Morning!
So it is Sunday, July 12th,
and i'm gonna vlog again this week
because
i just think it's a fun way to
show that we're all under a lot of
stress right now in these
times. Anyway,
here's my plan for today. I need to fill
in this notebook,
so i'm gonna do that, and then I need to
edit a couple videos because I filmed a
lot of videos last
week. The inspiration just struck, and I'm
trying to get in the habit of banking
videos so once the school year comes, I'm
not, like,
struggling. I also will continue
to read these two books.
I've got Incendiary by Zoraida Cordova.
This book is just like-- it's a bit of a
slow burn.
I've never read any of Zoraida's work
before, so I didn't know what to expect.
The Brooklyn Brujas series is something
that really interests me,
but this happened to be, like, her new
release, so I wanted to support
her in that way, and man, she's so good at
describing
scenes, and it's interesting because I'm
not finding any singular lines that I
really like,
but I am finding so many scenes where
i'm just, like, God, I can like,
visualize this! So I really appreciate
the book for that, and like,
the plot itself is escalating in a way
that seems realistic.
It doesn't seem overdone, um, so I just
feel like i'm learning a lot about
craft reading her book. Then we have
Poetry: A Writer's Guide and Anthology.
I'm still reading this. I'm probably, like,
a third or a quarter of the way through.
Um, this book is amazing.
You all need to get it. I'm going to keep
saying that as long as I keep reading it,
and we will probably go to the beach at
some point today.
I'm also gonna do some writing sessions,
so I'm about to do a writing session now,
and then once I'm done with that,
I will edit the description for last
week's vlog.
I think i'm going to try and do my vlogs
like this because I think it just helps
keep the narrative straight, where like,
in the morning I just
list out what I plan on doing, and then
showing you guys clips of me doing those
things,
and then the next day I can share my
reflections. So
anyway thanks for hanging out guys.
So I just got done with a 30 minute
writing session. I got 622 words in,
and I have realized
two issues that I'm seeing. One
I'm trying to figure out how
true to the original source of retelling
has to be.
That's what my story is-- it's a retelling
of a fairy tale--
and then two, I'm also trying to figure
out what
kind of worlds it is that the people are
living in, so essentially you have two
different groups. You have humans and the
set of magical creatures,
and I'm trying to figure out if it needs
to be
two separate worlds where they don't
know about each other,
or if it's like where they do know about
each other, they just don't interact very
much.
Um...
I don't know. I'm trying to decide what's
going to be the best option for that.
It's just hard because I'm still telling
myself the story,
and so there's so much that I'm-- I'm
learning myself as I go through this,
so that is something that I need to add
into the notebook. I need to create a
section where I just think through,
like, what kind of world is this and why
do we want it this way,
and I also just need to read a lot more
middle grade and YA fantasy
that talks about these same kinds of
things because
I think it will help me
see what other authors have done already
and how I can either
adapt it to make it my own or do
something completely different.
But ...yeah. i'm telling--
novel writing is like a totally
different beast. It's--
it is so technical, and
not to say that poetry isn't technical
because it is, but I feel like
poetry is a lot more emotionally driven,
whereas novel writing is like
the emotions can't come through if the
story's not right.
So yeah,
this is interesting. This is a very
different writing process,
and, uh, it's been very fun. Okay,
now I'm off to edit some videos.
Hey! Good morning guys! So it is currently
Monday,
July 13th, and
I don't really have much going on today.
Yesterday we went to the beach.
It took me forever to edit a couple
videos.
Um one of them was the vlog that I
posted last week, and then another one
was
the video that's gonna come out on
Wednesday. Um
but because of that I didn't get to do a
second writing session.
I did, however, start on my
basically novel journal, so that's
exciting, and,
um, yeah. I think it's it's been a good
idea so far. It's gonna--
I need to set it up in a way where, like,
anytime I have new ideas that pop up, I
have a space to write them. So
my plan for today is to look up some
videos, see if anybody has done something
like this, and see how they've set up
their notebooks, and if they haven't
you know, i'll kind of just go based off
you know any kind of suggestion I can
find.
I'm gonna finish Incendiary because I'm
pretty much done with that.
