Day 191

Spoiler Alert! May contain planning-stage plot/character details or other spoilers!

02 Apr 2017

It should come as a surprise to no one that I’m resisting finishing this up, lol. Partly, I’m afraid to look at the 8 (!) chapters I wrote yesterday; hitting the build-up, climax and cleanup all in one go sort of makes sense, in the same way that drinking while writing does. It can go very right, or embarrassingly wrong.

But actually, I have a pretty good feeling about the ending - it’s been the hardest part to stick, and I tend to like my endings until I reread them, sleep on them, and realize they’re emotional, nonsensical, and lacking in clear explanations or any continuity with the rest of the book. But, still - it seemed good last night. And I was super impressed at myself for producing over 8 chapters and 10K words of ‘fresh’ writing over 7 hours all in one go; that’s a new record by… a lot. I could work it out if I cared; honest I could.

Another advantage to plowing right through to the end is having an extra day to do cleanup, tweaks, and paperwork before submission tomorrow. Which I should be grateful for, but mostly I just want to be done now, so I’m resisting the final push. That, and I was so hyped up last night that I didn’t actually fall asleep until well after 2am. (Thanks SJMaas, btw!) Seriously, I’m pretty sure I’m the same person I was in the 4th grade, which is a scary thought.

But on the energizing side of things, I casually mentioned that this would be a good time for any prospective beta readers to get in touch in my social media updates last night, and got 3 (!) IG followers asking to read. Super exciting stuff; not only has my IG marketing experiment managed to connect with real human beings, they like the bits and pieces I’ve shared and are actually in my target audience, unlike most of the first round readers (You’re all awesome though!) It’s sort of amazing the progression with this project - from trying to wrap my head around even getting started, much less finishing a full draft, to trying to connect with an audience, and now things are really starting to take shape!

So where do we go from here? This will probably be the last ‘journal’ update for a while (until May), but I’ve finally got a News section up, so I’ll make an effort to keep that updated with anything that goes on over the next month. I’ve promised to keep my hands off Blind the Eyes whenever my editor’s working on it, but I’ll pick up both of the webserials on Wattpad etc., and I’m contemplating putting up the first version of Blind the Eyes as well starting sometime this month. I’m also considering relaunching the publishing section that I hid early on with more coherent (lol) details of what this process has looked like for me and will look like, and maybe get a reviews, suggested reading or Indie author feature segment going, in addition to cleaning up the website (yet again), growing all social media channels, and launching a newsletter. I’ll also put some more thought (and, optimistically, work) into freebie incentives for engagement, maybe get a poll up on what people would like to see.

Oh, and I want to watch Netflix, make some money freelancing, see friends, be lazy, go outside the house on occasion… yeah, the next month’ll be gone in no time at all! Until Phase 3~

Sunday

Start Time: 3:30 pm

Location: Abbotsford; home; couch

Drinking: Honey spiced old fashioned

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