JANUARY WRAP UP — smol writing updates, Harry Potter, and other random life-ishness

good morning, cyberspace!

The first month of 2020 is over, and if I’m being completely honest, part of me feels like I was slightly jipped in the “New Year” department. On January 1st, I woke up with a cold. Then, just when I began to recover from that, I caught the flu.

Queue me sitting on the couch doing nothing for the next three days whilst feeling like death was about to come knocking on my door with his spindly, bony-white knuckles.

However, despite these minor setbacks in my health–which decidedly proved fatal to my productivity–the month of January was still, in it’s own strange, sick little way, a good month! So let’s talk about January!

JANUARY WRAP UP // books and Harry Potter and life-ishness

WRITING

First and foremost–since this IS a writing blog–we have the writings of January! Now, as I mentioned above, I was SICK this month, peasants. And since my nose is currently still a Santa’s bag of incalculable snot, I’m technically still in recovery mode. Because of this, I wasn’t half as productive as I had planned to be with my writing.

But it’s fine! I still got some writing done, and I’m actually pleased with the progress I did make, which is better than making tons of progress and not being pleased with it at all.

SCRIBBLE ONE . . . SK

I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this on here or not recently, but my primary WIP as of right now is SK–my firecracker child who I love very dearly. everlost will forever be the book of my heart, of course, but this story has a peculiar knack for wriggling into your life and sticking there like a buggy little parasite, and for that, I love it.

Currently, my word count for this book is rather flimsy. Despite having worked on it for the entirety of 2019’s NaNoWriMo, I’m still very far from the finish line. I have about 12 chapters of it completed, and just recently I had an epiphany that–if I decide to follow through with it–will force me to go back and rewrite major chunks of the first act.

(and since I am very convinced that I will be following through with said epiphany, I am now preparing myself for redrafting.)

However, with that said, I still want to focus on forward momentum right now, which means instead of backtracking and rewriting the same chapters over and over again until I finally land on something that sticks, I’m going to be making a folder in my Scrivener file with a bullet point list of chapters and pivotal moments that need to change. This will be my first time actually using brackets and placeholders, though, so we’ll see how far I get before I buckle and go back and redraft everything.

(please place your bets in the comments below. my bet is this resolution will last less than a week. *throws cookies on table*)

In the meantime, I’m currently preparing myself for THE FRANK EXPERIMENT. I’ve been drafting on my laptop like crazy over the past couple days, hoping that by getting all my laptop writing out of the way, I’ll somehow be able to stick to my goal of writing with naught but a typewriter for the next month. In all honesty, I’m kinda scared. This could either be an amazing experience, or a crippling iron fist to my creativity. I’m leaning more towards the latter, personally.

Oh!! And my mom recently funded the experiment by buying me 500 PAGES of paper!!!!!! I am extremely excited about this, folks. This is a LOT of paper. . . *squeals*

SCRIBBLE TWO . . . EV

In other news, I’ve officially started sending EV out to beta readers*, and I am . . . subtly freaking out. Basically I’m good right up until I hit SEND on the actual chapters, and then I start screaming and flailing about in my room trying to turn the clocks back by three seconds, but it’s fine. I’m totally fine. It’s not like people are actually reading my smol trash gremlin or anything. . . *screaming intensifies*

* thank you SO MUCH to everyone who has expressed interest in reading EV!!! currently I’m trying to keep the beta reader list small (and by small I mean teeny teeny tiny), because this is my first time actually sending something of mine out into the great, unforgiving cyberspace to be critiqued, so the people I’ve been sending it to are extremely close friends, as well as readers and writers who write/read along the same genre as EV. BUT!!! if I end up having another beta round sometime (which, let’s be honest, is probably going to happen), I might broaden my scope and send it out to more readers/writers! (but for right now I’m screaming, so.)

BOOKS

I’ve also been reading this month, peasants! Believe it or not, being sick is extremely good for my reading life. When I’m sick and conked out on the couch, I find diving into a fictional world very conducive to escaping the horrors of real life for a little while. I even managed to read TWO BOOKS this month, which is kind of my smol goal for the year. Two books a month equals 24 books by the end of the year, and I would LOVE to read at least 20 books. (that’s what I’ve put as my Goodreads goal, anyway.)

I even managed to knock out a book for a reading challenge I’m participating in (the modern mrs. darcy reading challenge. you should check it out.), so that was fun.

. . . JANUARY READS . . .

