#Writing Journey

[novlr]

The first word is the hardest

Your journey as a writer starts with just a single word!

Thinking about writing doesn't get words on a page. You can plot and plan in your head forever, but it's that first word on a blank page that will finally get you started on your writing journey.

[jacquelynlscott]

🥉 Three Elements for Writing the Setting of Your Story

🔑 The setting of a story is where and when your book happens. Your book setting is important because almost everything your character does will be affected by when and where they do them.

The three elements for how to write your story setting are time, location, and environment.

⌛ Time

Time is the when of your story. When thinking about your book, consider these when’s:

📅 What year? Your time period affects everything about your character. What clothes they wear, the technology and language they use, and their ability to move and interact in the world. A person in 1700 Europe isn’t going to use a cell phone to call someone, just like a person in 2023 United States isn’t going to speak Middle English.

🍁 What time of year? Is it winter, spring, summer, or fall? A character living in a Canadian winter isn’t going to spend time outdoors in a t-shirt and shorts. A person visiting Arizona in the middle of summer likely isn’t going to walk around in a jacket and jeans, no matter how stylish.

⌚ What time of day? This is more significant for scenes than the book as a whole. You can use the time of day to create a particular mood, such as nighttime for a feeling of danger or mystery. You should also consider the time of day for what your character is about to do. For example, someone likely isn’t going jewelry heisting at noon on a Monday.

⏳ Is time passing? Pay attention to how time is unfolding throughout your scenes and story as a whole. You have to account for any time that passes between scenes, when characters travel, or when you insert a flashback. Make sure your reader knows when your scene is happening, or they’ll be lost.

🗺️ Location

The location of your story is as broad as the country and region and as specific as the neighborhood or house. Like the time period, the location of your setting will affect your characters in all aspects of their lives: what they wear, how they speak, if they walk or drive or take the bus, etc.

If your book is fantasy, you will need to do some very detailed world-building work. A fantastic resource for this is The World Building Leviathan from Kittyspace.

🌲 Environment

The environment of your manuscript includes the physical world and social, political, and cultural influences of the time and location.

Take into consideration the environment’s climate and how it impacts your characters. For example, a character living in the tropics will have a vastly different life than someone living in the mountains of North Carolina.

What is the cultural, political, and social environment like in your character’s time period and hometown? These aspects can impact what your character believes in and the different values they hold dear. Societal norms vary across time and place, and it will take a lot of research to make sure you’re getting it right.

🙅‍♀️ Setting Don’ts

Newer authors often think they need a lot of exposition about the setting up front. This is called a “data dump,” and they are often very difficult to read. You don’t want to bore your readers with a lot of information about your world upfront. Rather, allow your setting to reveal itself slowly, either through your character or short bits of exposition throughout.

If you’re writing a fantasy or historical novel, avoid treating everyday objects as novelties. Even if that object is unique to you, it would not be unique to your character. If something is supposed to be ordinary to your character, treat it like it’s ordinary.

Check out jacquelynlscott.com for a free downloadable setting worksheet to help you think through the setting of your book or scene.

[a-small-writer-in-a-big-world]

I hope to one day change my writing style to be a little more versatile when it comes to certain things. I’ve realized that my writing just doesn’t fit certain ideas yet

[inkcurlsandknives]

Querying Stats for Saints!

This post originally went out via my author newsletter, but I realized that if I’m finally going to start using tumblr as an author platform that means I HAVE A BLOG AGAIN!! 

I  recently announced that Saints of Storm and Sorrow, my Filipino Epic Fantasy sold in a two book deal to Titan UK and will be coming out June of 2024. (if you’re interested in Submission Stats definitely go sign up for my newsletter as those stats will go out exclusively in this month’s newsletter. I also send out whatever Filipino recipe I’m tinkering with at the moment, this month is a mouthwatering Kang kong/water spinach adobo stirfry)

Saints was pitched as a Filipino EMPIRE OF SAND X POPPY WAR Lunurin, a mestiza stormcaller, hides in a convent—from the Inquisition branding her a witch, and the Goddess of Storms, who sings of drowning colonizers. When she’s discovered, a marriage-of-convenience might save her from the Church, but not her Goddess. A typhoon is brewing in Lunurin’s bones. Freeing it will destroy the violent colonizers, but also the family she found in the convent and her new marriage.  

