Radio Silence

I have been quiet for quite some time now. I am so sorry about that... And I cannot say much about what I've been up to. Not yet, anyway, but I promise that, before the year is out, you will know what exactly this is all about! I've been working hard on my career lately and there are some changes on the horizon. Big, scary changes but hey, scary can be good sometimes, right? :)

So, uhm, seeing as I cannot fully disclose what I've been up to this past month, I won't have much to say in this post aside that I'm still writing Nellie but I've dialed down the pressure: it'll be done when it'll be done. Period. Right now, I'm at... 68%!

So far, so good. I can still write good scenes in it (I think) but my heart is elsewhere... I must also be careful because I do not wish to break the flow of the previous novels which were written at the beginning of my career (years ago) and now, I believe my writing has evolved a bit (I hope so anyway). More notably these past few weeks as I engaged in the reading of many helpful books about that!

To you writers out there, if you want to read books about "how to write", here are the ones I bought: 

Got the workbook as well:
I love to answer questions!
^_^

So yeah, I went through some big changes lately. I've even begun to plan (and enjoyed it!!!) Yup, you've read right: me, the Pantser, the one who said "planning is the death of the story", now cannot hop into a new story anymore without planning it first! It's like suddenly, my eyes got open. I threw all my stubborn, pigheaded prejudices out the window and I looked at my career with fresh eyes.
I cleaned my slate.
I went back to ground zero and I tackled questions like "Why do I write?", "Who do I write for?", "What does my typical reader look like?", "What do I want people to say about my novels?", "What genres do I wanna write in? What ambiance? Which subjects and themes?" Etc.
And I got answers for ALL of them!
Why and how did I do all that?
I simply accepted that writing was my JOB, not just a hobby: I wanna make a living out of it. And just like any job, it requires hard work.
So I rolled up my sleeves and I got down to it!

The whole series is a life-saver!

So if you wanna be a writer too, I urge you to tackle these questions first as well. I promise, everything gets MUCH clearer after and the stories just follow. :)
Let me know how it turns out for you!

A sneak preview of things to come. ^_^
Will tell you more about it in my next post, I promise!