#and when I'm trying to knock out 50k words in 4 weeks I don't have the spare mental bandwidth to get them to behave

[reactionimagesdaily]

quick update

Hola everyone!

Just writing a thing to say I SEE all the messages that've been sent to my inbox and I'll promise I'll get round to them soon! I've been doing National Novel-Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) this year (as well as some job-huntng lolol) and it's taken up a lot of my spare mental energy. Low-key it feels like all I can do to make sure that the queue doesn't run out of submissions xD

Next month I'll get to everyone's image requests - promise! - and also to those 10K celebrations I mentioned a little while ago! (I've been cooking some stuff up behind the scenes for that milestone, don't y'all worry)

And. Yeah that's about it from me. Stay tuned, thank you for your patience, love y'all, adios <3

[bthearst]

update #2.

NaNoWrimo, BookTwitter, Rejections -- oh my!

THIS IS A LONG ONE.

It's been a doozy of a month with the beginning of the holidays, nighttime knocking on my frosty bedroom window by 4:30pm, and the ongoing decline of the accursed bird app. The days keep coming and they don't stop coming.

Starting off this post with a celebration of the devastating total of 20k words achieved on this year's Nano project. It's only devastating because, as a completionist, seeing goals left unmet is the equivalent of taking 10d6 damage to the soul. Last year saw the birth of The Unbinding, with 50k written in November and another 20k added at the beginning of December to round up its first draft. I thought that with that manuscript currently being queried, I would be able to tackle a fresh new story, and this was my first mistake which turned into a necessary lesson, one I've been fighting for the last three weeks.

You see, The Unbinding is the first project that I have ever seriously committed to publishing through traditional means. I've been writing for upwards of 15 years and it wasn't until summer of 2021 that I came to accept that I could, and should, hold myself to the same esteem that I hold my favorite writers to. This meant that I would be buckling down, rewriting, and revising a story I truly fell in love with. Revising is like pulling teeth for me, so I established myself as a one-and-done type of person from the get-go. Outline and outline well, leave no scene unscrutinized. This meant I had a pretty solid base, an impenetrable one, when I began last year's Nano. So, five drafts in (five!), I decided that this was as good as the manuscript was getting. I called it a day, participated in two whole Twitter pitch events, and sent out my first query batch.

Every writer is different. I've read about writers pitching third drafts, fourth, tenth, twentieth, and landing agents. After all, the amount of revising that goes into a book is never-ending. After all, by the time some agents get back to you, you'll be another two revisions in.

This is hubris speaking. Don't you fucking listen to it.

I set this manuscript aside for three whole months. Had it sent to beta readers go through it while I focused on other things. And it was all well and good until I realized that nothing -- nothing -- that I put down on this year's Nano felt right. Every word felt rushed, wrong, empty, and while yes sometimes this is what it's like to write a first draft, I realized that I just wasn't having fun with it. The story may be good, but I was fighting something else inside my head that I didn't want to acknowledge, and that's that The Unbinding wasn't ready. I was tackling a new project and 'abandoning' something that held me in a vice grip for the better part of ten months.

"But, Mitch," you say, "if it wasn't ready, why the hell did you start querying it?!" One word (Or two, depending on how you look at it.): BookTwitter.

Twitter is the internet's hub for writers trying to break out into the scene. You have your users who post daily prompts for writers to QRT with their nifty little graphics and fun snippets of their epics, promos left and right, follow chains, the whole shebang. It's a place where young authors build a readership based off engagement and the wringing of the algorithm.

I am not a Twitter person. Sure I've been using the app in tandem with Tumblr since 2011, but I've never been savvy at it. Good lord did I try to be savvy though, engaging with said games and graphics but alas, I'm also not a graphic designer so my moodboards weren't as stunning as those WIP spotlights with 200+ notes.

That being said, I plucked a handful of books during my year-long foray into that side of the internet. It's a great platform to find diverse books by diverse authors, but it's also a place that is oversaturated with everything. Advice from querying writers, authors prepping for their debuts, agents searching for manuscripts, all going by at rapid speeds. The dreaded "this is what's selling so if you want to sell your manuscript you need to jump on it RIGHT NOW or else you'll miss your window".

So I did. Queer Gothics are in right now, I saw an opportunity, and I took it. Even when the story felt like it needed work, I went for it. I wanted to be in with the cool kids, wanted to make friends with all these hip zoomers clawing their way into tradpub. I focused so much on it that I lost sight of what truly mattered-- writing the story I need to write. Writing is rewriting, after all. I wasn't sick and tired of looking at this manuscript. In fact, I was still excited to work on it, make it into the best thing it could possibly be.

Since the whole Musky Man debacle started going down, I decided to simply cut back on my Twitter usage. It was making me miserable for a variety of reasons, but mainly because it isn't just for writing or the laughs. There's no way to curate that damn place, so one tweet will be about this cool new book that I would want to preorder and the next is about mass shootings and the government sanctioned genocide of trans people. As a trans QPOC, I literally cannot continue to split what little brain power I can spare towards creativity between doomscrolling and trying to squeeze myself into zoomer spaces.

I'm a writer. A cave-dwelling hermit. I am not designed to market myself, I do not have an algorithm-based software in my brain that enables me to build engagement, to grow my follower number on Twitter so that when agents ask me to link my profile on their query tracker submissions they can look at it and go "oh yes we can get a best-seller upon launch on these numbers alone!" It's exhausting. I'm an adult who's constantly fighting for their life, to make ends meet, to keep a roof over my head, to not spiral into depression every time I see another gut-wrenching article. There aren't enough hours in the day for me to blast on social media while also trying to write a damn book.

Shit's fucked, lads. I wish I had an answer to this. I don't. All I can do is step away, recalibrate, buckle down on creating, and start swinging again.

In short, The Unbinding is facing a major rewrite. Restructuring the plot for many a reason. Of the ten queries I sent out, I've gotten three rejections, and the jury's still out on the other seven.

I'm actually not discouraged by said rejections, either. There's this feeling of accomplishment that comes with every one I receive, an opportunity to learn, the understanding that I'm here, that I've done it, that I have something to put out in the world. It's daunting, terrifying, exhausting, but goddamn am I enjoying the ride. With any luck I won't get any full manuscript requests now that I've decided to go back in, but if it does happen, I'll just be completely honest with them.

I'm also fairly certain that my query packet was a hot fucking mess because I'm not joking when I say I have no idea what I'm doing. Beta readers? Critiques? Nah. I'm rawdogging this shit (for now).

BUT ALL OF THIS ASIDE---

The Wilds (first longer-ish play) has been workshopped and is currently in its second draft. What was meant to be a one-act has grown to a considerable length, but we're going with the flow and seeing where it takes us.

The Untitled Folk Horror story is still in the pre-drafting stage. I'm knee-deep in research, found some good sources while learning that my researcher badge on campus has finally been revoked thanks to me graduating last May, so things are getting a little harder to find. Who knew it would be this hard to find anything about a colonized culture from its own people rather than their colonizers, especially when two whole powers did their best to destroy everything during their invasions? Hurr.

So yeah. This concludes this very long post. Went to the library today to pick up a book I had placed on hold, ended up walking out with three whole books. Said book is What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher, and depending on if the mood strikes, I'll write a little review on it on here!

Cheers.