Tag: Writing

Posted in Uncategorized, Updates, Writing

Sneak Peek Week: February 2023

Posted on by Hayley Green

Photo by Joakim Honkasalo on Unsplash

Hello Family, Friends, and Fans!

Are you ready for another excerpt of Poseidon’s Pearl? Or are you here to listen to my writing troubles? Either way, you’re in the right place!

Keeping up with this blog thing is fun, though I do want more interaction. I think it’s about time I started posting on Twitter again. But I digress.

Snippet from Poseidon’s Pearl

In this excerpt, the King of the Atlantic Kingdom is Prince River’s uncle, Aquarius. Aquarius heard that River brought home a female in mating form (a little twist on my merfolk world, since I am not into tentacles and fins and other such things you may find in more avantgarde erotic works. But if that’s what your cup of tea is, enjoy it!) when he was betrothed against his will to the Princess of the Pacific Kingdom, Ripple.

Aquarius is trying to get River to spend some time getting to know Ripple, while River is only interested in seeing his little sister, Penelope. who is in the dungeons as an insurance policy that River will return to the Atlantic Kingdom and obey Aquarius’s rule. The first speaker is King Aquarius, followed by Prince River.

It’s time to meet Princess Ripple of the Pacific Kingdom!

Prince River’s Point of View:

“I want you to apologize to Ripple. She was devastated when she heard that her betrothed had another woman he loved enough to bring home. And then I want you to ditch the girl and marry Ripple. You could always invite your mermaid. Remember that your behavior reflects badly on Ripple’s name, bloodlines, and willingness to marry a half-breed like you. Not to mention the scandalous rule you will have when people hear about this. So, let’s keep this under fins and respect Ripple’s sacrifice.”

“Penelope first.”

A nasally female voice reached my ears as two hands with razor-sharp nails embraced me from behind. “Why? I’m right here. Besides, I’d love to meet the little fish. I bet she’s darling.”

I stiffened at this strange female’s touch. She slid around to face me, never once breaking physical contact. She was pretty, with angular features and long, blonde hair. She wore a red pigment on her lips and dark black pigment around her eyes. In other situations, I might have found her attractive. But if Aquarius liked her, that alone was a good reason for me not to like her.

“Ripple.” I inclined my head to acknowledge her.

“Such a warm welcome! I know this isn’t ideal, but the fact that I can overlook the other female in your life, as long as you’re discreet about it, is a tremendous offer.” She stroked my cheek with three fingers, making sure her fingernails showed the promise of their ability to draw blood.

Writing Troubles

This past week I lost my motivation to keep drafting the sequel to my Dragons Within short story. I had changed my goals from writing two chapters per week to writing a thousand words per day on any project. Unfortunately for me, this meant my brain took the opportunity to work on whatever I wanted to work on, and thus I lost all motivation to write the first draft of The Last Pyro (working title).

But writing two chapters meant pushing myself too hard, as I also have school papers to write and other responsibilities, habits, and life changes that needed to be addressed as well. My goal of writing two chapters per week was a first draft in an eight-week timeline, and I’m not there yet with my writing muscle or my ability to do everything without burning out.

For reference, I wrote the first draft of Poseidon’s Pearl in three months, as the first novel I had ever completed that I felt was good enough to edit and pursue publication options for it. This one is the second novel I have ever attempted with the intention of publishing it.

Because I had turned my focus to a daily word count without a specific project in mind, the urgency to write The Last Pyro was lost, and my brain made the excuse that as long as I wrote a thousand words per day whether it was blog posts or journaling instead of my fiction projects, I was still meeting my goal.

So I modified my goals. One chapter of The Last Pyro needs to be completed each week, regardless of how many words I write per day. The word count is just a secondary measurement of how productive I am writing-wise and can be an indicator of burnout.

The urgency is back! I tricked my brain into cooperating with my goals again! (Cue the meme that stated the irony of the two “o”‘s in the word “cooperate” insist on having separate distinct sounds.)

Thank you for supporting me and my writing journey.

Until next time, F3’s!

Posted in Updates

Writing Quest Update: February 2023

Posted on by Hayley Green

Photo by Matt Duncan on Unsplash

Hello Family, Friends, and Fans!

I have a lot going on in my writing journey, as well as in my personal life. But there’s one thing I am very proud of: I hit the first milestone of the year. I completed and published blog posts on the 3rd, 10th, 17th, 24th, and 31st of January 2023!

Now, I just have to keep this momentum going, and I am armed with a plan to do so, as well as keep up with my writing projects and personal life goals.

