Positive Writing Feelings

After a few months consisting of a considerable amount of writer's block, I've finally been making what I'd qualify as good progress recently. Part of that includes two chapters for a book whose working title is Interwoven, leaving me with thirteen complete chapters for it total. (It's unrelated to the Dúlra Coven Trilogy, but still YA fantasy!)

The past two days I've also been working on a short story that I'm going to try to submit to an anthology. If the anthology thing doesn't work out, maybe I'll just share it on here for free. What do you think? :)

Bottom line: it feels really good to be writing productively again! 

Good Omens

I have just finished re-reading (because what writer doesn't read) the masterpiece that is Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's Good Omens. It is one of my absolute favorite books and has been so for many years now, but it's easy to forget why exactly that is when I'm not in the middle of it. I always remember that it's funny and clever and creative, but re-reading it has reminded me why and in what ways. Though I'd read it before, and more than once at that, I found myself noticing new things, finding double meanings in sentences I'd once read at face value. It's the subtleties of seemingly mundane sentences that creep up on you after you've already moved on to the next paragraph and produce a laugh that speak to the genius of the authors and their mastery of their craft. My absolute favorite thing about this book though is that it just has so many ideas, and it makes me want to have ideas. No, it does more than that. It reminds me how incredible ideas can be and how amazing it feels to have them. It inspires me to want to write more, and reminds me how much I love sitting in front of a blank page that's just waiting to be filled up with words. I think it might have single-handedly broken my writer's block, though that remains to be seen.

If any of you haven't read it and you appreciate the fantasy/sci-fi genres (or you just really enjoy a good book and a bunch of laughs), you must read it. That being said, I'd probably say the same about any of Terry Pratchett's books, and I have no doubt that I'd probably say the same about any of Neil Gaiman's works if I wasn't so poorly versed in them.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to have ideas and enjoy writing...

New Ideas

New ideas are always incredibly exciting to me. Having one out of the blue after over a month of writer's block and slow writing progress makes me ecstatic. I won't tell you what it is, and it won't be my priority right now (that is reserved for the prequel to Faith's Demons, which now has a tentative title!), but I'll give you this little tidbit: it involves steampunk. ;)

Slow Progress

I love being a writer. I love writing. I genuinely enjoy sitting at my computer and thinking up ideas, then typing them up, or sitting somewhere with a notebook and putting my ideas to paper. To me a wonderful day consists of doing just that for hours with some time spent with my husband when he gets home from work and maybe a half hour spent playing with my insane cat. That is why those lulls when, no matter how much I want to write or how hard I try to write, I can't seem to make the creative juices flow as easily are incredibly painful for me to endure. On the up side: I have made actual progress on the prequel to Faith's Demons in the past two weeks. On the down side: it's been excruciatingly slow going. Still, two pages is better than none! Feel free to send writing vibes my way!

Why being sick sucks...

It appears that being sick is not good for my creative process. For about a month now my husband and I have both had our energy wiped out by chest infections, and in that time I have written a whopping one page of new material. The problem is that I have ideas, but they're scattered and my brain and body are too exhausted from illness to try to properly make use of them. Yesterday, for the first time in a while, my fingers' urge to write and my brain's ability to string more than two sentences together finally coincided. I'm now hopeful that the rest of September will be more productive for the as yet untitled prequel to Faith's Demons than the whole of August was. Fingers crossed! Now to just stop coughing...

A little insight into my writing method...

As a writer, inspiration can come from anywhere. In my case, a lot of it comes from daydreams or regular dreams. Last night, for instance, my brain dreamed up an amazing location (that I really wish was real). It was so vivid to me and stuck in my mind so hard that I had to roughly sketch it from a few angles when I woke up. Now my task becomes deciding whether to incorporate it into one of my existing works or to start something new for it (the setting came with a plot in my dream that I could easily expand). What to do? What to do?

A place that inspired parts of Faith's Demons

Welcome to my blog! I am the author of the recently released young adult fantasy novel Faith's Demons. On this blog you can find out more about me, learn about my writing (both what's published and what I'm working on), and interact with me. Warning: my posts may be both random and sporadic.