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 |  A place to talk about myself, my writing, and any upcoming projects. |
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Hello! I'm not really sure who is ever going to read this because I don't actually know anyone on this site and I highly doubt this is the sort of thing anyone would be interested in reading anyway. I'm writing it for two reasons. The first is for myself, so I have a place to sort of keep track of my progress on various projects and everything. The second reason is because I just got my upgraded membership today, and I want to try and make the most of it, which means finally getting around to using all of the features. On the off-chance that someone is actually reading this though, I'm going to do a little introduction here where I talk about myself and my writing and the sorts of things you can expect to read if you check this out. My name is Cat Voleur, I'm currently 21 years old, and I'm a professional writer. I got my first writing job a few months before I graduated high school. After that I spent about a month taking writing commissions while I looked for steadier work, and I was eventually employed as a ghost writer, where I spent about 3 years. I've quit ghost-writing very recently (and am consequently broke) to pursue my own dreams and perhaps establish a small following. I really enjoyed ghost writing because it gave me the freedom to travel and sort of choose my own schedule, but now I'm looking for something that I can take credit for. It's pretty sad to have steady writing work for 3+ years and wake up one day and realize all of the pieces in your portfolio are things you wrote as an angst-filled teenager. I'm going to take some time, edit some of my old pieces, write some new things, and try to see if anyone is interested in reading the things that I write under my own name. My commission and portfolio sites are, as of this moment, down for some maintenance work, but hopefully I'll be getting it back up soon with links to some of my work on this site. I also have a couple theme blogs run through tumblr and am currently the head writer of Toxic Bubblegum which is a zine published monthly put out by myself and my very talented friend, Alan Johnson. As for what I'd like to do in the future - I guess it just depends on what sort of opportunities I run into. I'm a big believer in just seizing the moment and going with the flow. The one thing I am sure of is that I'd like a career in writing. I sort of lucked into my first job, but now that I have a taste of being a writer I can't imagine being anything else. Ideally I would like to eventually have something published under my own name and become an author, but I'm willing to see where life takes me. I prefer writing in the horror genre, because that's where my real passion is. I look up to a lot of horror writers and if I could do anything, that would be it. I have the most experience writing in romance because that, unfortunately, is where the money is and that's what a lot of my paying gigs have been up to this point. I've been told that my strength is in fantasy. I don't know if that's true or not, but it's what most people tell me. I first got my account here a few years ago, around the time I started writing professionally, and I haven't done a lot since then other than upload a piece here and there. That's something I'm going to try really hard to get better about. I'd like to upload more stuff, get more active in the community, maybe see about meeting some fellow writers. Today is a very exciting day for me because I just purchased my upgraded membership. It was on sale or I might not have done it because I am, as I previously stated, broke. I've really wanted a membership here for awhile and I'm so glad that I finally did it because so far it really has been motivating me to get some stuff done. The first thing I plan on doing is uploading the most recent draft of Silence of the Lamps, which was the first thing I ever put up on the site, and it's undergone a lot of editing since then. After that I'm going to work on getting some more rough drafts up on here, and then maybe attempt to socialize, which is hard for me because even online I get really nervous reaching out to people. Anyway, if anyone read this, I'm sorry I babbled so long and thank you for your interest! Feel free to message me at any time if you want to chat or would like to have me read something or collaborate or anything. I don't bite, I promise. -Cat |
| Hey guys, I'm here to complain about my most recent writing blunder. I've been working really, really hard on submissions lately and even with the other projects I'm juggling I've been really on the ball. Until today. I realized I only had one thing I had to get done today, so I procrastinated doing it by working on a highly controversial piece of political horror all morning (the sounds of the local news praising a man who I honestly believe will bring about the third World War really set the mood.) I eventually finished my latest draft of that, sent it out to my test readers and turned to the one thing I had to do today. I've got a submission deadline on the 25th for a horror anthology. I finished my rough draft about a week and a half ago and set it aside, giving myself a few days to edit comfortably while I worked on my other rough drafts. I like to take a little bit of space between my rough draft and my second