February: The Verge of 28

I really am bad at keeping this thing updated. With the start of the New Year, things took a big turn in my life. While I haven’t kept up with my blog, I have been busy. So, what’s been going on?

1. My writing partner Lauren (shout out to the other half of Our Kindred Souls!) and I have gotten back into working on our joint projects. They are big projects, and most of our work has been discussing plot points and adding key moments to our big project. It’s something no one in our lives has had the pleasure of reading yet. Hopefully we’ll have a workable draft soon. We are also looking into publishing options for our first project, A FOOL’S ADVENTURE. More to come there, I’m sure.

2. I have been fighting a bout of depression. Mental health is very important to me, and I’ve always been an advocate of self care. During everything that has happened over the last 18 months, however, I seemed to have forgotten taking care of myself. I took a step back from a lot of things and realized what’s important to me. I’m taking the steps necessary to get back to being happy. I’ve always gone through phases in my life where depression strikes and I can usually get myself out of it. This time has been the hardest. I found myself just doing what I had to, to get by. That’s not living.

3. I’ve been learning a lot about what medications do to your body. Not based on anyone else’s opinion, but on what I’ve experienced. As most of my friends know, in 2012, I lost 50 pounds. I’ve struggled with my weight my entire life. During this depression, I managed to gain back all of my weight and then some. At the end of 2016, I signed back up at the gym I lost the weight at and I’ve been trying to work out at least three times a week. As of last Friday, I had only lost 2 pounds in six weeks. So I evaluated what was different from last time. Obviously, I was younger. But also, I wasn’t on birth control then. Now, “they” say that birth control doesn’t make you gain weight, but I beg to differ. In 2012, I stopped losing weight around the time I started the birth control back. Since then, I’ve never really been able to do much more than maintain my weight. And one side effect of birth control I wasn’t aware of: depression. So, I threw the pills out. A week later, I am definitely feeling better, more productive. Happier.

4. I’ve been reading a lot. Finally, finally, Victoria Aveyard released the third book in the RED QUEEN series, so I spent my Monday and Tuesday this week binging on reading it. Amazing story, and I’m going to do my best to post a review next week. My to be read shelf for 2017 just keeps growing, but KING’S CAGE was the book I was most excited to read this year.

5. In just a few days, I am turning 28 years old. When did I get to be nearly thirty?!?! Either way, I’m determined to make 28 a hell of a lot better than 27 was. I’m excited to get to spend some time with family and NASCAR (if you didn’t know, I am a huge fan!). Here’s to whatever 28 may bring!

AND….HalfLife is so close to being ready for beta readers I can taste it! Not only do my partner in crime and I write stuff together, but we help each other with our own projects. Lauren has been great in reading samples and giving me tips. It has really helped the progress along.

That being said, I will be searching for Beta Readers as soon as this draft is ready. I am hoping to have it ready by the end of February. If you would like to volunteer, please review the “HalfLife” tab at the top of my blog, and if it interests you, you can email me at abbielynnsmith0711@yahoo.com, send me a message on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, or leave a comment here with your contact information.

As always, thanks for reading and going along on this journey with me!

Abbie

December, December, A Time to Remember

Where did 2016 go? It feels like just yesterday that I was ringing in the New Year with my best friends playing Rock Band and Cards Against Humanity.

This month has been a time of reflection for me. A lot has happened this year, both good and bad. While a lot of what’s happened has been bad, I’m doing my best to focus on the good. It has been a trying year, not only for me but for my city, my country. We faced one of the nastiest elections in history in 2016. Baton Rouge experienced a tumultuous summer, between police shootings and the historic flooding in August. My family lost everything in the flood. I’d lost part of myself as the fall pressed on, between stress at work and home.

That would be the dream, eh?

But as this year comes to a close, I find I have a lot to be thankful for.

I’m thankful for my loved ones. As my best friend says, ‘Friends are the family you choose.’ I firmly believe that sentiment. I know without my best friends, and parents, I would not have made it through this year.

I’m thankful for the freedoms I have in this life. I get to choose where I work. I get to choose what I do with my free time. This year, more than any before, has taught me that I am privileged in many ways. I don’t take those privileges for granted.

I’m thankful that I was able to have all four grandparents with me until the age of 27. Losing my grandfather this year was one of the toughest things I’ve ever experienced. I miss him immensely, but with time, that will get better.

I’m thankful for my health. One thing I have always struggled with is my weight. While I am mostly healthy, I’ve found myself this year getting back to where I was before 2012. In 2012, I lost 50 pounds. I was happy. The trials of the last year have been difficult, and I’ve fallen into a lot of my old habits. But I’m alive. And I’m going to get back to where I was.

Most of all, I’m thankful that I have a love of books. Most people don’t have an escape when they get depressed. They don’t have a way of coping with the trials in their life. For me, books have always given me an out. There is little better than a new (or old) world being opened for my soul to experience. More than that, I am thankful for the worlds that I have been able to create.