I'm gonna continue reading my poetry
craft book because that has been really
good,
and then I plan on doing two writing
sessions.
So I'm gonna head out because my
daughter is now
on her tablet mode, and she is
you know, real into it. So see y'all later!
Hey guys! So here's an update from my day
so far. I'm outside which is why the
lighting is super weird. It's the
afternoon, which means it's like,
blazing hot over there, and then kind of
dim over here,
but anyway, you know. Got some mail today
which is exciting.
So a couple weeks ago, I applied to a
contest with a small press
to get my full-length poetry manuscript
published,
and there was an option to purchase a
book from the press
when I applied, so I went ahead and did
that, and
the press is called-- trying to cover up
my
address-- there Conduit Press. Conduit
Books--
and this was the book that I picked for
purchase.
So it's by an author named Michelle
Lewis. I've never heard of her
before, and the book is called Animul/Flame. Um,
and the description here says...
actually there's no description, but
there is a blurb by Terrance Hayes
who's an incredible poet. If you've never read
work by him, I highly suggest you do so,
and it says, "Michelle Lewis writes with a
candor and urgency that recalls the
poems of the late great Jack Gilbert.
These commanding poems manage to be both
straightforward and associative in their
grapples.
Take the words you saved and put them
here. Lewis writes in lyrical instruction,
songs, and meditations. Animul/Flame is
charged by an emotional integrity that
yields
exacting bite and insight. This is a
marvelous debut."
Pretty cool. So I just finished
Incendiary which was
really fun. I think I'm gonna rate it
four stars because I
sort of predicted the ending, but it's
definitely a series that I'm excited to
continue,
and honestly, like, The Orisha Trilogy
and The Waterfire Saga are like the
only series really that I've been
reading lately,
except for Death Note, if you want to
count that as well.
So I'm not much of a series reader, so
it's nice to kind of
get back into that flow, um, but here
we have this book of poetry, so I think
I'm going to read this next,
and then jump into The Silent Patient
just to
mix things up a little bit. I also really
like this cover,
like, I like this sort of collage-y
kind of cover, and it came with a little
bookmark,
which is super cute, so,
you know, support your small presses.
Support local presses.
Support indie authors. Support authors
published by Independent presses.
We're out here. We're trying to make it
just like everybody else.
Now the other thing that I am doing is
setting up a little photo shoot because
I have been working on my Instagram to
make it more bookstagrammy.
Um I still put personal stuff on there,
but
I'm-- I'm like changing up my grid, if you
will, trying to pay more attention to
that kind of thing.
So here's what I have going, and
you know trying to go for a theme.
Trying to be all, you know,
aware. I gotta do something about that
chord though, but
yeah. That's it
Hey guys! So it is 11:45 at night,
and I just now started writing because
I've been procrastinating all day,
and I think I said this in my last vlog,
but I think I've narrowed down a little
bit more
what issue I'm having when it comes to
writing right now.
So we basically have, like, two different
worlds going on. We've got the human
world and then we've got this
magical creature world, and
the magical creatures know about the
humans, but
only distantly. Like, they don't interact
very regularly.
Um the humans know about the magical
creatures, but in
myth, like, they don't think they're
actually real.
So i'm trying to figure out, like,
how...
how do I want these two worlds to come
together?
Because there's a situation that I'm
writing where like, the magical creatures
have to come up to the human
world, and
it doesn't really make sense unless the
magical creatures are prepared for it,
so I have to go back in and add some
details to the beginning of the story
to make that make sense. Um and I guess
this is
the issue with writing a novel, is like,
some of these
details start coming up in the later
parts of the story, and you realize like
that's actually not gonna make sense
unless I go back and
revise, so I think what I'm gonna do is,
in my
writer journal, include notes like this
to myself so I don't forget,
and so that way I can just, like, put it
down on paper, get it out of my head,
and focus on the draft because I do
recognize the importance of--
sorry my hand's hurting-- but I do
recognize the importance of
telling yourself the story first, and if
you get so tripped up by all of my new
details, then you end up losing
the story itself, but
it's also kind of hard because it's like--
I am a logical
reader, and so when something doesn't
make sense to me, and I just keep pushing
through. I'm kind of like,
"Ah, this is driving me crazy!" So
I don't know. I guess that's also just
more incentive to finish
the first draft of the book earlier so
you can start revising
sooner. Food for thought. Okay.
