It’s been about six months since my last personal update. There are two reasons for that.
One: I haven’t written much.
&
Two: I have a new baby!
A post shared by Abbie Lynn Smith (@abbiewritesx) on Apr 14, 2019 at 2:44pm PDT
I have been wanting to get my own dog for literally years. I’m a corgi fanatic, but I’ve also been surfing Petfinder the last couple of years to see if there’s a dog I can’t live without. He’s the one! I’d just watched Umbrella Academy a couple of times and when I saw that his name was Klaus, I knew it was fate!
Klaus has been with me for nearly three months, which has contributed to my lack of writerly things. I’m just now starting to get back into the flow of taking a little time each day on my craft. I knew puppies were a lot of work, but, honestly, I didn’t realize just how much goes into them. I’m thankful everyday for this little guy who’s stolen my heart.
That being said, I’ve been doing some soul searching, trying to figure out my next move in my writer journey. I have struggled to find my writing voice. HalfLife is, I think, indefinitely going to be placed on the back burner. The story is far too long, and I don’t have it in me right now to cut it down to where it need to be in order to be considered for a debut novel. I have scenes written and a plot outline for another novel that’s a spinoff of a joint project that I did, but it doesn’t feel right either. I’m going to take some time to revisit ideas that I’ve had in the past.
My favorite part of the writing process is drafting. I consider myself a plantser. I have a general idea of the plot, but not a step-by-step narrative. I love getting lost in a story, letting the characters drive through the world of my loose idea. I adore character driven stories, because they are the ones that I like to write. I haven’t drafted anything new in a long while and my fingers are itching to. I’m taking some extra time off from work around the 4th of July, so I may have some time to do it then.
Now, I just need to brainstorm. I need to find my story and just write it. (I must add here that “Let’s get down to business, to defeat, the Huns” passed through my mind) I think one of my greatest problems is that I don’t like being confined to just one genre. For example, in HalfLife, I feel like the writing is a little more on par with YA, but because of the age of the characters, it’s an Adult novel.
Most of what I’ve read the last four or five years is YA fiction. I particularly enjoy the fantasy genre, but I know that market is over saturated at the moment. Even if I did get something written, it would take a long time before the market swings back. It’s nearly impossible to predict market trends, and even if I tried, that wouldn’t be fair to me. I’ve read over and over again not to write to the market–write what you want to write.
So the question is now: what do I want to write?
What a terrifyingly beautiful question.
-Abbie
P.S.: More puppy spam because I can. Feel free to follow Klaus on Instagram here.