It only took 7 months, but at last: I’ve got a readable draft of the first Myth-Keepers book. Huzzah! As mentioned in my writing update from the beginning of the year, I revised The Myth-Keepers in an unusual way: I started at the end. I rewrote the third act of the novel, which amounted to …
Tag: author
A Completed Draft 2: Writing Update May 2025
Huzzah, The Myth-Keepers Draft 2 is complete! This semester-long project has been an absolute delight to work on in the beginning part of 2025. I mostly kept up with my goal of revising 10 chapters each month, though that fell off in April entering into finals. However, the flexibility of May post-finals week allowed me …
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A Decade of Myth-Keepers: My Oldest Story
"Mythics" was the original series name - I brainstormed different names for the series in my planner. It's on a November calendar page, but I didn't commit to writing and working on the series until December 2013. The Myth-Keepers, my longest actively worked on series, turns ten years old this month. It is very surreal …
December 2023 Writing Update: A Year of Little Progress
Hey there. It’s been a while. 2023 has been the sparsest year for writing updates (I at least get four, one per quarter, but this is only the third of the year) and one of the longest droughts since the last update (which was in May!). But I will admit up front: it seems odd …
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Facing My Writing Demons: Upon Rereading Our Company of Fools
For the first time since it was published in early 2021, I reread Our Company of Fools—with a Book Club. And yes, it was as intimidating as it sounds, even though it was with a few friends. And yet, I was pleasantly surprised by how reading my own novel, now removed from an author’s protective …
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How To Get Through Writing Your Rough Draft
I’m slowly realizing two very true things about myself as a writer. First, patience seems to be a defining virtue in this season of my career. Second, I really hate whatever stage of the writing process I’m currently in. Okay, maybe that second point is a little dramatic. After all, if I really disliked writing, …
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What I’ve Learned From Five Years Of Blogging
Wow, how time flies! This February marks five years since I created this website and embarked on the journey of blogging. Over the past five years, I’ve written more than 100 posts, averaging about 1,000 words per entry, meaning I’ve written at least 100,000 words for this website. That. Is. Crazy. (When I pulled out …
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What I Write
Every year around my birthday (August 11th), I try to write a self-reflective, personal post for the blog. This year, I decided to take a step of courage and talk more in-depth about my current writing projects–something that is, surprisingly, difficult for me. I was on the fence about doing this because I didn’t want …
Writing with a Day Job: Drive
Drive. Motivation. Perseverance. That’s the topic of today’s fourth and final post in my Writing with a Day Job series. If you’ve been reading along all summer, thanks for sticking around. I hope that my fellow busy writers have gained some wisdom, encouragement, or motivation from this series. Let’s end it well. First things first: …
Writing with a Day Job: Wise Rest
Greetings yet again! This is part three of four in my series on busy writers. Trying to write a novel but only have an hour (or less) a day to write? Working a job you can’t stand but really want to be a novelist? Or shuffling between parenting your kids, managing a house, and working …
By Madelynn Orion 