draft, and that's a pretty normal part of my process. Only this time, looking through, I realized that I don't actually like the piece at all. I like the concept a lot, but the execution is not my best. The characters are okay but in the time frame I had I didn't have a lot of space to get into their personalities too much which makes them come across as pretty underwhelming. The worst part is the end, which is incredibly sloppy. My endings in horror rough drafts are typically kind of sloppy because I get excited and my longhand goes from formal and eloquent to more of a jotting down the gist as soon as I can - so I am used to my endings needing the most amount of work. But I'm really just not feeling this one, and I don't see how I can improve it with the time frame I have or the word count restrictions for the anthology. The anthology itself is pretty open, but all of the stories that I have polished and ready to go are currently being considered somewhere. I don't know if I should try to get another one done in the next five days or just accept that this is one anthology I won't be getting into. I could use the time to work on the other editing I have to get done this month and get some more progress made on my portfolio...but on the other hand the opportunities seem to be going through a bit of a slow season, so it seems sort of silly to skip one if I don't have to. So that's where I'm at with stuff today - and my next few writing days are going to be slow because my boyfriend is off work and we're going to go look at apartments and stuff. Being a writer is really, really tough sometimes. Anyway, I hope things are going well for you guys and as always, you will be hearing from me shortly. All the best, Cat |
| Hey Guys, It's finally happening. I am finally making some progress on my portfolio. It's going to happen in bits and pieces around my other projects, but I have finally started. I uploaded a rough draft today that I plan on polishing into one of my portfolio excerpts, and potentially turning into a long-term project. It's still kind of a mess right now, but at least I'm trying, right? Anyway, I just wanted to let you guys know I'm still here, I'm still trying to catch up and most importantly I'm still writing  |
| Hey guys, I have been working nonstop for the past couple days and I seem to be falling further behind. It seems like the more things I do the more things that I find I want to do. Here's a little bit of what I am personally up to at the moment, and if it seems like a lot of projects - that's because it is. ~Off-Site Projects~ Manuscript Yesterday I mentioned that I was starting a manuscript and I'm cautiously optimistic. Although this might not have been my first choice of project, I do think that it's the most practical choice out of all the things I was considering. There isn't a lot of research required (well, research that I didn't already have to do for the short story it's based off of) and even though I'm only 5,000 words in I think that if I can stick to it, it might even be an appropriate length when it's finished. The big problems I was having with "Hotel Torres" and "Viral" were that my polished outlines for them were placing my potential word count dangerously high, and it's just so daunting as a first time author to go to a publisher with a manuscript of that size. (Not that I'm ready to be going to publishers yet, but I want to work on something that I know I'll eventually feel comfortable taking to one.) I want to get a little further with it before I feel comfortable sharing, but I wanted to let you guys know that it's definitely a thing that's happening. Horror Blog As you guys probably know (because I won't shut up about it) my horror blog is off hiatus. I didn't really think that one through. As excited as I am to be back to it (horror blogging is one of my greatest passions as it turns out) one of the things I promised with my return was more live content. It's going over fairly well, that's what people want to see, but I didn't consider how hard it would be to juggle posting well-rounded, live horror content on a regular basis around trying to fix my theme, add new tag pages, go through my backlog of submissions and get this year's queue together. I think I can manage it, but it's going to be a rough couple of weeks, and very time consuming until I can climb back on top of things. Social Media I'm not doing the best at this one, but I am making very, very slow progress at the social media thing. The accounts for my horror blog are being responded to very positively - particularly by some of the big shots in the creepypasta and true crime communities (and just to clarify here, I do mean true crime bloggers, not true crime committers). My personal accounts are struggling (understatement) but I am being followed on twitter by a handful of writing blogs and occasionally have conversations through there with other indie writers, so that's pretty cool. Zine In just a couple days my zine will be starting back up with an exclusive Friday the 13th issue. We're making the transition over to Patreon so that we don't have to do monthly subscriptions anymore and it will actually be more open and less time consuming - but until we can actually get it switched over it means lots of coding, site maintenance, and setting up a Patreon account for me, since I'm (sadly) our tech person. That doesn't even include the hours writing, editing, and scripting that