QUERY STAT TIME!

I’d like to start by saying I did query 3 books in addition to Saints, And They Called Her Stormbringer (2018- Epic Fantasy), One Half a Dead Witch (2019-Contemporary Fantasy), and Mushroom ABCs (2022- Picture Book) and I’m glad to have signed with an agent who’s so supportive of my backlist. If I’m completely honest I sent my first query for And They Called Her Stormbringer, my freshman year of college in 2012 and received such a brutal (though personalized) rejection that I stopped querying for 6 years and creative writing for almost 2. I will admit now that the feedback was accurate, but as a young writer I had no idea what to do with it or how to revise as I had no writing partners or critique groups at the time.

Fast forward almost a decade. Saints of Storm and Sorrow was fast drafted all 131k words in 31 days for Nanowrimo 2020. I worked to revise it with help from beta readers and CPs from February through August of 2021, I’m a fast drafter and a slow reviser. I went through several rounds of revision. I started querying Saints in the fall of 2021. In Oct 2021 I learned I’d gotten into Pitchwars with my amazing mentor Michella Domenici <3 and I quickly pulled all my active queries and fulls promising to resend the manuscript after the revisions I’d complete during the Pitchwars Mentorship. I then spent the winter of 2021 in an absolute whirlwind of revisions that culminated in the PitchWars Showcase in February 2022. I got 15 requests!! I was thrilled and sure that my querying journey would soon be over!! Saints and I then entered the LONG WAIT. I went into and came out of several writing burn out funks. At no point in the last five years I’ve never written so little as I did in 2022, I found it very hard to write the wait for the first time in my querying journey. Every few months I’d drag myself out of my agonies of waiting and hurl out another thirty or forty queries. Over TEN months post PitchWars I sent a total of 164 queries for Saints of Storm and Sorrow, I received 50 full requests, 4 partial requests, and finally 3 offers. For those who like maths that’s a 33% request rate. In my low moments it started to feel like I’d written a great query but a terrible book! I was told the pacing was too slow and too fast, that the world building was too hard to grasp and not detailed enough! I completed a panic revision in September 2022 trying to address these issues. I nudged everyone who still had my full or partials with the revision, and low and behold two months later, Saints got its first offer on the week of Thanksgiving. I was ecstatic. I asked for three weeks to consider (on account of thanksgiving) and quickly sent out nudges for every open full (18!) AND every query remaining open (65!). OVER 80 emails/Query Tracker messages WOW. 10 more requests for fulls and extensions to read came in. I waited, my inbox rattling with news for almost three weeks. I don’t ever want to send that many emails again! My agent Ramona Pina with Bookends actually ended up requesting my full on my original decision date! But I’d been asked for an extension by a few other agents and let her know she had 3 more days if she wanted to read. Ramona read Saints in two days and the day before my extended decision date sent me her offer of rep. We hopped on a call and I quickly realized there was no way I could decide in 24 hours between such excellent agent choices. I reached out to the other offering agents requesting the weekend to consider and contacted several of Ramona’s clients to get their perspective. After a weekend of decision agony I made the best decision for me and Saints of Storm and Sorrow.

