shift to be working for myself instead of having a boss tell me what needs to get done each day. So, creating an external source of accountability is something I am working on doing this month.

I am learning to be a lot more flexible with my schedule. Some days I want to write at 6am and some days I don’t get started until 9am. And that is okay. Again, the transition is a little weird, but all in all it has been good.

Goals:

May:

1. Finish the 2^ndDraft – This didn’t quite happen. This isn’t surprising. This last month was all about finding out how much I could actually get done. I think I should be able to finish the second draft by the end of July though…
2. Find a Content Editor – I did a bunch of research into this but haven’t quite finished. I need the Dragon Book to be more done so I can write a coherent summary of the book, because some major things changed this last month.

June:

Writing:

1. Finish the 2^ndDraft…for realz. Actually, if I can get through middle I’ll be really happy.
2. Finish confirming content editor. Again this is predicated on the Dragon Book being a little more finished than it is right now.

Business:

1. Post consistently on social media.
2. Do more research on Indie Publishing.

Reading:

 

Okay, I read a bunch of books this last month. Is this really a surprise?

Beneath the Sugar Sky – Seanan McGuire

The Pilot’s Wife – Anna Shreve

Trigger Warning – Neil Gaiman

Written in Red – Anne Bishop

Murder of Crows – Anne Bishop

 

 

 

 

The unexpected Mrs. Pollifax – Dorothy Gilman

The Amazing Mrs. Pollifax – Dorothy Gilman

The Elusive Mrs. Pollifax – Dorothy Gilman

A Palm for Mrs. Pollifax – Dorothy Gilman

Mrs. Pollifax on Safari – Dorothy Gilman

Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station – Dorothy Gilman

 

 

 

Mrs. Pollifax and the Hong Kong Buddah – Dorothy Gilman

Mrs. Pollifax and the Golden Triangle – Dorothy Gilman

Mrs. Pollifax and the Whirling Dervish – Dorothy Gilman

Mrs. Pollifax and the Second Thief – Dorothy Gilman

Mrs. Pollifax Pursued – Dorothy Gilman

Mrs. Pollifax and the Lion Killer – Dorothy Gilman

 

Also, if you haven’t you really should read the Mrs. Pollifax series by Dorothy Gilman. I have read them many times. The first time when I was a teen.

 

Misc:

I got to meet my author hero, Tamora Pierce at Baycon. She is super cool in person, and I really want her to write faster. She talked about what she has planned and now I’m super impatient.

Griffin and I spent a long week in Big Sur. It was the first time I’ve been down there, and wow. It is amazingly gorgeous.

I discovered I’m terrible at console games. But, I really knew this before.

We are prepping the house for summer which involves some major weeding. But Rosanna, you say, I thought you didn’t like plants or planting or landscaping? No, I don’t particularly gain joy from gardening, but I gain less joy from a yard overrun by blackberries, so back to blackberry cutting it is.

I’ve been thinking about the Mermaid book. I know, the dragon book isn’t done yet. There is still so much to do, but I’m in the middle and I need something to look forward to, so I thought I might do some planning for the Mermaid Book. As I was thinking about where to start I had to laugh, because, I might be a discovery writer.

What is a discovery writer?

A discovery writer is someone who does minimal planning and just writes their story by putting their characters in situations and seeing what happens. Another word used to describe a discovery writer is a pantser, as in, they write by the seat of their pants. I have always said that I am a mix between a planner and a pantser, but I realized that that might be less true than I thought. I tend to find my characters, and their voices through writing them. I tend to put them in interesting situations and then write to see what happens. I rarely know what is going to happen next. I just know where everything is headed…most of the time.

Famous discovery writers include Stephen King and George R.R. Martin. But here’s the thing, I don’t want to be a discovery writer.

Wait, why not? It sounds pretty cool!

