Where the Hell is Survived and What Have You Been Doing?

When was my last post? Over a year ago, or something? I vaguely remember that post being about posting more. Kind of ironic.

Anyway. Survived, which is the sequel to The Changed, has been written and edited for well over a year. What I still need to do is go through the edits, which is a bit of a time-consuming process. After that it will be good to go for release. Why haven’t I finished yet? I mean, it has been a while. The short answer is, time.time

That slippery bastard. I remember being a kid and having to wait an hour for something. Feeling each minute stretch on and on like taffy. These days, I swear I only have to sneeze and a year will have gone by.

Was that a convincing excuse?

Here’s the thing. For the past year and a half I’ve been part of a writing cohort at ASU’s Piper Writing Center. The program is called Your Novel Year, and it’s an intensive designed for writers to hone the craft of writing a young adult novel. Much of the novel writing I’ve done in the past has been speculative fiction. But I had a concept for a story that I wanted to write which was contemporary, so I felt that this would be the perfect opportunity to work on the skills it takes to write in that genre. I applied, was accepted, and had a wonderful experience. I got to learn from and be mentored by authors like Bill Konigsberg, Amy Nichols, Sharon Flake, Lish McBride, and Tom Laveen. Tremendous.

Some of my friends asked me why I wanted to do this program, since I’d already written novels before. “Isn’t that the point?” They’d ask. “To finish a novel? You’ve done that.” I guess that’s true, but a person is never done learning. Seriously, there is no craft that can ever be mastered to completion, and writing is no different. The second we stop pushing ourselves to learn more, we stagnate. I don’t want to stagnate. I want to get better. I want every book I write to be my best book yet. There are still so many opportunities to grow.

So, time. The program was intense and required my full attention. As of this past week, however, it’s over. After a year and a half of assignments, writing, critiques, and working with some of the best writers and people I’ve ever met, we finished. Those of us who live in the Phoenix area met up for a public reading at Changing Hands Bookstore. Despite my public speaking jitters, it was a fantastic experience.

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Now I’ll finally get back to those edits on Survived. Then I’ll start working on my next manuscript, because I’ve still got stories to tell.

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