I can’t emphasis enough how much of this process depended on LUCK and GRIT. The Luck of finding a fellow Filipina mentor in Pitchwars who totally understood my vision for the book. The luck of getting Saints into the right hands at the right time. The GRIT to keep sending my query package out even though at points I was convinced far too many people had rejected it to ever find my yes. My book had to get in front of SO many eyes before I found the right ones, but if you’re in the trenches now remember it only takes one yes. Querying is a numbers game and a luck game more than one of skill. You may read about those unicorn authors who send out 15 queries on their first book and get 7 offers, remember they are the outliers. Their books had the exceptional luck of speaking to the market at the right time. Many many wonderful books, telling excellent stories, having great literary merit will struggle in the trenches for reasons that have nothing to do with the book, but everything to do with timing, a contracting market, layoffs of editors and closing of imprints for particular genres.

It can be so hard to remember that rejections can come on your manuscript that have nothing to do with the quality of your work, but I think it’s one of the essential skills that this long journey to become published forced me to learn.

[morimakesfanart]

Heyya!. I just want u to know that i've just read your latest fic on ao3 NONSTOP for about 4-5 hours last night and i definitely confident to say that your fic is asuperb work of art...

It's rare to see that kind of fic like you've been working for the last few years... A story with additional comic is really such a breath of fresh air to me these days...

Please, don't stop continuing this super duper amazing fic of yours even. I'm trying not to ask nor demand you to update the fic rightaway, but at least i don't want my hopes got away after just found out about this fic of yours in less than 24 hours...

I'm glad you like it so much!! :D

I have no intentions of stopping. I'm making it for me most of all, and it's been super entwined with my growth as a person and writer/artist.

I always write 2-3 chapters at one time, so if one is posted it's because I have the start of the next set drafted. I just posted ch38, and my drafts go up ch41. There's only one more left in the current arc being posted. I need to do some final edits and the art which hopefully won't take more than 2 weeks. However, I won't start the art until I get ch41 more finalized and get ch42 started. Working multiple chapters at once helps balance the flow in and between arcs.

If I ever hit a point where I think I can't work on Sindria's Prophet ever again, I'll post all of the remaining drafts for whatever arc that ends up being without art. I don't see that happening though since this is not only the only story I'm posting right now, it is extremely meaningful for me, and I can't deny that it's where most of my paying members on Patreon are coming from. The help with the groceries has been extremely important. That pressure does more to make sure I don't lose track of time so I actually finish and post, and not a feeling of obligation tho. I am extremely grateful for the support I've gotten thank to this fic :3

On why writing & art:

I can't tell any story without also drawing it. I'm a visual thinker so I always feel like something vital is lost if I have to describe it in words alone. When I was little I wanted to make animations, but I realized when I was 12 that it would take too long, so I started making comics. I posted my first comics online on dA. They are still up if you find the account.

As it turns out, making comics takes much longer than just writing, and I am but one person. And I also eventually figured out that since I often use writing to process my own experiences there are topics that I want to write about that upset or even trigger me if I draw them to the point I will basically drop a story if I have to draw a long scene of them. That what's happening with my og series PBSN on tapas&webtoons if any one's been wondering why it only updates like 1ce a year now. So with this fic I have figured out how to do a combination of writing and comics. Now I can tell a story in a more timely fashion without losing as much of what's going on in my head as possible AND it has the added bonus of not having to draw the topics/emotions that stop me so I can actually keep working on it :D

But yeah, I am going to keep going with Sindria's Prophet until I reach the end :3

[innerstrawberrypolice]

2,604 words into writing my fic, and all the reader and Snow have done together is shake hands (he has also already called her, in so many words, broke and nasty)

[erinfulmerwrites]

Why I Got My Rights Back, Part 3: Crash and Burn

[quills-planning]

Creative Project Update

Word count check-in!

(Promise I'll be giving an overview of the project soon!)

During the month of February, I wrote a total of 7,991 words between three documents:

3,534 words in the first novel's zero draft

4,281 words in an overall world brainstorm document that covers the history of some of the main characters

176 words in a novel series overview

[polarisbibliotheque]

Writing Advice - Answering an Ask part 1

Hey everyone!! I recently got a super cute, beautiful and heartwarming ask requesting writing advices/how to beat writers block.