Okay, don’t get me wrong. I like discovery writing. I like putting words on paper to uncover who my characters are, I like writing along and finding new things that I never planned. However, discovery writing can be really slow. This is evidenced by things like the middle of my book that needs to be almost completely re-written. I think that if I had a more solid outline before I wrote the 1^stdraft of my middle perhaps I would have been able to look at it more objectively and realize that it was boring. Instead I wrote something like 20,000 words that I’m cutting. I’m not going to even try revising them, I’m just going to cut them.

My plan with the Mermaid book is to actually learn how to outline a book. I can always revert, or find a middle ground if I really don’t like it. But I think I need a little more structure in the drafting portion of my writing life. I, at the very least, need to learn how to have structure so I can gleefully abandon it if I chose.

I hit a road block this morning. I was in the middle of editing a scene and I rebelled. There was no finishing this scene, I wanted to take a nap, or scroll Facebook, or burn the world. You know, normal writer’s block symptoms. But here’s the thing about writer’s block. It is a typically a symptom that something is wrong. So, I took a moment and checked in with myself, then wrote in angry red letters “IS THIS SCENE EVEN NEEDED?” Then I went and took a nap and took O’Neill to the dog park.

Afterward I went to a coffee shop and outlined the five new scenes that I need to write. I’m officially in the middle, my nemesis. I knew that when I went through and “fixed” my middle a couple of months ago that it was only a stop gap measure until I had finished re-writing the beginning. And guess what? The beginning is done.*

I’m excited about a few things for the middle:

1. Deepening character relationships/DRAMA
2. New characters + shenanigans
3. Baby dragons?
4. Archiving a bunch of scenes I’ve already written

I’m also not excited about a few things:

1. Re-evaluating ALL of the reasonings and motivations…
2. Did I mention I have FIVE new scenes to write and I haven’t finished planning the middle yet?
3. Archiving a bunch of scenes I’ve already written

The beginning is already so much stronger. So, I’m actually very excited to be digging into the middle because it needs a lot of help. But hey, writer’s block has been solved, now I need to get my butt in gear. Also, my writing plan for this week has already been shot to hell.

 

*Is the writing ever really done? Its done for now, until I have time to do another pass. Or you know, until I write something in the middle that needs to be foreshadowed/changes/modifies/completely erases the beginning.

April was a surreal month. I went through some major transition and I’m not entirely sure where the month has gone. So, let’s take a look at April’s goals and events.

Writing:

April’s Goals were:

1. Edit 10 Scenes – I edited 3 scenes.
2. Post 4 Blog posts – I actually did this. You can find them here. 1 / 2 / 3 / 4
3. Keep up on Social media (2-4 posts/week) – My social media was very intermittent, so no, I didn’t accomplish this goal.
4. Release scenes to Alpha Readers – Nope, didn’t happen. Sorry Alpha readers, you can expect more chapters later this week.
5. Take a 2 week break – Yes, and it was so needed.

Like I said at the time, these goals were a little more ambitious than I assumed I could get done, and I wasn’t wrong. At the same time, I set them before the month began, and I didn’t want to change them just because my life got busy. Also, as I mentioned in this blog post, I quit my office job so I can write full-time. That job ended in the middle of the month and I chose to take the last two weeks of the month off before embarking on my new writing career. Between only having two weeks to do the work, and wrapping up my job, I bit off a little more than I could chew, so, some things didn’t get done.

May Goals:

1. Finish the 2^ndDraft of the Dragon Book
2. Find a Content Editor

And that is pretty much it. I know this doesn’t look like much, but I seriously need to get the second draft done, and I want to get it done by the end of the month. So yes, it doesn’t look like much, but it is the most important thing that needs to get done. Operating under the premise of – “To do two things at once is to do neither” (Publilius Syrus) I thought I’d keep my list pretty minimal for this month.

May is also going to be about building rhythms and habits for my work day. This should also be an interesting challenge. We’ll see how it goes.

