STORYTIME MONTHLY UPDATE: July 2018

Above: Gus driving me home in the twilight.

Hello! It is me. Poppy. Reporting from the month of August on how my July went. 
As you do. 

I had a pretty nice month, I think. Well, really it just ended quite well and my memory doesn’t actually stretch very far back, so I now believe the whole month was nice.
And why not? 

This month I found out my debut YA contemporary novel will be released in March 2019! 

So that has me fairly over the moon.
​It is hard to believe it is all real. 
​
​So here we go...

Writing Life:

Aaaah. The writing life. :)
It’s going pretty well. 
I think maybe I’m having a bit of a dream run with the edits for my upcoming debut novel. My editor at Wakefield is lovely, and seeing the manuscript smooth out and streamline with all her hard work is just an incredible experience. 


My biggest bad habit as a writer is my capacity to repeat myself. A lot. 


So I can accidentally repeat ideas within a story, like a character stating their goal too many times, or whatever. I am aware of this about my writing, because I have a writing group who gives me feedback and I have endlessly worked hard to try and iron it out of my writing.... but my biggest problem is I think I just get way too close to the text and I just can’t see the repeats for myself. I need someone to help me by pointing them out. 


Which is what my lovely editor has done.
And as we get rid of the unnecessary trim around the plot and dialogue, my story is really changing and becoming so nice and smooth. I am so excited about it! To see it grow and evolve with Margot’s help has just been such a cool experience. And the better the text gets, the more proud of it I am. I really like this story (which is lucky because editing a novel includes reading it over and over and over and over...). I really like my book a lot. Which is nice. It is good to be proud of it.


And yeah... I am super nervous to release it into the world.
After that it will no longer belong to me in a sense, and people can enjoy it or hate it or think whatever they think. It is a scary and exciting concept, all rolled up together.
And yeah... the release date is March 2019. Seven months away.
 
I am terrified but also.... I CANNOT WAIT.

Being a writer is a dream come true. It is literally coming true before my eyes.
​Which is an incredible feeling.
​

Life, Life:

The other super cool thing that happened this month, was that I met my literary agent for the first time in person, Jane Novak.
I am not going to lie, I was a little nervous. She’s already my agent, so it wasn’t like an interview or anything, but I couldn’t help it, I was still nervous.
 
It went great. I liked her so much and had such a cool time talking about my stories and plans and the industry. It makes me astounded once again that I actually have an agent now. She really likes my work. And she wants to work together to bring it out into the world.
Freaking amazing!
And she was so lovely! 

So that was pretty cool.
 
All this good fortune makes me think back over everything a lot. I’m talking 5 years of struggle and rejections and no agents and no book contracts (not even counting the initial additional 2 years where I gave up way too easily). And all the tiny little easily missed chances that came my way and brought me to where I am.

What if I hadn’t entered my novel, Making Friends with Alice Dyson, into the Adelaide Festival unpublished manuscript competition? Well it wouldn’t have been published. What if I hadn’t joined the YA Circle book club at Dymocks, which lead me to meet Vikki Wakefield and through her also meet Allayne Webster, who introduced me to her agent, Jane Novak?
So many tiny little cool things that could so easily not have happened.


It makes me feel very lucky.
  
Now one of the other exciting things about meeting my agent, was the opportunity to discuss some of my novels, what is and isn’t working etc. So now I have a finished manuscript I feel extremely excited about (YA historical fiction detective series), the ending is not quite there yet, but now I have an agent who wants to help me pull it together and get it ready to send out on submission.
I am so excited to fix my story and make it better.
​
And so pleased to have someone on my side who wants to help me do that.
Pretty freaking cool.
 
Okay. I’ll stop gushing now. 
But I guess I had a really good month.
 
In other news... the cat has stopped pissing on the floor, so that is pretty great too!
 
All in all, a lovely time was had by all.
Except maybe my poor husband who is neck deep in experiments, a thesis and So. Much. Study.
Ah. The joys of being a full time student.
​

Reading Life.

Oooh. So books I haven’t read yet that I am getting quite excited for, are the new releases, Reign of Mist and Circus Hearts. Both are self-published and are being released over the next few months and I can’t wait to read them.
 
This month I read:

• White Night (Freaking LOVED it!)
• Darktown (an adult detetcive story for a change, very cool)
• Defy the Stars (very breezy and nice read, thoroughly enjoyable)
• 36 Questions (a romance that reads like a rom-com in every way, quick, easy, fun and took me like two minutes to read. Very cute.)
• Since You’ve Been Gone (another romantic contemporary – a slow beginning but once I sunk into it I am finding myself really rather invested.... haven’t finished it yet but have started getting quite interested in what’s going to happen to the shy protagonist  (P.S – I used to be so shy, I liked a lot of this character’s struggles, and the idea that shy people can often come across rude or snobby when really they are just having trouble knowing what to do. So I really quite like that aspect. Very endearing. P.P.S – I am much less awkward and shy these days (through lots of hard work on my part getting braver and better at communicating with strangers) but DUDE I REMEMBER!  P.P.P.S – I am still shit and terrified at speaking in front of groups. Which will be fun when I begin promoting my booooooooooook. Yes yep. )

 
 
So that is it folks. Tell me what you did. Tell me how you are!
 :)