I wrote the answer on a doc and it has 3 pages, so I'm gonna be posting it in different parts - do forgive and AMAZING ANON WHO ASKED ME I HOPE YOU SEE THIS, IT'S PART OF YOUR ANSWER xD

Seriously, I've been sitting on this answer for a week now thinking how I'm gonna make it shorter >.<

So, without further ado, for the first part of the answer, I wanna tell a little bit about my writing journey - how I got from "not writing at all" to where I am now.

Because people think that you have a gift and words just flow like ambrosia in the cups of the gods - but I've actually started writing some pretty cringe stuff when I was 10 years old to get to a more poetic sort-of writing during my 29s currently.

THEREFORE, a little bit on how I got from cringy to still cringy but sometimes good writing ;)

I started by telling made-up stories to my sister when she couldn’t sleep and to my cousins during sleepovers because, I don’t know, they seemed to like my stupid little stories when I was 7 years old – or even younger. Sometimes I wrote some things, sometimes I didn't. But I was telling stories!

When I was 13, I discovered the magic world of fanfiction, and I wrote and published a HORRID thing on a fanfic website in my country, based on the band McFly that me and my sister adored back then (the gods have graced me with the power of deleting it and I thank immensely to that).

It was the first time I wrote AND published something to an audience outside of my friends/family.

After that, I kept on writing, and I moved to creating my own stories. When I was 14, I wrote a fanfic with the same band, but really the main theme was that I was an archeologist living in Egypt who researched on Atlantis and ended up finding the lost city. Somehow, I was allowed to climb the pyramids as well - because, you know, I ADORE Tomb Raider, and if Lara Croft could do it, so could I.

Told ya there would be some pretty cringy stuff in here, huh? xD

When I turned 15, I was bullied non-stop at school and so creating stories became my way to escape reality and have some fun with the people I wanted to meet in my life. I started carrying a notebook everywhere with me – it was my writing notebook. I had so many stories, and I never finished any of them (and good heavens, they are THE MOST cringy stuff, I’m glad they will NEVER see the light of day).

But I use the writing notebook thing to this day - whenever I'm travelling and internet isn't granted, I have somewhere to write.

I finished my FIRST novel when I was 16!! I was SO HAPPY about it!! It took me a year and a half writing it: a young adult book, kinda like Twilight (it was THE thing back then), with a secret society based on Arthurian Legend because I was a sucker for everything King Arthur (still am).

I can’t BEAR to read the first page of it nowadays, because c’mon. It was 15-year-old depressive me being bitter about everything and post-Twilight frenzy. The universe and worldbuilding has one HELL of a potential, but oh LORDS, it IS painful to read. I was a teen after all… But I finished a novel! If I haven’t done it, I wouldn’t be writing the way I’m writing today!

When I got into Law School, things got a little slow. I couldn't focus too much on writing and my social life improved a lot. I started tweaking my Arthurian story, but nothing too defined - I kept on writing lots of WIPs, though.

Around my 20’s, while I was close to graduating Law School, I started writing again… Supernatural fanfiction. With the SOLE PURPOSE of self-indulging, because I couldn’t find A SINGLE fanfiction that I could self-insert and love Dean Winchester while kicking some demon ass (sorry, I couldn’t resist the Nico inside me).

That led me to writing a 4-part Supernatural fanfiction that, honestly, for the next 6 years, it was the thing that made my heart soar while I was slaving away at a job I hated.

While I was overworking my ass off, I started writing (brace yourselves...) BTS fanfiction. I got into the band and some people from the website I wrote my Supernatural fanfic embraced me and kinda put me in the group and into the BTS world.

I was on the path of a burnout, so that became my escape - the girls from the website were so nice and we had many MANY writing projects of short stories. Throughout the years, I think I wrote around 25 or 30 stories, 40 pages max, to publish on this website and just have fun.

