I'm a fantasy and young adult fiction writer. Here, you'll find book reviews, writing tips, personal opinions, and updates on my work. New posts every Friday.
The stretch between Christmas and New Year’s Eve is odd. It’s too short to settle back into normalcy and too long for the holiday feelings to stay fresh. I’m writing this post on a break as I drive home from Christmas with my family, and it’s been a nice quiet trip. I love road tripping by myself (well, myself and the pups) because I can take the time to really enjoy the scenery and go for little walks in new places. I especially like having that alone time around this time of year, because it’s a convenient pausing point to consider where I am now, where I was last year, and where I’m trying to get.
I’ve decided that I’m going to start posting the days I’ve worked each week at the bottom of my blog posts. Knowing that people actually might notice if I skip a blog post has helped me stay on track, and I feel like I have a handle on regular posting now. It’s not big deal, but the little boost of self awareness will hopefully help me keep from letting too many non-working days slip by when I get sad, hazy, and generally frazzled. Blog posts won’t count toward the number of writing days, just work on my fiction. I’m aiming for five days a week, since I do still have to write posts and do other types of work. I’m not gonna get down on myself if I fall behind, but I need to develop my self-discipline, and that seems like a solid goal for this year.
That’s as close as I’m coming to a New Year’s resolution this time around. 2017 has been a thing. I’d say I’m glad to see it go, but who knows what the next year is going to bring. It’s daunting, but new life always springs up from destruction and decay.
Writing days this past week: 0 (A bit of an embarrassing start, but I’m glad to have spent this time focusing on my family and friends.)
As I’ve mentioned previously, balance is not something that comes easily to me, and I’m not just talking about my tendency to tip right over whenever I’m distracted from important stuff like where my feet are and how gravity works. It sometimes feels like I’m either ignoring all my other responsibilities to focus on work, doing all the things except work, or taking a mental and/or physical health day that stretches into a week of feeling guilty and frustrated. If it were possible to make a three way see-saw, that’s what it’d be like in my head.
Still, I think I’m in a better place than I was a few months ago. I’m sleeping consistently, instead of every other night, and running a little closer to normal person time in terms of appointments and deadlines. Work is happening.
I’m getting better at being kind to myself instead of breaking down when I feel like I’ve failed, but I still need to learn how to be tough on myself without the breakdown. When I’ve been hard on myself in the past, it was pretty much just self-bullying. It had no purpose, it certainly didn’t motivate me, and it was absurdly out of proportion to anything I had actually done or not done. That was no good, but without any internal structure I tend to lose track of important things and miss out on opportunities to move toward my goals.
Self care has been discussed to death lately, but what I really appreciate are the posts that remind me that self care isn’t just bubble baths and scented candles and wine with breakfast. (Or whatever you do with wine. I don’t really know.)
Practical self care is taking care of yourself the way you’d care for a friend or a child. Or, as one person put it, like a demon taking care of its host body so that it won’t fall apart. Whatever works. There’s being your own personal bully, which absolutely sucks, and there’s being your own coach, which seems pretty valuable to me.
Till I get better at this, Toci has been appointed my temporary coach. So far, she has ordered me to sit in multiple uncomfortable positions so she can use me as a throne. I assume this is some sort of wax-on wax-off, hidden wisdom type shit. Probably to teach me endurance or something.
Sorry, I’m groggy and kind of miserable today, so this is way late. I’m showing up with a post, but that’s kind of all I’ve got. I’m going through caffeine withdrawal because I have to cut way back on tea – which has previously been my lifeblood – and I’m having a delightful allergic reaction to mangoes because apparently I’m just not allowed to have nice things.
I’m currently rewriting the final chapter of Somnolence for about the fiftieth time. It’s tiring, but definitely an improvement on previous versions. My editor pointed out some pacing problems, but paring it down has been a struggle because I always want to stuff in as much content as possible. Pups and I managed to get out a little bit in the last few days, so here are some photos. I’m also gearing up to do some art, since my mother in law asked me to touch up a watercolor painting that I made for her a long time ago. Next Friday I’ll add a picture of the finished product.
At the park – It’s been a mossy kind of week.At the pet store – Lungfish have strange puppy faces and tentacle arms and I love them.This happy little baobab tree needs some perking up.
Rainy morning vibes. Weather is nicer when I’m safely inside with my sweetie and a delicious breakfast.
Book update: Obviously, my goal to have Somnolence published this year was impractical, but I’m glad that I gave it my best try. It will be published in 2018, and is going back to the editor in January. It was supposed to have been line edited by now, but I choked and couldn’t get it together.
I’m really looking forward to getting cover art made, and my plan is to use Damonza for that. They were recommended by Kristen Martin, and I loved her covers. So, hopefully, I’ll have some pretty and professional art to share soon.
Personal update: I’m writing this on my way home from a yummy dinner at my mother in law’s while listening to the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend soundtrack, which is endlessly brilliant. I’m now, after almost two years in Seattle, starting to feel kinda almost normal about driving home to this city. Still, I’m super excited about the fact that I’m going to see my family in California for christmas.
I have recently achieved new levels of sleep deprivation, even for me, but I’ve also been hitting my writing goals much more consistently, which is exciting. It’s pretty self-defeating to try to improve all the different areas of life that need work at once, so I’m resigning myself to the fact that really improving my writing and discipline means neglecting other things. Priorities are a pain.
