remember when I said I'd be good at this?

Neither do I.

But just because I have not written about it, does not mean that exciting things are not happening over here!

… I just can’t talk about them yet.

I hope to be able to share actual news soon, but until then… have some memes and updates?

The plan to write out the wait while on sub has worked! A week or so ago, I finished up the first trash draft of my current WIP. And it is rough! Sometimes, it makes no sense! But that’s okay! It has to exist first in order to make it better, which is what I’m trying to do.

Until this past year, I had no idea how to really revise something. I churned books out as a teenager and sent them off to the two-ish friends who would read them, they’d tell me they were great, and I’d be happy and move onward to the next book I planned to write. But a lot of those books were broken and I had no idea how to fix them and it left me with a sense of “if it’s not working from the get-go, it never will”. I actually think that’s been the hardest part to learn. Just because it doesn’t work now, does not mean it never will.

When I got into KissPitch in April and had to actually revise, I had a moment of panic because I had no idea how I was supposed to fix these areas of concern. I asserted that all of the methods my friends were using wouldn’t work for my brain. That wasn’t really true. I had to find the methods that worked for me and work on not feeling bad if certain methods didn’t work for me. It didn’t mean I was stupid or my book was beyond repair, it was just the wrong tool.

I’ve realized that revising is like building a piece of IKEA furniture. The instructions make no sense and parts of it are in a different language, it encourages you to use a friend, I’m sweaty, I think I’m doing it wrong, and everything might fall apart under pressure.

But unlike building a piece of IKEA furniture, if you feel like you’re doing it wrong, you are probably on the right track because sometimes books have to be broken before you can fix it.

Footage of Me Revising (2022):

So, this book is currently a little bit like a disassembled Nordviken (it’s a table) at the moment, but that won’t last forever. Perhaps one day there will be food on it.

Anyway, here are some things I’ve been watching/reading/doing lately that I’d highly recommend:

Currently Reading: Bloodmarked by Tracy Deonn

This is the second book in the Legendborn cycle. It just came out on Tuesday and I was so impatient for it that I bought the Book of the Month version, but it got stuck in transit, so I was at B&N on Tuesday to buy another copy. If you haven’t read these books yet, you must. Even if you aren’t a YA person, even if you aren’t a huge fantasy person. If you are a fan of Arthurian retellings, love amazing and impactful world-building, you should have these books on your list.

Other recommended reads: The Whispering Dark by Kelly Andrew

Apparently, YA is hitting for me right now… this book made me feel the way I felt reading The Raven Cycle and The Mara Dyer Trilogy for the first time. I had no idea what the hell was going on! Everyone’s hot! Everyone’s angsty! My review below:

Listening To: Taylor Swift released Midnights a few weeks ago, so mostly that, and if I don’t get tickets to the Eras Tour, it’s going to be everyone’s problem.

Watching: This is going to be random, because I hardly ever watch TV that is not a Bachelor show or Ghost Adventures, but I do spend my work days playing cryptid/ghost videos in the background. I personally quite like this guy Sir Spooks and his very oddly soothing accent as he says things like “if you look carefully, you can see an absolutely inhuman creature from hell in the corner of the frame.”

Now, of course, our obligatory cryptid meme:

Until next time!

~ Mallory