Even by my standards, September was ghastly. I had a dip in health, and a depressive spiral which I’m still recovering from. At the end of every month, ever since I started doing these letters, I automatically tend to take an inventory of my writing. I was so sure it was gonna suck this time.
Except I re-wrote the short story I had finished earlier. I have a better, more cohesive draft, and really like the overall idea. I tend to focus on themes a lot more when dealing with short stories. Without that kind of cohesion, I think, short stories tend to float in space. Like an extracted chapter from a book, a sort of vignette that says nothing. ANYWAY not to digress, this isn’t even about short stories. Just the fact that somehow I did some actual, real work.
I also did a whole lot of work on the synopsis of Book #2, which I hope to send off to my agent and editor /soon/. See, I have Big Thoughts™ about the world in which MONSTERS is set. But those plans are entirely dependent on how Book #1 does, and my publisher, and well, you (no pressure). MONSTERS is a standalone, by the way. I’m very super inspired by the way Rory Power does stories: characters first. So for me, the character arc is the primary factor in any good story. But still!!! I just really want to write stories, maybe inter-connected, in this world for the immediate future. Yeah, we’ll see how this actually goes. The way you need so many factors out of your control working together to make a book. Smh.
Anyway we’re back to diving into edits this month. MONSTERS, having gone through so many levels of edits before, in its current state is the book that makes it deeply mine. Rage-y heroine et al. I’m very excited to dial that up to 100 and go into full YA mode (the short story was definitely not YA :thinking emoji:) with stupid things I absolute go feral over like pariah girl and golden boy! Angst! Holding a knife to throat! A ball! Of course there’s a ball! Argument over who’s a bigger idiot! Almost confessions in dark corners!
And my favorite: maybe-could-have-been-childhood-friends-to-rivals-to-friends-to-lovers!
As you can probably tell, not being able to talk in concrete details is killing me because I love this book so very much.
