July 3rd, 2024
“Nature and Books belong to the eyes that see them.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Dear Writing Diary,
Oh, how I’ve missed summer!
I’ve at last taken (somewhat of) a break from my publishing and business planning over the last few weeks to enjoy my summer vacation—or as close to a summer vacation as I can have while maintaining a day job and continue my writing of course. Throughout the last week though I’ve stepped away from electronic screens to soak in the sunshine and mountain views. I wish I could have stayed for hours reading and daydreaming up new stories beside the river that appears in the video above. The sound of running water soothed my soul. The smell of pine trees and sound of birdsongs made me feel reconnected to nature and a slower pace of life that seems to have receded in the wake of our modern lives.
Most excitingly, encountering nature and a change of scenery has inspired me with over a dozen new short story ideas. While I love writing books, short stories provide me with a unique outlet for creating compact worlds that I enjoy experiencing for a month or so while writing. In contrast, writing full-length books requires more detailed worldbuilding and unsurprisingly a longer time commitment—stretching, for me at least, as long as a year or more. For these reasons, I like to think of the worlds I create in short stories as being akin to vacation destinations that I love visiting for a few weeks or even a month. The worlds I choose to explore in my books, however, are much more like places I would like to live for a while.
Despite currently being on vacation though, I couldn’t resist doing a little work on my publishing plans, so for over the last week I’ve also spent some time on the following tasks:
1) My Author Website – I recently purchased a domain name for my new WordPress site. Before the launch in a few months, I’m working on creating different pages for the website and the general formatting (a process that sounds much easier than it is).
2) Blurbs for Upcoming Projects – I revised the pitches for the upcoming projects I plan to publish within the next few months and in 2025.
3) Title Change to a Project – After seeing a recent fantasy book that has a similar title to my own novel in the same genre, I decided I should change the title to help avoid confusing readers in the future even though the plots differ drastically. I’ve started brainstorming new titles, but I haven’t yet landed on a new one that I love.
I’m looking forward to taking more time to relax for the July 4th weekend, but knowing me, I’ll likely still be writing and planning in one form or another.
Here's to seeing what summer adventure tomorrow holds.
-K
P.S. Whoever’s reading this, if you’ve enjoyed these glimpses into my writing life, could you please hit the subscribe button? I would love to share more of my writing journey with you in the future. :)
Wow you've been busy! A new domain name always feels like a big, solid, concrete step in the right direction. Looking forward to your progress and keep writing!
So nice to read this! I hope you can enjoy your vacation (the video is beautiful - and so peaceful!), and I wish you all the best for the planning you set out to do 🙌🏻