THE BOOK THIEF by Markus Zuzak

I LOVED THIS BOOK. Actually, I loved the movie first, but the book was equally good–if not better, as most books typically are. It was a little long, and technically I started it back in 2019, but we’ll just ignore that for a moment and pretend like it’s a bright, shiny new read for the new year. (it also happened to be the first book I read for 2020, which bodes well for the rest of my reading year, no?)

HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER’S STONE by JK ROWLING

Now, I know JK Rowling is a bit of a controversial subject right now–what with her constantly changing things within the canon wizarding universe–BUT I JUST COULDN’T HELP MYSELF FROM REREADING THIS GLORIOUS NOVEL, OKAY??? Harry Potter is my CHILDHOOD, and just because the author can’t stop tweaking her stories doesn’t mean I can’t love the book I fell in love with in the first place.

There’s just something so . . . happy . . . about the Happy Harry Potter series for me. It reminds me of going to the library and picking up as many Harry Potter books as I could, hauling them home, and then proceeding to devour them all within the span of two days. Hogwarts truly is my home when it comes to my origin story of reading, and getting to relive that experience is a feeling I can’t even put into words.

. . . CURRENTLY READING . . .

ILLUMINAE by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

So the beautiful Phoebe actually sent me an annotated !!! copy !!! of this book, and I am simply over the moon excited, peasants! As predicted, I much prefer reading this book in physical format, as opposed to ebook, which is how I tried reading it the first go around. And the fact that it’s been annotated by my absolutely wonderful friend just makes the entire reading experience so much more fun. . . Honestly, this is quite possibly my favoritest book now. I will never ever ever let it leave my presence. (and the notes she’s written in it are quite honestly the most wonderful things to have ever existed. I seriously don’t deserve this girl.)

Pheebs and Ally were spot-on with their book recommendation: I adore this story. XD

LIFE-ISHNESS

• I’ve been writing late at night again. (my writing process insists on continually switching from ‘morning writer’ to ‘midnight writer’. there is literally no in between.) It’s kind of bad for my sleep schedule, but my book loves it.
• I have some exciting P L A N S for February–which actually has nothing to do with The Frank Experiment–so I’m really excited to hopefully do those things here in a couple weeks. Some of them include FLASH FICTION and POTENTIALLY POSTING SAID FICTION TO THE BLOG, so maybe you should be excited, too, yes?
• WRITE-ON CON IS HAPPENING AGAIN!!! It’s at the end of February, and I’m still undecided as to whether I’m going to participate again this year or not. I do feel like I learned quite a chunk last year, and since EV is aaaaaaaaalmost to the querying stage, I feel like I could learn even more on the publishing side of things. . . *ponders whether I should join ominously*
• I got new shoes! . . .they came from the kids’ section. They’re not exactly comfy on my arches after 7 and a half hours of standing every single day but I mean?? They have rainbows on them so I’ll deal. (update three days later: I’m getting new work shoes. these are great for just going out and about, but after about five hours my feet are literally killing me and I’d rather cut my legs off with a rusty hatchet than keep standing. so.)
• As I kind of eluded to above, I GOT A PACKAGE FROM PHOEBE!!!!! If you aren’t already following Phoebe on like every single social media platform available, I don’t know WHAT you’re doing with your life, but she is literally the sweetest, kindest, funniest, most genuine human to have ever infiltrated this earth, and I DO NOT DESERVE HER, OKAY??? She is the literal best, and her gift-giving skills are incomparable, and I am a speechless blob of squishy happiness right now. . . <333

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TALK TO ME, PEASANTS!

And that’s a wrap on January’s wrap-up! What have y’all been up to for the past month? Any exciting writing adventures? Any exciting NON-writing adventures? What books have you been devouring in January? Any recommendations for my constantly-growing TBR? (I’m kind of hoping none of you have recs. I don’t need more recs. KEEP THE BOOKS AWAY FROM ME!!! *screams and flails wildly about with pitchforks*) and most importantly. . .

WHAT IS SOMETHING THAT MADE YOU HAPPY THIS MONTH???

I think a lot of times we focus on the negatives, but this year, let’s start focusing on the GOOD we’ve been given! Whether it’s a sunny day or a rainbow after a storm, tell me something that made your heart squish with happiness this month! For me, my biggest heart squishes came from the letter I got from Jem (again, I DO NOT DESERVE THIS GIRL, EITHER. what did I do to get such wonderful friends?? I feel like a fraud??), the package I got from Phoebe, and finding Frank in the thrift store. So what was your heart squish of January? Let’s talk about ALL OF THE THINGS down in the comments below! And until next time. . .