do it for the vine!

aka my own personal enjoyment of the craft of writing

One of the first things anyone tells you when you enter any creative field is to “do it for yourself!”

As a whole, this is REALLY good advice, especially in a time where capitalism demands that we monetize everything about our lives from hobbies to even your online presence. If you’re planning to become a writer solely for money and fame, you’re probably going to be disappointed. It’s absolutely not a guarantee that your advance/payment structures etc. will be enough for you to quit your day job, buy six houses, and have multi-million dollar film franchises. Can it happen? Sure, but especially in romance, I’m most definitely not betting on it.

I’m a big proponent of following your gut and vibes when it comes to projects. If a project is tiring you out and doesn’t feel fun, or another project keeps pulling at your brain strings, I’m the first to say “just go have fun with it!” “no thoughts, just vibes!”. Stepping away from projects or playing in a new sandbox can be really good to refill your cup and you should never feel guilty for giving your brain a rest and prioritizing your mental health. The best pieces of art come from places of love and it is SO obvious when an author had so much fun working on a project. You can just feel it.

Publishing is a brutal industry, as are most creative fields, so there has to be some level of love that an author has for their work that is detached from conventional markers of success: getting an agent, getting a book deal, becoming a best seller, etc. Success is not guaranteed and sadly, it is not a meritocracy. It’s easy to lose hope and love for your craft in the process, so hanging onto the passion and enjoyment you have for writing is critical, as is not constricting yourself to “writing to market” or writing something just because you know it can sell.

Will I take any of my own advice above? No, no I do not.

In fact, I have actually been in a super weird place personally because of all this. As mentioned in a prior newsletter, I am awaiting line edits on Love and Other Conspiracies, and have quite a ways to go before the draft of Book 2 is due to my editor and I’m currently letting revision feedback for that book take shape slowly in the back of my brain. So if there was ever a time to write something a little self-indulgent and lofty, it was now. That thing was the second chance treasure hunter romance I’ve been mulling around for years. I set out to do this for me because I wanted to write it and have no expectations for it.

However, I am far from the first to write this kind of book and there will be even more by the time this book would ever see the light of day.

Usually, that’s not necessarily an issue. Of course sometimes, you hear feedback like “the market is saturated” or “it’s hard to make this stand out" etc, but two people could take the same exact premise and you would still likely have two drastically different books. Everyone’s voice, style, and perspective will make each story different and each story work telling.

Do I take this advice to heart myself? No, no I do not.

My perpetual fear when it comes to people doing similar things to me is that I am not a talented enough writer for mine to warrant existing. My execution isn’t enough for people to want it if it already exists from someone better. The others writing things like this are/will be far more popular and renowned than I am, and no one will want my take on the genre. Why would they want my adventure romance when they have So-And-So Smith’s adventure romance?

I’ll be honest, it has made it hard to write sometimes. Every time I’m hit with a sense of doubt, I tell myself “there’s no point because this isn’t even going to be published” or “I feel terrible asking CPs to read this because I don’t plan to go anywhere with it” or “I’m just wasting my time”. For the past two years, I’ve been so focused on “I want to write this in hopes that it gets me an agent, gets bought etc” with a goalpost in mind. When it’s just an open field, it feels weird. It feels a lot easier to give up on those projects. But I am determined not to give up on this one, even as much as I want to sometimes.

I set out to write this one for me. For fun. It was an idea that excited me, and excited the friends I told about it. Hell, it even excited random people on the internet. It was by far my most popular #PitLight tweet by a super longshot. There is something about this book that was worth keeping with.

EMTS (the abbreviated title) will be the 32nd complete manuscript I’ve written. Currently, only 30 and 31 will ever see the light of day. It leaves thirty manuscripts that I wrote entirely for myself. I did attempt to query 2 in high school, so I did try with those, and 1 MS just before Love and Other Conspiracies that I submitted to Pitch Wars and AMM, but ultimately shelved before it ever hit the query trenches. In those cases though, the drafts were not written with those things in mind. I’d send them to friends and would post them online back in the day, but they were mostly for me, and I still have special places in my heart for some of those characters no one will ever know. Those MSs were not wasted because they didn’t make it to the shelf at Barnes and Noble. And I’m reminding myself that this book will not be wasted either, regardless of what comes of it.

It’s some of my strongest prose writing so far. It’s challenging me to write a trope I have not written before (and good god second chance is HARD). It has ultimately fulfilled that need I set out on when I was brainstorming: something fun, something that feels like an Uncharted game, with even more of a focus on the romance, and to create a figure behind this treasure who feels like a prominent character just as much as the main duo.

The MCs also very much so have this energy, too.

I’m about 90% complete with it, and will likely wrap up writing it this week or weekend before letting it sit for a bit and going easier on myself for a while. In the mean time, I really need to channel that 16 year old version of myself, who just wrote shit. And it was likely actually shit, but I did not care. All I cared about was creating and how excited I always was to write the next thing because that sustained me far more than feedback, or knowing what the odds of success were.

For the first and only time ever, I will proudly promote the idea of “I should be more like I was at 16”.

Obligatory Out There (We’re going to start going by this because I think cryptids is a little bit limiting, so we’ll be on brand for Hayden and Hallie’s show) Meme”":