Reading:

Leviathan Wakes – James S.A. Corey

Babylon’s Ashes – James S.A. Corey

The Wizard of London – Mercedes Lackey

Reserved for the Cat – Mercedes Lackey

The Clairvoyant Countess – Dorothy Gilman

Bitten by a Camel – Kent Dobson

 

 

 

Striding Folly – Dorothy Sayers

Whose Body – Dorothy Sayers

 

 

Misc:

I did a lot of hiking with O’Neill on my break. The image at the top of the post is of some young Poison Oak plants I photographed but didn’t touch. Here is the view from another hike. 

I started watching the tv show “The Expanse”. Which is based on the books by James S.A. Corey. I also re-read Leviathan Wakes because I wanted to know how true the book was to the tv show.

 

 

 

 

I Got my hair cut (finally).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And in general wound down in preparation for spinning up the writing this week.

(p.s.) Here is a picture of O’Neill “not” begging for food.

I consider myself a free-range child. The independence I grew up with was the catalyst for a lot of adventure. Sometimes I think that maybe I should have written more to be a good writer, maybe started earlier. But then I realize that my childhood, and growing up years have groomed me what I want to write – wonder and adventure.

Adventure waits…

One of my earliest memory is of climbing. When I was four or five we lived across the street from a park. We would run over there and the first thing I would do is shuck my shoes, rub my feet in the dirt and climb, like a monkey, up the swing set to sit on the top. And it doesn’t stop there. My play was always rich with swords and bows, sailing imaginary rivers on not so imaginary boats, made out of tarps and grape vines. I hiked, rode a unicycle, walked on stilts, and learned to fence. A 2nd degree black belt in TaeKwonDo and an orange belt in Kaze Arashi RyuI taught me to fold my hand into a proper fist and write a nasty fight scene.

I have jumped off cliffs, sometimes attached to a rope and sometimes not. And occasionally I have climbed back up the cliffs. I know more knots than the average sailor, built bridges, and forts out of sticks and rope. In Eastern Oregon I bucked, in Western Oregon I body surfed in the pacific ocean without a wetsuit. In Taiwan I swam on the other side of the pacific ocean, which was weirdly warm, while telling tales of ghosts and zombie armies rising from the deep. I’ve eaten things I can’t pronounce and accidently became a Buddhist. I’ve forgotten the password to heaven and read ancient Chinese philosophers.

Each author is the sum of their experiences and I feel like mine will only make the stories I tell richer. So come with me, come on an adventure. Because, I love adventure.

Library Minion

I was nine when my Mom decided that we took too many books off of the library shelves. I mean, it wasn’t like we just took them off and left them on the floor. We took them off the shelves, checked them out, read them, then returned them. She decided that we needed to help put the books back on the shelves and thus we got shanghaied volunteered to shelve books. I spent every Friday morning at the library putting the children’s fiction back on the shelves for the next nine or so years.

Libraries are magic. Anyone will tell you this. They are especially magic if you grow up in a small town. My library not only housed books, but it was a safe place to hang out, and did I mention the books? I traveled to a thousand different places, met hundreds of new (fictitious) people all by reading voraciously. I’ve said before that I didn’t grow up intending to be an author. It was never in my purview. I just loved stories. I loved stories so much that I read over 120 books one summer. It has been a pretty easy stretch to go from loving stories to creating stories.

I wouldn’t be here creating stories without my library. I went through the entire children’s section every week and I wondered what it would be like to go into a library and be able to find my books on the shelf. I think it might be really cool… Someday.

Wait, what? You did what with your job?

I quit my job. Technically I quit my job three weeks ago. My last day was last Friday. I am ridiculously excited. My husband and I have been having “are you ready to write full-time” conversations for the last year or so. And, I’ve always put it off, saying.
“No, not yet. I haven’t figured out how to do the daily work.”
“I would go crazy. I would miss being around people.”
“I wouldn’t be able to motivate myself to get what needs to get done.”

