Day 218

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

17 Jul 2017

Getting started considerably later than I meant to today, but TWITTER, lol. It’s hard to balance author platform early marketing stuff with, like, accomplishing anything else in a day - I pretty much just flitted from FB to Twitter to IG back to Twitter to Goodreads to FB to more Twitter, and then more and more and and and… yeah. So #pitchwars is coming up and I’m 98% committed to diving into that wormhole. The 2% concern is that if I don’t tone down the social media and other distractions, I’ll never actually finish rewrites in time. And I’ll probably simultaneously query agents during the process. And it could drag things out a fair bit longer, but! It seems to be a great way to build connections within the YA community and be part of the sort of cohort and critique partnerships that all the YA stars seem to be in, not to mention if it actually contributes to a better book and/or getting an agent, that’s a definite plus. The major downsides being, more opinions mean more changes mean more rewrites mean more angsting and time spent and deadlines pushed and… I’m possibly not enthusiastic/outspoken/interactive/social enough for the whole thing. IDK, I mean, everyone has a digital persona, so I’m probably ok, but I definitely feel insecure about the social aspect of being a YA writer and being engaging/exciting/fun/funny enough… but yeah, like with any career there’s the stuff you’re sure you’ll suck at that you have to do anyways, so here we go!

On a writing note, if I can just master my schedule a bit (a lot) better, I’ve regained quite a bit of confidence for the actual rewriting. I don’t agree with the “write every day” maxim; it’s too absolute, rigid, and in my mind, unhealthy, but… too long away from writing, and I forget that I can actually, you know, do it. So getting in there and back at it tends to be a tough hurdle to cross, but really affirming and encouraging once I push through. And while there’s a lot to integrate at every stage of editing and rewrites, it’s pretty cool to have the tools to take another pass and improve. One of the bigger problems for me being that I can’t resist tangling my fingers all up in the entire draft again! This is the first time I’ve really tried to spot target different sections, and while it’s good practice for zapping out big plot stuff that needs to be resolved, I’m almost certain that I’ll be sifting down to a word-by-word, line-by-line rewrite before this is all through. Super hard to get an objective view when you’re down mucking around in the language though, so I’ll do what I can to be strategic!

Monday

Start Time: 8 pm

Location: Abbotsford; home; couch

Drinking: water

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