Hey guys! So it is like,
close to midnight, and I just started
working on my first draft again. I am
hitting the point right before the
climax,
and what I realized I've had to do is-- I
am getting so focused on the how that
I'm not looking at the what,
and so I've just decided that I'm gonna
skip over a huge chunk of the rising
action
and focus on the climax because I want
to make sure that the scene
makes sense, and that way I can just move
on to my
falling action and my resolution and,
I mean, it might turn out that the
manuscript itself is pretty short on
this first draft, like maybe around
20 to 30 000 words, but I feel like
that's okay
because it's very bare bones, and I can
still take the month
to like flesh it out and and really
add some depth to it and some texture,
but
yeah. I am-- I was thinking a lot about
Alexa Donne,
and in one of her videos she talked
about how, like,
it's okay to have those messy parts in a
first draft because it's just the first
draft. It's not as if you're going to
get every single detail that you need
figured out.
That's what the subsequent revising
pieces are for.
So I think that's what I need to do
because I am just
frustrating myself, and then I don't want
to write, and then when I do write, it's
only like 500 words,
which isn't bad, it's just not
where I need to be, so
that's my plan, and then what I think I'm
probably gonna do
is once I finish this whole story
and once I've said the whole thing to
myself, I'm gonna go in through my
notebook and start plotting everything
out
based off this first draft I have, and
then
go back and revise it, so I want to
keep as much attention on it as I can
this month, but then after this month, I
want to give it a break because I think
there is some benefit to like
stepping away from a work. I know I did
that with my poetry manuscript.
I like, didn't look at it for a year, and
I think it really helped me with that just to make it
way stronger and-- and reorganize things
in a-- in a much
more cohesive way. So
I think that'll be good for me to do
with this fiction manuscript.
Um but yeah,
it's crazy. I'm on chapter 30 right now.
I-- I just didn't think I could write
something
like this. I don't know if this should be
middle grade or YA. Either or...
I feel like, realistically, it needs to be
YA, but then I feel like
I don't know. YA these days reads so
adults in a lot of ways. Like
I-- I don't know. When I was growing up, YA
was,
you know, like-- middle grade was was just
starting
to be a thing. It was-- YA was
definitely, like,
Harry Potter and Percy Jackson and-- and
Redwall and books like that, so
it's kind of hard now, but
anyway... and I'm also really loving
this notebook. This was such a good idea--
such a lifesaver.
Um I followed some youtube videos which
i'm going to link,
but they did a great job of just like
breaking down how to set it up, so I've
got
this cute little
word count tracker going here, and I can
just
color in the words that I get on my word
count, and then over here I've got my
draft one problems and considerations, so
I just go through, and as I'm writing,
these are questions I'm asking myself.
Um, and then, I wanna-- this is what I'm
talking about in terms of plotting
things out. I just wanna make sure that I--
I have, like, my big ideas of what I want
to happen
plotted out in the text.
I've got my characters. I just list them
as I go. There are some that are missing
because I started this after I started
writing the book,
and then what I plan on doing is
once I finish this draft,
I'm gonna go through, and then
with each chapter, just kind of talk
about, like, what's working and what's not
working,
and then that way I can just reference
this as I
work on a final draft, so... yeah.
I'm trying to make sure that impostor
syndrome doesn't set in.
Trying to make sure that I trust myself.
I know it's a big issue that I have. I
don't trust myself
very often, so
yeah. Anyway,
it's only Tuesday night. Night y'all.
All right, hey guys! So, um, as you can see,
the lighting is pretty terrible because
it is nighttime, and I am currently
taking a walk
with my dog around the neighborhood. I
just wanted to do a check-in today
because I don't think I've done one. It's
currently July
15th, and
yeah today's just been a weird day. I
have felt a lot of anxiety
again about school starting and what
that's actually going to look like,
but on some good-- good notes, I have been
working on my manuscript
which feels good, um updating my resume,
and, um, I've also
started reading The Silent Patient which
has been fun.
