What I’m Writing: Vowing to Get Back in the Groove

For about a year and half now, I have been writing various projects that I hope will one day become books.

The problem with this is threefold:

1. I have LOTS of plot ideas for books I want to write
2. I tend to be super, over-the-top in love with an idea for a month or two, will write a lot, and will then get burned out on that idea and start working on a new book
3. My life sort of went BAZOO in November and is just now starting to level out.

So now that I’m feeling better about myself and my relationships and my fiscal stability and my life in general (that makes it sound like I was losing it. I wasn’t. But I needed some time to figure some things out.), I finally want to start writing again. With all this in mind, I opened up the Google Doc of my work in progress (WIP) and just read the thing in one sitting. And, actually, I’m really happy with how it had shaped up prior to my very long writing break.

I’m very pleasantly surprised at exactly how much I like this story. I kind of thought that I’d end up hating a lot of it and wanting to change things or re-arrange the timeline or nix characters or something, but that’s not the case at all. I mean, sure, there are a couple little tweaks I want to make here and there, but no major book surgery required! YAY!

Now, for those of you who are unaware of my YA-novel-writing goal, here’s what it is: I want to finish this WIP, which I’ve been unimaginatively calling Airport Book (because a lot of it takes place in an airport),  find a couple really trustworthy and honest critique partners, get feedback, edit the shit out of this sucker, and then query agents. Writing in list form makes all of that seem strangely simple, in a “so this is what is going to happen” way.

I know better than that.

The writing process itself is hard enough, and I have absolutely zero fanciful ideas about how piece-of-cakey it’ll be to get an agent.

I know better than that, too.

But, dreams are hard right? And. And. It’s not like I’m writing only for the purpose of getting published. I’m writing these stories because I feel like I need to. The characters and plots and settings are just hanging out in my brain and if I don’t write them down, I’m pretty sure I’d start talking to these characters as if they were real people.

I really don’t want to go down that path.

So! I am officially proclaiming myself back in Writing Mode. And I need y’all to hold me to it. Ask me how it’s going, send me motivational tweets/emails, send me WRITE MOAR tweets/emails, and please do annoy the hell out of me about it.

I mean that.

And! I hereby vow to publish a weekly What I’m Writing post to update all y’all on how I’m doing with the writing and what’s going on and what I find challenging from week to week. I’ll probably even share a few excerpts. (Maybe.)

So that’s that! I hope you’re all having a lovely Friday!