Mid-Year Update

Hello everyone! Happy Wednesday and early Fourth of July. This week has felt so busy and its only halfway over haha I'm excited for the Fourth but I'm kind of ready for this week to be over... But anyways, I wasn't sure what to write this week so I figured hey let's do a mid year update cuz why not?? I hope this post is semi-interesting to you all. I feel bad that I'm not putting out something more helpful or instructional or interesting... It's just been a week. Actually, it's been a loong two weeks and my brain is kind of dead now.
Next week hopefully I will have my act together haha

Its midyear and I can't believe it... I feel like everything is going by waaay too quickly. I kind of feel bad cuz I feel like yet again my blog has taken a bit of a back seat. Like I need to start brainstorming and preparing posts or else I'm going to get stuck in a rut again and I don't want that to happen. I was doing pretty good at the beginning of this year but I think that's mostly cuz I didn't have a lot going on. I wasn't writing and editing a book to be published, managing a newsletter and writing new episodes of a serial plus doing class. So what I'm saying is, I don't want this to fall to the way side. This blog is going to stay a priority.

Anyways, on to the update! Like I said above, a lot has happened in the past six months. So much! I started this year with way different goals so I thought I'd share what's changed and what hasn't since I also kind of use this as my own personal journal. I love doing monthly wrap ups so then I can look back on them and see where I was at and what I was doing that month and I think a mid year check in would be a nice addition to my monthly wrap ups. Then I can look back and see where I was at and how things have changed or how much I've grown. My goals have shifted drastically since the beginning of this year and I feel like I'm in a different place. Kind of like I've settled and I'm good with where I'm at.

Alright so here's the list of goals I started with at the end of December/beginning of January:

• Finish updating Hunter's Heritage on Wattpad
• Write book 3 of my Hunter's series 
• Finish revising Second Star by the end of March 
• Get some people to read it for me and hopefully have get some feedback by May 
• Find an editor for it and get it edited and ready hopefully by July 
• Start working on query letters 
• Research agents and publishers 
• Start querying by August or September 
• Work on a new project and maybe write some short stories 
• Get my driver's permit and driver's licence by the end of the year 
• Work on waiting with God. My best friend I was telling me the other day what he learned while studying a verse in the Bible, about how the word wait in the original text means to intertwine. Like to twine ropes together and so in the context of the verse, wait means to intertwine with God in a season of waiting. To draw closer to Him. To pray and talk to Him, to read about Him and to learn about Him throughout seasons of waiting (we should be doing that even when we aren't waiting). So that's what I want to do. I want to make my time with Him more of a priority. 
• Keep this blog updated too. 

Wow... so much has changed. I had all these plans for Second Star (which is now called Lost Girl). I had made it a solid goal in December that I would query agents this year... things sort of took a different path, one that I am happy with. So in other words, all the goals that have to do with Second Star... never got accomplished and probably never will. What happened was I took Katie Phillip's week long Author Branding Challenge and it changed my life. I'm not being dramatic either. She made me think about things differently, re-prioritize my writing life and my goals, where I want to be and what I need to be focusing on. Seriously, if you have the money, I highly, highly recommend you do her six month author branding course. The one I did was a week and free and if you don't have the money for her course, I suggest following her on social media so you know when her next author branding challenge starts so you can jump in. I promise you, it is so worth the time.

It really made me think about things and realize that self-publishing is what I want to do. I want to be an indie author. I like the freedom and I love the community and environment that goes with being an indie author. And I want to focus on YA contemporary fantasy. That is the genre I could write every day for the rest of my life and be happy. Plus, it sells and not to be all about money but... money would be nice. Which is how I ended up where I'm at right now. I wrote The Lost Ones at the beginning of this year but it was so full of plot holes and such a total mess it felt overwhelming and unfixable to me. I can't even think about going back to it. After I realized The Lost Ones wasn't going to happen, I decided to work on something new different. So I started writing on a Sunday before my church's VBS started and finished the first draft of St. Croix Falls in two weeks. If you want to know more about St. Croix you can go here. :O And now that's my main priority. Growing my audience as an indie author, writing marketable books.

As for Hunter's Heritage and book 3 in the Sterling Hunter series... I did finish putting all the chapters on Wattpad, but I've decided to take a break from that series. I'm not ready to give up on Tabitha's story, but I just need a break from it right now, so as of right now the only thing that will be updated on my Wattpad is Dragon Hearted.

I did get my driver's permit! For a while there I honestly never thought it would happen... The permit test was so hard to pass and driving can be kind of anxiety-producing for me and yet here I am, behind the wheel and learning how to drive.

God has definitely been working on me this year. I feel so content with where I am right now in life.  It's a nice place to be in, when you can just accept the season your in and to go on a small tangent, also very nice when you can trust God has a plan for you. I don't have to worry like other people do because I have a God who has my life mapped out and I can trust Him with everything. It's very freeing. But anyways, that's another topic for another time. Although I've also realized that seasons of waiting are good but can also become stagnant and hold you back from being bold. I've gotten so settled into the season of life I'm in right now that I stopped trying new things, meeting new people, hanging out with others who aren't my closest friends. And that's not good. I think I'm starting to realize what people mean when they say being in your comfort zone can be dangerous...

Keeping this blog updated? Check! I've been pretty on top of that this year as I said at the beginning of this post.

Not to mention, I started a newsletter this year, bought my very own website and have been taking myself more seriously as an author. I also started college this Summer instead of the Fall. I hadn't planned for any of that to happen and yet here I am.

So yeah, that's been my 2019 in a nutshell. It's been a pretty great year so far.

How's your year been going? Have you accomplished any of the goals you started the year with?