It started nice, but as time went by and I started moving out of the rom-com clichés (which are nice, don't get me wrong, we all love 'em) and became more existential and philosophic with a lot of metaphorical things while writing - and people stopped reading my work. I started to think I was bad, no one wanted to read because I lacked quality in my writing, or just my stories weren't so appealing as I thought. So I lost my will to write and slowly went back to my personal original stories.

When I hit 25 years old, I got fired and had a full burnout. I got really sick and my life literally stopped for the last 5 years - it has been hard, but that gave me time to sit back on my computer and recover ALL the books and stories I never finished writing.

I am NOT joking, I just counted all of them, and I have 65 DIFFERENT unfinished stories sitting on my Word folder right now on my computer. I also have a txt file I keep some “ideas that might be interesting to work on” and those have around 12 different full ideas of stories I might never write as well.

Upon hitting 27, I went back to writing niche fanfiction I didn't think anyone would want to read, so I published it here. I thought no one would want to read Devil May Cry fanfiction written by a woman who clearly worries more about the internal turmoil of characters rather than if what I'm writing is cute/rom-com like.

I opted for a more adult approach - given Dante and Vergil are adult men with lots of traumas, and I thought "hey, I don't have to write teenage things anymore, I can actually write how two adults would have difficult conversations and relationships in this fucked up world of ours" and that made a HUGE difference to my writing.

and once again thank the gods I found my people who like to read this sort of stuff :)

For quite a while, I was worried if what I was writing was consumable - you know, if the romance was that kind of tacky romantic thing to sweep you of your feet with perfect characters who don't exist, if people only have good times and are always laughing and having fun, if people enjoy touching each other 24/7 and being romantic and all that sugar coated stuff, if what I'm writing is politically correct, if it hasn't any subjects that are triggering or "wrong" in any sort of capacity... And that stiffed me. I lost my will to write and I stopped enjoying it, because I couldn't get my ideas out anymore.

Being quite honest, I'm not a person who had an easy, beautiful life. I had many things happen to me that made me understand Vergil on a soul level (and I think that's why I'm so comfortable writing him, as much as I hate that man), because I'm wary of people and my trust issues make me keep everyone at bay. I can only put my feelings safely out on my writing and my music, and I wasn't being able to.

So I tossed everything out of the window and started writing unhinged stuff. And oh, that made me feel SO good! I always smile a lot when re-reading my Cyberpunk-style story and a character called Abby tattoos on the ass of a corporate man that he is hers bitch, and when a "fallen angel" from my vampiric story smiles creepily and tells everyone she's got the most unhinged vampire on a leash and tells him to just kill everyone in the room for sheer revenge.

Not the best, politically correct stuff. Very wrong, by the way. But I had so much fun writing them, and it has so much character building behind these actions, it makes me feel nice :)

Out of all the 65 WIPs on my computer, I have around 5 that I think are really worth it for a full novel and so. They are:

My Arthurian Legend based novels. I outlined a series, I made character sheets, I planned and planned and planned... Since I'm 15, I've been thinking about it. Someday, who knows, this story will see the light of day.

My Cyberpunk-style novel. Halfway through it and every time I go "oh this is too heavy, I can't write this" I just toss the thought out of the window and go for it. Quite unhinged, very existential and grim, everyone is depressed and traumatized, but I love it :)

The Angel-Vampire stuff. Or, as I call it sometimes, the trip of an angel-like being going through the 7 deadly sins until finally falling for good, all aided by the most unhinged vampire in town. It's more like a villain origin story than anything else.

The Tea Shop thing. Oh, this one has been on my mind since 2018 and only now I've found some plot I like for it. Creation (yes, humanized form of creation) runs a tea shop and everything is fine until a woman enters and she has no Universe inside her eyes - and that is something to be afraid of. Doesn't make sense? Oh, yes, indeed. I'm going crazy with the concepts on this one, thanks to Neil Gaiman and The Sandman.

