Update 12

Hey everyone! So I know I’ve been gone for a while. If you missed my last update I stated that I would be taking a break from writing for a little bit. However, I am now here to inform everyone that my break is over, at least mostly over.

            I think one of the reason I got so discouraged from writing was because I began comparing myself to other authors. Ones who work on five books at a time,  get signed to a publishing company, have their own editing services, make their own covers, have their own websites, and still manage everyday life. It was when I finally realized that I couldn’t compare myself to them that I decided I wanted to get back into writing.

            I love writing, and I don’t want to stop doing it. However, I am not able to put as much time into it as some other indie writers. I am a full time college student who also works twenty hours a week. If that isn’t enough, there’s also other things I want to spend time doing which include going to practice for my acapella group, spending time improving my drawing skills (I’ve gotten really into art recently), playing games on my 3DS, and of course writing. I can’t devote 100% of my time to writing. In reality I can probably only manage to focus about 8% or less of my time on my writing. But I’m ok with that for now.

            Being a writer involves so much more than just simply writing books. It’s almost like a second career where you have to market yourself and make connections, and keep updating your blog which I know I don’t do enough. They’re all thing I’m willing to do, but probably not to the extent of most other authors.

            For the time being, I’m going to stick to only one or two projects at a time. It takes me a long time to actually finish a novel because sometimes when I sit down to write, I only get a couple hundred words out, but that’s ok. I don’t need to rush anything. I would rather put out work that I’m proud of in three years than some crap I rushed through in three months.

            I will be informing everyone of what my new projects are in the near future, so stay tuned, because I promise I will be around a little more often.

~K.M.D.

Update 11

Oh wow, it seems as if I’ve taken quite a large hiatus from updating this blog and I do greatly apologize for that. However, I’ve been incredibly busy lately and this blog and my writing have really taken a backseat to everything else going on right now.

            For starters, I started college this fall and my classes and school work for that obviously comes first for me. I wouldn’t even say that the work load if currently worse that what I’ve had in high school, but it’s just different and I’ve been adjusting to that. I’m only in class for about eleven hours a week, compared to the thirty five I’m used to in high school, but college does require a lot of work outside of class. I do also work about 18 hours each week, which still doesn’t add up to the amount of time I spent in school during high school, but it keeps me busy.

            Being completely honest, I’ve developed what I would call a new mindset now that I’ve hit college and writing is becoming less and less important to me. I hate to admit it but it’s true. For those people who don’t know I’m pursuing a degree in biochemistry and I’ve now been spending more time thinking about what I’m going to do with my life. I’ve had to think about what I am going to do doing once I’m done with my degree and what things I need to start doing now in order to get to be successful later. I’ve recently been offered a job as a lab assistant which I’m hoping will help me obtain jobs in the future. I’ve had to think about what kind of jobs I can get once I graduate and if it’s possible to also go into graduate study while I have a job. I’ve also had to consider for the first time what I would do it I would have to move out of state, something I’ve never even considered before, since the best paying jobs in my field are all in different states. I’m slowly trying to develop a plan for my future and I’m having a hard time trying to fit writing into that plan.

            Part of my lack of recent writing is a lack of inspiration on my end. I want to get away from writing young adult literature and try my hand at writing something that had meaning to it, but I’m having a hard time trying to think of something I would enjoy writing. I’m also having trouble writing the stories I’ve already started, in particular The Unusual Isles sequel. Since there seems to be a lack of interest in the book itself, even within my friends and family, I’m very, very, hesitant to continue writing the sequel I have planned out. With the sequel to The Unusual Isles, the book would be pointless without having read the first book, and if nobody has read the first book, what’s the point of writing the sequel? I wanted to put my concentration and focus into another novel or even short story that could stand by itself, and would then have a chance at being successful and interesting. The problem with those stories is that although I am in love with the plot lines, I’m having a hard time putting the story down on paper through characters that I’m having a hard time connecting with. I could easily write the sequel to The Unusual Isles because I am already so invested into the story and the characters, but if nobody else it, I don’t see the point in writing the book, which I honestly find heart breaking.

            I am very surprised with myself that I’ve ended up reaching this point with my writing. In the summer I just came from a huge personal victory in my writing after my experience in ANGA. My writing had improved a ton and I thought that would give me the motivation to write more. However, even since ANGA ended, my writing career and self-motivation just ended up entering a downhill spiral.

            As of right now, I don’t know what I’m going to do any more. I don’t know if The Unusual Isles sequel will ever be written, or any of the other novels I had planned. And I don’t know if I will even end up finishing another novel again.

~K.M.D.

Summer Update!

I start school again tomorrow, so here's an update with some other things I've been doing over the summer. 

I think by my pervious blog posts it’s been obvious as to what I’ve been up to this summer. Obviously my big accomplishment was finally publishing The Unusual Isles which was an awesome experience. This time around the self-publishing experience was a lot more pleasant because I used a better company and also had a lot more support. I have also obviously been taking part in ANGA as you have read about in many previous blog posts, so I won’t go into detail about that.

