The Manley Editor of Champions: A Thank You

I have the most amazing editor. Really, I do. 

I started working with Chris (Christine Gordon Manley from Manley Mann Media) back in 2015. This was back when I didn't even have the first draft of my manuscript finished. I had about eleven or so chapters at the time when we started working together. Although I didn't have the whole thing finished, having an editor really gets your creative juices flowing and I finished my first draft in what I consider record time. I mean, nothing motivates you like having an editor. Especially if you want said editor to remember what was going on with your story while you worked on the unfinished bits. 

I admit, I probably should have waited to send in the manuscript when it was fully completed. But that is one of the reasons why Chris is such an amazing editor. And sending her the first few chapters and then getting feedback while still writing the rest did help me eliminate a lot of the plot holes and tighten up my writing. So, I guess it all worked out in the end!

Seriously, though. I was looking at my first (completed) draft that Christ had looked over, and then again, I looked over the second draft, and I'm impressed with how far I've come, how much I've improved. Chris would suggest some edits and I would expand on them, make them my own. My story evolved and sometimes when I read some of the lines from my third draft, I cannot belie I wrote them. No, seriously. It's like someone took over me and wrote them, even though I remember writing them myself. They're the kind of quotes I’d find online and think "damn, that's good. I should save that for inspiration." But I didn't save them off FaceBook or twitter. I thought of them myself and sometimes with the help of Chris. 

This brings me to today. Chris just handed me back my third draft of my novel and again I am blown away by the awesomeness of her work. Chris has a way of telling you the hard truth of what works and what doesn't and doesn't make you feel bad about it. She tells me all the things this wrong, filling up my manuscript with all that glorious red ink. But even though it's criticism, it isn't harsh. It's as though a good friend is saying that hat doesn't go well with your outfit. Okay, so I'm not doing a very good job at explaining it but trust me. It's a pleasure to work with her. 

According to Chris, this may be my final draft, after I finish the edits. And I agree. I'm at a point where I really feel confident about my novel and its message that I'm trying to bring to the world. A message that it's okay to love anyone, regardless of gender. It's okay to struggle in life. It's okay to be different. It's okay to take time to discover yourself and find out who you really are. There are so many messages in this novel of self-discovery that I know other people can relate to, because I was there myself. 

With Chris helping me along the way -- as good editors do -- I know SOUTH will both entertain and help people in all walks of life, regardless of age.

Here's to more laughter and amazing teamwork. Thank you Chris!~ 

 

Mental Health: In Writing and Life

So, if you didn't already know, I've become much more active on my social media lately. I'm also working on this website to bring more awesome content (which will go live soon). And while I've been keeping people in the loop over on FaceBook, Instagram, and Twitter, I realized I haven't yet updated my blog with all the juicy info. 

So as a quick update, my manuscript is with my editor (and I should get to see all those glorious edits sometime this week!) Yet what does one do while their main manuscript is in the hands of their editor? Start writing a novella to SOUTH! It will be called BRIDGE. I plan on writing a sequel to SOUTH, called MIRROR. And while I have the general idea of MIRROR in mind, it still needs a lot to have fleshed out before I can start writing it.

So, for the past few weeks I've been planning out and thought dumping the ideas for BRIDGE. I even started writing BRIDGE, and I gotta say, I'm super stoked about this novella. I also really love this new character I'm introducing, Kaci Miller. This novella will primarily focus on Minami and her new roommate, Kaci, shortly after the events of SOUTH. And yes, AJ will still be there. Although it will be a while before anyone can get to read this novella because SOUTH is still in the works.

As a side note, all names, SOUTH, BRIDGE, and MIRROR, are symbolic as well as literal and they were chosen for a reason.  

Now that we got that quick update out of the way, I want to address something that is important to me, mental health. I cannot stress the importance of mental health enough. If your body is in need of rest, you rest until you feel rested.

I've been feeling very creative for a while now, getting back in the writing grove while juggling a full-time job and a busy social life. But said life had me so busy that I burned out to the point where was staring to feel unwell due to my lack of sleep. And no, nothing is wrong. I’m just literally just living life to the fullest and I keep forgetting my body doesn’t like too much excitement for extended periods of time.

My body was in dire need of a recharge and man I wasn't feeling so good last week. I overworked myself because I didn't want to miss a beat doing ALL the things in Korea. But I drained myself to the point where I was physically not well and mentally drained. I spent a lot of time recovering, mostly chilling and watching YouTube, and while I didn't get anything creative done, my mind rested and in turn, the creative juices came back.

