I remember, on the eve of the 100KQ4 Challenge, saying that I was so happy I felt those nerves I used to experience before every November. That it meant this challenge would feel similar, would help fill the hole.
I'm very happy to say that I'm not experiencing the same anxiety around being behind. The November days I missed used to compound and that "word count needed" would track up and the pressure would build and build and build as I did my best to cla...
2024-10-11 13:16:33 +0000 UTC
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Hi friends!
Coming to y'all today from the St. Louis airport (after getting 616 words in my 100KQ4 project, woo)!
(Not a great view but you can see my reflection! Hello! Bahaha.)
I'm on my way to NYC for the book launch of my friend Wallis Kinney's 2024-10-07 14:31:44 +0000 UTC
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There's this anxious, excited feeling knotting my stomach, the same feeling I used to get in the lead up to November. I'm glad! I thought that maybe it wouldn't show. That us creating our own challenge would give me a bit too much leeway amongst all the other challenges and I wouldn't be nervous.
The nerves are a fun reminder that we're taking something Big on. That, if all goes as I hope, I'll have a completed draft by the end of the year. (Maybe even a completed draft I could give som...
2024-09-27 13:33:04 +0000 UTC
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We're at the point where we can start counting down the days on our hands until our challenge kicks off! Am I ready? NO. But I'm hoping to be soon!
This next week will be all about outlining. I finished my reread of my old Zero Draft material and have an okay idea of the parts I want to keep and what I want to change. But during our livestream (linked above!) I'm hoping to really finalize those details and begin creating my Scrivener doc from Beginning to Middle. This part should be pre...
2024-09-22 14:27:00 +0000 UTC
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Look! My book tree lamp!
I’m slowly but surely making over my office space and, with the addition of my lounge chair, needed something that wasn’t as abrasive as my overhead light to read by. (Also I needed more space for books. Now the piles look more purposeful! Lol.)
If you want to see the book tree lamp in action, don’t forget that we have a Patreon Preptember stream on ...
2024-09-11 12:39:34 +0000 UTC
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Hi friends!
Popping in real quick to tell y'all I'm silly and forgot to post the link to our stream happening soon! (In, oh, an hour or so as of me typing this lolol.)
My goal for this stream is to actually draft up my pretend query or the back matter or what I imagine this book will look like. So far, I've shopped my shelves and grabbed a few (potential) comp titles that I hope to read over the next couple weeks:
2024-09-07 12:28:49 +0000 UTC
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Today's high is 88 and it's expected to storm in San Antonio for the rest of the week. Fall is almost here!
To celebrate, last night I turned on Charmed and played Super Mario Odyssey while eating homemade apple crumble. The only thing missing were the decorations and a glass of cider. (Next time.)
Tomorrow I'll be on the Inimitable Books twitch channel at 2:00pm CDT for a <...
2024-09-02 19:40:39 +0000 UTC
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Helloooooo!
Tomorrow is our first Double Stream Day of August. :) You can find the link to the stream here and it'll be at 3:30pm CDT.
Our second Double Stream Day will be on Saturday at 10:30am CDT and you can find that link here!
I'm always so excited to write and chat with y'all, but I'm especially excited becau...
2024-08-29 20:31:42 +0000 UTC
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I had an idea that's so audacious (some could say ridiculous) that I needed to rush over here and work out the kinks with y'all.
Before that, though, let's get the housekeeping out of the way! Real quick, I promise.
For our Double Stream Day, we'll aim for Friday, August 30th at 3:30pm CDT and Saturday, August 31st at 10:30am CDT. I'll post back up here with the actual links before then!
2024-08-26 00:36:41 +0000 UTC
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Hi friends!
Today is officially Day 7 of my 1000 Words of Summer challenge and I already have some ✨thoughts✨on this experiment. I'm excited to see if these realizations evolve while on the road. I can't believe I leave tomorrow to help my brother move up to Ohio! It feels like I only just got home bahaha.
Still, I'm excited. There will be lots of driving, lots of sibling shenanigans, and hopefully just enough to time to really squeeeeeze in those one thousand words.
But...
2024-07-29 12:36:46 +0000 UTC
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Today is my first day of the 1000 Words of Summer experiment! I grabbed a tea this morning, did half a page of handwriting in my story notebook, and then immediately hopped into a new Scrivener document.
Honestly? It felt so easy and smooth!! But I often find that I start challenges strong and it's not until midway through that I find myself dipping or struggling. Still, I do have some things I plan to change for tomorrow and the rest of the experiment!
