A Forrest's Ramblings #1
July is almost over, and that means only three more months until the next NaNoWriMo! To be honest, I’ve had NaNo in the back of my mind all year. I can’t help it: I’ve written a book every year now for the past four years because of it. But I keep asking myself: Will I be participating this year? What will my next story be? What do I want to accomplish?
I still have two drafts that need revising, not to mention A Bitter Drink which I’ll be releasing this fall. I may just spend NaNo editing so my backlog doesn’t feel so heavy. (Two books don’t sound like a lot, but, like… It’s a lot. 😂) I feel like I’ve been going pretty slow this past year. But, uh… *Gestures at the world.* Covid n’ all. I’m sure I’m not the only one.
I keep a log of ideas I’ve drummed up over time. Recently, they’ve been cropping up via dreams. For those who don’t know, I had a huge dry spell of dreams. YEARS of ZERO dreams. It was probably all the anxiety, *nervous chuckling*, but regardless, I’ve been dreaming again and while weird and sometimes unsettling, for the most part they’ve been glorious in that they’ve given me new scenes and even characters to work with.
Not that I’ve worked with any of them. Ha. Okay, but not exactly—I actually fleshed out one dream in particular and wound up with some faces thanks to a Picrew maker. The only issue with this story is that it’s heavily leaning towards cyberpunk/sci-fi, and I have yet to delve into that genre seriously yet. Not that I don’t want to… I just wonder if I can do it justice. 🤔 Why not, though, right? WHO KNOWS. Maybe it’ll be awesome. It feels awesome. 🤣
Back on dreams, though: my most recent one came about from watching/reading WAY too much My Hero Academia (seriously, I binge-watched the entire anime in three or four weeks and then read the remaining manga chapters until I was up-to-date.) That was a short dream, but it had some fun (but sad) content, and I ended up writing a little one-shot about that. It’s fun to write for fun! Fanfiction isn’t bad, ya’ll! Works those creative muscles and forces you to write in a world you didn’t create yourself.
Anywho, for the most part the formatting of A Bitter Drink is complete. Once a few key images come together, I’ll be able to finish up and then start putting a cover together. 👀 Expect a cover reveal in the coming months!
I opened up my Apothecary WIP for the first time in a while, and boy, I sure do have some resistance to working on it, haha, but being in a critique group is helping me work my way up to revising the next chapter. I’ve been feeling extremely burnt out of late. I should probably give myself a break. 😅
To circle back and answer my own questions…
1) I’ll probably wind up participating. Even if I’m not writing a new story, I can use the time to edit/revise instead.
2) TBH if my next story isn't the final book of my Witch series, it's going to be that cyberpunk/sci-fi story from my dream, or elements of it. No idea where I’m gonna go with it yet, but I’m sure I can figure something out. (I need to get the kinks worked out in Book II before I get ahead of myself with Book III!)
3) Honestly I just want to release more books. So again this goes back to #1 of how I will more than likely edit instead of making a new story. I can’t rightly release a new book if I don’t have quality stories to put out. :p A draft only gets you so far! Get yourselves a critique group, a writing group, an editor, something! Discord is a great place to make new connections, just FYI for those of you who feel stuck in the draft phase.
A little news before I wrap this up:
I was using Linktree for my host of links, but Buy Me a Coffee just teamed up with a new website called Bio Link! What’s great about BL is that it’s completely free and was made to host actual artists rather than brands. I love the customization options and analytics. You can now find me and all my links here.
Also, I released the first page of A Bitter Drink to my Buy Me a Coffee page! If you sign up as a Flower Bud member, you’ll get exclusive access to this page (as well as other WIP updates and exclusive content) until the book’s release! All donations go towards supporting me as an artist and helping me to put more time towards my creative endeavors. As always, if there is something you would like to see, you can leave a comment here, on BCAM, or message me privately via my contact page.
How did you like this status update? What would you like to hear more of? Let me know in the comments, and don’t forget to like and subscribe!