Also important, once you start your road to recovery, take baby steps. Don't jump back in full force or you're going to be right back where you started. I wrote about 500 words Monday and 300 or so yesterday. And today I took the time to jot down plot ideas. Not as much as I usually do, but it felt good all the same and small doses is better than nothing at all and feeling like you got hit by a truck and left with a mentally dazed mind.

I must say, the mental break did me wonders. Now I'm back and feeling much better and my mind is not on auto pilot anymore. I can get back to writing and posting and stuff.

So yeah. Look after yourself. Even if you're living life to the fullest, remember to take a breather so it can all sink in. You'll enjoy life even more that way.

Take care!~

A long overdue update

Well, where do I begin? It's been a little over a year now since my last blog post. A lot has happened since then and I feel the need to address it in this post. Call this post more like a journal of my past year, so to speak.

If you follow me on social media (such as Twitter or Instagram) you may know that I've recently graduated from the University of Prince Edward Island, first class standing, with a BA in Spanish. Before graduation, I was almost finished my third round of edits for my novel. Yet as the end of my final semester came around, I became too busy to finish writing. Then, graduation came. Not much editing was happening there. After graduation, I was busy looking for jobs abroad. I spent a lot of my time working at my part-time job at a Dollarstore, bonding with my family, and the rest, preparing resumés and essay's and all other sorts of documents needed to teach English abroad. Needless to say, I've kind of put the novel on the back burner for a while.

Then in September, I found an amazing recruiting company based in Seoul, South Korea, called Korvia Consulting. They are super amazing, and should you wish to teach in South Korea, I highly recommend you use their free service.

Anyway, I soon landed a job in a Korean public middle school. On October 21st, I moved over to Korea with my wonderful soul-kitty, Sorren. It's been amazing so far. Both my cat and I really enjoy the Korea way of life. (Videos of said life to be found on my YouTube channel. Check out my social media links for it).

Sadly, with the excitement of moving abroad, and then actually living here, I haven't done much editing since my last semester at UPEI. It's been so long that I'm now currently re-reading the whole novel so that I can remember all the cool new changes I've made and so I can also remember where I was heading with the novel. I'm almost back to where I left off. And since I was so close to the end, once I start editing again, it shouldn't be too long before I'm finished this round of edits. I don't think there are too many edits left. This may even be my final round. I'll just have to wait and see what my editor says. (And I'm very lucky to have an editor who understands my adventurous lifestyle). 

So! Now that my update is over, I've decided to use this blog not only for my novel and writing related things, but as a helpful inside to being an ESL teaching in South Korea. While you'll get all the cool videos and picture's elsewhere, I'll go into more details here. Maybe even share lesson plans that worked out amazing for me. And anything I post in regards to ESL, you can feel free to use.

And do, with Christmas next week, I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas!~

Writer's Block

A friend of mine asked me a question tonight in regard to writing and I thought I'd share my answer. Perhaps it will be useful to future or current authors.

"Hey, if you don't mind me asking, how do you deal with writer's block? Or with difficulty starting or finishing anything creative?"

My response:

I don't mind at all!

Its hard, not gonna lie. Sometimes I'll just re-read everything I wrote in hopes that I'll get inspired to write more. It's especially hard when the page is blank. (Or when the page is blank, and you have so many ideas that you don't know where to start so you just kind of sit there and stare at the screen and get nothing done. Kind of the opposite of writers' block but on the same level).

What helps me, however, is music and planning. Music is my inspiration and I thrive on it to get me in the mood and sometimes it inspires many chapters. But in the end, what got me though writing the first draft (aside from a huge musical influence) was what I called "plotting the plot". I sat down one day and drew out a time line of when things were to happen in SOUTH, from start to finish. I started with when the major stuff should happen, and then added less major scenes (kind of like fillers but they would still be necessary). After I got that written out, it became like a guideline; a map I could follow. When I would write, I could psychically see how far I was getting and in turn that was motivation. I'd be like, "damn, I'm halfway! That's so cool! If I kept going I'd really super far then!" It was an amazing motivator. So that, plus a good song in the background, was how I started, and finished my novel in such a short amount of time while also doing school assignments.

One more thing of advice, just keep writing, or even, just start. You may start with like a random super small sentence. But when you look at the page, you see progress, even if its small. Then the more you write, the more progress you see and the better you'll feel. Sometimes, a small ten-word sentence may end up being a 3000+ word a day writing streak. That's how it was for me, anyway.

Yet my friend still had some concerns:

"I keep starting, looking at what I have so far, hating it, and then restarting. I've written the first part of my novel twice. And it's not very good."

And so, I continued:

But that's the best part! Because it's like a blessing in disguise. I may have written my full novel from August to December, but do you know how long I've technically been working on this story? The idea alone came way back when Minami was first created, which was probably in the early 2000s.

