Hey, guys!
Last week was a busy one. I finished this round of edits for The Gem of Meruna, and started on the last pre-beta-reader edits on Salt and Silver. I made it like…30 pages in. And it’s still formatted for 8.5 x 11 inch pages. So that’s not bad.
I also ordered awesome bookmarks to give away with my books, and a bunch of swag for Soul Bearer. The bookmarks came in, and were…misprinted. :/
So now I have to get them replaced, which sucks.
A lot.
The last order (business cards) that I placed with this company, one box was printed with a white line on the edge of one side. Now this…
The white line I can fix myself with a marker. Lmao. This one is a pretty major mess up. I actually had to be a grown up and contact them about it. Which doesn’t make me happy, because I don’t like conflict or dealing with people. Hopefully, it’s handled well. Idk. We’ll see. Since it’s the weekend, I’m still waiting to hear back from an actual person.
The swag should be in later this week or next week. Since some of it involves the cover art, and I know I’m going to want to show it off, I’ll be revealing the cover for Soul Bearer this week!
Email subscribers will get to see it first, btw. They’ll also get to see all the book swag first, and have an extra shot at winning when it comes time for giveaways. (Hint hint. Subscribe maybe?)
Now that the shameless subscriber plug is behind me, this coming week, I’ll be doing final touches, and, if all goes well, uploading into Ingram Spark. Then…ARC readers.
Which brings me to the main topic today.
Writing tends to lead to a lot of self-exploration, whether you intend to do so in your writing or not. It teaches you a great deal about how you think and how you see the world. You have to analyze all of it, and analyze others, and check to see if your viewpoints are overwhelming the story. You have to analyze the viewpoints and characteristics of the characters, and question whether they’re viable.
Sometimes you find a trend in your stories, something that you just tend to work into one novel after another, that reveals something about you.
Well, this week, I learned something very unexpected about myself.
You see, I’ve been busily compiling a list of reviewers (IG handles, blogs, etc. No personal information.) to approach for Soul Bearer’s release, and this week, I shared that list with a few author friends.
And that forced me to actually look at the list from someone else’s perspective.
Which made me realize that I am NOT an organized person.
At all.
I knew I wasn’t organized with my writing. I don’t outline, and I barely do any planning in my head. I just start writing, taking down the most basic notes as I go. Hell, with Salt and Silver, I knew *maybe* 2% of the final book when I started. So much got changed, or deleted, or moved. The very bones of the story shifted at one point, so strongly that I stopped writing, and reworked the first 40,000 words to accommodate the change. I had to.
(Kudos to anyone whose been following me long enough to have read THAT blog…yikes. That was a rough couple of weeks.)
Now, that one is one of the most extreme, an outlier, but I never really know more than 10% when I start writing.
And I love that. I love the exploration of it. I love learning the story as I go, and getting to know the characters as they develop.
But in pretty much every other aspect of my life, I always thought I was an organized person.
But I’m nowhere near it.
Sure, I know where all my stuff is, but if I needed someone to get me a certain book or trinket from my library, I’d be better off getting it myself. They could not go in there, and just figure out the system of organization. because there isn’t much of one. I have a couple bookcases of collection books, a couple of bookcases for books I’ve read, and some for the ever growing “To Be Read” books. Each bookcase has books stacked in front of the rows, and on top of the rows. And within those three groups, there is no objective system.
My favorites go on the top shelf. As you progress further down the shelves, you find books I like progressively less. That’s it.
And the stuff on the shelves with the books is just arranged in ways that I like. Lmao. I call it aesthetically arranged clutter. But I can go in there, and find any little trinket easily.
My notes for writing are barely more organized than that. Mainly, I just put a heading at the top of a page, and fill in whatever I need to remember about that subject below it. When I need to find it, I just search for the heading.
That list of reviewers was no different. Lol. Headings. A lot of parentheses. No real solid structure.
Because I’m not organized.
I mean, don’t get me wrong. I use my phone calendar for doctor’s appointments, and I can budget like a boss.
But that’s about it. Lol.
That isn’t the lesson I expected to learn about myself this week, but I’ll take it. Lol.
Which, I guess, explains why my IG and FB look how they do. So many authors have super pretty, refined profiles. They have color palettes and specific fonts that they use for specific things, and their author platforms look beautiful. They have solid brands.
And mine is memes and cat pictures. Lmao. Throw in a nice picture from my library every now and then, sprinkle in a few posts about my books.
But branding is all about authenticity, so I guess I’m just being authentically disorganized? Maybe that’s an excuse? Who fucking knows.
Lmao.
Can you tell I’m tired?
I did just work a 12 hour shift. And did one yesterday, as well…
Meh. Lol.
I think I should probably sign off, now.
Keep reading. Keep writing.
Later.