Tag Archives: Writing

Woman watching the sunset

Focusing on what I can control

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For many years now, my husband and son have teased me about how I often get most of my "news" from social media. Occasionally, I get told by the hubby or the son about what is going on, but I haven't watched a news broadcast or read a newspaper in years. I don't feel like I'm missing out on much for having this attitude. And given the events of recent times, for the sake of my mental health, I need to even start cutting out some of the social media news too.

It's time to put a dose of sanity into the coo-coo of the world.

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Sorry, I have not read every book

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Wouldn't it be nice if we could just read day in and day out? But life has to happen and reading every day from the moment you get up to when you go to bed is not possible.

However, because I'm a writer and editor (that's my day job), I encounter so many who assume that I have all this time on my hands to read every book on the planet. And it's another assumption that makes an ass out of all parties involved.

Far too many times, I encounter someone who starts talking about some random book, assuming that I've read it. Yet, more often than not, I don't have a clue what they're talking about.

"But surely you've read that book. Oh, you know the one I'm talking about. It only came out… um… last year. Ohh, why haven't you read that book yet? It's in your genre."

Well, I haven't read it because I didn't know it existed. Or I have too many other books to read. Or I just don't have enough time in the day.

It's time to put a little reality in this equation, and highlight that there are only so many hours in the day, and sometimes, I don't want to read.

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Woman watching the sunset

Goodbye NaNoWriMo

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When I first started writing, I was introduced to this idea of NaNoWriMo. It was presented to me as a writing challenge, where writers aim to write 50,000 words in a span of a month. The idea was that short novels are roughly 50,000 words, so writing those 50,000 words in one month would mean that you wrote a novel in a month.

Novels for me are much longer than 50,000 words, with most of my drafts clocking in at upwards of 98,000 words. The novel I'll be releasing next year is just under 140,000 words. However, I saw NaNoWriMo as an opportunity to get my butt in the chair and just write. It was about turning off the internal editor—which is not easy for me, especially these days.

So, in 2014, I joined NaNoWriMo… and wrote just shy of 70,000 words during that November. And those 70,000 words turned out to be the skeletal bones of two (2) different novels in my high fantasy series, along with some additional scenes that happen in later books.

In 2015, I became the municipal liaison (ML) for the Christchurch, New Zealand region. In 2020 (in the middle of the pandemic), the New Zealand Elsewhere region was added to my portfolio.

But there were seeds of discontent that had been brewing… and in 2023, it all came to a head. The demise of NaNoWriMo as an organization was on the horizon, and I refused to go down with it. So, I, like many other MLs around the world, jumped ship at the end of the 2023 season.

But the idea of NaNoWriMo was still important. So, I was hoping that things would turn around. I was secretly hoping that someone would be willing to step up and take my place—though I knew no one would. Still, as we head into the 2024 NaNoWriMo season, I'm saddened to see that there are zero MLs in New Zealand. It's seven (7) NaNoWriMo regions in New Zealand, and no representatives of the organization in this country.

I'm not surprised, but I'm still saddened.

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Letter to Self: Your number one goal is to write!

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A few years ago, I came across this exercise that was about self-reflection for writers, specifically targeting what we thought of ourselves as a writer. We were to write a letter to ourselves, being honest about what we thought about our writing skills. This self-examination was to include any strengths and weaknesses that we might have seen.

Through the exercise, we were supposed to identify what we thought were “weak points” within our writing, so we could start learning and improve… and grow.

I’m a learner at heart. I am always trying to learn that next thing, constantly expanding my skill set. So, taking the time to develop a plan for targeted learning was appealing. So, I wrote a letter to myself and stashed it away in the archives of my computer.

Recently, in going back through my blog notes and other files, I encountered the letter that I wrote to myself back in 2020.

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Don’t ask about the published works. Ask about the work-in-progress.

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I became serious about publishing of fiction back in 2013, starting the process about learning everything that I can about what it was really going to take to publish fiction. In 2015, I chose to retrain as an editor. And every single day since I opened up for business, there has been this underlining doubt.

How can I prove that I know what I'm talking about when I'm haven't got the proof in the pudding?

Every time I encounter a writer who is focused on books that I've published, I find myself in a position where I have to defend my choices, which is something I shouldn't have to do. And when I get accused of being a hack because very few of my clients are published, I get defensive of my clients and want to go in for the attack.

I thought I had come to terms with my demons and had developed strategies to get past them so I could do my job. However, a recent interaction via Instagram brought all the insecurities flooding back, making me question all of my choices—yet again.

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