First things first: I’d like to say a huge welcome to all the new folks who have signed up for my monthly newsletter since I sent out the December one. I have over 550 subscribers now, and I’m very grateful for every one of you! Please feel free to leave comments or suggestions, if you like. This applies to folks who aren’t new as well. Obviously. If you want to see all the exciting things that happened before you subscribed, here is where you can find past newsletters.
And now, on to the first section of my newsletter — the section I like to fondly call: “the brain dump.”
I’m not a resolution person. I am, however, a goals person. What’s the difference between resolutions and goals? Literally nothing. However, I like to think that calling them goals makes them more solid and realistic, so I’m going to keep doing that.
I love goals. I have yearly goals, monthly goals and daily goals. I have weekday goals and weekend goals. I have checklists on paper and on my phone and in my head.
I realized not that long ago that, even though all my goals and checklists make me seem like a rigid, obsessive control freak, I need them to keep me sane. I need them to keep me grounded. I need them so I don’t veer off into the dense forest of aimlessness, and I also need them so I don’t stay in bed all day.
I once thought I needed my goals and checklists so I could maintain control of my life. But I was wrong. I can’t control my life, no one can. There are very few things that happen in my life that I can actually control. What I can do, is maintain the illusion of control, and I do that very successfully.
What surprises me, is that the illusion is all I need. If something in my life is causing my anxiety to spiral out of control, often (not always) all I need to do is focus on my goals; focus on my checklists; focus on the things I can control.
I can control completing tasks. I can control doing the laundry every weekend. I can control writing for a certain length of time every day. Even the act of writing down goals and then changing my mind and crossing them out or replacing them is something I can control.
And that honestly helps. Focusing on checking things off helps. The illusion helps; even if it’s just a fantasy.
Do you make resolutions and/or goals?
Love, Julie Update
(For those who are new, Love, Julie is my current WIP. It’s a continuation of Someone to Kiss that focuses on, you guessed it, Julie.)
I’m currently at, what is turning out to be, my favourite part of the writing process with Love, Julie. I’ve finished the “writing the first draft and hating everything on the page” part and have jumped right into the “editing the first draft and realizing that things might not suck as much as I thought they did” part.
I love the editing part. I’m not one hundred percent certain why I love this part so much, but I have a sneaking suspicion it’s because, as I’ve noted in previous newsletters, I’m a giant nerd.
I’m a project manager in my real-life job. What I love most about project management is that it’s all about driving things forward efficiently. I love looking at a schedule and moving things around like a puzzle, trying to make things better, trying to make things fit. Trying to be efficient and effective with the resources I have.
That’s where I’m at with Love, Julie. Everything is there. Everything is on the page. I just have to move things around; add things and take them away; make things better; make them more effective. Whenever I see a place where I can combine two sentences into one, or make something flow better, or replace a word that changes the whole feel of the sentence, I get a giddy buzz of satisfaction in my brain.
See? Nerd.
I’m enjoying this part so much, I’m actually ahead of schedule.
If you’d like a little peek into the wonder that is my brain, I’ve created a Love, Julie Spotify playlist that I add to when I hear a song that fits the story or one of the characters. It’s fun.
Someone to Kiss Update
For the past week, Someone to Kiss has been part of a super sweet blog tour. If you want to read some of the reviews, check out the socials of the wonderful participants in the image above.
Blog tours are really cool and I’m very grateful to have been a part of a couple so far. It still amazes me that people not only read my book but also take time out of their day to write a nice review. I hope I never stop being completely thrilled about that.
Also, I created some advertising on Facebook and Instagram yesterday, and, because I’m a digital marketing genius, Someone to Kiss went from somewhere in the hundreds to 21st on Amazon Canada’s Single Women’s Fiction list.
Although, now that I think about it, the blog tour probably had more to do with that than my stunning advertisement.
Never mind.
What I’m Reading
I just started reading this and I already love it. It’s quite a bit different from books I’ve been reading lately but similar to books I used to read exclusively. It’s great to be back, I must say. I’ll post a full review on Instagram when I’m done.
Resources
I forgot a couple of great newsletters last month when I posted the ones I follow. My only excuse is that I am old and my memory is embarrassingly terrible.
Helping Writers Become Authors
And: