Playing Catch-Up.

 To my dearest friends and followers,

I began the month of April with every intention to sit down and finish writing my novel, The Death of Jack. I spent the first few days finishing up a few other things and then celebrating Easter with my family. After that, I opened up my document simply titled "Jack" and read the last chapter I had written, to sort of refresh my brain where I had left off several months before. 

I ran in to a problem though. I couldn't remember where the characters were at, or exactly what was happening. I decided to read the 2nd to last chapter, only to find that I still couldn't remember. So I read a bunch of notes in my notebook. The ideas I'd written were all so familiar, but I couldn't remember which ones I'd already incorporated in to the story and which ones I had yet to use. Great, I thought. Even as I read the last note I'd written, I thought to myself, What was this writer trying to say?

The only thing I could do was print the entire book and start from the beginning. So that's exactly what I did. I even told myself, I'm not going to edit the book, I'm just going to read it so I know what's happened. 

As some of you may know, the majority of what is written so far was written during NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). What that means, is that most of the book so far was written with the intent to write, no matter what, even if it's crap. Many of the scenes were rushed, and some of the thoughts aren't fully expressed before moving on to another topic. This was due mostly to writing with a timer going and knowing I won't have enough time to fully think about one idea and where I want it to go, so instead moving on to something else I do know the direction I want it to go. I hope that makes sense. 

Basically, it was sooo difficult to read the first part of the book without editing it as I went. So rather than focusing on fixing everything right now, I sort of just read it slow and marked everything that was a simply typo, and wrote notes on everything that needs fixing, and why it needs fixing. I want to completely finish writing the book before I really delve in to revising and editing it.

It's super exhausting for me to read something when I can't just read it for enjoyment. Reading my book again with the purpose of note-taking and future revising, almost felt like homework. Even after I started reading through it, I ended up taking another week off. But I'm ready to finish so I can begin writing again. At this point, I'm pushing for mid-end of June to have the entire thing written. Wish me luck!!

As always, thank you for reading!!
I'll do my best to keep you updated with the progress I'm making.

Yours truly,

Me

P.S.

I know this is kind of random, but I had to share this. Basically, when I was a kid (maybe around 11 or 12 years old), my parents took me and my sister to Borders bookstore, where we were each told we could get one book. I picked out a book and showed it to my mom. She read the back cover and told me something like, "you're not reading this, find something else." So I picked out Little Women, which won mom's approval. 

However, in the last few years, I've looked for that book which I was never allowed to read. The problem? I didn't know what it was called or who the author was. I only knew what the cover looked like. It wasn't even a cover that I could describe. I just knew I'd know it when I saw it. I tried to recall anything about that day. Why did mom say no? Fairies. I think it had fairies in it. No, not fairies. It was vampires. Yes, that's it. I wasn't allowed to read it because it had vampires in it. But didn't it also have fairies in it? And they were dancing. And it must have been written for middle grade readers, as I remember it was in the children's section of the bookstore. 

So I searched Tween book about vampires. Tween book about vampires and fairies. Tween book about fairies. Underrated tween vampire books. Underrated tween vampire books published in 2006-2007-2008. Tween vampire and fairy books. Tween book about fairies dancing in the full moon. And then I found a section called "retellings of The Twelve Dancing Princesses." I thought, ooh, maybe. And I clicked on it. And I saw the cover I'd spent years looking for!! The book is titled Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier. I leave it to you, Dear Reader, to do your own research about this book, but I will say this: I've never read it, but it looks amazing!!

Additional:

Check out the first book in the series, The Story of Hollyhocks!!

Handmade journals make the best Mother's Day gift!! Check them out in my Ko-fi shop!!