Hi Writing Group! My July Progress

Here's my July progress.

I think of you as a member of my big, bold, extended writing group, and when I planned my 2025 goals, I promised to share my monthly progress with you. (Fulfilling this promise also helps to keep me on track!)

So, here are a few highlights from the month:

What a Joy to Take a Break!

I started the month closing my laptop for an extra long July 4 weekend, and it was a pleasure to leave my daily routine. The truth is I had gotten myself into something of a rut, and I didn't even notice it until I took a step back. When I gave myself a few days of unscheduled-ness--reading, doodling, daydreaming--I realized how valuable downtime is. When I opened my laptop again, I felt refreshed and my interest in my gothic mystery project was renewed.

My next break is planned for sometime in August, and I hope you get to take a break this summer, too!

Learning from Wattpad

My serial minibook, Dream Walkers: Heart & Hand, completed its rollout. Whew! It was a journey! Writing in a new format and new genre, planning the rollout, placing conversation starters, posing questions, monitoring feedback, and engaging with other authors/readers, stretched me in a thousand new and different directions. Two major take-aways:

1. Leveraging a serial fiction platform is a great way to dip your toe into becoming an authorpreneur and test your strengths and identify where you need to focus. You have to keep one eye on your creative output, and the other eye on your readers. The good news is you're in a kind of laboratory, where experimenting is the norm, with people who want to be in this space with you. Of course, serial fiction is not everyone's cup of tea. But if it intrigues you, try it out!

2. Things don't happen by magic. I liked the fact that it was all down to me and I had to produce and engage, according to the schedule I established. There was no room for blowing things off. This puts me in mind of a recent post by Steven Pressfield: Artist = Working Stiff. He nailed it.

I'm assessing my story feedback, and see ways to make my fiction better, but since I'm still digesting I'll make that a separate blog post for the future.

Last Day of the Smashwords Sale

July is your chance to get my ebook, The Write Group, for free at the Smashwords Summer Sale. But I'm not the only author leveraging Smashwords this month. There are lots of other wonderful books (free or at a discount) from many other terrific authors, both established and new and emerging. So, while I hope you'll download my ebook, I encourage you to be sure to visit the sale today and get lots of works from different writers!

Writing Group Next Steps

In August my husband and I plan to get away--and I can tell you about that next month. I also plan to maintain my writing/editing schedule. If I keep focused, I should have my gothic mystery project ready for some writing group/beta reader feedback by October.

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Enough about my work, how did your writing go? Did you continue to make progress? Or did you take a well-deserved break? Let me know in the comments how you're doing. And keep writing!