I guess I should use my blog to, you know, update people on things I’m doing at length. I talk a bit about things on Twitter here and there but it’d be nice to put it all in one place.
So, if you follow my Twitter you may know I haven’t been able to write that much. I’ll keep that vague for reasons I’m not comfortable with fulling discussing but basically I don’t usually feel very good at all, I’ve been trying a couple things and had a major procedure I’m hoping will help, but I’m still having some issues. They may or may not go away with time, so I’m basically going to be trying to make healthier choices in the meantime in hopes that it’ll help me somewhat too.
Long story short: I don’t feel good many days and haven’t been able to write like, at all.
Over the past year, I’ve feel like I’ve accomplished a lot, but with little fruits of labor to show for it. The major thing of course was I released my first novella with LT3. This story was submitted in 2016. BUT, in April 2017 after receiving my edits back from them, I had to rewrite it. So yes, I wrote it twice, once in 2016 and once in 2017. I wrote a 20k novella in four weeks and met my deadline, which I think is my biggest accomplishment and the most I’ve ever written in that period of time. What I wrote in 2017 is what became the Masks that was released for your reading pleasure in August.
When I set out to do that it seemed impossible, and I did it. By accomplishing that, I felt like I could really do this whole writer thing. If you want to know more about what happened with Masks, refer to my blog post with the outrageously long title, here.
In April I also wrote a short, steamy pirate smut piece for a collection call and submitted it.
Right around the time I received my first edits for Masks, I was working on what I wanted to be my next project, a story I’ve been writing on and off since 2009 about a pirate and a merman. It’s one of the first stories I started, and I completed a very rough draft of it in 2016 as well. Once all the final edits with Masks were out of the way, I resumed rewriting that story. Mostly.
One of the other things I worked on during the summer was an unplanned project for a collection call of LBGTQIA+ fairy tale retellings. For that, I wrote a piece called Leo, a retelling of Pinocchio. That story ended up being about 16k and was submitted in September.
In September I also finished the second draft of my pirate and merman story, with a push from a friend who challenged me to get the last five chapters rewritten (bragging rights 5eva!). Of course, even the second draft is still rough. I learned a lot from my edits on Masks and have some major work to do on the beginning half again.
Around September I also started daydreaming about a continuation of Masks, which I’d had potential ideas for long before it was even accepted by LT3. I’m still getting ideas for it regularly and I’ve decided I’d like it to be a three part novella series.
It was also right around this time that I started kind of giving out, or rather, giving in to, how crappy I always feel. So, I’ve been slacking off. I haven’t done much more along of the lines of a third draft for my pirate merman story, and I haven’t done anything but daydream about Masks material.
So, what happened to pirate smut and Leo? Well, both of them were not accepted by the respective places that I submitted them to. I was really hopeful that Leo would be, and that I’d be able to say I had two things published in 2017, but it didn’t happen. Pirate smut I’m not super surprised about, but I’m glad it’s done.
Looking to the future, for now Leo will sit until I find another queer fair tale call. It’s a completed draft ready to go. No plans for the pirate smut at the moment (it’s really corny, trust me).
My original goals were to get both my pirate and merman story and the rest of my Masks novellas ready to submit by the end of the year. So, since I’ll be writing in November anyways, I’m going to be working on Masks for NaNoWriMo! If I don’t meet word count with that I’ll also me drafting some new material for my pirate and merman story, and I’ve got a few ideas for a spin-off sequel story for character from Leo.
I might be failing miserably at this but I figure I might as well take advantage and use NaNo for some added motivation to actually accomplish my goals, because while I might not have been able to get anything else out there in 2017, I really don’t want the same to be said for 2018.
Feel free to add me as a buddy on the NaNo website and I’ll add you back, and hit me up on Twitter during NaNo month too if you like!
So, what is everyone else working on this November? Let me know in the comments!
Amara Lynn 