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Summer Update



We've made it to the tail end of summer. For the last week it's been a crisp 60 degrees and dreary each morning, before rising to a humid 80 during the day. With the Delta surge, I've mostly stopped leaving my house again, except for the occasional walk to the trash can behind the house.  I love these weeks. The cold mornings tease at sweater time, and the dewey grass just wants to be walked in. It brings me back to the excitement of a new school year, to new friends and new activities. 

For the last two weeks I've been on a writing break. I wrapped up draft 5 of the Wedding Crown on August 17th and set it off to 6 beta readers. So far I've had feedback from 2, so I'm sitting on those notes, trying not to thing about it too much until I receive more notes. I've spent the break slowly reading through a craft book (Jack Heffron's The Writer's Idea Book), working on some scattered house projects, and of course, wedding planning. We're less than three months out from the wedding and have so much to do still. We're crossing our fingers that it'll be safe to proceed. 

In the past when I've reached the end of a draft, I've needed the long break to recover my creativity and motivation. This time, as soon as I sent off the beta emails, I started itching for a new project. And since the weather's been providing me with the perfect gloomy backdrop, I've been lighting a candle and diving in. I'm trying something different this time--I have a loose idea of where this story is going, but I haven't written it down, let alone outlined it. Instead I did some character work ala Story Genius, and just dove into writing. No timelines, no pressure, just writing for fun. In a couple weeks I'm going to visit a friend in Nashville, and I'll be using the week as a writing retreat to hopefully hammer through some more of it. 

Since we're now two-thirds of the way through 2021, I wanted to reflect a little on my yearly goals: 
  1. Beta-ready draft of the Wedding Crown by mid-March. Well. This is done, six months after it was meant to be. Done is done, though, so that's all right. 
  2. Three zero-drafts (January, May, September). I wrote one short-story in February, but haven't done anything but the Wedding Crown since then. I'm working on a new draft now, and depending on how this one goes maybe I can squeeze the third one in during Nano. 
  3. Learn how to edit and lean into craft without getting caught up in word count and deadlines. This will be an ongoing project--I do feel like I learned a ton in the process of editing The Wedding Crown, particularly in between the fourth and fifth drafts. There's still more to learn, of course. 
  4. Arrange for a dedicated writing desk. This is done! Hopefully I can share some photos soon. 
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