S.M. Butler's Blog, page 11

Hey guyssss!!! January has been a tough month, so I’ve been kind of MIA on the blog and in email. I’ve really been heads down on Her Last Kill revisions, which until the last couple of days, really hasn’t been coming together exactly like I wanted it to. It’s been a slow process, and likely, I’m not going to be finished by the end of the month (i.e. TODAY. Sigh.) like I wanted.

But I’m not getting discouraged from it. I’ve learned that every book has its own life and its own personality. I’ve never written a book the same way twice. I’ve never revised or edited one the same way twice either. Something in my process always changes, usually for the better.

I think that kind of tumultuous relationship with writing can be… tiring. It can wear on a person. When you first finish writing, revising, and editing in some kind of record time, you tend to think that you can do that with every book from then on. I’ve learned that’s really not the case.

At least for me.

It’s hard to finish a book, guys. I watch in this author Facebook group where this one girl finishes a book once every couple weeks, but I have to wonder… how the FUCK. Maybe she writes books that are more simple in nature. Maybe they’re shorter. I don’t know.

I miss writing short, actually. Since I came back to writing, I’ve been writing much longer books than I used to. I don’t know if that’s a good thing, or if it’s specific to the Reapers series, but I don’t think it is specific to the Reapers because I wrote an urban fantasy romance that was even bigger than the Reapers books back in October. LOL.

Anyway, I’m getting off track. I’m probably not the only one sitting there in awe of this woman finishing a book every few weeks. Would I like to do that? Absolutely. But I know that’s not how my process works. The fastest I ever went from idea to final draft was about three months. And I know writers out there that are in awe over that number like I am for that author in the Facebook group.

What I learned about myself when I took that time off from writing and publishing is that rushing myself, rushing my process, and succumbing to the pressure of everyone publishing faster than me, ends up with me in a far worse place. I’m not eager to burn myself out, and maybe that makes me a little more cautious about setting dates for the rest of the Reapers series before they are written.

It’s okay to be slower than that girl in the Facebook group. It’s okay for your speed to be different than mine. It’s okay that your process is more streamlined, or that one guy over there has a bigger email list than I do.

This is one thing that I keep telling myself every time I berate myself, or I feel bad because I am not capable of doing something that someone else is having such great success at.

It’s okay.

For February, this is what I’m going to tell myself as I work on revisions (because, yes, I’m not done) and start re-evaluating my quarterly goals.

It’s okay.

2019 is a low-pressure year. It’s a year of building my businesses and side hustles. It’s a year of claiming what I had before and creating a great community around myself that will motivate and help me thrive.

It’s okay to be me. It’s okay for you to be you.

But it’s not okay for me to squander my writing time playing on the interwebs, so my lovelies, I’m out for now. Have a fantastic and awesome day. I hope your Januarys were amazing, and I wish your Februarys to include so much awesome you just can’t stand it.

I’ve been so busy the last couple of weeks that I’m really glad I decided to take some time from writing to deal with life. I threw myself into Sucky Day Job, because it’s our busy season and now that it’s over, and things are returning to normal as people go back to work and school, I find myself actually having enough energy to sit down at the computer to do writerly things again. Though I still feel a little bit like this…

I started back up on revisions for Her Last Kill this week. Yes, it’s still going to take a mountain of work to get it into good shape. But I found that I still loved the story I wrote just as much as I did when I wrote it back in November. This is good, though. It means I’m not going to throw it out the window when I get frustrated in a few weeks.

I realized this week that I’m impatient. I know that good art, good books… they take time to make and sometimes more than one sitting. I find that I get frustrated because it’s not coming together the right way in the right time frame. And I didn’t really realize why I was getting frustrated until this week. And I’ve been writing for YEARS now. And funnily enough, it was working on my sketchbook and drawing that made me realize it.

I expected to sit down and create a fully finished piece of artwork in one sitting. And when I did that, I was unhappy with the outcome. It sucked, really. When it comes to writing, I’m the same way. Not that I expect to be able to vomit out a book in one sitting, but I need to learn to not be afraid to let it take time to write and get better.

I think a lot of this comes from comparing myself to other writers. Some writers can write a book every month and be able to publish them that fast too. I’m not that fast. I can probably put out a book every three months if I’m working on nothing but writing full-time. But that actually is what led to my burnout and me quitting writing for two years. Almost three, actually.

So, no more comparing myself to other writers. Because that way lies madness. I am who I am, and writing isn’t the only thing in my life. I do have a day job, I have family and friends, and I have other interests besides writing. I like video games and YouTube and Netflix, and I love reading. Doing nothing but writing sucks the fun out of it for me.