In fact, SOUTH wasn't always called SOUTH. It used to be a super dark story (just about Minami), where everyone got murdered and there was so much death that Minami was even supposed to die in the end. (Could be why it was originally called SILENT TEARS). I've written so many chapters on SILENT TEARS, and even of SOUTH, both with multiple drafts, all which were pretty bad. You can read more about them in an earlier blog post, and click the links to read the stories themselves for a good laugh).

I'm not even saying what I have now is good, though this draft is certainly the best I've written and I haven't even finished editing it. Stories that change is you, the author, finding what truly works and what doesn't. It's probably not going to work the first try, even if you think it's amazing. I sure thought the very first chapter (script form) for SOUTH was the best thing I've ever done. But reading it now? I cringe. And that was only a few years ago. And even though my current round of edits for SOUTH is good now, I'm sure there is always something else that I'll notice later and improve upon.

But the good news is that it does get better and improve and you will produce something great. You have to work for it, but it will happen.

***

To all writers out there, never give up. Finish that story you started, no matter how long or short. Because the sense of accomplishment you'll get just by finishing something you've started writing is the best explainable feeling you can imagine. It doesn't have to be good. As long as you started and saw it through, you'll be heading on the path that will change your life.

The Cadre Chats With: A.M. Molloy (Interview)

Last month I had the pleasure of having my first interview. The University of Prince Edward Island's newspaper, The Cadre, sat down with me for over an hour for a lovely chat in regards to SOUTH.

This lovely article, written by Lorelei Kenny, is the result of my interview.

The Beginning

Welcome to my musings. The blog where I'll be posting snippets of my mind for all to see.

In this first blog post, I've decided to tell a quick tale on how my novel SOUTH came to be.

As we all know, stories can take years to tell and still never be perfect. But it's the imperfection that, oddly enough, makes it perfect to me.

So, a bit of back story before I go any further. SOUTH was originally going to be a comic (and it might very well be someday). The story started many, many years ago, however, it has changed drastically over time.

The original story was called Silent Tears. Here is what it was originally about:

Minami Kyuki’s hearts a battle ground of despair. Faced with more difficulties in her life than the normal teen, Minami copes by living one day at a time. But how long before the tragic events of her past haunts her to her death?

Pretty dark, right? Then in 2010, I changed the story to Shattered. It was still dark but not nearly as much as Silent Tears was. It focused mainly on Minami’s past and eventually leading up to college. I never wrote anything on Shattered, however. I just couldn't figure out how to start it or where it'd go. All good signs that it wasn't a good story to begin with if you ask me.

Then in 2011 I went to Korea for the first time. On the train I saw this one lonely blonde haired white girl in the crowd of Koreans. This random stranger was my inspiration for AJ. This made me want to skip all that back-story stuff and go straight to college years. Somehow this inspired a complete 180 in my story and SOUTH was born.

SOUTH was still originally going to be a comic, with my friend Ryuu doing the artwork. I had originally written two volumes of comic script, but something didn’t feel right. Then one day, while listening to a song, it hit me. I suddenly knew what was missing. I then changed a few small things, which in turn, changed the story a lot. So, I opened up Word and started writing. The words just seemed to flow. Writing it as a novel felt better for this new format.

I started writing the novel version SOUTH around February of 2015. Then I slowly wrote the second chapter a month later. Then I kind of stopped writing for a while. What got me motivated to write again was actually sitting down and writing down and plotting the whole plot on a timeline on paper. To any aspiring authors or hobbies writers, I highly recommend doing this. It's an amazing motivator, especially when you write you can see your progress and it motivates you to keep going. At least, it did so for me. After writing down the plot and seeing the clear path written down so I could write more clearly, the writing poured out of me. 

I started writing again in August of 2015, around the time I got an editor. Nothing motivates you to write like having an editor. Within months, I wrote the entire novel to SOUTH. I finished the first draft on December 27th, 2016. Considering I wrote it while doing my BA in Spanish at the University of Prince Edward Island, I was pretty proud of myself.

And that is the story on how SOUTH came to be. The short version, anyway. I am currently working on my third round of edits, and let me just say, thanks to my editor this version is going to be even more amazing if I do say so myself. I'm still learning as a writing and will constantly improve. I strive off good critiques and even hope that if I made any grammatical mistakes or spelling errors in this post, would you be so kind as to point them out in a polite manner. After all, how can I improve if no one says anything?

That being said, I just want to give some quick advice. Write. Never stop writing. Even if your story sucks -- 'cause let's face it, we all have a sucky story written at some point -- just write it anyway. The feeling of actually completing a story is like non-other. Doesn't matter what kind of writing it is, be it a poem, short story, or novel, just write.