Adventures in Crafting with Words

I am absolutely horrible about posting updates.  There is seriously 4 books on my blog list and I keep adding to it.  I have no excuses. I spend half my day tackling Etsy shop business (marketing, orders, etc)  www.abookwormcreates.com btw I spend the other half of my day writing and editing.  Add to this mix NaNoWriMo I think my head is about to spin around.  However... my next post will be about ITEF... Alicia

Things have not been okay around this writer's family. On Father's Day my grandfather suffered a stroke.  A week in the hospital. 3 weeks in rehab. Then we moved him into a retirement village.  Before that he'd spent a week in the hospital followed by a week of us staying with him 24/7.  All that was after the Alabama trip. Then about 10 days ago, right as we were settling into our new routine, my mom had a mild heart attack.  Thus yet another week in the hospital. That week I made a lot of chainmaille for the etsy shop.  The etsy shop has gotten a lot of attention, mostly because I can easily send out tweets with projects. My brain had stalled on me.  I was doing things by rote.  That's why chainmaille was so easy once I'd gotten the patterns down.  Go ahead. Look. Not everything is posted, but enough is already available for sale. Www.overthinkercreates.etsy.com And now we're back to 24/7, only this time I'...

Sometimes things get frustrating over on my side of the laptop.  Keep watching reviews and determining ways to bounce back, to create better.  Watching the numbers and wondering if those handful of bad reviews are just pulling the rest of the potential readers down where they don't want to read, not even with Kindle Unlimited.  I have to watch the day by day because at the end of the month if I don't hit minimum page reads and sold books then I'm losing out. I'm running out of time.  I'm running a gamble here by wanting to be a full-time writer.  A crafter of words. But this and etsy don't always pay the bills.  They certainly aren't paying me enough to get out of my parents house. Who am I? I am a writer.  I've been a writer since the seventh grade. And Yet... It hasn't even been a year since I've started.  I really need to not lose hope. A

*Warning: Contains a free write that is basically a stream of conscious jumble of verbal diarrhea. Yes. Writer's block. A freeze on words that are necessary for forming the next story in the Bookworm Stories series. I have my base. I already know the major event that is going to happen during the prom chapters. I've already referenced it. I'm working my way towards it. But what about what happens before this event? After? It's been 12 years since I went to my own prom. Even then I went stag because I was too shy to ask any off the guys - including the track team member I had a crush on, or the baseball player I had a crush on. That was an interesting semester... It's not like I was Miss Popularity. I was Miss Bookworm. Miss Awkward. Miss Socially Awkward. I'd rather be on the track running in circles and trying to improve my personal best times instead of dealing with the boys at my high school. (No offense, guys, if any of you are actual...

Wait?  I'm using a pen name? Why yes, I am. Why? I had always planned on using a pen name.  In fact, I had one picked out years ago but I am unable to use that particular name because an ex-boyfriend just so happens to have that last name.  (So, if J stumbles onto this blog, no hard feelings, but you can keep your last name.) Pen names are not easy to pick out. First there are the reasons that you want/need a pen name. 1. Maybe it's job related.  I read so many articles and other peoples' blogs about how nobody really wants to know that their doctor is writing murder mysteries in their spare time and might know how to make murder on the operating table look as if it was an accident.  I know I don't.  Or how people in education (be honest, how many English teachers want to write books - I know I'm one, kind of) be it teachers or substitutes trying for teaching positions (myself included) want that pen name to distance themselves from their studen...