What I’m thankful for: My awesome partners, my family and friends, puppies in general, and the fact that abusive men in various creative fields are being sort-of held accountable by the public, at least enough to shame them for their appalling behavior instead of ignoring the issue completely. Hooray! That’s a clear improvement, so I’ll take it. Maybe someday, instead of terrible men, we’ll have artists and actors of all genders and races who actually deserve their success and didn’t earn it by destroying those with more talent and less leverage. I’d say that’s the american dream, but the american dream was more about taking land, enslaving people, enforcing freedom of exactly one religion, and claiming that god said you could do all that ’cause you’re his favorite. We should probably just let that phrase die. It’s a mess.
Writing wasn’t my dream career. I didn’t start as a kid like a lot of authors, and I don’t have any cute snippets of childhood fiction to share, sadly.
I started writing in 2011, when I was 22. At first I just did some journaling to cope with my depression. I’ve always loved to read fantasy, and an idea for a fantasy story had been rattling around in the back of my head for a while. I think the stream-of-consciousness journaling that I was already doing helped loosen me up enough that I just started writing it down.
I pounded out a few chapters, then slowed to a crawl as I ran out of the bits I had already figured out, struggled through a few more, and then stopped. I knew I didn’t have the skill to write that story the way I wanted to, so I quit. But then, I did something totally normal and healthy that was nonetheless a big deal for me. I decided to get better at writing so I could come back to that story and tell it really well. I started writing little short stories when I had ideas, just ’cause, and that was fun. They weren’t great, but I could finish them in a few sittings, and finishing anything felt really good.
I switched to a second novel project for Nanowrimo in 2012, and figured I could just do it all in one go because it was supposed to be a shorter and less complex story. I was very wrong, and I didn’t win. I hadn’t plotted either of those attempts, and even though that story was simpler in concept, I had allowed it to ramble again and gotten totally lost. I kept working at it, but I was pretty frustrated, and effective practice was still totally foreign to me. I was just flailing around and trying to make this huge thing without a plan.
Looking back at it now, I see that the drafts for those two stories actually add up to a pretty impressive amount of output for a beginner. I wasn’t tracking my progress very well at the time, and I counted all discarded work as basically wasted time and effort even though I was actually learning from it.
The idea for Somnolence came to me in a dream. I hate myself a teensy bit just for writing that ridiculously pretentious sentence, but it’s basically true. In 2013, I had a dream that was just the climax battle of a fantasy story. It felt super epic and compelling, and when I woke up I wrote it all down in my journal and started making up more backstory for it. I really liked it, and it had the potential to draw from a lot of the emotional crap I was going through at the time. In a spectacular act of self-sabotage, I switched projects again. I kept feeling like I needed a clean slate because the other projects had gotten so messy. In reality, I needed to learn to plot properly, but that didn’t really occur to me till I had written about half of Somnolence.
I slogged on, working mostly when I felt inspired and wasn’t too depressed to move my fingers on the keyboard, and it took for-fucking-ever to finish the first draft. I declared it finished, just barely, on New Year’s Eve right before I moved from California to Seattle in 2016. That really was a huge milestone, although it immediately paled in the face of what I wanted to do next. I wanted to edit it properly and actually publish it, and I had no idea how to make that happen. Fortunately, by then I was just barely starting to grasp the practice thing and I’ve always been really stubborn. I’ve been researching, reading, joining writing groups, watching youtube videos, blogging, and practicing writing craft.
I don’t know what it is about writing that drives me to improve. I find it satisfying in a way that I don’t really understand. I love to draw, but I never felt the need to practice enough to polish my skills or make a career out of it. I’m usually pleased with what I can produce, but I’m perfectly content to do it as a hobby. Writing comes less easily to me. I’m often not at all pleased with my initial results, but it’s still where my energy goes, and I’m happy with the progress that I do make. Working toward the goal of being a published author has helped me change my life in a whole bunch of positive ways and improved my self-esteem. It wasn’t my dream growing up, but it is now.
Me at my favorite hiking spot, just after pulling an all-nighter to finish that first draft.
Seventeen year old Orane has been given a mission by her royal parents: to travel to Castle Destare and convince her reclusive uncle to leave his estate to her family. With only her new lady in waiting for companionship, and steadfast Captain Felix and his men for protection, Orane sets out for the northern mountains.
After a harrowing attack on the road, Castle Destare is a welcome sight, but it is nothing like Orane expected. Her uncle and his caretakers are strange and withdrawn, and the great stronghold itself seems to be slowly surrendering to the elements. Worse, Orane can’t help feeling that the decay is creeping into her mind. With unnatural creatures prowling the woods, escape seems impossible, but it might be just as dangerous to stay.
Will Orane be able to open her heart and uncover the terrible secret that haunts the castle, or is it already too late?
My awesome beta readers have chapters in hand, and the manuscript is headed for the first round of professional editing on May first. I’m still working on a release date, but in the meantime, here are some pretty mood pictures for you. Somnolence is set in a dreary mountain location, surrounded by an encroaching forest and climbing with brambles and overgrown rose bushes.
Jasmine Collins 