            I have also been working on a few other small projects that aren’t nearly as important for me at the moment. I am working on a collection to 100 haikus. I took a 100 day art prompt from Deviantart and decided to write a haiku on each theme. I realized during ANGA that I am terrible at writing haikus so I thought this would be good practice. I will admit that I only have about 15 done and I don’t know if this project will ever get finished.

            I also participated in another group called Figment’s Next Top Writer: Summer Camp. I wasn’t nearly as involved in this as I was ANGA, but it was still a fun experience. I won one of the writing workshops and I found quite hilarious. We were given a character outline and told to write a certain scenario about her. The character happened to be a swimmer, so I took a lot of inspiration from an anime I watch named Free! about a bunch of swimming guys. I got a lot of comments on it saying how good it was because they could tell I was a swimming in real life, which I’m not. I guess that anime really ended up helping me.

            I also had a few side novels I wanted to work on, both of which got absolutely nowhere. One was a college murder sort of detective story where seven students try to figure out the murder of this one girl. I hit a wall with this one almost as soon as I started it. The other was about a prestigious school that only lets one third of the senior class graduate due to its very interesting graduation standards. I decided I want to restructure this one to make it darker, more like a manga I read called Dolls Code.

            I have also started writing the sequel to The Unusual Isles and it currently sits at around 8,000 words. I still have some plot holes and things I need to clear up in this story.

            So that’s what I’ve been up to over the summer. When I start school my writing time will be very limited, which is sad, but I know I’ll find the time to write somewhere.

~K.M.D.

March/April Update! (Update #8)

I am stuck in the absolute worst editing loop in the world right now. I literally cannot stop myself from editing over and over and over again and it’s starting to get really irritating. I always set these goals for myself as to when I’m going to finish certain things and be productive, but I almost never meet them. First I was planning on getting The Unusual Isles published during Christmas break, then it was spring break, then it was before the end of the school year/before my graduation party, and now that fact that I might want to get beta readers for it had just hit me and that might push this back into a over the summer kind of project, which I really would prefer not to do.

I told myself that after I finish editing it right now it’s going to be the last time ever, I’m going to send it in for copyright and then I can finally move on and get it published, but I’m not sure how well I’m going to live up to that statement. I also really need to finish it so I can get on with writing the sequel which I can’t currently because I have a mental block in my head that won’t allow me to write any more of it until I get The Unusual Isles out there and published.

Honestly though, I love this book and I am so emotionally invested into it and I care about it a lot. I think that’s the reason why I’m so anal about publishing this one, because I want it to be perfect, and I want someone out there other than my friends and family to actually read it and enjoy it.

On a side note I also had another idea that along with monthly update here on my blog, I might also do monthly vlog updates about my writing on my Youtube channel. I thought it might be cool to combine the two things a little bit and give my audience two different outlet to catch up on my writing on.

On another side note I also re-applied for Season three of America’s Next Great Author on Figment again this year. This is my third year applying for it (I’ve applied every season) and I’m hoping I’ve improved enough to make it at least slightly farther than I did last season, considering I won’t be a week without wi-if this year.

That is all for now!

~K.M.D.

Winter Update! (Update #7)

I know, I know, I haven’t posted anything on here in ages, but I figured I should fill you guys in on what’s happening with my book.

So, over winter break, I had my book edited again, this time by the lovely Taren Blankenship who really helped me out with formatting and everything. I was also really nice to hear an opinion on it that wasn’t from my family. She was a great help and I really appreciated her volunteering to edit for me. (If you read this Taren, you’re getting thanked in the acknowledgements!)

After reading it over another two times, I feel like it’s ready for publishing, but there still the smallest bit of doubt in me that doesn’t want to publish it yet.

I really don’t know what it is and I didn’t have this same problem with my last book, probably because I wasn’t as serious about it and wanted to publish it really fast just for that sake of saying that I published a book.

I also really need to publish it because I started writing the sequel but I realized that I can’t get that much into it unless I publish the first one.

I think it might be partly because that I’m afraid what other people will say about it. Considering how much effort and time I put into this book, I’m just afraid that people will hate it and give it bad reviews. I know I’m not the best writer in the world and criticism comes with everything these days, and I’m expecting at least some bad review for it, but I’m still nervous about people hating it.

I’m also not exactly sure about how I should go about advertising it once I’m done with it. I’ll admit that more people know who I am right now than they did when I published my first book, but still, I’m not sure if anyone will really put forth the money to buy it.

After a lot of thought about sending it off to indie publishers and literary agents, I decided that I really don’t want to do that. For me, that’s just really time consuming and it’s just going to lead to more rejection. I also feel that since I wrote the book, I want to advertise for it and I want to get the full profit that might come with it.

So yeah, hopefully The Unusual Isles will be out and ready for purchase by the time I graduate from high school. I realize that I was pushing for Christmas time, but I knew in my mind that that deadline was never going to be met.

So stay tuned and I will definitely update you guys when I publish it!

~K.M.D.