April has been good to me. I’d spent the last two weeks of march visiting my mom and came back to Ecuador with a ton of books and stuff to keep myself busy! So, I’d very much describe it as a moving forward month. I think I’ve left my reading slump behind, and I’m trying to get back on track with my writing as well!
Reviews
- Ash Princess by Laura Sebastian ★★★★½
- The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin ★★★★½
- The Evolution of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin ★★★★½
- The Retribution of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin ★★★
- To Kill a Kingdom by Alexandra Christo ★★★★½
College
My classes start next week, and so I just hope I’ll be able to keep posting at least once or twice a week to keep stress levels to the minimum. I like my posting schedule so far, but I wouldn’t like it to get any slower either.
That said, I made a few purchases to get a little excited about my new and last semester in college.
Business
I was able to give another writing workshop during April, which I loved, because I got paid for this one. I got four dear students, which is always better than zero. I’m so grateful to them, and even though of course I was so nervous, I was glad by their responses to our workshop.
This time, it wasn’t really about standing in front of them, even though there was some of that. Charging for what you know comes with its own brand of insecurities. Is it really going to help them? What if they don’t understand and they don’t like me and ask for a refund omg?
But once it’s on, it’s on. Talking about writing makes me feel so good, and when the guys started asking questions, I felt like I could finally breathe. There’s nothing better than questions in a workshop, because that’s how you know they’ve been listening closely enough to process the information and want more, dig deeper.
That’s me explaining stuff.
You might or might not have noticed that a while ago I started a new newsletter for spanish-speaking folks who were interested in learning about writing. It’s the tab on the menu that says ‘Curso Gratis‘. I’ve been using a free email course to show them what I’ve got to offer to them and see if they’d benefit from hearing from me from time to time. At first, I didn’t get a lot of responses.
For about 5 months I got stuck in 10 subscribers. It was quite disheartening but I knew that that was also on me. I wasn’t promoting the thing enough, so I could hardly expect people to flock to me. So I started thinking like a blogger, as if I was a newbie all over again. I needed to put myself out there and go to where my people were. So I did that. And while I didn’t gain 100 people in my email list in a week or obtain any out of this world stats like you usually see in success stories, I can now say I have 50 peeps that regularly open my nerdy writing emails. Half of them joined during April while I was promoting this workshop, so I’m happy because this proves that I just need to promote my thing more so more people can know about me and what I do. Feeling very optimistic!
The community
The StayBookish zine has released its 4th issue and it’s A+, filled with amazing content by bookworms from our community, including yours truly.
In a blog post of hers, Aimee points out a few things she wishes books with POC included, which are so true and I totally support all of the things she mentions.
Marie puts together a wonderful and inspiring post about feeling validated as a book blogger. I always love her posts about being a blogger because they’re so damn relatable!
Nicole reflects on her expectations about POC names in books. Sometimes we don’t even realize we’re judging things through our limited life lenses and forget that a single book can’t possibly encompass the whole experiences of a particular culture or adhere to our own expectations.
Laura talks about the recent rise to power of duologies in a post that really made me think about which I preferred.
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Congrats on so many more subscribers for your newsletter and good for you with the workshop! That’s awesome!
Thank you! It makes me really happy too! Starting something like that is terrifying as hell, but also very rewarding when things work out.
It’s so awesome about your workshop and email course, Pamela!!! I don’t really do a lot of writing anymore myself, but it’s so awesome the way you’re helping writers out. ♥ Good luck in your last college semester, too! And thanks so much for sharing my post. 🙂
No problem! And thank you! My writing had also fallen by the wayside for a while, with me struggling to manage so many things at the same time. (I really picked a hell of a time to focus on writing while working on the thesis tho) But during that time I found that I loved giving writing advice so here I am XD
Yayy for the writing workshop Pamela! And best of luck with college as well. Two posts a week is so amazing still while in school! I could never keep up with that.
I hope you have a wonderful May!
Thank you! I’m beginning to see how difficult it’ll be, but, yeah, I hope I can make it 🙂
I’m so glad your workshop was a success, and that your newsletter is picking up! That’s seriously awesome 🙂
And thanks for mentioning my blog post 🙂
No problem! I had been thinking duologies have become a new trend now too and your post was very interesting! And thank you!
Wohoo seems like you had a busy month! I have yet to read the final book in Mara Dyer trilogy as I keep putting it off… I’m so scared! Also, congratulations for expanding your business, that’s amazing 🙂
It has been! Initially, I’d been planning to binge read the series, but my interest decreased so I also put off the last book. It wasn’t as good as the other two, in my opinion, but I’m glad I got to the end of it. I hope you enjoy it more than I did when you get to it!
Thanks for your kind words! <3
I’m so happy that April was a lovely month for you and I hope your classes at college will go well and that you’ll enjoy them 🙂
And yay for that writing workshop and the new subscribers, I’m so glad you’re doing well, you’re on the road to success for sure and I wish you the best for it all – honestly, this is so inspiring.
Thank you so, so much for sharing my post, that means a whole lot <3
I hope you'll have an amazing month! <3
It definitely has been a good month. And thanks so much for the sweet words. All the encouragement is more than welcome! And no prob, I really liked that post! Hope you have an amazing month as well!
I’m so glad that your workshop was a success and that you found some new subscribers to your newsletter. That seems like a fantastic resource! I’ll tweet about it and put it in my Sunday Post!
Thank you so much, Nicole! It really means a lot, so I’m very happy :3