My goal is to lean into th...
2024-07-23 19:44:59 +0000 UTC
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Originally this post was meant to be a "hello from Ireland!" but instead it's a "hello from my usual spot in Texas!"
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given that I rarely leave my house except to visit the library and have recently been in super large crowds and on planes and trains and in automobiles,...I got sick.
Not only did I catch what is perhaps my worst cold in recent memory (though not COVID!), I also broke out into hives??? (And, I'd later find out, likely unrelated to the cold!)<...
2024-07-15 20:28:24 +0000 UTC
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Hello, helloooo! I’m drafting this from Barcelona (or just outside it, in Castelldefels). This is what the beach looked like last night. (At 9:20pm! The sun was just barely setting!!)
I won’t be here for much longer as I’ll be traveling to Dublin soon, but I’ll be staying there for about a month. If anyone’s local to the area or will be around in July, let me know if you’d like to m...
2024-06-29 11:54:23 +0000 UTC
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Hi friends!
I HAVE DONE IT. I've finished my re-read of A Closet Full of Cauldrons. Just finished, in fact. Like ten minutes ago, as I'm typing this. Tomorrow I'll get to start Draft 3 and dive into the re-writing process and I am SO EXCITED.
I'm trying to decide between drafting the completely new scenes or starting at Chapter 1. But you know what? That's a conundrum for tomorrow. I'm betting Future Me will know exactly where to start. Right now is just about celebrating: celebra...
2024-06-12 22:21:22 +0000 UTC
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IT'S FINALLY TIME!
I received the feedback from all three alpha readers and now it's time to corral, parse through, condense, and otherwise analyze what they thought of A Closet Full of Cauldrons. Their feedback has already been SO invaluable, so I'm excited to tackle this next step of the revision process!
My main focus for this draft will be:
- smoothing the world-building in the first couple chapters,
- inputting another scene with the mUrDerEr into the story,
- castin...
2024-05-30 03:11:30 +0000 UTC
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Sometimes I put writing experiment polls up to y'all and one option blows the other out of the water. I kind of love when that happens, because I know that means y'all are just SO EXCITED for one of the options. It's always been an indicator that it's a really, really good idea.
Other times I put writing experiment polls up to y'all and they come back split as split can be. (I love these times, too.)
2024-04-29 13:20:44 +0000 UTC
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QUICK EDIT: So sorry, y'all! Have to run out and help my partner's grandma. Moving our stream back a day, but at the same time. (Friday the 12th at 4:15CDT) Thanks and see y'all then!
I DID IT, I DID IT, I DID IT!!!
I finally did it -- I finished this draft of A Closet Full of Cauldrons and sent it over to my three alpha readers.
It's so funny, as excited as I am about the project (and I am), there's still a sense of relief with having it done. A weight off my shoulders, in ...
2024-04-08 14:01:03 +0000 UTC
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Hello, hellooooo!
Crawling out of my Crunch Time Cavern to wave as time flies by much too fast. March is almost over? Hello? What?
The cavern is of my own making. I “finished” A Closet Full of Cauldrons a couple weeks ago, but knew I needed to go back and smooth things out, fill in names, create some spells, etc., and gave myself a deadline to have it Actually Finished by April 1st.
In fact, I've already notified all my alpha readers to make sure they had room o...
2024-03-28 01:24:16 +0000 UTC
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Hello, hellooooo!
Popping in today with a couple announcements.
First up, I'll be over on the Inimitable Books, LLC channel for a Scrivener workshop today at 12:00 noon CST. I will be playing the part of the curious and confused (a role I know well in regards to Scrivener). I'm very excited to pick the brains of Zara & Kelli and learn from their expertise.
It's funny, having been a longti...
2024-02-26 15:22:13 +0000 UTC
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Hi friends!
For the shortest month of the year, February sure is proving pretty hectic for me! So far, there's been:
- the INCREDIBLE Prime Writing Weekend to kick it off (thank y'all again SO MUCH for all of your suggestions and participating, it was so much fun),
- then my friend and I celebrated Galentine's Day early,
- the double whammy weekend of Tet and the Super Bowl,
And finally -- my siblings are coming into town TOMORROW. I'll be driving up ...
2024-02-15 21:01:53 +0000 UTC
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Hi friends!
