The first half of this year has left me biting the dust because, oh my god, I can’t believe it’s june already. So anyway, I just turned 23 -yay for me-, and so many things have happened!
I’ve been meaning to write more blog posts but I’ve gotten so caught in doing ALL THE THINGS that I’ve accidentally left the blog step down from the list of priorities. But I love blogging so I’ll going at it until I feel like I really can’t go on.
So I wanted to tell you a bit about what’s been going on.
Life
As for a general life update, I dyed my hair blue!
I’m just saying, when I’m an old lady, I want my hair to still be blue.
In other news, I love my job even though it can often be stressful too. I’m the Social Media Manager at a marketing agency so it’s content creation all day. I create content for brands, and then I come home and create more for my own. So it kinda never stops? And it’s exhausting to juggle and prioritize.
But I guess we all go through that in one way or another, having to balance our lives on and offline.
Blogging
There’s not been much going on, but I’m going to share what I’ve written about these past few months.
Discussions
Reviews
Reading
Reading-wise, I’ve been doing super. I know it may not seem that way because I’ve hardly posted any reviews. But there’s a reason. I’ve been on an adult contemporary romance binge.
Yup.
I can’t get enough of them.
I’ve reviewed this kind of books before here but I don’t think it meshes well with the blog as a whole. So I just rate them and review them on Goodreads and not here. But you can bet your bookshelves I’ve been reading nonstop! I’m even ahead of my GR Challenge!
If you want to take a peek at my recent favorites in this genre, I made a post about 5 of them!
Writing
At the start of the year I continued working on my novel project, until a new shiny one came along. A writer friend of mine convinced me to tag along and write a short story. That project had to be cancelled, but just when the news hit me, an opportunity for a writing contest -a short story contest- came along.
And at this point, I think it’d been a few years since I’d actually finished any kind of story I’d started. It was very frustrating.
Finishing this short story was beyond fullfilling. It helped that I had a clear deadline to finish it.
I learned a few things from this experience.
Writing short stories is super hard
I must admit I did initially think it would be easier to write a short story than a novel. And it can be in a way. But it’s harder in others, specially for me since I’m used to larger plotlines and more space to develop them.
I started with a simple idea but the possibilities to expand kept tempting me! I had to keep it max 2k words. That can be a single chapter in a novel! So the word limit was really short, obviously. I was also used to being able to use more dialogue and description, but here I had to be ruthless editing!
Editing really is everything
After finishing the draft, my story was like a Frankenstein’s monster. A patchwork of narration, notes and skipped scenes. I combed through the thing a few times to iron it and polish it.
Imperfect as it was, I finally submitted it and I’m so excited! Whatever happens, I love the story and hope it’ll be enough. Fingers crossed!
Hi Pam! You look gorgeous with your new hair color! <3
I'm so happy you're loving your job and what you do, this is so, so important and this makes me so happy you found your path, yay <3 Congratulations as well on finishing that short story, yay, this is so very exciting!! Fingers crossed for the contest!
I hope June has been lovely to you so far, sending you lots of love <3