As a child, I loved the back-to-school season. It was a time of new beginnings, a time of fresh pencils and crayons, of new clothes and shoes, of new friends and of reuniting with old friends. As soon as the Fourth of July ended each year, I set my sights on September. I would brim with anticipation. (Yes, I was a nerd.) This year, our oldest child is heading off to full-day kindergarten. She never went to preschool, so it’s [...]
It’s hard to explain to others that I wrote a book I never wanted to write. I didn’t even write a book I’d want to read. I went against all conventional advice. Stay with me here. I always wanted to write books that are light and allow a reader to escape from reality. The world is so dark and heavy, and I wanted to bring levity to the weightiness. But, when I prayed for a story, that’s not the story [...]
It’s been months (again) since I updated, and it was unintentional. Life has a way of reprioritizing day-to-day events, and my revision process took a step to the back for a month or so. But, I have picked it up again, and I’m nearly 66% through draft two. And, during this draft, I’m eating my words. Though I never wrote it out anywhere, I was cocky enough to think that my second draft would not drastically change from my first, [...]
This is a long overdue writing update (I think the June 1st entry was my last actual update), so I have lots to fill you in on (especially if you don’t follow me on Instagram). First off, I finished my first draft on July 29th, almost exactly five months after I started. That in and of itself felt like the biggest accomplishment and the most anticlimactic moment of this whole process. Finishing the first draft meant I got the bones [...]
This is a story about a new MacBook. But, this is also a story of so, so much more. I won’t rewind too far, just to February, right around the time I started this blog. I knew I was supposed to write something, but I didn’t know what I was going to write. In fact, I was procrastinating on writing, and I decided to gather supplies. In my mind, I needed software (Scrivener) and I needed hardware (a laptop). We [...]
A long time ago, in a house not far from where I live now, was a bright-eyed teenager who dreamed of being a writer. I pictured my perfect life often. I would be published by twenty, and have several books under my belt before I got married and had children. In the midst of life, there would be plenty of time and finances to spend my afternoons in coffee shops writing the hours away. And, when my current life got [...]
