Category Archives: Book 2
Working/Writing Around the Holidays
Holidays can bring family and joy and festivity, but it can also bring vacation time from day jobs and free time to yourself. This isn’t true for everyone every year. But when it is, *chef’s kiss*, it’s a beautiful time.
Here on December 28th, I’m in a wonderful position of being on vacation until the New Year. Not all of my friends, family, and coworkers are so lucky, and it wasn’t more than a couple years ago when I was a contractor still and didn’t get any paid vacation or holidays at all. So, I cherish this time! Time to be around family, sleep in, enjoy good food and company, panic about the 10-day countdown to my book’s release, and spend some quality time with the revisions of my second book.
I’m in yet another unique situation where I’m working on Draft 2 of my second book, but I’m doing so with a freelance editor—and we don’t have a deadline. This isn’t to say that I should (or could!) be taking my sweet time with it until the heat death of the universe. On the contrary, I am a self-starter in terms of deadlines, and I can’t abide a deadline-free life. That’s one of the reasons I have done National Novel Writing Month in the past, because it imposes a one-month, 50,000-word deadline.
But I also don’t want to run myself ragged in the week that I have to reboot before the start of 2020, when just as many things will be pulling me in just as many directions. January, my friends. January.
January itself heralds the release of my debut book, NAMELESS QUEEN, on the 7th of the month. It also marks the release of a project at my day job that I spent the last year on. It also will involve me going to places around lower Michigan to sign stock and indie bookstores, signing at least 500 copies of my book (FOR SECRET REASONS!), and pondering the fate of the new decade.
January. I will survive it. Everything will be fine.
What I’m really saying is that I believe in deadlines as a powerful form of motivation, and here are my deadlines for the end of this year, my “End of Year To Do list” prior to my “2020 TO DO LIST.”
END OF 2019 TO DO LIST
- Finish revisions to Chapters 1-3, and send them to my freelance editor, Ruth.
- Build my calendar for January 2020. (Dot journals are amazing!)
- Start revisions to Chapter 4-onward.
- Plan out my next two YouTube videos. (I have notoriously gotten to the Friday before the posting day and been like “Oh. Filming and editing. I should do that.”) I’m off for the holidays but want to be ready for next year!
I finished my first draft! – Writing Vlog Ep 07
A video in which I screech, eat sugar, screech again, eat more sugar, and talk about what it means to finish a first draft and plan your next steps.
Visit Your Local Bookstores! – Drafting Vlog EP 03
Sometimes it takes perseverance to get things done. Whether that’s buckling down with a daily word count goal in order to get a book written, or figuring out what “Summer Hours” mean for local businesses.
It’s always good to support local businesses. I live in a relatively small/rural town that has a private university nearby. During the summers, a lot of the local businesses restrict their hours, because most of their business comes from the student population.
So, because I’m now a cantankerous old person who quite like it when there aren’t a thousand-some students swarming the streets during the day, I’m trying to make a point of finding and visiting the local businesses that I enjoy! Show your local businesses some local love!
I Started Drafting Book 2! – Drafting Vlog Ep 01
I’ve done an unscheduled drafting vlog with my thoughts on DAY ONE of drafting my next book!
Rebecca McLaughlin 