Writing Journey

In January, I only missed three days of writing. It didn’t matter what I wrote, but I kept track of my word counts in different areas of my life:

  • Writing fiction, outlines, blurbs, marketing materials, and blog posts.
  • Schoolwork.
  • Miscellaneous, including journalling, editing (not as a word count, but just a record of days I edited), etc.

The three days I missed writing were when I was traveling for the day or had plans with friends, along with one “burnout” day where I didn’t write a word.

The burnout day happened when I felt out of spoons (as a measurement of energy), so I took the day off. When I did the math to see why I felt burned out, I realized that I had written over four thousand words in three days and had a traveling day in the middle, as well as the first draft of a six-page school paper due.

So I took a deep breath and made a plan to slow down so I could work my way back up to writing one thousand words of fiction a day without burnout.

I bargained with myself to help myself get started with the daunting task of writing my dragon project because I am at that halfway point where the project has lost its luster, and I want to move on to something else. I told myself that if I write two or more pages of my dragon project, then I can use the rest of my writing time to work on whatever strikes my fancy, whether that’s a blog post, editing the novel I plan on publishing this year, outlining the second book in the Poseidon’s Object series, or doing schoolwork.

Just like the photo I chose above, the writing journey is full of hills and valleys. I’m learning to take things as they come and adjust my goals and plans to align them with who I want to be and aim for the success that I define for myself.

Writing Goals:

  • Write two pages or more per day on my dragon project.
  • Keep up with schoolwork, including reading ahead and keeping up with the assignments, so I don’t procrastinate until the last minute.
  • Write a blog post every week on the 3rd, 10th, 17th, and 24th of February 2023.
  • Make a story bible for the Poseidon’s Object series by reading through the first book and compiling quotes and information directly from the text.
  • Write and edit these blog posts on the day before I send them out. There’s no need to schedule them, but save them as a draft and then post them the day they are due, at my convenience.

Thank you for your continued support, family, friends, and fans. You keep me going.

Until next time, F3s!

Posted in Updates

Frivolous Fun: January 2023

Posted on by Hayley Green

Photo by Lidya Nada on Unsplash

Hello Family, Friends, and Fans!

I’ve made it! For a whole month now, I have written a blog post every week. There will be two this week, as a new month starts tomorrow, and I promised you a “Writing Quest” post on the third of the month.

The Fun Part

For this 31st post, I want something light, short, fun, and engaging. I figured games would be a good place to start.

This or That: Hayley Green’s Manuscript Themes Edition

Hint, hint: all of these elements are important in the two manuscripts I am working on!

ThisOr That
Sunor Snow
PearlsorGold
Paperbackor Hardback
E-bookor Audiobook
Fantasy RomanceorParanormal Romance
Adult / New AdultorKid-lit / Young Adult
Slay the DragonsorProtect the Dragons
OceanorMountains
Fireor Water

Thanks for supporting me on my journey to being a self-published author!

Until Next Time, F3’s!

Posted in newsletter, Updates, Writing

Sneak Peek Week: January 2023

Posted on by Hayley Green

Photo by Joakim Honkasalo on Unsplash

Hello, Family, Friends, and Fans!

As a part of my goals for 2023, I decided I would do weekly posts on the 3rd, 10th, 17th, 24th, and, if applicable, the 31st of the month.

Here’s the catch: instead of making every post a “Writing Quest Update,” I have decided to make each week a different theme.

  • 3rd of the month: Writing Quest Update. Features updates on my personal life, my writing life, and my professional life.
  • 10th of the month: Sneek Peek Week. You will receive an excerpt or snippet from something I am working on, and I will talk about some struggles I face while writing.
  • 17th of the month: Reading Fling. This will include a list of things I am reading and book recommendations.
  • 24th of the month: Accountability and Productivity Proclivity. This will feature my goals and progress toward them as well as productivity methods and resources.
  • 31st of the month (when applicable): Frivolous Fun. I will post a fun poll, meme, or question just for laughs.

Snippet from Poseidon’s Pearl:

Leading up to this quote, the merman Prince River has been away on a trip and has returned in need of help. He saved a human from a riptide and needs help keeping her safe. So he goes to his best friend since childhood, Harvey, who agrees to help River.

This excerpt shows a little about River and Harvey’s dynamic.

*** Subject to change when published

River’s Point of View:

I breathed out a sigh of relief. “Thank you, Harvey.”

“Anything for his Royal Highness,” he called from deep inside his room. He preferred not to have bioluminescent jellyfish, just the algae.

“I thought I told you not to call me that, sarcastic or otherwise,” I said, a smile stretching my face. It felt good to be back home.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Royal-pain-in-my-ass.”