go into the actual content portion of the zine (which unfortunately only accounts for about 5% of the time that I spend working on it.) Submissions My quest for publication is far from done, and I refuse to let it hinge on one manuscript that will be finished who only knows when. I am still submitting to zines, sites and anthologies. Sometimes this is just as simple as a cover letter attached to one of my polished pieces, but the more on the ball I become about submissions the more frequently I'm having to write brand new content tailored to each piece that I want to submit. I think I finally perfected my system for doing this (which is one less thing to worry about) but that's still anywhere from 2-10 pieces that I do every month, often within a very small time frame. Research Site Projects~ Reviews I'm still working through the list of reviews I need to get done, and almost through them. I've also been field testing one of my genre specific themes, and there haven't been any complaints so far. I would like to get a specific signature for it that's a little creepier, but that's a ways down the road I think because of the other many things I have going on at the moment. Blog This isn't actually a current thing quite yet, but the closer I get to approaching the end of this blog, the more I'm thinking about ideas and templates for the next one. I do think it will be better :D Portfolio Things I know, I know. I keep saying that I'm going to have to get my portfolio things done (which I really, really do) and I keep delaying it, but I guess that's just how life works - especially in a creative field sometimes. It's not that I've given up on my portfolio or any of those sad, empty folders in it, but it just became less of a priority. I want to establish a solid group of readers. I want to field test my work and grow across multiple genres. I want to have more of my stories visible online. I'm going to accomplish these things. It's just that 2017 has gotten off to a crazy start. With submissions I'm always, always going to be swamped for as long as I keep at them as mercilessly and as thoroughly as I have been lately, but there are other projects that are going to be less time consuming once I get set up. Once I have a handle on the theme/content for my horror blog I'll have more time opening up and I do prewrite as much of the zine content as possible way, way in advance to give the artist as much time as possible to do his thing. My portfolio is important, and I'm going to get to it, but truth is it doesn't have a deadline. My zine has deadlines. My blog has deadlines. Submissions have really, really tight deadlines. The first two I can knock out of the way, but it's time to just admit that my portfolio is something that I'm going to have to do in those short spans of time between finishing my monthly submissions and starting the next month's submissions. Now that particular timeslot is being split with a manuscript, it's going to be slow going. That sucks, but it's how it is right now. Romance I can't write romance. I can, obviously (that was how I made my living for years) but I can't do it for myself. If I'm not writing for a specific person, if I have no outline, I can't do it. I'm not a romantic person. The only two kinds of romance that I write for myself are fanfiction, or really long, really disturbing pieces of erotica (which I'm not going to elaborate on too much here, but the point is that I think it would really weird a lot of people out.) So, I need to decide what to do with my romance folder on here, and how I want to go about separating my erotic content, if I decide that I want to scare people off my portfolio in order to post my content. One thing that I've been considering is doing the whole "secondary account" thing for my pen name. I've been considering for awhile the prospect of writing dark erotica under a pen name, I have one picked out, and that might be a good way to test the water - although it would still leave my personal account devoid of romantic samples... so that's where I'm at there. Novel Folders I'm actually not sure if I'm going to do this or not yet, but it's something I've been toying with. I'm in a novel group on here that I'm really excited about, but my novels are so disorganized. I have all the information for them stored neatly in my head, but very little evidence to support that I'm actually working on this. I've been thinking (once more of my basic portfolio is up and polished some) that I'll put together some project folders (or static items with lots of links since I like to do my folders mostly by genre) that have whatever notes, outlines, excerpts, character information, same-world stories that I feel comfortable sharing. That way I can get feedback on ideas before pouring all my time and energy into them and then second guessing myself because I have no support system in the early stages. Sharing rough concepts scares me, but it's something I'm trying to work past and I think it would be good for me. This is a big step, but it might be the best way to get some input on my novel ideas, and letting talented writers choose my projects for me (or influence my decision at the very least) might allow me to tackle the novels one by one rather than tacking on bits and pieces to dozens of projects at once.) Contest My horror contest idea is on hold for the time being. I'm still excited about doing it in the future, but my horror blog needs to come first because the two are connected. The more work is completed on my horror blog the more energy/time I'll have to put into hosting a contest, and the more receptive my followers will be to reading the content I get from here. It's not being abandoned, but I have some other things I need to tackle first. So yes, this is where I"m at with things at the moment and why I'm so slow lately with responses and why I'm still not posting new portfolio content or doing as many reviews. I'm still around, I'm just incredibly busy and determined not to get crushed under the weight of projects. I hope things are going well for you guys, and I look forward to hearing from you. All the best, Cat |
