#IWSG June 2025: Childhood Inspiration

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 June 4 posting of the IWSG are PJ Colando, Pat Garcia, Kim Lajevardi, Melisa Maygrove, and Jean Davis!

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

Link | IWSG Blog Hop Participants 

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June 4 question - What were some books that impacted you as a child or young adult?

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Hello, friends!

I'm a bit later than normal getting to today's post. To be honest, I forgot it was the first Wednesday of June already. Everything went so quickly!

I don't have a lot to report writing wise from May. I got my rewrite finished of my holiday romance. If you didn't read the May entry, I was changing it from third person past tense to first person present tense. That took me about six weeks, maybe seven. That included the first rewrite, two people reading through it for me to spot places I missed, and then me doing another pass on it with that feedback and to make sure the voice stuck throughout with the POV change.

I got a few rejections, not on the book, but on some short stories. That was kind of a bummer. It's really easy when all you get is rejections to spiral about being an awful writer. One was on the story I wrote for an anthology call, it's still out for another call, and the other was on the horror story I've been trying to place for over a year. I sent out a few more submissions for it. I do think it could be in a maybe pile for one zine at least, based on the Submission Grinder queue. But my maybes haven't turned into a yes yet, so we'll see. This industry just likes to beat us up!

I did get some good news this month though!

Since it was released in the newsletter for the Contemporary Romance Writers I think it's safe to announce that my suspenseful holiday romance The Tinsel Twist is a finalist in the Stiletto Contest for the Unpublished Romantic Suspense Category.

Link || Contemporary Romance Writer's Stiletto Contest

The winner will be announced at the CRW virtual conference in July. It's very affordable and has some great presentations for contemporary romance authors. I'm excited to have made finalist! I have my SportsWIP out at a couple other contests. It didn't place in the Stiletto Contest, but everything is so subjective with different contests and judges, I haven't written it off from the other contests yet.

Making finalist in the Stiletto definitely gave me a little confidence boost amidst all the rejection lately, so there's that at least.

I had hoped to get another book review and interview with my agency sibling Linny Mack for her debut Changing Tides done in May, because it released May 6th, but the month was crazy, for both Linny and myself. She has the questions now though and that will be coming up this month sometime. If you're looking for a beach read, definitely check out her book!

I didn't get any editing work done on SportsWIP. My brain needed a break after that rewrite and I had a couple plumbing fiascos, one that ended up with my dad having to help me replace a large steel pipe in the basement that had rusted out and completely clogged our kitchen sink, so there's that. I am hoping to dive back into those edits this month though. I'd like to have the edits done and readers over the summer so it will be ready to go out on submission in the fall, just in time for football season!

June Question

Today's question asks: - What were some books that impacted you as a child or young adult?

I can tell you the two book series that I read a ton of and got lost in the worlds of and heavily inspired my writing at a young age: Nancy Drew and Animorphs.

Now, those are quite different as far as genre, if you couldn't tell. I mean, sometimes Nancy Drew got a little spooky, but it wasn't aliens.

I think I started reading Nancy Drew books when I was in first or second grade and around second grade I wrote my first fanfic. I didn't know it was that at the time, of course. But I wrote a little Nancy Drew mystery and even folded the papers up hamburger style and drew a little Nancy Drew ripoff cover and everything on it. My interest in mystery novels kind of waned as I got older and started exploring sci-fi/fantasy. I got into Animorphs in late elementary school and had to check every time we went to the store to see if there was a new one out yet (this was before we even had a computer in our house). Obsessed doesn't quite cover it. This led me to write my first "full-length novel" (in quotes because I'm not sure you can really call it that LOL) around sixth grade, called The Science Fiction (Isn't Always Fiction). I have a print out of it on my bookshelf to this day. It has skulls for section breaks. It even features illustrations by yours truly (I am not an artist). And it was heavily inspired by my obsession with Animorphs.

In middle school I got into Dean Koontz (and a bit of John Grisham). My parents didn't know any better that I probably shouldn't have been reading Koontz at that age, and they were more aware of King's writing from the movies and I wasn't allowed to read those, so I could get away with Koontz, and they let me check them out from the library. I have a vivid memory of coming to a July 4th family gathering one summer and my older cousin (probably mid-20s at the time) who worked at the bookstore asked me if my parents knew what I was reading. I kinda shrugged. She didn't say anything. I think that's where my love of thrillers and procedurals came from, and I made a natural jump to urban fantasy later.

So yeah, instead of being a single book like The Giver (which was inspiring of course) or something like that, I have whole bodies of work that had a huge impact on me as a child as far as my writing and also my taste in media later on in life.

Thanks for stopping by!

Let me know in the comments how your May was and what you're working on, or feel free to let me know what your most impactful books were.

Looking forward to traversing the blog hop this month.

Be sure to see my links for other places to keep up with me online and sign-up for my newsletter! I promise I won't spam you. I don't even have an onboarding auto-welcome post set up yet, but I am working on a reader magnet.

For now,

Rosie J.

Link | Rose on Twitch

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