The thing that ruined my rewriting process
And learning digital art! ARCs coming soon! Writing retreat!
🧠 LEARNING 🧠
Last weekend I went to Virginia on a writing retreat with my online co-writing group. Some of us have been writing together since November 2022!!!! More to come on this in the celebrating section.
I spent most of the weekend drafting The Severed Fates Book 4 (I’m at 65k!), but I decided to also dip my toes into a sci-fi project I drafted in 2022 that I call “The Fixers.”
On vacation, I read through my old draft and noted the things I loved, noted the things I hated, and began to dream of what a new re-written draft would look like. It’s a project I adore, and it feels like it has so much potential.
The past few months, I’ve been using my “not an author” day to start a rewrite of the Fixers.
It’s been FUN!!!!
Then, I decided to spend some time working on rewrite on my writing retreat.
It was… not fun.
I felt stuck and frustrated. My words weren’t flowing in the literary style I was hoping for. I decided to stop and thought “maybe I’m just not ready for this dream project".”
I took some time to reflect this week, and then I pinpointed what was different about my writing this weekend that killed my excitement.
THE PROBLEM: On my retreat, I had my old draft pulled up next to the new one. I reached a scene that I liked in my first draft, and I was trying to pull some lines from it.
BOOO JEN, BOO DON’T DO THAT!!!!
(At least not in this situation)
I realized after the fact that this new draft needs to be written fully fresh. I’m a different writer than I was before with a different vision for this book. Different POV, different tense, different style!
Maybe someday I’ll be able to pull some things from the old draft. But if I can’t, it’s okay. It existed for a reason, and I wouldn’t be able to write a new draft without it.
But right now, I DON’T NEED IT
🎉 CELEBRATING 🎉
My writing retreat!!! 😍
In August 2022, my friend Rain and I had an idea of starting a virtual co-writing group for people in our Instagram community doing NaNoWriMo.
In November for the annual challenge, we met twice a week for body-doubling-on-Zoom writing time to help with accountability.
But once the challenge ended, we didn’t stop meeting - in fact, we added in a third time a week! We’ve always dreamed of our group meeting in person for a writing retreat, but it hasn’t happened… UNTIL NOW!!!
Last weekend, all seven of us migrated to Northern Virginia to a cute little mountain-y lodge to spend the weekend writing together.
We all got a lot of words down on paper, but we also had fun chatting, laughing, eating, critique swapping, and even going on a cavern tour.
The view from the back patio where we spent most of our time writing!
OH AND SOME BIG BOOK NEWS TO CELEBRATE!!!!
ARCS go out to almost 80 readers on July 1st!!!! (Now I just need to convert from doc to epub which is always the biggest pain in the butt…)
I got my first proof copy of When Death Is Hiding!!!
My books are getting harder to hold in two hands lol. I just have some minor adjustments to make to formatting, and a final proofread, and the acknowledgments page, and then another proofread, and … idk if it ever really feels done.
😫 STRUGGLING 😫
Do you ever feel like social media and the internet has ruined your brain? I feel like that a bit lately. My distractibility is the worst it’s been in a while.
Here’s an example:
These days it takes me 45 - 60 minutes to reach my daily word count goal of 600 words. Not because it ACTUALLY takes that long to write but because I click over to other tabs, think of other things I need to do mid-sprint (like write this newsletter, oops), and waste time distracting myself rather than sitting with the feeling of “I don’t know what to write.”
Yesterday, my friend Carey and I hosted our weekly writing group at our local shelter. We always spend about 20 minutes of the group in quiet writing.
During that time, I decided to work on writing Book 4 by hand (which I never do) and then went home and typed it all up.
I fluffed up my writing a little bit as I typed it, but holy smokes, I couldn’t believe that it was nearly 600 words.
In 20 minutes, I wrote almost 600 words by hand when it takes 2-3x as long on my computer since I’m always dinking around on my computer.
I’ve made progress staying off social media on my phone by installing an app blocker - I can no longer go on Instagram after 10:30am Sunday - Friday, YAY!!!
But… I get so distracted while writing on my computer. Any tips??? HELPPP??
🧘♀️ RESTING 🧘♀️
ART ART ART ART ART!
I have a new hyperfixation!!!! This happens often. I bounce between hobbies and get so into something that it actually ends up making me feel sick because I’ll do it for so long without eating/breaks, which may have already happened once this week…
Anyways, DIGITAL ART WOOO!
I want to be able to make my own character art for my kickstarter someday. Problem is, I’m really good at drawing things I can see… like when I drew by hand, I did a lot of portrait art. But I’m not so good at drawing new stuff from my brain (like an OC).
But, as I just recently heard from a video I watched about digital art, you have to try things that are outside of your comfort zone to get better at them. So I’m going to TRY.
I’ve messed around a little bit with digital art since I got my ipad, but not enough to really develop a style or get good at it.
I’m currently in a phase of learning technique (layers, shading, coloring, pen styles, etc). So I drew Anya from Spy Family!
My next goal is to mess around with drawing different styles of animated faces to learn about options for facial structure, eyes, noses, etc.
Maybe by this time next year, I’ll have art for my characters!!
…or I’ll pay someone if I can’t do it myself :)