| Hey guys, I have literally been going crazy since before NaNoWriMo last year trying to pick a long-term project that could potentially result in me having a manuscript. I've been tearing myself apart over this around submissions and blogging and portfolio work and it's been eating away at me. I've been outlining projects, I've been doing character pieces for projects, I've been researching the projects that need researched (even the ones that need an insane amount of research because I thought I had figured it out, started writing, and realized about 65,000 words in that I wanted to tell the same story, but on a much wider scale and am now left with a very focused cast for a story that I want to cover so much more ground with, and now I realize that to get the proper cast I have to do some serious research into other countries because I've lead an incredibly sheltered life and I have a fear of misrepresenting other cultures) and just generally doing a ton of work. I've been bouncing back and forth between a handful of ideas. There's the insane research project that I think could well be upwards of 100k but would really like released as one issue (which, assuming I could finish all the research for that before I die, would still be a nightmare to do anything with. It would be hard to workshop, hard to edit, and even if it were perfect nowhere would publish it because no one is going to publish a horror novel that long by a completely unknown author.) There's my other virus/plague project, the notes for which are sitting somewhere in an office on the other side of the country, because I didn't really think I would need them down here. There's the zombie novel, the rough draft to which I've had completed for a few years now, but I have no motivation to pursue because, even if I do have a super amazing idea for a comic follow-up, nobody but me is still interested in straight up zombie fiction anymore. There's the hotel project that I've dedicated to odds and random generators (my poor boyfriend has also gotten sucked into the planning for this one - I spent an evening making him roll dice to determine who lived and how badly survivor's were haunted). There's my deep web martyr project, which has quite a bit of, less than savory content that I have to justify with actual talent, unless I want to start my novelization career in novels publishing flat-out torture porn. And of course, there's my dark fantasy project that I can't outline because I can't quite decide if it's actually a dark fantasy project, or a psychological horror piece. I thought that if I obsessed over this enough, or got enough work done on each of them, a path would eventually be made clear. I thought something would click and I would get an answer. So this morning, when I woke up at an ungodly hour of the morning after getting to bed just a couple hours beforehand, with a crystal clear image in my head of how to adapt a short story that I had no intention of spending any more time on into a full length novel, there was about one minute of breakthrough followed by about a half hour of questioning whether or not it would be worth it at that point. I'm not convinced that it is worth it,but within an hour I had the complete outline ready to go, and I guess this is my life now. I am running on less than three hours sleep, and in the middle of so many other things, but guess what? I think I'm starting my book today. |
| Hey Guys, So, I've been pouring a lot of my time and energy into my offsite horror blog lately, and am about to polish up my queue to serve as a safety net in case I have any more technical difficulties or in case things are slow in the horror community. One of the things that has been requested for my queue is more horror stories. I typically fill the need for horror fiction with creepypastas, because it's an abundant source of free horror fiction that's available to anyone with internet access, and back when I first started out that's typically what my followers wanted to see more of. What I'd really like to do is branch out - and it occurred to me that I just so happen to have an in with a ton of talented writers right here on WdC. What I'd like to do, for anyone who is interested, is put their stories up on my horror blog. They'd of course be given full credit, the post would include a link to the original story (assuming it had already been posted here) and a link to their site/social media page. It would be good for me, my followers could get more horror content, and the writers would get a wider readership (in theory, anyway. A lot of my followers have been sort of absentee lately.) The only thing is I'm not sure the best way to reach out to people here on the site. I could start a contest, but I'm not 100% confident