The rockstar guardian angel one. That's it. It's literally what the premise says: a woman has a dead rockstar as a guardian angel - and they couldn't be more opposite of each other. It doesn't help she's investigating his death and can talk to ghosts.

And my original vampire story, which I just call Nathan and Kathleen. I started this one when I was 16 or 17, so the writing is VERY cringy. I had just seen The Witcher 2 gameplay and, by then, I had never seen anything like it. As it's expected, I'm re-writing the 150 pages of unfinished work I already have.

Will this stop me from writing the other WIPs whenever I want to? Nah. I’ll keep on writing. Even if they are bad or horribly cringy.

Why am I blabbering about ALL this???

Because the most important stuff you can do is write.

You see, I didn't start out writing the way I do today - and I have so many stories, with so many pages, that I like so much, but I read it nowadays and I see I need to re-work them. And that's how you evolve! That's how you get better! By refining your abilities!

This is something I learned with the rockstars I love so much. None of them started out by playing perfectly - most of them had to sit down, listen and learn their instruments on their own. They got a LOT of things wrong to start getting something very simple right. And the more they play, the more they train, the more they refine, the better they become.

The same goes to writing - so, keep on writing! Everything you can, as much as you can, don’t feel bad about starting something new and never finishing another one, and don’t feel like you need to put out a masterpiece every time you sit to write.

Sometimes you just need to… Write.

[theeccentricraven]

Catch Up Time and Announcements

Hi Tumblr buddies! I've been busy in the past few weeks, but good things have come from it. I finally finished the first draft of my WIP The Blood Cleaners at 209,742 words! I’m going to take a break from writing for a couple of weeks while I catch up on things in life. In the past couple of weeks, I’ve been tagged in a couple of tag games I love but didn’t have enough time to devote to them. I’m going to spend the next couple of days trying to catch up on them. When things have cooled down, I’ll spend the last couple weeks of April working on my Camp NaNoWriMo project. I’ll pretty much be reading notes for an old WIP and creating rough brainstorming sheets, outlines, and character profiles. 

During the summer, I’ll spend a lot of time rewriting The Blood Cleaners. I’m going to re-outline, do some more research, and work on the second draft once I’m ready.

In other news, I have released my first writing vlog on my YouTube channel. I was pretty nervous making this, wanting to vlog but camera shy. I admit I’m not that great at making videos yet, but I hoped to share what I’ve learned and share my story to help inspire others to pursue their writing.

I hope to respond to tags soon. I wish you all the best of luck in your writing journey.

[cnrodgerswrites]

Hello, friend! Welcome to CNRodgersWrites, where I’m all about the magic of books and the thrill of storytelling.

If you’re anything like me, you’re always on the lookout for your next literary escape. Well, you’re in luck! I’ll be sharing my honest thoughts on all sorts of books, from page-turning thrillers to heartwarming romances. If you have any recs please feel free to let me know!

But hey, I’m not just about reading here. I’m also diving headfirst into the writing process of my own novel. And let me tell you… I have not the faintest idea where to begin. I’ll be sharing all the highs and lows though, so buckle up and join me on this crazy journey. I have a feeling it’s going to be a long one!

Grab your favorite drink, cozy up, and let’s geek out over books and writing together. Can’t wait to share all the bookish goodness with you!

[transcendragon]

Don’t Write Every day: Looking Back at the Productivity of 4 Years of Monthly Word Count Goals 

Hello to my blog. Long time no see. I’ve still been writing, though, I’ve just been writing more longform work that’s harder to post to a blog than poetry. I might try to make more reflection posts or write more poems again, to have something to post here, but I do love my novels.  Writing Reflection In 2020 I stopped trying to write every day and started on monthly word count goals. Since the…

[jacquelynlscott]

✍️ How to Develop Your Main Character

🚧  The two building blocks of good fiction are plot structure and character development. Writing a compelling main character (MC) is important because if your reader feels like your protagonist (protagonist means your leading character; there can be multiple) is one-dimensional or boring, they may not bother finishing your book.

