First off, Happy 2020! Here’s to the year I get my damn book sold, am I right?

Anyway, today I wanted to take a little time to talk about what I’ve been up to writing-wise recently.

To recap: one year ago, I began the querying process for my first novel, In the Sky. 2019 was basically full of waiting and procrastinating and editing and rejection, but I learned so much from the process. I re-wrote my letter a few months ago and am still very much querying as we speak.

While in that waiting period last year, I didn’t do much actual writing. Instead I focused on launching this blog, revising In the Sky based on agent’s feedback, and well, not much else.

Ask any author or agent and they will tell you to totally forget about the book you’re querying and move on to writing the next one. They’ll tell you that the first novel rarely gets published first and usually it’s the second that makes it. Truth is, I never once pulled out my second book and worked on it. To be honest, I didn’t have the motivation to. I knew I had to essentially rewrite it, so I pushed it off and off and off, telling myself my first book needed to be the focus at that time.

(A little backstory: I wrote my second book, Unattainable Reality, around the same time I wrote In the Sky. It was based off of the crazy fan fiction I wrote through middle and high school, but truly came into its own when I did a massive rewrite in college.)

So, I kept procrastinating getting back into that second story. Until now.

I dove back into it and this funny thing happened. Something I would have kicked and screamed at the idea of months ago felt more okay to me: having it come out before my first one.

I realized that while I’ve spent a lot less time on it over the years, my second story is also my baby. It is a story I am so passionate about too. I just had to be reminded of that fact.

All of this was just to say that I’m so glad I’m writing again. Unattainable Reality has to have major chunks written as I had this thing back in the day where I would just skip writing scenes that didn’t have anything major happen in them… so now I can do more than just revise. I can actually really, truly write. Which is fantastic.

What are your 2020 goals? I’d love to hear them!

Ps. Click below to subscribe to my brand new podcast all about fandoms, obsessions, and writing…