in my ability to run one and I don't have a lot of funds for prizes at the moment. It's an idea I've been playing with for awhile, but I just really don't know how to go about it. In an ideal situation I could set up a monthly contest that gets the blog followers involved a bit more. All the entries I get from here could go on the blog, there could be voting from my readers, I could hand out awardicons or MBs or something, and everyone would get promoted. That would be great... but I just have a feeling that it definitely wouldn't go that smoothly. What I'd like to do first is test the waters a little bit with the blog, see if I can actually get people participating and reading the promoted fiction before I get anyone's hopes up here. Of course to do that, I would probably need some guinea pigs. So, I'm opening this up for discussion. What do you guys think? Any thoughts or ideas on running a contest would be good. Any suggestions on how to reach out to the fantastic horror writers on here (other than just one at a time)? Any horror writers who would like to submit their work to me for free promotion while I try to figure this out? Really anything at this point would be helpful. I don't really feel like I'm on top of my own stuff enough to be tackling a project this big, but I also know that there's never going to be a perfect time, and the request for horror fiction was just put in so... I don't know. Thoughts? |
| Hey guys, I know that this has been a rough year for many, myself included, and here's hoping that 2017 will be better. The cynic in me has some serious doubts due to recent political events, but I am trying to remain optimistic. To cite Amanda Palmer's rather controversial statement (that I'll admit, could have been presented/phrased much better than it was), rough times give artists a great chance to thrive. This idea by no means make me any less terrified of the things I fear may be on the horizon, but it does give me some comfort to know that there are so many talented individuals who will be able to shine and create beautiful things in what could very well be a bleak future. (I'm the best at optimism, right?) A lot of the talented writers that I have been lucky enough to meet through this site give me hope that no matter what happens, there are still going to be things to look forward to; new content that will be worth sticking around for. I have some Writing.Com projects coming up that I am really, really excited about. I want to kick the new year off to a good start. The first thing obviously is to finish my correspondences on here - which I'll be dedicated much of my day to. I only got a few things replied to the last time before I ended up crashing on the desk - oops. So I'll be on for awhile answering messages, trying to wrap up some reviews (it's been a long time since I've actually posted any reviews - and I feel really terrible about that. I know people have been waiting awhile.) That obviously is stuff that's going to need to get done before I start on anything new, but I wanted to let you guys know a little bit about what is coming up, in case anyone still cares. Since I'm almost out of room in this book item, I'll be needing to create a new blog soon, and I've got a lot of ideas for it. I'm thinking about making it slightly more newsletter-y. Most of it will still be ranting (honestly, ranting about stuff is the main reason why blogging appeals to me in the first place) but I'm going to make a fancy template for it - and I want to start promoting more stuff. I'm thinking at least once a week (maybe every other week - I am juggling a lot of start-ups at the moment) linking the public reviews I've done and sharing links with some of my favorite pieces that I've read or that friends have done. As for the book thing - I think I'm just going to go ahead and do regular static items with the excerpt and an author's note about how it's an excerpt. Then I can tackle the full length book items one at a time, but sort of on the back burner. That way I don't clutter up my portfolio with a lot of books that only have one or two chapters in them. I feel like that would really annoy people, especially if I'm doing it in every genre. Then, if and when a book gets far enough along or when I collect enough bits and pieces for it, I can create a project folder for it. I will cross that bridge when I get there. I'm thinking I might be more productive if I stop stressing myself out about things that are too far down the road to have a solution. I also am thinking about sponsoring a contest. It's something I've been thinking about on and off for awhile now - and now that my horror blog is off hiatus I've been thinking about seeking some new horror talent to feature. Maybe teaming up with a narrator or an artist (or ideally both) to put together a neat narration video for the winner. They'd then have their story on the narrator's channel, on the artist's page, and then obviously their work would be promoted on my horror blog. I'd need to get some collaborators for that obviously, but it's something I am thinking I want to do. The last thing that I want to give you guys a heads up about right now is some horror stories that might or might not be on their way. All of my polished works (minus the one that I got the rejection letter for a couple days ago) are currently being considered by different magazines, anthologies, and websites. A few of them are edited versions of pieces that have already been on my portfolio, but some of them are content never before seen on the internet. As the rejection letters start coming in, I'm going to be uploading many of them to my horror folder on here because they were written for specific things and if they're not needed there, I think I'd rather flesh out my folders on here than try to alter them to fit in at other places. And that's about it. I am going to be talking to you guys soon (some of you directly and very, very soon because I'm off to go through my inbox) and will hopefully be seeing all of you around. I hope everyone has fun New Year's plans, and that 2017 gets off to a good start for all of you. Best wishes, Cat |
