I was tagged in the Writing Process Blog Hop (started by Kelley Harvey) by my awesome writer friend Rachel O’Laughlin!

1 – What am I working on?

Currently I’m working on a YA fantasy/romance project. I have ideas for six books in the series, and over 80k words spread out over the six books – about 60k on the first book and 20k of random scenes from the other books. My working title for this project is Grimsai – the grimsai are the dragon fighters in the first book, and the grimsai theme is carried through most of the series.

2 – How does my work differ from others of its genre?

Most dragon books don’t have people fighting dragons, at least, not the way I do it. (At least I think so… I hope so…) And mine have the romance thread. Also, it’s a series, but each book is separate from the others. They have different main characters and a different goal, though main characters from the other books do appear.

The closest thing I can think of is the Narnia books. They’re all complete stories, and most have different main characters, but it’s all in the same world with the same characters popping up in random places and stuff like that.

This example works much better in my head. LOL

3 – Why do I write what I do?

Because the stories won’t leave me alone? Does that count? I was working on another project a few months ago, in March, when the idea for the first Grimsai book hit me in the head. I was trying to ignore it, and next thing I knew, I was making a Pinterest board for it and telling Skye that I WANTED TO DROP EVERYTHING AND WRITE IT.

She told me to wait for Camp Nano, in April. 

I couldn’t even wait that last week of March. Two days before Camp Nano started, I wrote the beginning, just to get it out of my head. And then another 2k somehow managed to sneak its way out of my head before Camp Nano officially started.

Four months later, I now have over 80k on this project, which is amazing for me. Normally I can get to about 12k words on a project before I lose focus and change to a new one. 

I guess that’s why I write what I do – fantasy romance. Because I lose focus on the stories that don’t interest me, and then when I find a world that I LOVE, I can write 80k words like it’s nothing. I love my characters – my kick-butt dragon fighting girls, my princesses and princes, the guards who end up falling in love with the princess, and anyone else that I want to create. I love all of the main characters in these books, and I love the world that I’ve created, and I love my dragons, even if they do make my MC’s life a living hell for a while, and I love how my writing can take me into another world. 

I could go on and on and on but I think the next question is going to have a long answer too so I don’t want to write too much on this one. 🙂

4 – How does my writing process work?

Okay, so this is difficult. Like I said earlier, most projects I don’t get over 12k words on. Three exceptions:
–Project IAPTK, my first novel EVER. My introduction to writing was a friend convincing me that I should join her for Camp Nano. June 2012 was my first Camp Nano, and I successfully completed my 50k words, finishing the novel at about 57k words a week later.
–Project Estermead. This is the project I was working on before Project Grimsai. I think I was at about 27k on that one when I couldn’t wait to start Project Grimsai, and I want to go back to that one at some point, because I liked that one. LOL
–Project Grimsai. Officially my longest project ever, at over 80k words, I’m becoming quite attached to this baby. LOL

With only three projects ever reaching a decent amount of words, I’m still working out how I write. But when I looked at my projects, I found one thing that was consistant with all of them – from the 80k Project Grimsai to my 7k Project Locket. 

I don’t write from the beginning to the end. I write like I’m making a quilt – first I make all of my patches, then I sew them together. I know what scenes need to be written, and I write the ones I’m excited for, because if I’m not excited for them, the words don’t come easily, I lose momentum, and it ends up joining the pile of under 12k projects.

So I write all of my scenes, and then I connect them, which is the not-so-fun part, but by then I’m invested in the project enough that it happens, and then I rewrite the whole thing so it makes sense. LOL

It may seem weird, but that’s how I write. At least, that’s how my one MS and this WIP went. Are going. Whatever.

I did that with Project Estermead too, but with only 27k worth of quilt pieces, it’s hard to tell if that’s how it was going to end up.

So yeah, that’s my writing process! I’ve never gotten past a finished first draft – I’m hoping to change that with this project. Feel free to poke me until I can tell you that I’m done with it. 🙂

Here are the three writers that I’m tagging:

Kennedy is just a girl trying to navigate her crazy life. She’s beyond caring and creative and loves to spend time with her friends and family. When she’s not solving other people’s problems, she’s coloring in her dinosaur coloring book and hanging out with small people. Somewhere in there she manages to put story typing robots to shame.

Kennedy blogs at edythane.blogspot.com.

Darci writes YA & MG SF/F. She’s a Mormon stay-at-home-mom of two animal children she calls Monkey (4yo) and Ribbit (2yo). A proud Gryffindor, she makes and sells wands at Colevanders.blogspot.com, is a  #WriteClub sprintleader and writes as Thor on YAvengers.com. She lives with her husband and kids in Arizona. 

Darci blogs at darcicole.blogspot.com

Krista Newport is a 20-something professional blogger, writer, and poet. In the day she writes blog copy for hot businesses, and in the night she transforms into the scribe with a lust driven quill. Krista likes long walks on the beach, men with accents, red wine, and sensual novels. If she could, she’d use chocolate for currency. Dark chocolate will buy you a whole lot. Milk chocolate? Milk chocolate is the penny of her world.

 Krista blogs at kristanewport.com

I have a lot on my plate for April.

1. I have to keep up with my normal life. The business, eating, sleep… that all has to happen.
2. I’m attempting to get 20k words on my current WIP with April’s Camp NaNoWriMo. I’ve written about NaNoWriMo before, if you don’t know what that is. 🙂
3. I’m also attempting the A to Z Blog Challenge.

This is what the creator has to say about the challenge:

“It all began with my post from Saturday March 27, 2010 when I set forth a challenge to all bloggers for the month of April.   Can you post every day except Sundays during this month?  And to up the bar, can you blog thematically from A to Z?

“Most of the time if you subtract Sundays from April, you then have 26 days–one day for each letter of the alphabet.  When April 1st lands on a Sunday you begin on that day which will be the only Sunday you would post during that month’s challenge. 

“Using this premise, you would start beginning April First with a topic themed on something with the letter A, then on April second another topic with the letter B as the theme, and so on until you finish on April thirtieth with the theme based on the letter Z.  It doesn’t even have to be a word–it can be a proper noun, the letter used as a symbol, or the letter itself.  The theme of the day is the letter scheduled for that day.”

For my posts, I’m going to highlight some of my favorite books, using the author’s last name. If I can’t come up with an author whose name begins with a certain letter, I’ll probably find a book that starts with that letter. 🙂

I’m also going to see if I can make each post approximately 100 words. I don’t know how that will go – I’ve never tried to do a word limit before.

Hopefully I’ll be able to keep up with it all!

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