But I’m going off topic here. (Surprise, surprise, I know… Or maybe the real surprise is that I have a topic…

I hope you guys have a fantastic holiday. Merry Christmas, if you celebrate. I’m headed to my brother’s house for Christmas this year, with a stop at my parents’ before that.

No matter what you celebrate this holiday season, I wish you all peace, calm, and happy times with your family and friends, not to mention delicious food and low to no stress for this holiday.

Me, trying to work on revisions…

[image error]Image courtesy of GIPHY

And then…

[image error]Image courtesy of GIPHY

Yeah. So that’s my progress this week….

It’s really kind of the season for goals and planning and reflection over the past year, right? So maybe that’s why I did two goal posts back to back.

The truth is… This is what’s on my mind right now. This is a big part of why I don’t get a lot of writing done in December. I take that hit because it’s important to know where you’re going and the why of it.

After my two-year writing hiatus, I came back in 2017 ready to pick up where I left off. But I didn’t expect that it would take another six to eight months to get back into the swing of things. It never occurred to me. I thought I would come back and everything would be as it was. But that wasn’t true. I had trouble writing. I didn’t know what to write, really. I wasn’t in a place where I could produce another Lucky Thirteen book. So at the end of 2017, I really hadn’t done much except getting myself back into writing. I wasn’t writing anything for publication. It was just for me.

So 2018.

It’s been a weird year. I’d say… it was a rebuilding year. I did a lot of rebuilding in 2017, but most of that was the foundation, like getting my website back online, and migrating my mailing list to a different service so I could have more functionality. I got into drawing and painting, and oddly enough, that new hobby got me into the writing mood more than anything else did.

2018 was about fine-tuning the new foundation and getting the writing done. The first book I finished in three years was HIS LAST BREATH. It took me most of 2018. I restarted it from what I had of it from before. It still wasn’t working. So I rewrote it in a different POV (third instead of first person) and it gelled. I wrote the zero draft in about three weeks. Revisions took about two months. After that, it was edits and cover art and doing all the businessy things like picking a release date.

December may have not been the best month to release with all the holiday books and stuff out from the big publishers, but I really needed to have something out before the end of the year, so I could feel like I did something, even though I know inside that I did a ton this year, more than I did in 2017 and definitely more than in 2016.

Now I know I can do it.

The last few years, I’ve looked back on the past year and felt like it was the worst year ever. There were various reasons for it. My sister passed, I lost my crappy Day Job, I had money struggles after someone else screwed me over and stole a shit ton of money from me. So my reasons are probably valid.

This year, I don’t feel like that. I don’t feel like this heavy cloud is sitting on me like it has been the last few years. I have a pretty good Day Job, even though I call it the Sucky Day Job. I really only call it that because I’d rather stay home and write. Can’t blame me for that. My kids are awesome and smart and talented and they’re doing so well. And I’m writing again. I’m talking to people outside my family. I’m really starting to enjoy life and writing again.

So there you have it. My 2018 wrap up. 2019 is going to be even better. I’ve always thought that struggling makes you appreciate the good times even more. Maybe I still struggle sometimes, but on the whole, I’m on the upswing in my life. If I could, I’d freeze myself at the very top, and never come down again.

You ever had one of those months where you just didn’t want to do anything at all? 

I had great intentions at the end of November, and I started December off with a bang. But I’m at the point where I just want to sit on my couch, binge-watch holiday movies, and eat cookies.

I’m thinking about blowing off the rest of the year and starting January off on a fresh note because I kind of like the idea of binge-watching holiday movies and eating cookies.

Also? The new season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is out and I really want to watch that, too. And I also need to catch up on Outlander. I’m only on Season 2. I know. Been trying to avoid spoilers for like, ever, which was a lot easier before I came back online.

In other news, I got my new Hobonichi yesterday. I was going to do a custom planner I designed, but I really like the simplicity of the Hobonichi, so I’m gonna try it out for this quarter and see how it goes. I figure if I need to add things, I can do it TN style, and make smaller little inserts. I’m using one of my TN covers, because it fits my Hobonichi perfectly, so I have a couple extra elastics I could use for inserts.  I also ordered the Tomoa River paper that the Hobonichi uses so I could print my inserts on that paper. It’s gonna be awesome.