With that being said, I finished NaNoWriMo on November 21. I know how rough the story is, and I plan on working on it in the future. I’m proud that I was able to accomplish such a feat and prove to myself that I can write every single day. That’s what it was about for me. After reaching my 50,000 words, I took a bit of a break to read (a review for Heartless is on its way!) and work on a new idea for a book series.

As December dawned, however, I had to go into editing mode. HalfLife editing is in full force. I’ve learned some new tricks in Microsoft Word (track changes…wha????) and I’m using those to help me through the process. My hope is to have it ready for beta readers by the end of January. I know I have a lot of work left to do on it, but this is the most confident I have ever felt about my journey to getting published. The story is good. The characters are so ingrained in me and I know the world will love them.

Christmas is coming, and things are bound to get busier. My goal is to blog every couple of weeks. Life can get in the way, so no promises. :p

As always, thank you for reading and going along on this crazy journey called life with me.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, whatever you celebrate, to you and yours.

Abbie 🙂

NaNoWriMo!

Hello again, friends.

I’m quickly discovering that I’m not very good at keeping up with a blog. The last few weeks, I have worked on getting my life more in order. But, as you well know, life doesn’t always go to plan. Things come up and you have to handle them. For me, that has been helping my parents get their house finished so they can move back in post flood.

Anyway! So, November is (Na)tional (No)vel (Wri)ting (Mo)nth. NaNoWrimo! I was glad to see the friends of mine who decided to participate this year. It’s exciting whenever you get an idea in your head. In October, all I could think about was writing the story and developing the characters, but I refused to put words to the page until November 1st. As this is my first NaNoWriMo, I wanted to do things ‘by the book.’

For anyone unfamiliar with it, you spend the month of November writing at least a 50,000 word novel in any genre of your choice. It’s not necessarily an easy feat, especially if writer’s block is a problem.

Lo and behold, November 1st came. I jumped! In the first day, I hit 1,000, then 2,000, then 5,000! I was proud of having a good starting off number. If you span your 50K words out, it averages to 1,667 words per day. The week before the first of November, I sat down to do a test run on a fanfiction and found I could write that many words in less than an hour of true, concentrated writing. Having that early jump helped me get ahead. There were a couple of days in the last 17 that I was only able to write a couple of sentences, much less a thousand words.

Within a week, I reached 22,000 words, which isn’t necessarily unheard of. I exceeded my goals pretty quickly. The big ‘but’ of it all, however, is that I was finding my story lacked depth. It had a good, solid back story, the characters were intriguing, but I didn’t spend a whole lot of time developing them throughout what I’d written so far.

What does that mean?

A first draft is a first draft. It is meant to be rough. It is meant to need development. One thing Lauren and I learned throughout writing our joint series is that you are attempting to get the bones out in a first draft. That is what I’m reminding myself of. I reached 25,000 words (halfway, per the Instagram post below) on day 10 of 30.

View this post on Instagram

Woooooahhhhh we're halfway there!!! #nanowrimo #nanowrimo2016

A post shared by Abbie Lynn Smith (@abbiewritesx) on Nov 10, 2016 at 8:38am PST

Today is day 17 and I am currently at 42,328 words. If I wrote around 550 words each day the rest of the month, I would reach 50K.

My goal is to hit 50K, and then put the project down. Don’t get me wrong, the story has great potential. It really does. I just don’t know if it is something that I want to pursue just yet. It needs a lot of work, more work than I’m willing to put into it right at this time.

So, you ask ‘Abbie, what was the point?’

View this post on Instagram

Hit 40K today for #nanowrimo! Very excited that I've been able to do this in 2016. Even though the project itself is very (VERY) rough, participating in this proves to me that I CAN write every day. It's about making time, not 'having' time. 😆 #nanowrimo2016

A post shared by Abbie Lynn Smith (@abbiewritesx) on Nov 16, 2016 at 8:21am PST

The point, my friends, is that I have proven to myself that I can write every single day. Every. Day. Even if it’s just for an hour or two. Or just a sentence here and a paragraph there. It is doable while working a full time job.

Nearly every single agent I’ve researched has the same message: don’t quit your day job. You can’t expect to jump out of the gate with a best selling novel. It doesn’t happen that way. I know this, I just never took the time to heed the advice. Being a writer has always been my dream. As a kid, you’re told not to give up on your dreams. I may have journeyed away from that dream for a little while, but I’m back on the path.

Once I reach 50K, the project will be saved on my computer for returning to later.

So, you may ask, what’s next?

I am returning to the world of HalfLife, to Dominick and Kate and Michael and Caleb and Rachel and Alec. And I am going to introduce them to the world. I am going to finish this round of edits and then seek out beta readers! Interested in getting a glimpse into a world of magic hidden beneath the stone streets of New Orleans? Hit me up!!

As always, thanks to you for sticking with me!

Yours truly, Abbie