A deadline worked (surprise)

First posted on Instagram, August 2: I did it! The End, a complete first draft, by August 2.

I’m going to let this sit for a bit and then it goes through a revision, and then a couple of beta reads for specific (law-related lol) things, and then I’m going to ask my editors to do their thing. Then cover design, set up a tour (?), do a pre-order. Thank you for your patience! The writing is the hardest part naman huhu, the rest will be easier/faster.

*And yes for the past few weeks I’ve been writing this directly on Vellum. It’s been satisfying seeing it instantly previewed on a Kindle haha. Makes it seem ready.

I’m going to celebrate. Done with book 29!

First posted on Instagram, July 30: Sorry to say (to myself) that writing on a deadline does help me.

I’ve written over 6000 words since July 17 (13 days ago). Even when giving myself a schedule and keeping to it, I would have been fine with that pace for 6 weeks.

Every book of mine that I find difficult to write is difficult in different ways; my previous solutions did not work for this one. Until I went to that classic advice to (figuratively) kill a darling, or let go of a thing that I was writing around, with much difficulty.

What was it this time? It was the idea that I had to hide all traces of this particular (real life) inspiration, because I wanted to keep that to myself. After a while it felt like I was writing around a That Thing shaped hole. I tried actually mentioning it.

Then the words showed up. The characters knew exactly what to say.

This thing we do is so fascinating and odd and you can think it becomes easier but then you’re reminded that you have to be vulnerable to understand the people you’ve created.

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