Before Christmas of 2022, I finished writing my first novel. I had self-edited it to the point that I felt comfortable distributing some advanced reader copies to get some feedback. That way, I could do one more round of self-edits from the feedback before I sent it to my professional editor. Somewhere around two dozen people offered to help and about a quarter of those people have read and given feedback so far. I am so grateful to all the volunteers and I will likely still get more feedback as more people get a chance to finish reading, so this first shout-out is to all of you who offered to help. I can’t put into words how much I appreciate you.
On the reading/reviewing front, I have had the pleasure of reading and reviewing several books whose authors reached out asking me to review their books. I love being able fellow authors get their books noticed. Reviews are invaluable to us authors. In this digital world of algorithms and AI-assisted targeted marketing, reviews help more than you know. If you read something, even just a star rating helps the author in the long term and only takes one click of a button. Thanks in advance to all the all-star author supporters out there who leave reviews. You are amazing!
I haven’t been as engaged in writing competitions as I would like to be, alas, there are only so many hours in the day and I haven’t figured out how to juggle it all, yet. The biggest reason for my lack of competitive drive lately is I AM WRITING BOOK 2.
At the beginning of March, I set a goal to write a minimum of 500 words per day on my current work-in-progress (forevermore known as WIP). I had been struggling for the first two months of 2023 with low creativity and a general disdain for the current state of our world. Something had to be done.
So, this second shout-out is to me, because I have now written at least (but actually more than) 500 words per day in March, and book two currently stands a little over 11,000 words!!! I am so excited to have the creative juices flowing again.
Writing is a journey of hills and valleys. Thank you for joining me on this crazy ride!
Alicia
Alicia's Word Haven 