Professional writer.

I'm a little surprised I never came here to update you about the new turn my writing life has taken; then again, I am pretty busy these days.

I got hired by Inkitt to be a "script writer" for their app, Galatea. Yes, I am now a full-time, self (and family) supporting writer, guys.

Galatea takes stories people post on Inkitt (it's similar to Wattpad) and has people like me adapt them to an episodic format. Then they have designers add on immersive elements like sound effects and music.

Yes, I write werewolf romance (usually--I did work on one thriller) professionally now.

I've been working for Inkitt since late April and, for the most part, it's been amazing.

There are moments when it is not amazing, but even on those days, I can still ask myself if I'd rather be doing anything else, and the answer is HELL NO.

I've even started carving out time here and there for my own writing projects... I'll be posting the first few chapters of a new novel on Inkitt soon. You can also read the short novel I wrote while waiting to hear back if I was hired here.

I'm learning a ton. We work in teams and collaborating is not always easy, though I've really come to appreciate it as a way to bump up creativity and get feedback. Just recently I was on a solo project and I actually felt kind of ambivalent about it. On the one hand, it made maintaining consistency across all of the episodes in the "season" (they use TV terminology for their stories) easier, but it also felt like I was missing that feedback and support.

Oh, and by the way, they are hiring, and you can work from home.

What new turns has your writing life taken in recent months?
Have you checked out Galatea?
What do you think of adding sound effects and music to something people read?

Wow, it's been a year!

Jeez, guys! I'm sorry I've been so MIA. I didn't realize so much time had passed.

Last year was busy and in many ways a great year. I really enjoyed my teaching job and got to do a *lot* of new projects which is probably one of the main reasons I let this blog sleep for so long. Then this summer several not-so-great things happened which definitely cramped my writing style both in terms of any blogging that might have happened and any novel writing. But that led to an amazing new chapter in my life: we moved to Hawai'i--the Garden Isle of Kaua'i, to be precise.

There's been a bumpy adjustment period. Many things have changed. For one thing, I'm now teaching middle school math! I really enjoy it, but it is very different from what I was doing before (one of the bad things that happened is that the district closed my school--I'm heartbroken about that). I've started a blog where I'm going to explain how to teach certain math lessons. It's mainly for the parents of my students to use, but you can check it out here, if you're curious.

There's a writer's conference locally in November and I really want to go! One of my goals for this new WiP, which is not set in any of my previous universes, is to attempt to go the traditional publishing route. I make no promises. I may lose patience with that very quickly. One of the reasons I indie publish is that I am a control freak so it really suits me to do everything myself. But I've decided I want to give it a shot, just to see what happens.

I'm snatching little moments here and there to work on the WiP. Like, sometimes only 15 minutes. It's better than nothing. And honestly I'm totally out of the habit of writing for long stints. I stayed home from work one day and could have written for hours and could only manage an hour or so.

For the current WiP I've been doing a lot more planning, outlining, etc. than ever before. I used to be such a pantser. But it's been a gradual process over the last few years propelled by the challenge of not having regular time to write. Now with my writing time in ever more brief snippets, the outline and brainstorms and character descriptions and everything are absolutely essential. There is no way I'd keep track of anything without them.

I have 29K words done and I wish I thought I could do NaNo this year. Maybe I'll try to set myself a more attainable goal and go for it.

How about you, where are you at with your creative projects? How have things changed for you over the years? Let me know in the comments!

The Outcome of My Recent Resolution

Anyone with even a slight penchant for cynicism probably would have predicted the outcome of my little "I'm going to wake up early to write" idea without even trying. Yes, you cynics, you were right, that never happened. Not once.

HOWEVER, it is my pleasure to stick my tongue out at you cynical bastards and say I STARTED TO WRITE ANYWAY. (Do you like how I've suddenly turned this into some sort of bizarre adversarial thing between me and unnamed "cynical bastards"? I can be dramatic like that for no good reason other than it amuses me.)

