Smut & Scones

Hello. Writing is going surprisingly well, which is grand. We're on Day 3, and I'm miraculously on track. Embracing outlines has helped me get a handle on this story for the first time in literally years, the years that this has been The Novel that I pick up and put down endlessly over and over again. I'm diving in again, and I feel good about it. We'll see how I feel once Week 2 arrives, but so far so good. Come and find me on the forums if you like, my NaNo handle is GrumpyUnicorn.

I often resist anything that looks like outlining, believing myself to be a pantser at heart and preferring to just free-write and see where it takes me. And yet my stories are always better for having done some sort of pre-planning. Even just a little bit. Otherwise I just get annoyed when it goes no where, or gets confusing, or no one's motivations make any sense and suddenly I've written 10,000 words of garbage that don't work. Inspired by a podcast episode I was listening to today, I started scribbling out the backstory of one of my main characters, the vampire Dexter. I finished fleshing it out tonight on the computer. I'd always had a general sense of his backstory, where he came from, who his family was, and the basic idea of how he got to where we find him when the story opens. But I'd never taken the time to fully write out the details. To understand the why of his behavior, based on what was driving him. What had shaped him and his motivations. Let...

What would I love to do? In pondering what I really ought to be doing with my life this afternoon, and with the catalyst of conversation with a good friend, it occurred to me that I need to find a thing that I think I would enjoy doing and start going after it. You know what I like doing? Writing. Reading. Talking about books and the arts. Listening to podcasts. Looking at beautiful things. Anyone want to pay me six figures to do that? I'm a firm believer in the idea that you can make a living out of your passion, that you can turn your love into a six-figure life. And I'm not afraid to put in some hard work. The problem is, I'm miserable NOW. I've spent a lot of years in a field that I never intended to be in, doing something that causes me nothing but stress and anxiety. I tried to leave once, worked in the publishing industry for a while. Financial concerns sucked me back in. It was the right move at the time, but now, It's time to change. I will ...