Writing, Reading, Life

I have been finally getting some progress on my WIP this past couple of weeks. My husband has been kind by letting me disappear periodically to get a chapter or two done whenever we don’t have hockey or swimming to take the kids to. I am glad to report that I am almost three-quarters into my second draft now! I am almost dreading being done this draft, as I promised myself that I would start querying it when I was finished. However, querying means actually putting my book out there for people to read. With that comes the inevitable rejections that so many writers talk about. I am trying to remain hopeful that it won’t take me five years to find a publisher, but perhaps that will require that I self-publish. We shall see. Hopefully more to report on this someday in the next few months.

When I’m not writing, I am trying to read more. As you have seen in my last post, though, I also love to watch more movies in October. Halloween, combined with the rain and the colder days, makes me want to curl up with tea and popcorn and watch movies. Especially Halloween movies. What kind of horror writer would I be if I didn’t love Halloween (I guess?). I wish there were more hours in the day so that I could keep doing everything that I enjoy doing. Darn day jobs getting in the way of the life we want to live, right? Ha. I have some new horror writers that I’m checking out that I found by watching for indie authors on Instagram, so I am looking forward to digging into those. I will list the books I’m reading in my upcoming newsletter, so make sure to subscribe if you are interested.

After meeting with the business advisor, I also have been getting really excited about so many other things outside of writing my novel, which is making it even harder to find the time to sit down and just write. My mind is swimming with ideas, all of which I would love to start doing tomorrow, but again – that darn time issue is back to rear its ugly head. Hopefully, someday, I’ll be able to tell you that I’m actually launching some of this other new content, but we will see how timing goes. I also need to make sure that I don’t burn myself out, as my kids need me to still do things for them, and work needs me to still be online from 8 to 5. Not to mention, I have at least four or five other book ideas that I want to dig into. I’m not sure they will all be as long as the first – a couple may be more like novellas – but I still want to dig into the ideas so that I can get them down on paper. It’s amazing how many more ideas can come to you while you are writing your first book. Hopefully they don’t disappear while I’m spending over a year on the first book to get it in a good enough state to take my first stab at finding an agent or publisher.

I have learned a lot over this past year though, and I am so grateful for the ride this new path has taken me on. I have been meeting new authors/writers on various social media groups, as well as local ones. I have also been finding social media more fun since I actually have something to talk about now. I can’t wait until I can travel again, as there is so much more I would love to do and document along the way.

I’m curious what other writers do to make enough money while they write novels. Judging by Twitter, it looks like many are reliant on a full-time day job like myself. It makes it so much harder to focus on my book when the prime time to write (a.k.a. when the kids are at school) are also the hours that I am required to be making someone else money. I am going to start digging into it myself and see what I can come up with. Perhaps that will become a future blog post in case any of you, my readers, are interested. If you have any ideas, I’d love to hear them!

What are you up to this October?