It-- it reminds me a lot of like
English thrillers.
So movies like Closer
or
not Snatch because Snatch is a little
bit more stylistic, but
there was like a very specific type of
thriller coming out of
Great Britain in the like late 2000s
early 2010s,
and that's what The Silent Patient
reminds me of.
I am enjoying it so far. It's pretty cool,
and I'm also listening to Influencer.
That book is fine, but like,
it's not presenting me any information
that I didn't know or that isn't
common sense, so I've only got like
40-ish minutes left of it. I'll probably
rate it three stars.
Not my fave, but I could see if I was a
lot younger and just starting out in my
career, that might be helpful,
but a lot of the stuff that I've learned
is very common sense based off the book.
It's a lot of like,
professionalism basics. So anyway,
that's where I'm at with today. Hopefully
this walk is, uh,
not too scary. Hey guys, so
it's currently Thursday, July 16th. It's
actually my sister's 30th birthday which
is nice,
but I can't celebrate with her because
she's
in a different city than me, but
today has been a weird day. I woke up
feeling kind of sick.
I've been looking at part-time online
teaching jobs.
My husband and I are really trying to
get out of debt and start saving for a
house and stuff,
so I figured universities
are probably hiring people to teach
online courses,
might as well throw my name in the ring.
So I did that. I then met with my
illustrator today,
and like, this is what she's been coming
up with so far. The illustrations are
so cute for this book. I'm so excited. So
now we're just focusing on nailing down
the skin tone of all the characters,
making sure that's consistent,
then, uh, figuring out how to justify the
text, and I need to cut out some of the
text because
the thing with writing a picture book is
that like you start off being really
descriptive,
and then once the illustrator comes in
and starts adding in that piece
to the book, some of the descriptions you
have
aren't necessary because you can now see
it on the page, so
in this final go-around that's what i'm
going to focus on,
and then she's also going to design a
cover which,
that'll be super cute, and I'm just
loving what she's come up with so far.
So that's happened and now.
I'm reading The Silent Patient. I'm about
halfway done,
and it, like I said last night,
it's pretty good, but my one complaint
about it is that it feels a little bit
melodramatic.
Um, it's definitely like a European
thriller-- so very like
"Oh, we smoke cigarettes and we drink wine and
we we talk about Euripides
and-- and psychoanalysis..." and all that kind
of stuff, so
it's-- it's like kind of what I need right
now. I need sort of like a high class
escapist
kind of novel, um,
to-- to get me out of this crazy time that
we're in.
So it's been a fun read, but one thing
that I find strange about the book
is it's told in two different ways. So
you have the main narrator
who is-- whose name is Theo, and he's a
psychoanalyst.
He works in a mental institution and he
basically
works with the--
I don't know. She would be the antagonist
of the book, but basically like,
she has murdered her husband. Her name's
Alicia.
She's an artist and he's trying to
figure out why.
Why did this happen? Why would she do
something like that? The other way that the story is told is through her diary,
and so she writes in this journal, and
she talks about her thoughts and
feelings,
but something that's really strange in
it is that she
quotes conversations that she has with
people,
and I don't know how realistic that is.
Like,
I-- I keep a journal, but I don't quote
conversations that I have with people. I
describe what the conversations were,
but I don't sit there and quote what was
said verbatim, and that is something
that's going on in the journals, and I'm
like, that just doesn't seem
realistic to me, but that might be like a
nitpicky
thing that I view it. Um,
so yeah. Anyway, my plan
is to read this.
Read some more of this,
which I am almost done with. It's so good!
Um so if you're someone who's getting
into poetry or
wants to study more poetry, please do
yourself a favor and buy this book.
Then I'm going to go for a walk
again. I've been walking every day this
week, which is super nice, and I just got
to make sure that I keep doing that
because
my anxiety keeps building, and that is
something that is definitely a release,
and then by next-- by next week I want to
get back into my running
habit. I-- I was running for a few weeks
there, and then with everything going on
in June, I just stopped,
um, so I want to get back on that. Um,
yeah, and then
write for like an hour because I haven't
done that in a while.
Um I finished Influencer last night.