As you can see, I’m not really feeling all that guilty about not writing right now. It’s December, the holidays, and I realized when I was looking over my white board that I actually drafted two books this quarter. One is HER LAST KILL, and the other is a contemporary fantasy I’m toying with for next year. Neither is super urgent at the moment.

Also? That’s a lot of words for one quarter. I’m probably feeling like this because I wrote so much in October and November. I think I’m just going to take the time off, enjoy my holiday binges, and spend some quality time with two teenage boys that really don’t care if I spend time with them or not. But I do, and they will like it, damn it.

Welcome to another edition of State of the Suz, in which I talk about where I’ve been, where I’m going, and what kind of unholy demands I’m going to put on myself to get there.

Inspirational, aren’t I?

Let’s talk about November first, okay?

Because I think that’s pertinent to where I’m at for December so far.

November was a good month for me. It was NaNoWriMo so I got to spend a lot of time writing, unapologetically, which is awesome. I won NaNo around the 23rd. My plan had been to finish before Thanksgiving so I could jack off and do nothing for a week during the holiday and spend some time with family. My plan went off without a hitch there.

After that week off, I decided to take a couple of days and get things set up for HIS LAST BREATH’s release on December 3rd. So this is all admin stuff, and it takes a different mindset than writing for me. Which is good, because then I can recharge my creative well while I’m working on other things, and then when I come back to writing, I’m refreshed and ready to go.

So I didn’t do any writing for the last eight days of November, which is okay, because that’s how I planned, right?

Here’s December.

My original plan was at the beginning of December, I’d sit down and start revisions on HER LAST KILL. It does need a lot of work, and I knew that, so I didn’t want to leave that to the last possible moment before it needs to go to the editor. Look at me, thinking ahead, right?

I probably should have considered that I scheduled a book release at the start of the month. Soooo… Already, I’m spending all my time this month with the Publishing Hat on. This means I’m spending all my time working on the marketing, writing newsletters, blog posts, recording podcasts… All that stuff. No writing. No revising, which was the original plan.

Sigh. The best-laid plans…

That said, it’s the beginning of the month still. I still have time to redeem myself. So my plan for this week is to actually open up HER LAST KILL and start working on the revisions. I did already do a revision board, so it should be relatively easy to open it up and start it, right?

For those of you not familiar with my revision board, here’s a picture of it. Basically, what I do is go through the draft, scene by scene, and write a one-sentence summary of each scene on a sticky note. Each sticky note is a certain color depending on POV. So, normally, I have two colors, but this book wanted to be special, so there are four. Yeah.

Anyway, I stick them up on the board in the appropriate place and then I look at places where I need to strengthen out the plot itself or fix an issue with the plot. Then I grab the appropriately-colored sticky note, write ADD IN at the top, and then do a one-sentence summary of the scene I’m going to have to add. And I always add scenes. A lot. I take out some too, or rewrite some, but there’s always adding. LOL.

Once I’m done with that, the revision board is my reference as I go through the draft. As I tackle the revision on each scene or write the new ones, I’ll take the sticky note down off my board. And I’ll do that until it’s all gone and I’m at the end.

It’s a little elaborate, I think. But I’m very visual, so seeing that progress is imperative for me and motivational when I get near the end and I’m frustrated by the book not being done yet. Because that happens too.

Anyway… I had plans to focus on Section Five for a bit, take a break from the regular obligations and do some fun writing but I think I just want to get this big part of the process for HER LAST KILL out of the way first. Because edits go fairly fast for me. It’s revisions that take so long, so I just kind of want to get the biggest part of the process out of the way so I don’t have to worry about it or stress that I won’t get it done. Because one of my goals for the New Year is to set things up for my writing so I don’t need to stress over it. Stress leads to burnout and we all know how that went last time. #twoyearwritinghiatus #letsnotdothatagain

So that’s the plan for the rest of December. I’m going to focus on HER LAST KILL revisions. I still need to write a few more blog posts for the month, both here and on Story Nerd and I need to record some more podcasts but… I can do it.

Easy does it.

December is always hard to get things done at all. I usually plan on things like revisions and edits instead of actual writing during December because this month is always difficult to focus on writing. Revisions and edits take a different part of my brain, so they’re much easier to handle than writing.

Okay, this turned into a REALLY long State of the Suz to say I’m doing revisions this month. LOL. I’m also working on my goals for next year, which kind of depend on what I get finished this month. Maybe I’ll just err on the side of caution and just start the New Year ahead if I finish, or be right where I need to be if I don’t. Look at me being smart. Ha.

For real, I’m going to stop typing now. I got revisions to take care of, remember?

