YA Fantasy First Draft Finished!
Two days ago, I finished writing the first draft of my YA fantasy work-in-progress. I’d been working on it every day for the past year and a half, but it had been on my mind since 2022. Although this book is my third work-in-progress, it is only the second one with a complete manuscript. The…
Writing and My Mental Health
I’ve had depression and anxiety for nearly a decade. I’ve been getting treatment for it for eight years. It has had. . . let’s say an interesting effect on my writing. While there are days that lethargy, brain fog, and disinterest have prevented me from writing (or doing anything), I have incorporated those emotions into…
My Writing Routine
I am terrible about forcing myself to sit down and write. If I sit at my desk, even if I have a timer going, it never ends in a successful writing session. I get distracted, start thinking about something completely unrelated, then the next thing I know an hour has passed and I’ve written five…
Authors’ Social Media Battles
Since starting my author social media accounts, I’ve struggled to gain followers, likes, and simply views. I joined TikTok in June 2024. I started posting daily in September 2024. From then until last month, all except 56 of my posts got less than 100 views. Most of them got less than 50, a large percentage…
What I’ve Learned While Writing My YA Fantasy
My goal for 2025 was to write the first draft of my young adult fantasy novel. I didn’t finish writing the entire book, but I have written over 67,000 words. I planned for it to be around 80,000, but I’m just now entering the last quarter of the storyline. I still plan for it to…
Plotting My Fantasy Project
My New Year’s resolution this year was to write a completed first draft of my young adult fantasy work-in-progress. This is the same fantasy project I mentioned in a post back in 2023. I wrote the first two scenes without any idea whatsoever of where I was going with it, even within the current scene…
Reading Recap 2024
In 2024, I read exactly 200 books. They were a mix of YA and adult fantasy, contemporary, urban fantasy, science fiction, and even a couple historical fantasies. I’m not going to list every book I read this year, just the ones I rated four stars (I almost never rate a book five stars because author…
NaNoWriMo – No
For those of you who don’t know, November is National Novel Writing Month. Obviously, the goal is to complete a manuscript by November 30th, usually totaling 50,000 words. I, on the other hand, am doing the opposite. Here’s why: I have been working on my YA fantasy novel for over eight months. Although I am…
Summer 2024 Reading Recap
Now that summer is officially over, here are some of my favorite books I read between June and September this year. They range between YA and adult fantasy and contemporary, and my reviews are spoiler free. Listed in no particular order: Born of Blood and Ash by Jennifer L. Armentrout – Adult Fantasy – Book…
The Road to “The League”
“The League” was my first work-in-progress, and the only one that has a completed first draft. I would say it is the most unique of my WIPs, and the one that is the most triggering. You can read the synopsis for it here, so I won’t go into it much in this post, other than…
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Allison Burton 