Earl Grey Books

If you read my post the other day about some blog changes and plans for July, you might remember that I mentioned I’d be participating in Camp NanoWriMo—in a very relaxed way, of course. So today I thought I’d share through the WIPs I’m working on throughout July and probably for at least the rest of 2021, though probably much, much longer. So without further ado.

Tied Together

Tied Together was really the first story I ever really got stuck into. I started writing a version of this when I was about 15 or 16 I think, but one of the characters had been created when I was much younger—about nine or ten. This story means a lot to me. I started writing the first draft of this iteration days after my mum passed away and for that first month, in particular, I think it was one of the things that kept me somewhat above water. I finished that first draft about 10 months later in 2015 and I’ve been trying to write the second draft ever since. I wrote 20k of this while away on a writing weekend this year so I know I can still write it, I just need to push past some of that difficulty I’m having with the start.

This follows two girls who are intertwined because of a curse between their families. It’s definitely not a fantasy, but more of a contemporary with magical elements. There’s a sweet romance, lots of friend and family love, books and cats!

Sugar Free Sweets

This is a hard one to talk about. For starters, it’s the newest one to the list so it’s still in the very early days. But it’s also a kind of personal story, one of which I’m not quite ready to share with people on a public platform yet. This deals with some stuff I’ve dealt with lately, and some of the important friends in my life who follow me here haven’t been told yet while I process that. I want to write this story because it’s one that I think people might need but I’m also mindful that there are certain people that I want to talk to before I share more details about this one to the world.

I have the whole plot for this one mapped out already, but I don’t really know who my characters are as people yet or what the setting is so that’s what I’m working on this month. I’m not someone who has to have everything planned out in detail but I like knowing who my characters are at the start so I can make sure they grow through the story.

Descent Into Ashes

This one is still in the early stages as well in a sense. I had the idea of this at the very end of 2019 and I’ve written about 5k so far. I don’t really have a plot yet or feel like I know my characters well enough, but I have an extremely vivid setting in my mind and some ideas of key scenes that interact with that environment. It helps that this one takes place in the town my grandparents lived in and I spent a lot of time as a kid and teen there with them too.

I can tell you that this one takes place in a post-natural disaster world. Again, my stories are very character-driven, their relationships with one another and with the world around them are all extremely important so with this one I’m needing to take a lot more time creating the ‘why’ of this world that causes my characters to act the way they do.

So that’s all for today. I don’t imagine I’m going to do enough work this month during Camp NaNoWriMo to share any updates, but I will definitely be doing an updated version of this post just before NaNoWriMo starts along with talking about my plans for November and so forth. Until then, I will see you all tomorrow.