It's definitely-- I rated it three stars
for the same reasons I talked about
yesterday. Like,
if you are someone who's super young or
first starting out their career, like, you
haven't worked
ever before, there's a lot of good, just,
career advice
in that book, and I think especially
nowadays, with having a social media
presence,
even if you don't want to be an
influencer I think there's a lot of good
advice on how you should be handling and
thinking about your social media
as a professional, even if you keep
everything private,
nothing's really private, so if you're
gonna have social media-- which
what is it, like, 9.5 times out of 10
people will--
then make sure you are representing
yourself in a way that
you feel comfortable with, because I
think honestly, like,
too many people treat social media like
it's their private diary, and it's not.
It's a public thing, and I say this as
someone who's made that mistake. I have
100%
thought of social media as just like my
private place to share my thoughts,
and it's not that. It's definitely
something that other people can see,
and other people will react to, so plan
for it accordingly.
Um, and that was like my main takeaway
from that book.
It didn't provide anything that I hadn't
heard before. It maybe just went into a
lot more detail
than other sources, which is why I still
rated it three stars. Like, I do think
it's a very solid book. It's just not
something that I needed.
Um so now I'm just thinking about, you
know, once I finish The Silent Patient,
I have this other book that's been on my
nightstand for like
a couple years. Let me see if I can grab
it. So The Skillful Teacher, which is this
book that has all kinds of different
teaching advice in it.
I, uh, yeah-- I am like halfway through it. I
started this a couple years ago, and then
you know, it was right--
I started it when my daughter was about
eight months old,
and then once she started walking it was
like,
game over, but this is a thick,
thick book, and it's got a lot of details
in it,
but with the school year starting, I
think it's always helpful to read books
like this
that give, like, just concrete teaching
advice,
so I will probably read that until the
Reading Rush starts,
and i'm excited because this will be my
first year participating in the Reading
Rush.
I think it'll be fun, but yeah, that's
pretty much been my day so far,
so, you know, hopefully y'all are having
good days,
and I will talk to y'all later. I want to
point out,
he was my professor. David Kirby, he was
my very first workshop professor
for poetry. I loved his class. He teaches
at Florida State University.
He's been teaching for like 30 years.
He's phenomenal,
so if you ever get a chance to work with
him,
do it because he is like by far one of
the most empowering professors i've ever
had in my life.
So something I want to highlight that
this book does is
this last section where the anthology is,
instead of just posting a bunch of poems
together,
what it does is tell you the mode of the
group of poems it's going to give
it, then gives a quick definition
of it, and sort of explains the context
of that poem,
and then it gives an example of what
they're talking about.
Something else it does is sometimes it
includes these
mini interviews and these gray boxes for
certain poems and then that way as a
reader you can deepen your understanding
of what the poem means and how it
relates
to the form that it's discussing.
I personally have never really seen a
craft book for poetry do this,
so I find this to be incredibly
fascinating,
and super helpful, particularly for
people who might be newer
to writing different kinds of poems. Hey
guys.
So it is currently Friday, July 17th,
and yeah.
Update. So today my plan is to finish The
Silent Patient,
possibly finish the poetry craft book
that I've been reading.
I-- I'm also watching my kids right now
while my husband works,
so that's fun. We, meaning me and my
husband, are gonna go on a date night
tonight which is gonna be really nice.
So this week, my husband and I were
supposed to go on our honeymoon. We just
got married in November.
We've been together for like seven years
at this point,
but we finally decided to make things
legal for tax purposes.
Not really, but kind of. Um, also, shout out
to Mina Reads. I was just watching your
video,
and we basically
aren't able to go on our honeymoon
because it got cancelled due to covid, so
luckily through our travel agency we got
a credit for our trip, so we can just
book it at a later time. It's not as if
we lost
that money. It's just sitting somewhere
else for now,
but it does suck because I specifically
planned my trip for the summer so I
didn't have to miss a huge chunk of
school.