The point is, all of a sudden* I found the energy for it. Isn't that great? Last Saturday, during the little one's nap, I sat down on the couch with my laptop instead of at my desk on my gaming computer where I go to play The Sims. I reread the 48K or so words I had done on the sequel to The City Darkens and then began adding to them. I've written about 10K more so far.

Onwards and upwards. What obstacle have you overcome recently? Even the little ones count.

_________
* It didn't happen out of nowhere. It's all due to my friend and beta-reader Kathryn, who finished reading what I had written and told me the main character, Ginna, is a badass. And I was like, "Yeah, Ginna is a badass. I really like Ginna." And all of a sudden I wanted to be writing Ginna again.

Inspired to make a pledge

Okay, I know this is going to sound cheesy, but I was watching an episode of Glee, where they're singing Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror," and I got really inspired.* Not to write (although I've had a lot of inspiration for writing lately, for which I am grateful), but to make a pledge. It's still a bit hazy, but let's see... I pledge that when I break $1000 in sales (this is still quite far off), I will donate $100 to some sort of children's charity. It was a line in the song about not having a right to ignore a hungry child's need... Anyway, once I break $1000, $100 to a children's charity. And when (yes, when) I start making at least $500 a month in sales, I'll sponsor a child. I did this before for a while but had to stop because money just got too tight. I'd like to do it again. And if I ever become one of those epub authors who makes more than $50,000 a year, maybe we'll adopt a child. That's something I've always wanted to do, and if you ever read my family blog you'll know it's something we may have to do if we want a second child (although that's still not a sure thing). Adoption is so expensive though, so I'd have to be making a lot more than I am now to even consider it.

*This is weird for a couple of reasons: first off, I'm really not sure what to think about Michael Jackson when it comes to children, and unless you knew him personally, you can't honestly tell me you have all the facts either. But I am uncomfortable with at least some of what I do know, so for him to inspire me to want to make a pledge to help children, well... Anyway, secondly, it's all the more apparent that I am a sucker for Glee performances, because the previous performance in the show, a mash-up of Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" and Destiny's Child's "Survivor" already had me all worked up thinking I could take on the world. This is nothing new, actually. I straight up cried during Amber Riley's performance of "Beautiful"--and I still do every time I watch it.

So anyway, you folks who read this blog can hold me to my pledge. I will announce it when I break $1000, and you can say, "Hey, that means $100 to a children's charity!" and you can even suggest some good ones.

How about you, have you been inspired in unlikely ways lately? Do you have any pledges you've made or would like to make?

Wherein I Muse about Writing

Despite going back to work last week, I have managed to continue working on the current WiP, which is satisfying. Lately writing has been functioning as my escape. It's not always like that--I'm far more likely to retreat into the Sims 3, but I've had to set that aside because the game has so outpaced my poor computer's abilities that without an upgrade the game is unplayable. Which means I have to resort to writing to get away from reality--and lately reality has been giving me reason to want to get away (see my recent entries in my family blog if you want details about that).

I've set aside the decopunk serial for the moment because I wrote myself into a corner with it and I decided I need distance before tackling it again. Instead I've written about 40K words of the third novel in the Veronica Barry series. I'm still wrestling with the title. Something to do with clouds. I have a whole elemental symbolism thing going--first water, then fire, now air. Next will have something to do with earth. Maybe the fifth will have to do with spirit. Or maybe I'll switch to feng shui elements and have metal and wood. Or some combination.

So far, the novel is moving along nicely, and I've managed to bring together several elements that I'm enthusiastic about, so that's cool. My only regret is that I didn't write The River and the Roses in first person. Ever since working on the decopunk serial, which was in first person, I've decided I really prefer it. However, River, Fire and Veronica in Paris are all third person, so it doesn't make sense for this book to suddenly switch to first. Oh well!

