Month: September 2022

Nature of Magic

IT IS FINALLY OUT! (Get it here. Unless you haven’t read the first two. In which case, start here.)

Okay, now that’s out of the way…

Preptember…?

In October, I will be traveling to the location where my next book takes place, and I’m going to do my best to get 50k words that month, and half of those while I’m abroad. Again, an ambitious goal that I’m unlikely to meet, but even if I fail to reach 50k, I’ll still get lots of work done, touch wood, and visit a lovely part of the world. I do appreciate it when people take me on vacations, I get to go places I wouldn’t be able to afford on my own.

But since October is going to be my NaNoWriMo, September is my Preptober… Preptember? Plantember? Anyway, the month is almost over and I’ve hardly started planning. I’ve been trying to get NoM done. But now it is, so I can happily shift to my next project.

(A hint as to the location for the next book: I have been studying Portuguese in preparation.)

Thoughts on “Autumn vibes”

I love the cosy autumn aesthetic. Truly. I want it to be my life. I could watch videos on loop of women with perfectly manicured hands slowly making cup of tea or coffee and lighting a candle next to a pillow for their morning routine.

I want that.

But I’m not that. I need to hit the ground running first thing and try to get as much done as I can until I run out of momentum. If I have a beautiful slow morning, that’s it for the day. I’m so at peace and relaxed, I just ride that vibe. Today is a great example. I woke up, made tea, and went outside to appreciate the cooler morning and sat and read a book that I’ll be discussing in a book club tomorrow. It was glorious.

But I didn’t do anything for the rest of the day, despite having plenty on the to-do list.

It was a lovely morning. I didn’t achieve the beautiful instagram aesthetic, though. I’m not effortlessly beautiful. Not even with tons of secret effort to look effortlessly beautiful. Nothing can alter that. (That is not a cry for compliments. I know what I look like and I like that my face is a bit villainous.)

I want a peaceful, beautiful clean home and workspace, minimalist and appealing and all hygge-y.

But that’s not who I am. I am a chaos person. Things do not stay tidy (if they were ever tidy to begin with.) So I will have to satisfied with cosy chaos and being effortlessly average.

Imposter Syndrome

I’m glad I can finally share this blog post. I started it last week, but I didn’t want to post anything until I actually published Nature of Magic. It is more expensive than the other two, but it’s also more than twice as long as the first. Ugh. It makes no sense. I feel like a fraud trying to trick people into spending money on something I’ve written, but, isn’t that the goal? To be a semi-self-supporting author? To make a living by writing? And how am I supposed to do that if I do not charge for my work?

I want to get paid for it. I just don’t want to charge for it. It makes it seem like I think I’m worthy, when I don’t think I am. The audacity, to make people pay money to read my work. $5? Who do I think I am? (I spent almost $20 on a book today, but it was Ray effing Bradbury. And I am not even close to Ray effing Bradbury.)

Moving on…

I will try to keep up with the blog while I’m abroad. Posts might be shorter. Or longer, who knows! I already write more when I’m away.

Nope, moving back to autumn vibes. Still not over it.

How are you celebrating the coming of autumn? Or, if you’re in the southern hemisphere, the coming of spring? Both the start of spring and autumn seem like much better places to start anew than January first. So arbitrary. It should definitely be at the change of seasons, and that change should be splendid and awe-inspiring. We should do autumn and spring resolutions.

Yes. Boom. Doing it.

My autumn resolution, or mantra, I suppose, is to always be writing. Fiction, blog, journal, letters, nonsense. I want to entertain myself more with my writing. I want to always be running out of ink, for my fingertips to be forever stained. (That’s an exaggeration, of course, but I want to think of writing in more than just in terms of work, but as solace, comfort, entertainment too.)

If I were to set a measurable goal, it would be to publish this next story by the end of the season.

What about you? Any autumnal (or vernal) resolutions or mantras? What do you want to remind yourself going forward this season?

Tags autumn vibes, imposter syndrome, nanowrimo, Publishing

Books Travel Writing

NoM, EoM, MoA, and the pluperfect tense

Post author By Kathryn Amonett
Post date September 10, 2022
4 Comments on NoM, EoM, MoA, and the pluperfect tense

Having read the first draft, my mother remarked that I’d overused the ‘had + past participle’ construction.

I reminded her that she had only herself to blame by sending me to a school that required Latin. The pluperfect should be used if one event happened further in the past than a more recent one. Straightforward. And as the narrative is already in the simple past, there will be many uses of the pluperfect tense. Just a fact.

