I'm Back!

Blog Two

Hello writers! Welcome back to the writtenbyemiley blog. I wanted to start off with apologizing for my absence on this blog (and my whole website). Part of my goals for the year is to grow this blog and reach more writers in hopes that I can help someone with their writing experience. As for scheduling, I am going to be posting a blog twice a month. The days may vary, but I'm hoping to keep it consistent on the 15th and 31st (or the last day of the month) of every month. If you're a returning reader--thank you so much for coming back I really appreciate you. If you're new then welcome, I am so glad you are here and I hope you enjoy reading this blog :)

To start off I thought I could do a little January recap. I read one book this month (though I do wish it was more). My goal for this year is to read 35 books, so I'm hoping to get back into the habit of reading a book a week. I like being realistic as a full-time student who is also writing two books I don't have the time (or motivation) to be reading 2 to 3 books a week like I used to. I do miss those days though. But the book I read this month was She Gets The Girl by Rachael Lippincott and Alyson Derrick. I absolutely loved their book Five Feet Apart when I was in middle school and I've also read The Lucky List. I have yet to read their other books, but they are definitely on my TBR. I loved She Gets The Girl, it is truly the perfect romcom. My taste in books does vary a lot, but I always find myself circling to romance novels. What I liked about this book was that it talked about very real problems that people deal with daily and made me feel very seen. As a reader that is one of my favorite feelings and as a writer that is one of my biggest goals in my writing. It was added to my list of five start books--which is rare I might add. I started another book this month, The Game of Love and Death by Martha Brockenbrough. I am going to have to write an entire other blog on that book because even though I haven't finished it I know it is going to be one of my all-time favorite books. It is SO good.

Now onto what most people are reading this for--the writing. I barely did any actual writing this month because I was planning/plotting my novel which at the moment is being called project.eclipse. If you want more information on any of my projects, I have a section on this website under projects that gives you a little idea about each of them (I had so much fun making this blog/website). I only wrote about a thousand words this month (I'm only counting the words from the actual draft document). If I counted all the words I physically wrote this month I'd be counting till my last breath. So anytime I post about my word count for the month I'm only counting what's in the draft document. I have yet to finish chapter one, but I will get that finished after I post this.

So in January, I officially started draft one of project.eclipse. I only have about a third of the book outlined at the moment. I am a plotter over a punster (or so I thought...). I like to plan my books out chapter by chapter and as I was doing that for this project I got to a point where I sat there for an hour trying to figure out what was next. It took me a couple of days to realize that I just needed to write the book and it would take control on its own. As writers, we all know the feeling when you have everything planned out and then you go to write the book and it starts writing itself. I prefer to be prepared, but I know better than to try and outline the entire book when I know that's just not going to work. I learned my lesson with the last book I wrote (though that entire novel is a mess and I wonder why). I had planned out that novel down to every single scene and when I went to write it she had a mind of her own and turned into something completely different. So I am just trying to get a good 20k to 25k down on paper and then we'll regroup to see where that has me.

I do try my best to write every day, but finding the motivation is sometimes hard for me. I am hoping to get a good chunk of writing done in February, but I also have some exams to do and I am currently behind in school so we'll see how that all works out (wish me luck)

. I am very active on my Instagram account and we are getting closer every day to 10k which is so crazy to say. I love everyone over there and how supportive and nice everyone is.

I know this blog was kind of all over the place, but I hope you enjoyed reading it. As always leave a like and a comment, I appreciate it so much. And tell me if you have any blog post ideas for me or something you want posted on my Instagram. I wish you luck with your writing (or reading).

With love,

Emiley