keeping secrets is really hard

hello all.

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that sounded really ominous in my head, and I'm not really sure why. but fear not--this update post is not ominous at all. there's just a few little things that I wanted to share with you all, especially since I've been holding onto these secrets for a while now.

I'm REALLY bad at keeping exciting news to myself, guys. it's a serious problem.

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so remember when I did this nifty little beautiful people post about my 2017 writing goals? let's have a quick review, shall we?

• I want to finish draft 2 of Tethered and potentially start editing it.
• ^^I want to find more beta readers as work on this goal^^
• I want to outline that cyberpunk novel that has been sitting in the back of my mind for a year now.
• I also NEED to research for said cyberpunk novel.
• I want to continue with the great ones and the general, slowly but steadily.
• I want to stay in love with writing, and I want to make time to write. 

now, I know that it's only July and it's a little early to be throwing these goals out as the year is only halfway done...but if we're being completely honest here, these were not my true goals. my true goals were:

• finish draft 2 of Tethered by April at the latest
• pay some minor attention to the great ones and the general, but mostly try to fix all the plot issues
• make time to write around school and work
• stay in love with writing, somehow

and honestly, I was doing pretty great with Tethered until the sun came back. April was a little bit of an extreme goal, but I wrote draft 1 in 30 days, so I could probably hack it in 4 months, right?

wroooooooooong.

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I'm discovering that I'm a very seasonal writer. maybe it's the synesthesia in me, but I connect certain stories with certain times of the year, or certain weather/seasons and it's practically impossible to write in any other season. Tethered is set in November (ironically), so I really need gray skies and bare branches to get my groove on. it's weird, I know, but I can't handle the amount of foliage right now when I'm trying to write about all things gray and moody and mysterious. I just can't do it.

plus, I was in the middle of school from January to April. that was NOT happening.

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on the other hand, I strongly correlate Cor with summer, as it was my summer baby last year, and although the great ones is more of a year round kind of thing, I tend to connect it with summer more because that's when I finished the first draft back in 2015.

so yeah--I didn't quite make that goal with finishing Tethered 2.0 by April. I'm not even really working on it right now, except on the odd rainy day. it's just better not to, because I don't want to fight this story. I want to envelop myself in it, and I can't really do that when it's sunny with a high of seventy-five (ehehehehe).

HOWEVER.

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I still really wanted to write. I have so much time right now, even though I'm working 20 hours a week and taking two summer classes. so I toyed with the idea of picking up Cor again, but that novel is still so in my head that I didn't feel like I was ready. I started writing a steampunk short story for my brother about clockwork soldiers, but once again, that didn't quite feel right. nothing felt right.

until the other day, when I decided that I needed to rip apart the great ones for the millionth time.

again. *sigh* why am I like this...
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the great ones and the general is an oooooooold story for me. it's been around forever, and Matt's been around even longer. there are things about it that 12 year old me loved, but that 21 year old me has a negative opinion about. There were plot twists that, with more maturity and experience, I realized were not realistic and were slightly problematic. and so, with that in mind, I went about reformatting the great ones into something very very new.

something so new that it has a new name.

(and if you noticed that I deleted the great ones and the general board off my pinterest, you get a gluten free cookie.)

let me hug you, you observant pumpkin you
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it was a tough decision. really tough. but I'm really happy with it, and I'm so excited about it.

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I'm still working on it. as of tomorrow, I'll be at 300 pages, hopefully and about three fourths of the way done with my outline. Things are angsty and sarcastic and healing. I love it. one thing that is really different about this new and improved version of this story is that it's less about suicide and more about grief and guilt and how those two things interact. mental illness is still a predominant aspect of this story, but after looking back at these characters and all that they have experienced, I wanted to dig deeper of the aftermath of death on those left behind. grief  and guilt are such crucial elements of life after loss, and in all the other drafts/versions of this book, that was horribly neglected.

so here I am, with a new draft in hand and a mechanical pencil in the other, ready to face the world.

hopefully with less maniacal laughter and killing than Light Yagami. maybe.
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stay tuned.