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The fastest way to shut down my "freelance life means I have to constantly be working" thoughts is to remind myself that if I was a boss holding a worker to the standards I hold myself to, their union would hunt me for sport and nobody would blame them.

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I wrote this sometime around August 2016 (none of this is edited, I just left it as is):

Running. Katia had always loved to run. Run through the sandy beaches of her home in Savee. Run through the palace’s garden of Lakana when her family would visit the other royals. Run across the marble stone of Callia’s grand streets. Running brought with it a sense of freedom, her hair blowing in the wind, her long colourful skirts flowing with her movements. Running made her think of the strong waves crashing down, always in constant movement, never settled, but peaceful nonetheless. But that was before. And now it was after.  Running now, Katia’s heart thumped in her chest, twigs snapped under her heavy footfalls, her already ruined clothing snagged on branches and her ankle almost twisted on the uneven ground. Hooves stomped behind her and metal clanked, Lakana’s soldiers were close, gaining on her. She didn’t look back, only forward. Forward meant away. 

And this is from January 2019, from the earliest draft of The Witch and The Wolf (a.k.a. Unnatural Secrets):

The two thugs chased after her, big burly forms in the shadowed hallway. She turned a corner and tried all the doors. Nothing. She tried the double doors at the end. Shit. She's trapped. Back against the wall. Cornered. Which is exactly where a thief should never be.

And this is the current intro paragraph to Unnatural Secrets:

VANISHINGS CONTINUE: OFFICERS HAVE NO LEADS, read South Karuq’s morning paper. Iliza leaned against the sun-burning brick wall next to the news stand, the hum of the market and its stalls drifting by her. The deep indigo headscarf she wore did little to shield her from the heat, despite the taste of rain on the humid air, but that was the least of her concerns.

So, I have this spreadsheet of all the WIPs I've ever worked on, some are fanfic, most never made it past 10k words, there's one completed short story, and three completed novels....Anyway, I just went back into my files and read something I wrote in 2014, I would have been 15 at the time. Fifteen years old with all the unbridled audacity of a teenager to think I could write a book. And it's soooo bad. Like so bad. But also, I've grown so much as a writer in the decade (oh my gosh, a decade!?!) since.

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So, I have this spreadsheet of all the WIPs I've ever worked on, some are fanfic, most never made it past 10k words, there's one completed short story, and three completed novels....Anyway, I just went back into my files and read something I wrote in 2014, I would have been 15 at the time. Fifteen years old with all the unbridled audacity of a teenager to think I could write a book. And it's soooo bad. Like so bad. But also, I've grown so much as a writer in the decade (oh my gosh, a decade!?!) since.

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Writing Tips/Advice For Beginners: Coming Soon

I put together a blog post of writing tips/advice for anyone just starting out.

I've seen a few posts on here from people who want to start writing, fanfiction or their own work, and have no idea where to start, asking about the 'fundamentals of writing.'

So, I wrote this post. It's the advice I needed to hear when I started writing, and it covers a handful of the basics, including formatting, planning vs. pantsing, character creation, and more. It'll be published later this week, so stay tuned.

p.s. if you like the blog (should go out on Thursday), let me know, and I'll write up more on developing characters, plot, and worldbuilding as a beginner.

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Never thought I'd be someone who writes in books (even in pencil), but here we are. Annotating is kinda fun, actually. At first, it was to develop my understanding of the plot (when I read The Mask Collectors) but now I'm underlining and marking up anything I like about the characters, plot, word choice, and metaphors.

My copy of The Life That's Waiting by Brianna Wiest is filled with stickers and underlines. And now I'm doing the same thing with The Bellweather Rhapsody.

Gosh, I love being a reader and a writer.

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WIP Update: Ch. 3 just hit 1,000 words.

My word count goal for each chapter is at least 1,000, but I aim for 2,000, if only because I have no idea whatsoever how many chpters this book is going to be.

Judging from my cue card outline, it's somewhere between 30 and 40.

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So for over a month and a half I’ve been told in my Creative writing MA class that my writing is too poetic and abstract to work in the form of a novel and that I need to simplify my meanings and sentences. I did as I was told and lost all interest in writing if I have to write in the same style that every other novelist does. Today I received this note from a classmate and didn’t realise how much I needed to hear it. Don’t change your art just because other people don’t get it. Don’t change your style to fit in with everyone else. It’s your story not theirs.

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Finished reading my 35th book of the year: The Life That's Waiting by Brianna Wiest. I love, love her writing. Seriously cannot get enough. I want to write like her one day.

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Why Do I Read

Why We Read by Shannon Reed got me thinking: why do I read?

Well, I read to be a more inclusive and better writer. I read diverse stories from diverse authors. I read to learn about different types of storytelling or to see how a negative character arc is executed. I read to discover new ways of interpreting classic fairy tales and mythical monsters, magic systems, and worldbuilding that isn’t Western-centric.

I set out, several years ago now, to pay attention to the authors I was reading. I looked at my shelf one day and realized nearly every single book was by a white person. Coming from a mixed-race family myself, well, that would not do.

I’ve since read books from Chinese authors, Latinx authors, black authors, and Nigerian authors. I’ve read books by disabled and neurodiverse authors about disabled and neurodiverse characters. I’ve read books by LGBTQIA+ authors. I’ve read their memoirs and their poetry. I’ve started to include a more diverse cast of characters in my own stories because of this. There are more BIPOC charactres, more queer characters, more women. I’ve looked at a story I’m working on and thought, wait, why can’t this character be gay? Or a woman? Why did I make them a cisgender man in the first place!?

Read the full post on Medium.

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I think at some point in time we need to sit down and start explaining to artist who want to make a career out of art that there are FAR more options than just "living off of commissions" and "posting my art online and praying I get paid for it".

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It's still kinda wild how Phineas and Ferb managed to completely hijack an idiom. Now whenever someone hears a sentence leading with "If I had a nickel for everytime [...]", odds are their brain auto fills with "I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice," rather than "I'd be rich," or "I could [action that requires purchasing something requiring an obscene amount of money]". Y'know, what the idiom originally was

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But you can write it down and claim its "science."

If you mess up a social interaction you can say "Failed Experiment" and move on

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currently falling back in love with the mechanics of creative writing. i spend so much of my life working with words in one capacity or another and somewhere along the way i forgot how fascinated I am by the nuts and bolts of creative writing as a craft. how excited I get about grammar and syntax and punctuation and the ways you can mess with these things to create specific effects. how writing isn't some innate talent but instead a big box of tools and DIY paraphernalia & supplies that you learn (and re-learn!) how to use, then do whatever you want with. creative writing love of my life <3

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Started Ch. 3 today, this one is from my MMC's perspective. I'm writing in 3rd person, but the chapter will follow him. As I'm writing, though, I find it fascinating how naturally I shift into each characters voice, so naturally that I didn't even realize I was doing it at first.

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- The Life That's Waiting by Brianna Wiest

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I finished writing chapter two! Between writing it by hand in small sections and then typing it up to add details and more description later, it's been such a more manageable process. I can't believe I used to force myself to write 2k words every day to get a draft out in a month. It was absolute garbage. Now I'm so much more confident in the words I put on the page bc I have, y'know, an actual outline.

Anyway, here's an excerpt from chapter 2 of Unnatural Scerets (full intro in pinned post).

"Iliza sensed the boy behind her before she saw him. She'd passed a note to Sebastian as the sun had begun its slow descent for the afternoon, careful to keep the shadows in front of her. A quick bump of shoulders, fingers sliding against each other, and Seb had a place and time to meet."