| Hey guys, I am determined to do something at least mildly productive tonight, but due to the most recent rejection letter (record time for this one -yay) I am not really feeling in the writing mood. I want to curl up and watch Youtube videos and drink hot chocolate, but have promised myself I will start dealing with rejection better, like a professional. So I have decided to compromise. I am going to complain about it here briefly and be melodramatic and weepy (boo hoo) and now I'm going to move past it. Life moves on. Even if my stories were perfect (I know that they're far from) they would not be a fit for every anthology. Putting my stuff out there more also means getting rejected a lot more, so I'm going to have a lot of these letters coming my way very soon. I'm going to go ahead and use this non-writing work time to catch up on some of my reading and correspondences - something which I have been putting off literally all month. It's always a daunting task to go through and apologize to everyone for missing out on things after a computer crash takes you offline for a couple weeks, and I am waaaaaay behind in reviews. Hopefully I will make some headway on that tonight, and tomorrow I will try to get back on the writing horse. All the best, Cat |
| Hey guys, I didn't get very specific in my last entry, but I thought I would take the time today to talk about some of the stuff I'm working on now that I (sort of) know what my upcoming projects will be. I got super behind on my projects, both on and off site (not to make excuses, but a very handsome man keeps buying me video games. Since I'm trying to take my gaming blog off hiatus, it's easy to tempt me with the promise of an opportunity to make my PSN/Steam counts look a little bit more decorated before I link them up.) over the course of this last month. One thing that I really need to do (and that needs to take some serious priority) is getting my portfolio site updated, filled with new shiny content, and all linked up. I have been saying that forever, but it's something that needs to happen. Soon. I have tried countless methods of working on it before, and they all sort of end up in the same place where I have an anxiety attack while surrounded dozens of open notebooks not sure what to do, and then I usually just shut down for a couple days. That can't happen this time. I've got a couple weeks to get a handle on things and I don't intend to spend it curled up in bed watching Netflix (tempting though that does sound.) Since I'll be linking everything up, a lot of the stories that I select for my portfolio site are going to be on my portfolio here as well, which is going to mean lots of new content. So far my plan is to tackle one genre at a time - starting of course, with horror. (And thanks to SCREAMS!!! I have a handle on flash-fiction for the first time ever.) I have some decisions to make about which stories to revisit and what categories I'll need all new material for. Thanks to poor foresight on my part a lot of the material that I'd like to use (two of my high fantasy projects, my paranormal romance manuscript, a sci-fi novel and most of my best rough drafts for horror stories in the 2k-7k range) are not accessible to me any time in the near future, which is going to make my life incredibly difficult considering the short time frame I have to work on this whole portfolio thing. The other main issue that I'm having is with excerpts. Since so many of my commission projects are longer (and a lot of my professional history is in writing stories over 75k) one thing that I'm really hoping to include is excerpts from chaptered works. Unfortunately that means deciding how to present them - and where to link them to. I could, in theory, just toss the excerpts up here in their polished forms as static items OR I could start them off as book items which would make it easier to continue them later, but might look less professional in the meantime. That is mostly where I'm at right now in the decision making process. I also have some stuff on here I want to do. I have some reviews half started that I would really like to get out to people, I have some messages to respond to, AND I have been nominated for a Quills award. A couple months ago I didn't know what a Quills award was, and now I'm up for one which is both incredibly exciting and a little bit nerve-wracking. It came very out of the blue, and for one of the items I'm most self-conscious about nonetheless. More than anything I'm honored, and it has inspired me to go back and do some cleaning up to the item. Now that I know how to use WritingML a little better and how book items work, hopefully I can make the content look a little bit more presentable before it's time for judging.
