Tyler Hillis

Hey, just in case it hasn’t come across in my previous updates, I want to hammer in the point that writing is fucking hard.

You have to be intentional. Disciplined. Motivated. And a thousand other things, all while life continues to happen. In a perfect world you could hit pause on everything and spend as much time on writing as you like. But that perfect world does not exist, which makes what published authors do even more incredible, to me at least.

We’re coming up on the start of November. On the first, it will have been one year since I committed to this book, which is both amazing and somewhat sad.

It is amazing that I have worked hard on a single project for so long and have improved my writing so much. But it is sad that it’s not in the place I’d like it to be. Perhaps it’s my impatient mind that wanted the thing published by now, and since it’s not, equates it to failure (which I also know, it is not).

Nonetheless, I continue to be proud of the work I’ve done and will continue to do on it.

But I also want to branch out and start the next phases. So, I’ve set a goal. By the 31st of October, I will finish editing yet another draft and begin sending it off to agents. I will start that long journey of finding someone who believes in the story I’m trying to tell.

But also, in an attempt to keep up my November tradition, I will start writing something new. Something…ridiculous. Good, I hope. But ridiculous.

I want to have a project that I don’t have grand ambitions for (although, knowing the way my mind works, they will eventually come). I want to have an outlet for writing, without putting so much pressure on it.

So, the next six days will be a lot of work. Finishing another draft and writing query letters, all while life continues to happen.

Let’s see how it goes.