October 31st, 2018

 Happy Halloween! 

Overview:

• What's New: Return from hiatus, baby on the way, unexpected advice 
• Novel Update: Incorporating CP feedback, hope for overwriters
• October Reads: Norse Mythology 
• In Case You Missed It
• Et Vous?

1. Return from Hiatus: You may have noticed I’m officially back from my social media and author platform hiatus! The only exception is, sadly, my YouTube channel. I LOVE the community I’ve found there, and hope to return to AuthorTube soon. But for now, it’s honestly all I can do to breathe life back into my other accounts. YouTube is by far the most time-consuming of my platforms, and therefore will take the most patience and planning to restart. I hope you understand--and believe me, I’ll announce it everywhere when I’m finally back.
   
   I’d also like to sincerely apologize for my disappearance throughout August and September. In my July newsletter, I spoke vaguely of some “big news” that completely derailed my summer goals, along with a persistent illness. If you follow me on social media, you probably already know that the news and illness were both caused by my first pregnancy!
    
2. Baby on the way: My husband Nick and I are expecting a baby boy in March! It’s equal parts exciting and overwhelming. I could write an entire newsletter just on the subject of first-time pregnancy surprises...but don’t worry, I won't. XD (Feel free to reply to this email if you have any questions, or if you’ve gone through this craziness and need to vent because OH, DO I UNDERSTAND).
   
   Ahem. Suffice to say my first trimester was a hellish experience. Between constant nausea and exhaustion, an unending supply of aches and pains, and the depressive plummet in motivation, I struggled to keep up with the connections I had worked so hard to create this spring.
   
   Eventually I had to show myself some grace and press pause.
   
   I won’t get too into how horrible it felt, for fear of repeating myself. Besides, if you’re a fellow writer, you already know. You know how gut-wrenching it is to put your story and your dreams on hold. You know how impossible it can feel to get back into the habit of writing after you’ve been away.
    
3. Unexpected Advice: I’ll end this section with a small tidbit my father-in-law accidentally shared the other day. He sent me an Inc.com article by Melanie Curtin titled, In Just 11 Words, Billionaire Richard Branson Gives his Best Career Advice (It Came From his Mom). Now, he sent me this as a joke, saying, “Everyone wants to raise billionaires, right? What do you think of this parenting style?”
   
   That’s because the first bit of parenting described in this article involves dropping a 5-year-old off on the side of a country road, 3 miles from home, and driving away so that he would overcome his shyness by asking strangers for assistance.
   
   I mean, clearly it worked out for this guy, but um...I have concerns.
   
   Anyway, I kept reading, and the specific piece of life-changing advice this now-billionaire credits his mom with is: “Never look back in regret--move on to the next thing.”
   
   Here is an excerpt from Curtin’s article that elaborates:
   
   “For many, this forward-focus is easier said than done. Especially if you're a perfectionist, it can be easy to obsess about something you did wrong, or dwell on regrets you have. "The amount of time people waste dwelling on failures rather than putting that energy into another project always amazes me," says Branson.
   
   It does more than amaze him. According to psychologists, regret is not only a time- and energy- suck, but it's terrible for your physical health...Regret impedes the ability to recover from stressful life events by extending their emotional reach for months, years, or lifetimes."
   
   The key phrase there is "extending emotional reach." It's one thing to make a mistake and suffer the consequences; it's another to extend the impact of that mistake by dwelling on it.”

How often do we prolong our own suffering? First by guilting ourselves over what went wrong, then by guilting ourselves over feeling the guilt. It’s exhausting, and frankly, such a huge waste of time. Instead, spend that time plotting your next endeavor. It may be hard to forgive yourself immediately after a failure, but it will become easier the closer you get to your next success.

You can read the full article here if you’d like; it’s short.