And, yes. I am excited, nervous, overwhelmed, but mostly I'm ready to get back to writing and get back in touch with all of the wonderful people that I've met through this site. It's going to be tough to balance this stuff with my other projects (I picked the best time to bring those blogs off hiatus, huh?) but I will absolutely try my best. I hope things are going well for anyone who still reads these things, and I will hopefully be speaking to you guys soon. -Cat |
| Hey guys, I know I have been gone awhile. The computer that I'm sharing with my boyfriend had some malfunctions. I think (maybe?) that it's fixed. I know the processor has been replaced and that has helped with the overheating quite a bit but it's also running a lot slower. In any case, I'm sorry for my absence. I seem to be making a habit out of disappearing without a trace - which isn't exactly a habit I want to have, but my technology seems to have its own opinions about that. I will try to get back to the reviews I owe to people and to responding and all that fun stuff as soon as possible, although the computer didn't get fixed at an ideal time. I'm swamped at the moment with all sorts of projects that I'm trying to juggle and it has just been a nightmare. I am trying to work through it though and, yeah. I guess that's about it. I hope you guys are doing well and with any luck I'll be getting back to stuff soon. All the best, Cat |
| Hey Guys, November is essentially over I'm not going to validate this year. I'm pretty sure I hit well over the 50,000 words in my longhand draft, but I couldn't get the typing done fast enough to prove it. I had a minor wrist injury this week that really slowed down the typing I had left, and then I had one submission I had to complete on very, very short notice. I'm still pretty happy with the progress I made, and I think it was a good month for my writing overall. This month and this project have helped me in the following ways  I figured out how to fix the plot structures of two stories, one of which I've been battling with for nearly two years. I wrote out a whole book from start to finish. It was terrible, but it had been a long time since I had done that, and I'd nearly forgotten how. I wrote without using an outline. Again, it was terrible, but it was also an incredible tension reliever. I had forgotten how wonderful it is to just let characters run the story themselves I got a ton of character development done. Even though most of my characters from "Viral" will be transferred to my other plague project, I feel like this helped me get to know them a lot better. I learned really well how to juggle my own stories and projects around work. Sure, I missed the deadline for this because I'm the world's slowest typist, but I got it written. I wrote my own story that I wanted to tell without skipping a single submission or missing any of my other deadlines. I had no idea I was capable of doing that, and it feels pretty awesome. I got to participate in the really awesome Write-A-Thon. Even though I didn't technically "win" NaNoWriMo, I am going to get a participation badge and I got put on a team with some really, really awesome people and some very talented writers. I'm sorry I didn't get the full 50,000 points for my team, but I have a wonderfully understanding team.So, yeah. I feel accomplished. It would have been great if I could have gotten the rest of what I have written typed out so I could validate and and my team could get all the points from it (and I probably could have accomplished that if I had not overshot so severely in my rough draft). It would have been great to get a NaNoWriMo winner badge rather than a participant one. But it's okay. I really genuinely think it will be okay. I did get a couple more chapters typed so I'm going to go ahead and upload those and update my wordcount one last time, and then I am taking a break. December is practically upon us and that means a whole month's worth of submissions I need to start working on, starting the cycle all over again. I might sleep and game and take a break for a day or two, but then I plan to be back on here, sharing progress and doing reviews and participating in things again. Thank you guys so much for bearing with me this last month, and I will be talking to you very, very soon. All the best, Cat |
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That said, it's all about the journey Cat. So you get rejection letters. You could be like me - I never get them. Of course, I never submit anything but ... 
If you want to be published, keep trying and you will get there. Don't you dare give up!