I look back at this and realize that I am perhaps the queen of excuses. Our most recent iteration of this conversation however went a little differently. He asked if I was ready to write full-time and I started up with all of my excuses then realized that each “reason” was not a reason at all, but just my fear getting in the way of the thing I have been working toward for a long time.

I cried. I called my mom and told her all of the things that scared me. And I also realized I was mourning this change. I was ready to be done, but I was going to miss my co-workers. And frankly, change is scary. That was a Friday, I started planning that weekend how I was going to structure my day while working from home, and I got really excited. I talked to my boss first thing on Monday morning and we were interviewing temps by the end of the week. I’ve been training my replacement for the last two weeks. On Friday I finished transferring any important files off my laptop. Handed it into IT and deleted my work email from my phone.

Super Thankful

I am incredibly grateful for the job I’ve held for the last two+ years. It allowed me the time and brain space to actually pursue my writing. I am grateful for my boss who taught me a ton of things, like how to write a contract, and stand up for myself. I am grateful to my co-workers who are kind, cool, and appreciate my “eccentricities”, also known as me just being weird.

So yeah, I’m taking some time off to breath, eat good food, hike beautiful trails, sleep in, read books, play with the puppy, and hang out with Griffin. I’ll be back for the start of the next chapter refreshed and ready to go.

If you have been reading my posts on social media you know that I’ve been posting about my writing timeline. So, here it is, more in depth, and perhaps with a little different slant

Early Writings:

I have created stories for myself for as long as I can remember. Some that I created when I was pretty young make absolutely no sense to me today. I wrote some of them down, but I rarely wrote more than a paragraph or two. Until I learned about NaNoWriMo the longest thing I had written was a short story I had to write for a class.

The NaNo Years:

I learned about NaNoWriMo from a friend the weekend before it started in 2012. One of those stories that sticks in your brain had been in mine for a couple of years I decided I should write it down. Winning NaNoWriMo that year started an obsession. When we moved to California in 2013 I decided that instead of getting a job maybe I should try this writing thing and see if I could make a go of it. That lasted about 2 months. The thing I had not considered was that I am an extrovert and if I don’t get to be around people and socialize on a regular basis I become intensely unhappy. Getting an office job saved my sanity.

I “won” the next three years of NaNoWriMo, exploring my writing style and learning more about the craft of writing. I rarely wrote between Novembers. And I realized that though I nursed dreams of being an author, what I really needed to do was learn how to do the daily work of writing. In 2016 I started planning to re-write The Dragon Book and I did a bunch of exercises to flesh out the world, characters, etc. I attended my first writer’s conference and pitched the book to an agent. She wanted to read the first fifty pages and gave me a lot of really good advice. I embarked on the re-writing The Dragon Book. I finally finished the first draft at the end of NaNoWriMo 2017.

And Now?

And now the editing begins. First drafts are notoriously messy and mine are no different. I am in the process of revising. Getting to do things like reconciling the timelines of two different characters, and naming all the characters that I had left in the first draft as [goon2] or [black dragon]. I drew a map. And I figured out the muddling in the middle. It looks a lot better but still needs a lot of work. Most of my global edits are done*. So, right now I’m going through chapter by chapter and preparing the first part of my book to release to alpha readers**. Revising has been both easier than I thought it would be and much more difficult. Something that I thought would take me weeks took me an afternoon.

The Future:

So, if it isn’t obvious I am working toward publishing The Dragon Book, which will have a proper title at some point. At this point I am planning on indie publishing it either at the end of this year or sometime next year. So I am getting to learn the business side of publishing for myself as well as balancing that with getting my edits done.

Then, it’s on to the next book. I write stories that I want to read and there are a lot of them in my head. So, watch this space for the next exciting adventure.

 

*Until I find more global edits.

**If you are interested in being an alpha reader comment below or use the contact form to get a hold of me.