Rosie J.
- Apr 5, 2023
- 6 min read

#IWSG April 2023: Spring has Sprung!

Updated: Apr 28, 2023

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds! Posting: The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. Post your thoughts on your own blog. Talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer - aim for a dozen new people each time - and return comments. This group is all about connecting! Let’s rock the neurotic writing world! Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG.

The awesome co-hosts for the April 5 posting of the IWSG are Jemima Pett, Nancy Gideon, and Natalie Aguirre!

The following link will allow you to peruse everyone in the Blog Hop.

Link | ISWG Blog Hop Participants

***************

April 5 question - Do you remember writing your first book? What were your thoughts about a career path on writing? Where are you now and how is it working out for you? If you're at the start of the journey, what are your goals?

***************

Hello, friends!

Welcome, Spring! I'm not sure it fully feels like springtime to me yet. The weather has been a bit wild in Tennessee. I've been flipping between having the heat running or the AC on or sometimes just having the windows open. I hope your spring is off to a great start!

It's been a super busy month since I last talked to you intrepid IWSG members.

SAGA Conference

The second weekend of March, I attended the SAGA Genre Fiction Writers Conference in Winston-Salem. It was fantastic! It had been two years since I'd been able to attend a conference, so it was lovely to be around writerly types again.

If you'd like to read about my experience at SAGA. the authors I met, and some of the writing tips I gained, you can read about it all in my blog series:

Link | SAGA Conference Day 1

Link | SAGA Conference Day 2

Link | SAGA Conference Day 3

I hope you enjoy checking out those blogs. If you've never been to a writing conference, I highly encourage you to go to one! Maybe my posts about SAGA can inspire you to check one out.

WIP Update

In other news, I wrote about 8,000 words in March. I was hoping for more. I was also hoping for "The End" on my holiday romance, but between Covid recovery, the conference, getting back to rehearsals AND starting a new side gig, I'm happy to have squeezed in that many words.

I will finish it here soon because I'm super close. Literally the last chapter or two. I can see the finish line. I'm doing Camp NaNoWriMo this month with a modest goal of 25k, so it will get done, plus I'll hopefully start work on a couple of stories I hope to post to Kindle Vella.

Twitch Writing Sprints

One of the things that helped me get words written in March was that I started hosting Writing & Productivity/Coworking Sprints on Twitch twice a week! Because I have to

Purple background with a couple hearts. Text: Writing & Productivity Sprints on Twitch, Wednesdays 8-11pm Easter, Fridays 1-4pm Eastern, twitch.tv/RoseEvenstar21

make the choice to actively show up for other people, it helps me be accountable.

Things have been going well. I've had a steady and active group of people showing up to co-work with me each stream. I don't always make progress on my WIP during the streams. Sometimes I work on a blog. Sometimes I work on my website. It really depends on the mood I'm in at the time and what is taking priority in my brain.

Feel free to join me Wednesdays at 8 pm EDT and/or Fridays at 1 pm EDT for sprints on Twitch! We have a great time and tend to make a lot of progress. If you check out the SAGA Day 3 blog there are some video clips from one of the streams where we did some short story prompts. It's a heckin' good time!

April OHHOW - Weekend of Writing Wildly

This weekend I'll be taking part in an event called the Weekend of Writing Wildly. In 2020, a group of NaNoWriMo MLs started a 100 Hours of Writing event to deal with NaNo being all virtual because of Covid. It went over so well, we've done a similar event every November for NaNoWriMo and April and July for Camp NaNoWriMo since! There will be 50 consecutive hours of writing sprints live on Twitch between 12 pm EDT on Friday and 2 pm EDT on Sunday! I'll be streaming at 10 pm EDT on Saturday.

I can't wait! It's always a great time.

Last November, we collectively wrote almost ONE MILLION words.

What an achievement!

Click the graphic to go to the website for more information.

IWSG Monthly Question

I guess I can throw in an answer to the monthly question to wrap up. I would love to dig around in my parent's basement to see if they kept the very first "book" I remember writing. I was obsessed with Nancy Drew books as a child, and somewhere around 2nd grade, I wrote my first fan fiction. I even cut the paper out to the size of the Nancy Drew hardcovers (you know the bright yellow ones) and drew a bad illustration on the front and started writing my first mystery novel!

In middle school, I wrote a novel that I typed up and illustrated called The Science Fiction (Isn't Always Fiction). Catchy title, right? RIGHT?! It was a very heavily self-inserted middle school novel with obvious Star Wars and Animorphs influence. Strangely, I haven't written any sci-fi since then.

Through high school, I kept trying to write an urban fantasy loosely based on my adventures in the Ayenee Yahoo! chatrooms. A place I was probably way too young to have been hanging out in at the time. But I kept rewriting the beginning over and over again and never got past the first 10k or so.

The first book I finished as an adult was around 2012. It took me two NaNoWriMo events to finish it. It's a spy thriller that I still cherish to this day and plan to rewrite next year. I'm going to rewrite it as a bit of a sci-fi, space opera though. There are some major plot issues with how I have it written now, and I think taking it out of the modern-day world and plopping it into a sci-fi world I have full control over will help alleviate a lot of those issues (and cause more I'm sure).

One thing that's always been a goal of mine, from the time I was a kid, was the dream to be a best-selling author. Other kids daydreamed about being doctors or lawyers or astronauts or movie stars. I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to create the worlds the actors got to portray. I wanted to be on TV being interviewed about my novel. Have people fall in love with my characters. That's always been my dream.

How's that going?

Well, life kinda sucks sometimes, ya know. Lots of things happen to throw you off your course. But, this year, I really feel like I'm starting to get back to that goal. I'm going to finish a WiP for the first time in almost a decade. I'm blogging regularly. I'm continuing to build a community. I'm continuing to market myself, so that when my first novel does come out, hopefully, I'll have people interested in it.

And I fully intend to put something out on Vella this year. I wanted to do it last year, but it didn't happen. The timing wasn't right. I think it is this year though.

I'm staking my claim right now. By the Summer Solstice, I will have published something on Vella. You all heard it. Now hold me to it!

Alright, I think that's it for me. I know it was a bit of a lengthy post, but March was jam-packed with good writerly stuff to talk about! I hope you will check out the SAGA blogs and consider joining me on Twitch for writing and coworking sessions in the future!

Thanks for stopping by and let me know in the comments about your writing journey and goals!

For now,

Rosie J.