Writing Troubles:

I started the draft of Poseidon’s Pearl back in 2017. I went on to start and stop a couple drafts before buckling down and writing the 62k manuscript in 31 writing days. These days were not consecutive, and it took me three months to pen the first draft. This manuscript was the first novel-length project I had outlined and written to completion. But I had no idea how to edit.

For years I tried a bunch of different editing methods, interspersed with some life events that left me with long stretches of time that I didn’t write.

But then, once I figured out a method that worked for me, I dove head first. I went from the third draft to the fifth draft in about a year. But I neglected drafting other projects in favor of focusing on schoolwork, Write of Passion, and dealing with the dung bomb that was my life.

This means that my creative writing muscle was atrophed. That is, I could no longer write for hours on end, churning out 1,000-2,000 words per day. Now, getting 500 words of fiction is a challenge.

Lesson learned: I need balance between drafting and editing works so I don’t have to start from the beginning in terms of my creative writing muscles.

Thanks for supporting me! Until next time, F3’s!

Posted in newsletter, Updates, Write of Passion News

Writing Quest Update: December 2022

Posted on by Hayley Green

Photo by Syd Wachs on Unsplash

Hello Again, Family, Friends, and Fans!

How is it December 3rd already? Time has flown by. But that means I’ve been keeping busy!

As always, here is an update on what has happened this past month.

Write of Passion

As an inexperienced technology person, I have accidentally deleted all of the past issues of the Write of Passion Literary Journal. I am genuinely sorry for those whose work is no longer available. I don’t have the energy to try and restore it, and I am closing shop as a small press. Fractured Realities and Shadows Redefined will both stay available for purchase.

But this is not the end of Write of Passion. For now, it will lie dormant as I focus on school. However, it will get a reboot. It may not stay a small press, but it might pivot to something new and exciting. Stay tuned.

Writing Journey

I have been editing or writing something down almost every day and have been tracking my word count. For November, I wrote more than 30k words. That’s a lot when I was also doing schoolwork, dealing with many appointments and social gatherings, and not participating in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). However, this is a huge difference between the month before (12k words) and the month before (around 5k words).

I want to get this book to you as soon as possible, so I have to start taking my writing just as seriously as my education. I’m doing overhaul edits with it right now, and the trilogy for the same couple turned back into a standalone with the secondary characters’ stories as the second book in the series. I’ve never set deadlines for myself, but I think I need to start if I ever want to get this book to you.

I’m also dealing with some pretty serious burnout and some major changes in my life, such as finding a new living situation. So taking care of myself is my first priority, followed by school, then writing.

Do you have any pointers or tips to make setting deadlines easier or how to calculate deadlines? Are your deadlines flexible or solid? Do you use milestones? I would love to hear how you set your goals!

Thanks for taking the time to read this! I’ll be back on January 3rd, 2023, with another update! Stay tuned!

P.S. 2023?! Just twenty years ago, it was the eighties! I also don’t know why I think the eighties were twenty years ago when my parents hadn’t even met. I certainly do have an “old soul.”

Posted in newsletter, Updates, Write of Passion News

Writing Quest Update: November 2022

Posted on by Hayley Green
https://pixabay.com/en/pencil-notes-chewed-paper-ball-1891732/
Photo via congerdesign via Pixabay

Hello Family, Friends, and Fans!

I chose this image intentionally, because the month of October was all about scrapping ideas and making new ones. Topics this article will discuss are the course I am taking in Entrepreneurship, Write of Passion, new schedules, and, of course, my writing journey.

Entrepreneurship Class and Write of Passion

I was excited to take this class because I felt like it would help me figure out how to fix my problems with Write of Passion, and help me figure out how to get it up and publishing again.

What actually happened is it showed me that the Write of Passion literary journal and anthologies were a lot of work for very little gain. If someone dropped the ball, there would be a ton of work that someone else needed to deal with. I was honest with myself and realized that it would not be possible for me to keep running it as is.

I have some plans in the works for the future of Write of Passion, but I am not quite ready to share them yet, as I must inform some of the team of the changes, before I announce it to the public.

In short, Write of Passion will be pivoting in a new direction.

New Schedules

The month of October was an experiment where I attempted three different schedules.

The first had me working from 9 to 5 with two fifteens and a thirty-minute lunch break. As I am not a morning person and am super lucky, I do not have to keep to this schedule.

The second was adjusting the other way and being a night time person, starting work at 3:30 in the afternoon and ending around 10:30 at night. In order to keep this schedule, however, I had to drink a scary amount of caffeine a day and I was not comfortable in doing so.

