Jaclyn Paul's Blog, page 4

I’m already a successful author, and that’s why I need a pen name

I’ve hinted about this before, but over the coming weeks you might see a lot more of a new name around here: Lena George. Lena is my pen name for my fiction writing, and her first novel comes out this fall.

Fun fact: I’ll share my first social media post as Lena below, but this — if you’ll believe it — was the runner up.

I went back and forth a lot on this decision. Now, as I lay the groundwork for promotion and eventually book preorders, it feels like very much a done deal.

Writers take...

The stories we don’t want to tell

On the afternoon of April 20, 1999, my mom was driving me to an after-school activity when she told me, “I have to talk to you about something.”

I was in eighth grade. Old enough to know when someone waits for a quiet moment to say, I have to talk to you about something, it’s not good news. I glanced to her from the passenger seat of her gray Subaru station wagon and waited.

I still recall today the exact piece of road we traveled as she told me earlier that day, two students had entered t...

4 boundaries that helped me meet big writing deadlines this month

Narration on this post is made possible by my ADHD Homestead Patreon supporters

Friends, my life has been a bit of a mess lately. My current novel manuscript will finally set sail for the copy editor on Monday. That is, as my grandmother used to say, barring anything unforeseen.

Well. As an adult human with a house and a child and a telephone, among other things, I cannot bar the unforeseen from my deep dark writing cave. The unforeseen can and has happened over the past couple months...

Wandering a favorite writing spot

I’ve written often about writing at the beach, and how I would never have two finished books to my name without our humble family bungalow. And yet, I don’t pull massive word counts on every beach trip.

In fact, since our first pandemic summer, I haven’t written much there at all.

My two most recent trips have been to get together with my dad and help with the house more than anything. This feels fine. I’m finally getting more time in the office. My life finally has a more predictable stru...

At least two weird analogies about drafting and early revision

I’m currently writing a series of essays for The ADHD Homestead. They’ve provided a case in point for why I stopped numbering these series in advance.

I may have thought I knew how many posts this would turn out to be, but Post #1 has already become three posts. So that’s how that’s going.

The other day, I sat down to rewrite the conclusion to (what was then) Post #1. I really got in the zone and did what I considered my best writing yet on the piece.

Unfortunately my “conclusion” weigh...

Writing retreat: August 2021

In my previous post about writing retreats, I talked about what they mean to me, how they support my writing process, and how that’s changed over the years.

Now I’ll share some nuts and bolts about my August retreat with my best friend in Maine. I want to post this kind of thing more often for anyone considering a similar getaway (or just interested in living vicariously — whatever floats your boat).

While I’ve attended several writing conferences, I’ve never done an official retreat. I’ve...

Reflecting on writing retreats, and how their meaning has changed over the years

I like to share about my writing retreats on here (hopefully to inspire others!), and I just discovered my notes on our August retreat buried in the Notes app. Oops! In the spirit of better late than never, I’ll share a bit about the retreat itself in a separate post, and reflections on what writing retreats are actually for right here.

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Back when I started doing these retreats s...

A few thoughts on a false start

I’m pretty sure most authors share the fear of, what if pub day comes and no one — like literally no one — buys this book?

This hasn’t happened to me with a book launch, but it sortakinda happened with my recent workshop launch. I postponed both sessions of my fall Order from Chaos workshop due to low enrollment.

These things can feel like a worst-case scenario or the end of the line, but any so-called failure is what you make it. The most successful creators learn from it and keep creatin...

My editing process: blog post opening

I occasionally share tidbits of my writing process with my Patreon crew, but today’s share felt like a blog post. So here we are! I’m going to show a little window into my blogging process.

Many of my posts here are casual and off-the-cuff. Not so with my ADHD Homestead blog. Every ADHD Homestead post goes through some version of my full writing process, which usually looks like this:

Outline (for new non-fiction drafts; I generally don’t outline fiction before I start)First draft (compute...

Late-pandemic thoughts: please talk to me about work

Friends, it’s been a minute. I make no excuses. 2021 is the year I stop pretending this space is anything other than a more professional, less coming-of-age-angst-y incarnation of my early-2000s LiveJournal.

Blogs felt so different then. They allowed us to step into the writer’s mind and process life through their lens. Terms like SEO, monetization, and content had no connection to blogging.

Not that I ever intended to monetize this blog. Still, there’s this sense, even with an informal bl...