Talk to you guys soon!

I’ve never made any secret that I’m not good in the kitchen. I will never be Suzy Homemaker. I will never have more kitchen appliances than [insert some famous chef here], and I will probably never be able to get through making a dinner without burning something. But I decided I wanted to try for a couple hours and attempted cookies. Because why not, really?

So the first cookies I decided to make were pumpkin spice cookies. I’m not usually huge on pumpkin spice things. I hate it in my coffee. I hate it in pretty much everything but baked goods like cookies and cake and muffins. Like we had this pumpkin spice cheesecake muffin thing at work… OMG… I thought I died. It was amazing.

Anyway… the first thing I realized while I was getting ready to start was that I didn’t have a mixer. This is how ignorant I am of kitchen things. I’d never bought on. So I ran my butt down to the store and grabbed a hand mixer real quick. I also realized why people use the expensive ones with the bowl. I made a huge mess when I turned that thing on. Shit went everywhere.

It took me a couple tries but I got the hang of the mixer thing. From there it was smooth sailing. Once I got it all mixed together right, I dropped it onto the baking sheets and hovered over the oven… because I have a tendency to forget about things in the oven, too… Yeah.

So, after I got the cookies done, I let them cool and decided frosting was in order. Naturally, I didn’t have any so I had to run back to the store while cookies were cooling to grab frosting. I decided on cream cheese. I debated mixing in food coloring to make them more festive but that’s just asking for a bigger mess and stained clothes. I think that would have been pushing things… But anyway, I think they turned out okay. The recipe I used made them a little more cake-like and chewy than I thought they’d be but I also kind of like them this way over hard and crunchy. So I guess it worked out.

They aren’t the most beautiful cookie in the world, but for my first real try in a long time, I think I did okay. I survived to my thirties without being a kitchen expert. For some it comes easy. I’m not one of those people. I had fun with it. I didn’t like cleaning up afterward so much. I really did get cookie dough in the weirdest places in the kitchen.

So that’s all I got on the cookies. I still have the sugar cookies to make… I’m going to attempt shapes this time. But that’s not going to happen today. Today’s my birthday, so I’m headed out for lunch with my mother. I never do a lot for my birthday. I’m not big on parties where I need to be “on” the whole time, but I enjoy the one on one time I get with family and friends when they decide birthday lunches are happening.

Have you ever had a cookie moment like me? Maybe not necessarily cookies, but actually gone out to do something you’ve never been good at doing, and it didn’t turn out so badly?

It’s here! It’s here! OMG… I’m so excited to bring you this book! I hope you guys love it. If you don’t… well, don’t tell me that. But if you do love it, let me know!

His Last Breath is available NOW on all of your favorite retailers!

Check it out!

Available now from these online retailers:

Amazon  |  Apple  |  Nook  |  Kobo

Are you excited too? Tell your friends! You guys are going to love Chris and Abigail as much as I do. I know it.

I haven’t had a tree in my house for about three years. I moved twice, and it never seemed like it was important, though I’ve always loved putting the tree up at my parent’s house.

This year, I decided I needed one, so I took myself down to Walmart and bought a small one, plus some decorations because in one of the moves, I lost all my Christmas stuff.

Sorry about the weird lighting. Was totally not paying attention when I took the picture..

So this year feels very much like starting over. Everything is new for Christmas. I think it’s completely appropriate, really. This year was a turning point for me in so many ways, from personal to business to writing and publishing… I feel like I’ve gotten to the point where… I’m almost the person I’ve always wanted to be. I’m not dreading Christmas this year like I was last year. I’m still not where I want to be, but I no longer feel like I need to hide from my family because I’m not doing what makes me happy.

Anyway, I got the tree and brought it home. I bought some decorations and of course, this year’s ornament for me (I still need to find the right ones for the boys).

My ornament for this year. The anchor was absolutley pergect.

I actually think I didn’t buy enough ornaments. I didn’t really like a lot of what Walmart had to offer, so I got basic stuff, like tinsel garland, and the glass ball things. But I’d like to find ornaments that are more me and my family rather than it screaming Big Box Store. That’s probably going to be today’s project.

Oh, and I need a new tree topper. I bought one at Walmart, but it sort of feels like a placeholder, because it totally does not fit with my tree or the other decorations I got.

Which leads me to where do I get these things? Is there a place online that sells awesome Christmasy things that can ship relatively fast? Or should I try local stores? Maybe one of the craft stores, like Michaels or Hobby Lobby? Ahh! Where do you guys go for Christmasy stuff?