​My Writing Thus Far

​“The best stories, however, are living things, and as much as we may cherish the original, the true act of love comes in the retelling.” — Anne Boyd Rioux

​You've read my bio, now let me tell you a little about my writing. As I’ve said, it’s now mostly fantasy, whereas before it was horror, romance, and nearly everything in between.
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My greatest accomplishments in writing came when I began participating in NaNoWriMo, an event held in November of every year. This event, as well as CampNaNo, held in April and July, are events where writers challenge themselves to write fifty thousand words for the month. My first year in 2018, my WIP was an altered timeline post-apocalyptic story that I had planned, plotted, outlined, and directed every step. In the end, I had gotten all of 6, 799 words. I worked on it throughout the year but ran out of steam and landed at about 17k. On to 2019.

At some point in 2019, a throwaway line in the popular Netflix series, Vikings caught my attention, and I jotted it down. Eventually, I went to research the validity of the custom mentioned in the line, which ended in no results. So I took it upon myself to build the lore behind it. It certainly took a whole different turn from the show. Putting aside my research, I started writing and ended up with the first chapter of a squishy Rom-Com type story about a ghost, a girl, and her dead grandfather, who everyone thought was a kleptomaniac. Sounds cute, but when I pulled it out on the first day in November, I still had D&D and the characters we had played during the week on my mind and I knew I wanted to write a medievalish fantasy. So the story transformed. But I, being a type-A personality who thrives by routine and structure, had not prepared for this upset. So I pantsed the entire story. I had very little clue what the next line would bring until the one before it had been written. It was the most fun I had ever had while writing. I kept a few aspects of the original idea, but it is wholly different from the original.

Since then I participated in July's 2020’s CampNaNo and NaNo that following November. To date, I have written roughly 200k words across the three books in the series. I somehow managed to pants all three of them.

So this is the story of the beginning. Maybe next time I’ll tell about cutting 25k words or how I deleted the edited version of my 85k novel.
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