Hope you've had a great start to your February! We have one more day of the Prime Writing Weekend with only the 71, 53, 41, 19, 11, and 5 left to go! If you can make it, I'll be streaming at 8:00am CST over on Twitch to finish this event out. :)
Now as February is the shortest month of the year, I wanted to share that we'll be reading ON WRITING: A MEMOIR OF THE CR...
2024-02-06 03:10:18 +0000 UTC
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Ahhh, thank you all so much for voting for this weekend! I cannot WAIT for the insanity to begin bahaha.
(I'm also aiming for my 10K Fridays -- 10,000 words, 10,000 steps. Maybe today is the day I finally achieve both bahaha.)
I'm hoping to go live here in about 35 minutes, so about 9:15am CST. I'll have some warm tea ready to go so I can start counting it towards my bingo board. ;)
Speaking of, if you'd like to populate your...
2024-02-02 14:41:41 +0000 UTC
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Hi friends!
Popping in real quick to let you know I changed the date & time of our final JanuWriMo stream and book club chat (THE LAST DRAFT: A Novelist's Guide to Revision by Sandra Scofield) to this TUESDAY at 7:45am CST.
So basically back a day and thirty minutes.
I got a migraine today and though my medicine has been working WONDERS for me, I don't wan...
2024-01-29 01:54:46 +0000 UTC
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Hi friends!
During our Januwrimo Stream #2, after the D100 rolled a 5 and then a 19, we jokingly decided to do a 97-minute sprint as the largest prime number under 100 possible.
(Actually a super productive 97-minute sprint!! Even if it did start as a joke lolol.)
Of course, this then spawned an idea train:
What if we did a whole stream of prime numbers?
What if we did it on a...
2024-01-24 14:12:02 +0000 UTC
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Hi friends! I'm finally back from Japan!
I'm drafting this at four in the morning because my sleep schedule still hasn't adjusted, but oooooh boy, do I have so many stories for y'all!
Between the earthquake and tsunami (we were very fortunately on the other side of the country at the time) and the plane crash in Tokyo, the adventure to get back home was.....a little hectic. Do people stil...
2024-01-09 19:49:31 +0000 UTC
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Hi friends! Last we chatted (before my power went out on stream, lol), I had BIG PLANS for December.
Well. Turns out December had very different plans for me!
After visiting my friend a few hours away, I returned home and promptly came down with a bout of sinusitis that just would NOT go away. But as you can watch in my "december." vlog, I still managed plenty of crocheting, handwriting of a first draft, mulling over publishing plans, and a whole lot of additional ponderi...
2023-12-27 15:00:07 +0000 UTC
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QUICK UPDATE:
We just completely lost power. Now idea what happened; looks like our whole neighborhood is dealing with it. :( Sorry for the abrupt end to the December 1st stream!! Hopefully everything will be back in time for Twitch this afternoon.
And we’ll definitely still have our Double Stream Days this month.
Look out for an exclusive vlog coming to y’all soon!
Hey ...
2023-11-21 15:51:30 +0000 UTC
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Happy new moon, y'all! 🌚
(I only missed it by a day, so we'll just pretend bahaha.)
I hope you've had a WONDERFUL start to your November and NaNoWriMo (if you're participating). I hope you've found the groove of your story, that you feel closer to your characters more and more each day, and that you're excited to be almost halfway, EEK.
Things have been a little hectic over here. Maybe you've noticed the daily vlogs have stopped. (They had a good run!)
I didn't real...
2023-11-14 21:22:27 +0000 UTC
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Where, oh where, has the spookiest month of the year gone??
I had a dream last night that, with the brief cold front blowing through San Antonio, we wouldn't get any trick-or-treaters tomorrow! ("Dream," but really that would be a nightmare.)
My brain likes to play tricks on me the closer we get to exciting things, and it's doing the same with NaNoWriMo. Big plans! Two projects! Vlogs! SOMETHING MUST GO WRONG.
So I'm here, typing this, trying to quiet that absurd little voic...
2023-10-30 15:04:32 +0000 UTC
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HI EVERYONE.
It has been far, far, far too long. I'm finally back from my road trip and settling into a pseudo-routine. (As much routine as one can have during this CRUNCH TIME of Preptober➡NaNoWriMo.)
Importantly, I feel like I can take a deep breath again.
One of my favorite things about getting older is really learning more about myself. And I know I always need some "decompress time" after trips. But instead of becoming one with my couch, like usual, I actually set up ...
2023-10-25 15:44:26 +0000 UTC
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