I know that I could use the simple past for both, but the pluperfect (pluscuamperfecto, le plusqueparfait, plusquamperfekt) is used freely in so many languages that I’ve studied that I don’t actively think about it. But this might be a time where studying so many other languages has made me sound less like a native English speaker. And I don’t want my book to sound stilted (or more stilted than it probably already does.) I will go back and change some of them to simple past, if it sounds more natural, colloquial. English is not Latin. It’s not even a Romance language. The rules are not so set in stone.

She (herself a student of Greek, which also employs the pluperfect, or ὑπερσυντέλικος, which, like all other words for pluperfect, means ‘more than completed’) agreed to look again, but now I’m self-conscious about it. Self-conscious enough to begin my blogpost with grammar—never a good sign.

The rewrites are nearly done (apart from the reread to specifically look for the pluperfect), and ready to pass back like a hot potato to the copyeditor. Before it is published, or at least soon after, I was thinking of another chapter for EOM, which is more than half done. But so few people are still reading, it hardly seems worth it to continue, the only reason to keep working on it would be if those readers actually bought by other stuff. A few have, but a very few. Not sure it makes all the time and effort writing EOM would require worth it, financially, emotionally, creatively.

I have so many other projects I want to be working on once I finish the Nature of Magic. The travel adventure series, my dark academia duology, a Persuasion retelling (with swords) and numerous little magical or romcom novellas.

I met with a brand specialist yesterday. I won an hour of her time by making a fool of myself on stage. A bargain! I make a fool of myself for free all the time. So I have some steps to follow to get more satisfaction out of my writing, and more money. Sigh.

Both are important.

In a few hours, I am going to refill the well, as they say, by going to the Museum of Art. I will come back here later to report.

It’s now Saturday. These were some of my favourite exhibits.

This is a ceiling. I just lay on the floor and gazed for a while.

Take care, everyone.

Books Writing

I shouldn’t have gotten too excited

Post author By Kathryn Amonett
Post date September 3, 2022
No Comments on I shouldn’t have gotten too excited

I was, perhaps, premature in gifting myself this LamyAL-Star in Tourmaline to celebrate my finishing Nature of Magic.

I sent the draft to my editor, promptly got sick and collapsed for a few days. (I am waiting for at-home covid test results as I write this post.)

Then this morning, I received both my lovely lovely pen and an email from said editor entitled “DON’T HATE ME”.

I haven’t read her comments yet, but I think it’s fair to say that I am not as close to publication as I’d hoped.

Still aiming for a September publish date, even if there are still many rewrites in my future.

But let’s talk about something else, like… my favourite time of year.

BACK TO SCHOOL SHOPPING!

(You thought I was going to say autumn. And yes, I do love autumn, but it has the unfair advantage of being associated with back-to-school-ness.)

It should be a holiday, in my opinion, celebrating learning, presents (or school supplies if you like—same thing) and anticipation of new beginnings! I’m not in school anymore, but I still love shopping for school supplies. I’ve already bought my planner for 2023 (I’ve boarded the hobonichi techo train, and got myself the weeks version) a set of midliners, and, of course, the new Lamy and a pretty bottle of ink in amazonite, which I managed to dunk my thumb in the moment I opened it and now under my nail is a lovely shade of green.

In other news, I ordered a bike online a few months ago and it FINALLY CAME! I’ve been riding it everywhere, even though my city is not the most accommodating for cyclists. Still, I love it. I rode every day to where I would write, got my work done, rode back, and boom, work and exercise done before noon. If I accomplish nothing else with my day, still pleased. (I’ve even ridden it throughout this rainy week we’ve been fortunate enough to have.)

And speaking of rain, it has been lovely reading weather.

And just what am I reading?

BABEL!

So so so so so so good. I have been waiting for this book to come out for MONTHS and yes, I did go to Barnes and Noble the morning it came out. I’m really enjoying it. Taking my time to savor it, because I know I’ll only get to read this for the first time once.
All the the vibes. Seriously, it puts my own dark academia resistance story to shame and I LOVE IT.

(I took that photo in my car after just having left the bookstore, considering maybe I should just read a chapter or two in the truck before I went home.)

Anyway, one last plug to please buy or read on Kindle Unlimited my Relearning Magic series. I’m told that I should not make any post without plugging my stuff.

Sounds tedious, but I’ll try it this time, just to see.