❓ The three basic questions in main character writing are:

Who is your MC?

What does your MC want?

What is keeping them from getting it?

🧍 Who is Your Main Character?

Your main character is the reason people read your book, and however you build them, they need to be well-defined and behave in consistent ways. When drafting your characters, consider their:

Age

Background

Habits and mannerisms

Occupation

Personality and beliefs

Physical description

Relationships

📝  It helps to write out character sheets and ask yourself questions about every aspect of your character’s life. There are some great resources that can help with this, like The Mother of All Character Questionnaires by Johnn Four. While it’s originally for building D&D characters, it works for any kind of character development.

😶‍🌫️ Remember, though, that your main character needs flaws because nobody is perfect. On the flip side of this, if they’re unlikable with all the flaws in the world, they need a redeeming quality that lets the reader sympathize with them.

🤌 What Does Your Main Character Want?

Readers root for a character who desperately wants something because we, as humans, desperately want things. This is how you get readers invested in your character’s story. The want stimulates empathy from your reader because they want your MC to get it (whatever it is) just as badly as your MC wants it.

A relatively new concept that comes out of Millennials and Gen Z is a lack instead of a want. For example, your MC might be anxious or depressed with a lack of self-awareness or empathy.

🛑  What is Keeping Your Main Character From Getting It?

Whatever it is that’s keeping your main character from getting what they want creates tension and conflict and drives the plot forward. This could be the antagonist (the person who actively opposes the protagonist), a skill the MC needs to learn, the MC’s socioeconomic status, etc. The more obstacles standing in the way of your MC’s happiness, the better.

Whatever you do, don’t let your MC have what they want right off the bat. They don’t deserve it yet. They have to work for it and experience character growth before they can have it. Your job as the writer is to put as many roadblocks in their path as you can possibly think up.

🌈 Character Arcs

Every main character needs an arc. Basically, that means they need to be different from where they started. This change doesn’t have to be dramatic, though it certainly can be if you want. Your MC can do a complete 180-degree shift, or maybe they just turn a little to the left. Either way, they learn something and change just a bit.

Some character arcs to consider:

Getting what they wanted all along, but it isn’t what they thought.

Never getting what they wanted.

Never getting what they wanted but they don’t even want it anymore because they found something better or realized it was the wrong thing all along.

Dying along the way, though be wary of melodrama and other creative writing mistakes to avoid.

[evelynbenvie]

It's been a journey five years in the making, and it's nowhere near over yet ✨

I know I don't write or publish as fast as some people, and I've accepted that 😌

I'm just going to keep writing what I want, silly fantasy books with SO MUCH queer rep in them 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

[cevansbrat0007]

As someone who has been reading your work for awhile (and regularly rereads all the old stuff), I noticed how much more confident your writing has become! Especially with the Ari stories recently, it feels somehow more decisive. As a fan I am excited to see your progression. Wanted to point it out and celebrate it!!

Also, I can’t help but see as you are making so much progress on a personal level, how of course that’s going to bleed into progress in your craft. Lots to celebrate!! 💜💜💜

Wow! Thank you so much for sharing that with me. At this point, I've been writing and publishing stories on Tumblr for around 18 months and it has definitely been a journey - albeit a good one.

I do feel more confident in my abilities most of the time. And certain aspects of writing no longer intimidate me as much as they used to. I feel as if my smut game is improving. At the very least, I don't tend to cringe as much when I reread certain fics.

I have also learned the importance of allowing myself some grace, both in my writing as well as in my recovery. Not everything has to be perfect all of the time. What matters most is that I'm proud of the finished project I share.

Thank you for your kind words and for your desire to celebrate with me. You have no idea how much you really just touched my heart just now. I appreciate you!