Veronica is, by now, like an old friend, and I can see returning to her over and over to tell more stories about her. I have a lot of other plot bunnies bouncing around in my head. I really want to write a romance, for one. Maybe an Edwardian romance, since I just love Jane Austen. Plus, I sometimes get tired of the violence that necessarily comes with writing a Veronica book (other times I'm in the mood to write horror and it really works--lately that hasn't been the case, though, because I really feel like there's too much violence all around us these days). So I figure a romance would be a good genre to choose if I want to avoid writing violence.

Romance is a challenge for me. I tend to be very cynical about romance in real life, and to find a lot of fictional romances unoriginal. Then again, I almost always enjoy romantic comedies, so I suppose that's the exception. I'm not sure I have the skill to write any kind of comedy, though. I can be funny, but it's sort of this out-of-nowhere thing that happens sometimes, not something I can sustain. So I'm really not sure I could actually manage to write a romance. But it's something I'd like to try one of these days.

I've always loved soap operas, and I've often thought it would be fun to write a series of novels, or maybe even another serialized novel, that emulates soap operas. I'm not sure how that would look, though. I mean, to really emulate soap operas, you have to be willing to go the whole hog. Baby switches, returns-from-the-dead, improbable-relative-revelations, etc. Would that work in written form? Maybe I'll give that a try one of these days. It would probably work best slightly tongue-in-cheek, but I wouldn't want to go too over the top with silliness, because then it wouldn't really be sustainable, would it?

What genres have you thought about trying out? Have you jumped in and tried one that was new to you? How did it go?

the aftermath of my week long writing binge...?

I have these ambitions.

I decided that spring break would be filled to the brim with writing, editing, and publishing... and that happened. I published three books (although I'm going to have to upload a new copy of the third, because I rushed it and then realized I needed to still fix a few things). I finished the first draft of the WiP. I came up with a new story idea. I pretty much drove myself nonstop for ten days (we had a snow day added to the break). It was wildly productive.

And now I'm tired.

I don't regret it. At all. But there's a part of me that's really dissatified with the fact that I can't keep that pace up ALL. THE. TIME.

I decided to make April my personal NaNoWriMo. I planned to come home every day after work and write, like I did in November. That hasn't really happened. Yesterday I came home and took a nap on the couch. Today the hubby took me out to eat, and I'm dreaming of just going to bed right now--and it's 7:30pm.

And I know I'm genuinely tired, because even though I have that whip-cracking inner voice going off about it, it's a very faint voice, and the rest of me can't muster up any energy to care.

I've done the rewrites on the third book. I could take it down from the sites and put the new version up right now. It probably wouldn't take me more than fifteen minutes to do. And then, I could find all the reviewer-blogs I've been collecting and start submitting my books to them like I've been intending. This would be a good marketing step. But it's probably not going to happen tonight.

Tomorrow, with any luck, I will make it home earlier from work, and I'll have time for a nap if I need it, and then I'll find the energy to do the new uploads and write some more for ApriNoWriMo.

I think, actually, with ApriNoWriMo, two things are slowing me down. 1) Definitely my fatigue. 2) The story idea. It's not a bad story idea, but it's a new one, totally outside my Veronica series, and as such, I'm not bought in to it yet. I takes me a while to get bought in, which is why I like the NaNo format--I'm in such a rush to get words down by the deadline that by the time the month is over, I've bought in at some point without even noticing. So what I may need to do is come up with Veronica Barry: book 3. One of the lovely things about writing VB: book 2 was that I slipped right in--no initial struggle to form an attachment. That was way cool. So maybe I don't need a break from it, as I had decided when I finished the first draft of book 2 during spring break. Maybe I need a little breather and then to dive right back into Veronica's story...

Something to ponder.

My question to you is, how do you deal with fatigue? Do you ever push yourself very hard and then pay the consequences? How do you handle that, if you do, or avoid that, if you don't? Do you write in series? If so, do you take breaks between each book to write something else, or remain immersed in your series' world?