Yeah. That worked out really great. Uh,
never playing that game again. Um,
so anyway, we were gonna go to Paris
for four days and then we're gonna go to
Marrakesh for four days,
and I can't think of any other cities
that are as romantic
as those two, so it really sucks that
we're not gonna be able to do that. Now
our plan for tonight is to just go find
a bench somewhere. A friend offered to
watch our kids for the night, and we're
gonna eat some Moroccan food and
you know drink some french wine and
french desserts,
and look at probably a large body of
water if we can,
and-- and make the most of it. It's--
I don't want to come across as like I
should be able to travel because I don't
feel that way. I definitely don't want to
go anywhere
outside of the state of Florida, and I
definitely don't want to stay in any
hotels right now or anything like that,
but it just sucks because my husband and
I have
only been on one trip alone without our
kids
our entire relationship, and that was
last year in February. We took a weekend
trip to Costa Rica
because of a deal we saw in Groupon. we
have never done like a full
week-long trip just me and him.
I got pregnant very early on in our
relationship, so
it has just been years of like
only having kids. We never really had a
point where it was just me and him
except for the first six months of our
relationship, so
it would be nice if we could just
have some time just me and him and--and
we don't really get that, so
that's the the only thing I'm feeling, is
like, just wishing we had more time for
me and him,
but regardless,
we're gonna go on our date night tonight.
I'm also gonna go visit my dad
down in Miami now that he's like been
recovered for a few weeks of Covid.
My sister's birthday was yesterday, so
we're gonna do like a mini
family reunion which will be nice, but um,
yeah. It's weird times. It's such weird
time for a lot of different reasons,
and it's only getting weirder, and it's
interesting. I was talking to my sister
last night, and she
is a nurse, so she she's well versed in
everything that's going on with covid,
and the big thing
that she told me was like people need to
remember,
this is not a sprint. It's a marathon,
and we're expecting a fast solution,
but it's not as if the vaccine is going
to come out and we're all going to be
saved because
vaccines have to be released in levels
and certain people get the vaccine
before
others. There has to be trials for it,
there has to be bidding wars based off
of companies that are going to purchase the
vaccine and--
and all of that. So it's going to be a
year or two of this. We've really
just started in a lot of ways, or
maybe we're like halfway through. We're
nowhere near done though,
and I think that's the thing people got
to keep in mind with all of this.
So, I mean, that doesn't really bode well,
but I'm someone who-- I like to know the
facts, and I think that's been the issue
with all of this, is that people want to
deny the reality of the situation and
they just want things to go back to
normal, but
in some ways there will never be another
normal for us,
and that's okay. We've just got to accept it
and prepare for it,
and I think that's the problem right now.
People are still in their denial stage,
and they don't want to accept the
reality that they're in.
So that's all I've been thinking about,
but anyway. All right. I'm gonna get some
reading done,
some writing done. I didn't write
anything yesterday. I had such a bad
headache by the time I was ready to sit
down and write,
and I ended up just falling asleep, so
hopefully today
my head feels a little bit better, and I
can-- I can actually focus on some writing,
but that's where i'm at.
Morning guys! So it is currently Sunday
morning,
and I am hanging out at my dad's house.
Um,
my sister's birthday was earlier this
week, so we decided to come down and
visit him,
and yeah. It's been a very eventful week
in terms of reading. I finished a lot of
books this week.
Yesterday I finished the graphic novel
version of Fahrenheit 451 which was cool.
Right now, I'm starting to read Bee Season
by Myla Goldberg.
I don't really like it that much, so I'm
going to give it about an hour today and
after reading it for an hour, if I don't
like it,
i'm just gonna DNF it because it's one
of those books that's been on my
TBR shelf forever, um, and then tomorrow I
start with the Reading Rush,
so I will be vlogging my experience for
the Reading Rush
all next week. Now I did not get any
writing done the past three days.
I'm hoping I can get some done today. I
think
for me personally, I think it's better
when I can take a break from a
manuscript and just
let things simmer in my brain, so I can
figure out how to fix some problems I'm noticing.
At least that's what I'm telling myself,
so we'll see how it goes next week, but
that is pretty much it for me today. If
you stayed for the entire video
please go ahead and drop down a mango
emoji below.
My dad has a mango tree, and so I am
definitely going to be taking some of
those back with me.
I post videos every Wednesday, Sunday, and
sometimes Friday.
You can find me on all social media
platforms @shellyflowers,
and if you'd like to buy my book the
link is down below. Alright. Chao y'all.
