New Planner Move-in Month and an Awesome Writing Moment

Ok. If you’ve followed along with me for some time, you know my affinity for a good planner, specifically the Erin Condren LifePlanner. For my 2019-2020 year, I’m using a vertical planner for my personal planning and then a horizontal planner for my writing/business/blog planning. This is my hobby as much as a necessity for my peace of my mind and productivity.  I am very excited to be using them this morning. 🙂

Something REALLY cool happened this week.  I just finished rereading Christopher Paolini’s Inheretence Cycle Series, and the story came to mind as I was working on a query letter draft.  In a query letter, the writer gets one paragraph to explain what the core of the story is.  I was grappling with this exercise, trying to figure out which words I could choose to sum up the essence and importance of my story, when I remembered the moment (possible spoiler alert) in Paolini’s story, where Eragon has to speak his true name to the Vault of Souls to save Alagaesia. (If you haven’t read these books and are a fantasy fan at all, I’d totally recommend them.  I don’t love the point-of-view thing that happens in the later novels, but I LOVE Eragon’s story.) So, I was thinking of what Eragon goes through to figure out his true name, while working on the query letter for SB and what is so important and shifts the trajectory of my own main character’s life, when IT HIT ME.  Words that I hadn’t had the first couple of drafts AT ALL came to me and as soon as I entered them, that paragraph began to sing.  The description I was crafting was getting so much closer to the truth of my story and my character, and it was an awesome moment.  It was like finding a piece of my main character’s true name.

It was a writing moment I really needed this week. We are totally in summer vacation mode, and I am struggling to maintain balance. I NEED balance between time with my girls, time for all four of us as a family, and time for my writing. This moment reminded me that I’m on the right path. When it’s time with my girls and time for us as a family, I am fully immersed in whatever it is we are doing together. And any other time, I am saturated in stories. This week I’m working on finishing my query letter, revising SB, and outlining/writing SoS.

What are you reading right now? What are you writing right now?

Happy Writing!