Novel Update

1. Incorporating CP feedback: Critique partners (CPs) are magical unicorns. Ideally, they are fellow writers/creatives, so they will offer you a different sort of feedback than what you’ll later seek from your beta readers. But even though your CPs are often experienced writers in their own right, you still have the final say when it comes to your book. You are the only author who can tell your story the way it needs to be told. Pick their brains and listen to their advice, but never implement something in your work only because a fellow author, however talented or successful, told you to. Trust your instincts if it doesn’t feel right. Sleep on it. Mull.
   
   I’m currently about 1/6 of the way through self-editing my second draft, and I’m weaving in the feedback from my CP this round. Sometimes that means I blush at how obvious my mistakes are, and sometimes that means I call him up in the middle of the day to debate the implications of a single sentence for half an hour. Sometimes, he convinces me, and others, I hang up and banish his comment from my mind (and my writing).
   
   Or I end up somewhere in between, making a note of the potential issue for a future round of editing, but leaving it be for now. If later, multiple beta readers notice the same problem, it will likely have to be fixed. If no one else takes issue with it, I can probably leave it be.
   
   It’s no wonder editing often feels like an endless cycle. 
    
2. Hope for Overwriters: Confession time: My first draft ended at about 355k words. Yes, it’s an epic fantasy, but still...that’s a lot for a debut. For reference, it’s currently longer than Patrick Rothfuss’ The Name of the Wind (But NOT as long as his sequel, The Wise Man’s Fear. That beast is just over 400k words. And yes, I whisper this to myself every single night).
   
   I know that if I want to see any significant drop in word count, it’s going to involve some major cuts. And while I refuse to cut anything for the sole sake of shortening the manuscript, it would certainly be nice if that sort of thing happened naturally.
   
   Enter this small surprise nugget of hope! I never imagined just how many words I’d lose by simply deleting repetitive language. I’ve already shaved off over 5k words from the first 80 pages, solely by avoiding the use of “to be” before other, stronger verbs, i.e., “He felt anger coursing through his veins” becomes “Anger coursed through his veins,” and other general redundancies.
   
   Example: “I took out some eggs and whisked them together in a bowl,” becomes, “I whisked some eggs.” Why? What else would I be whisking eggs in? And also, if I’m whisking them, I obviously first took them out to do so. Furthermore, the word "whisk" describes a method of combining these eggs, so of course they will end up together.
   
   So unless it’s important to the story that your character is, say, whisking their eggs in a top hat, let the reader fill in the blanks.
   
   I will say that sometimes there is a stylistic or even functional reason to use more passive language, to be + verb combos, etc. Every writing “rule” should be practiced in moderation. Yes, even when it comes to adverbs. I’ll say it to anyone’s face: I’m a huge fan of well-placed adverbs. Too many adverbs can make for lazy writing. But so long as they’re being used to convey something extra, and not leaned on as a sole means of implication, adverbs can provide delicious extra shades of meaning.

October Reads

I had ALL THE PLANS to read Halloween-ish books and be in a spooky mood all month. I even bought a few new ones (my TBR pile is still glowering at me) that felt ideal for October, such as Stalking Jack the Ripper and Truthwitch. However, I am still in the middle of my September read, Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman. It’s not Gaiman’s fault; I’m enjoying his book. I just have to set more time aside to read in future months.

I will read more in November. I can do better than this.

In Case You Missed It

Et Vous?

Still with me? Apparently we had a lot to catch up on, and I’ve missed you all!

Are you participating in NaNoWriMo this November? If so, I wish you the absolute best of luck. I’m here all month if you want to talk about your project. :) I’ll be channeling all the word-warrior energy of you NaNo-ers to power through my edits. Instead of 50k words, I’m hoping for 50 chapters edited. So I’ll be with you in spirit!

And if you’re not joining the ranks of NaNo this year--you can join my club! There are plenty of other ways to keep yourself productive and accountable next month. And never feel ashamed of piggy-backing off the energy of NaNoWriMo, even if you’re not strictly participating. Last time I checked, the writing community was pretty damn supportive and welcoming to writers of all different paces and styles. <3

As always, if you have any questions or comments related to this email (or anything else), please reach out! I’m always happy to clarify or chat. :D
 

<3 Always,
Danielle