The third one, like Goldilocks, was a happy medium and the perfect solution. At 11:30 in the morning, I practice my Spanish. From noon to 1:30 in the afternoon I read for fun. I then have three blocks of time separated by thirty-minute breaks that end at 8 at night and then I watch my favorite TV shows and head to bed at 10 at night.

Writing Journey

I learned that I get in the mood to write by reading a chapter or two in a writing reference book. I also figured out that I am best at writing in the evenings.

One of the writing reference books that helped me was called Paused to Prolific by K. Webster. She suggested having several projects going at once, and I have found that immensely helpful for the way my brain works. I do not get paid to recommend her book. It helped me, and I want that for others.

Now I am working through three projects and counting school writing as my last project, with school being the priority and then rewarding myself for doing schoolwork with writing on a fiction project.

I tripled the word count output I had for September this past month. And I am celebrating by, you guessed it, spending more time writing my fiction works.

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Merry writing, F3s!

Posted in newsletter, Updates, Writing

Writing Quest Update: October 2022

Posted on by Hayley Green
Photo by Dan Meyers on Unsplash

Hello Family, Friends, and Fans!

Mental Health:

I’ve got to be honest with you: September was rough. Mentally, physically, and emotionally, I feel like I was run over by a bus, then stomped on by a stampede of Clydesdales, and finally got peeled off the sidewalk piece by piece with a snow shovel. In other words, I’m not doing so well.

What has gotten me through each and every day was the promise that tomorrow is a new slate, a new day, a new chance. Even if it did suck, again, there was always tomorrow.

Writing:

I have been slowly working on the third draft of Poseidon’s Pearl by reading and highlighting everything I want to change. And then a peer reads my writing and now I have to fix a major plot hole in the setting, in River’s character arc, and basically re-write the book. But it will be SO MUCH BETTER when I do. And I’m saving all of the old versions, too, so if I think I over edited it, I can just pull up a previous draft and go from there.

I am also drafting the first draft of the sequel novel to my published short story. The story of the one Pyro that survived. More to come on this later.

Thank you for keeping up with me!

Posted in Updates

Writing Quest Update: September 2022

Posted on by Hayley Green
Photo by DJ Johnson on Unsplash

Hello Family, Friends, and Fans!

This past month has been a struggle.

Challenges

I have been working hard on an intense class for school that is a writing workshop. The good news? I am getting some valuable feedback on my novel Poseidon’s Pearl: Book One of the Poseidon’s Object Series. The bad news? The class is a lot of work, so I have to put the assignments first over my second editing pass of the full manuscript.

Not to mention, my mental wellness challenges have flared up for the past couple of weeks, draining my energy so my productivity has gone down in an effort to be kind to myself and let myself heal.

Even though I’ve had some challenges, I have been making small steps of progress in other areas.

Successes

I am working, slowly, on re-structuring Write of Passion so my team doesn’t burn out again and hopefully we can continue to publish journals and anthologies for your reading pleasure. It won’t be up and running any time soon, but I am working on it.

Secondly, even though this class is intense, I am working ahead so when I have completed all the work for class I can do on my own, I will just have to do the week-by-week assignments and will have more time to write. Plus, I am getting invaluable feedback that is helping shape my novel.

I discovered a new emotional arc for my characters in Poseidon’s Pearl and am going to revise the work to emphasize this aspect. I am in no rush to publish, but I am working on making the work as good as it can get.

Finally, this blog post is a miracle of itself, that I took the time to write it and post it. I was half-planning on a social media annouccement that this month’s update wouldn’t happen, but instead of writing that, I wrote this update.

Thank you for reading my life updates! I have a treat for those of you who have made it this far: I’m going to share a short excerpt of Poseidon’s Pearl also known as PO1. Enjoy!

Sienna:

After taking a deep breath, I decided I would go for a swim to relax and gain some mental clarity. I toed off my shoes and headed towards the water. I loved the feeling of the warm sand between my toes. The ocean felt like bath water at this time of year, at the end of dry season, when heat still permeated the air. I dove under when I was waist deep.

Something changed as I swam forward. Before I knew what was happening, I felt the water pulling me deeper, tossing me around, and dragging me out to sea.

A riptide. The sting of the salt when I opened my eyes didn’t bother me. I struggled, trying to get my bearings and figure out which way was up so I could ride the current and get a breath of air.

My heart pounded in my ears and throat as the need for air burned in my lungs. Involuntarily, my mouth and nose opened. I breathed in nothing but water. My body tried to cough the water out but that just made me inhale more.

This was it. I was going to die.