Mid Year News

I started 2024 off with some plans for the year. Now that we are at the tail end of June, here is a bit of an update. The weeks have flown, but they haven't been uneventful. 

1) My Diploma and Trophy

In early April we graduated. It's great to tick off study milestones. I received my Graduate Diploma of Creative Writing and Communication, while my husband, Andrew, received his Master of Teaching. As a total surprise, I was presented with one of the special academic awards of the ceremony. It boosted my confidence in ways I can't describe. Since my undergraduate days, so long ago now, I never considered myself much good at formal study. The rigors of that course had knocked my teenage bravado right out of me. I purposely planned this blog to be all about discussing classic and bestselling literature in a down-to-earth, no-frills style.

(Check out this other blog post I wrote, A blog for normies.)

But perhaps I'm not a complete academic slouch after all. I'm taking this lovely trophy as a serendipitous wink to keep on writing. Not surprisingly, however, the assignments that involved storytelling suited me for better than anything requiring referencing and lots of research. 

I'm glad I followed through with my studies at Tabor College. You never know what you're capable of if you don't give a try, and in all honesty, part of my impetus was need. When I'd finished homeschooling my kids, I had to find something to do to help keep a bit of an income rolling in.

2) My Fan Fiction

I've been keeping a lid on this one all year, but can't help letting out a little bit of excitement. After a hiatus from fiction writing of almost a decade, I've caught the bug again. I've been working hard since February on something totally different from anything I've written before, and to mark the change, I've used a pseudonym. 

When I stumbled across the awesome, extensive Archive of Our Own fan fiction site (or AO3) I instantly decided to add writing a fan fiction to my bucket list. Daydreaming further details of other authors' brilliant characters long after I've finished their books has always been second nature to me. So I chose my fictional universe (Louisa May Alcott's Little Women - Jo's Boys series), came up with my main characters (a couple of her 'boys') and started scribbling away. And the project has really ignited my imagination and taken off! 

What's more, I learned an important fact about myself in the process. Writing fiction energises me more than writing non-fiction. During my Diploma, I imagined trying my hand at a non-fiction book. I had good intentions to try adding to the glut of happiness literature with a book entitled, 'Happiness Tips from Fictional Characters.' I meant to draw examples from many of the reviews I've written for this blog. I'd even completed a major assignment about how I envisaged the layout, with a few sample examples. Yet in all honesty, it always felt like a bit of grind when it came to actually working on it.

Once I started my new fan fiction though, my drive was instantaneous. My imagination kept drifting back to it. The contrast was so dramatic, I've accepted once for all time that working on non-fiction will never excite me in the same way as writing stories. 

I still enjoy reading non-fiction though. It's just that now I have even more respect for non-fiction authors than ever before, because they manage to see ideas through to book form, which I could never bother forcing myself to do. 

Hey, if somebody else writes a book of happiness tips from fictional characters, I'll read it. 

3) Social Media

I've been having a bit of a time crisis with the juggling act between my couple of platforms. The vastness of 'bookstagram' has been swamping me most of all. I appreciate the wise souls who have pointed out that the human spirit isn't equipped to cope with the beast we've created. Human beings existed for centuries with social outlets of just twenty to fifty friends and acquaintances. And their places of influence spanned a few miles around their physical dwellings, at least most of the time. Now we've suddenly had our reach exploding! The invention of the internet means we may now consider an unlimited crowd from right around the globe to be personal friends of ours. And they're all potentially available the very second we share something. While our egos may cry out, 'Hell, yeah!' our finite cellular make-up crumbles under the pressure. I'm sure I'm not alone. 

Misplaced guilt has been dogging me. Many online friends I follow publish a steady stream of beautiful, painstaking, well-curated posts. Giving them each the appreciation they deserve would require hours of attention and concentration, rather than the half-hour or so I put aside for scrolling through Instagram and Facebook. Responding as I'd like to would take me at least half a day, so since I'm just one individual with a limited time frame, I often find myself skimming or scrolling past instead. That's the source of my misplaced guilt. I can't help feeling callous, even though logic tells me keeping on top of it all is an impossible dream. In Johann Hari's book, Stolen Focus, he uses the analogy of trying to drink water from a fire hose. We simply can't keep up. 

When we try, with the best of intentions, our attention spans are frizzled. I won't go there now though. That's a subject for another day, and more thorough thinkers than I am have tackled it. 

I've slowed down my own Instagram output without sputtering out completely, although to be completely honest, I've sometimes considered pulling the plug. I'm not really sure what to do about the time-sucking nature of this problem, either spreading us way too thin or loading shovels of guilt on our frail psyches for not keeping up with the stream of feed.  

How do you handle it?

4) For now anyway... 

I'm keeping up with this blog. I consider myself to be providing a low-key but vital service by adding impressions and personal details about books people may want other opinions about. Quite often, a post will receive comments years after I've written it, from readers who are just now enjoying the books I've discussed. 

And of course my fan fiction (it's called 'Longing For Home') is never far from the top of my mind. Many chapters are now up on AO3, but as I'm not finished yet, I'll keep quiet again until later. I'll just say that I wouldn't mind letting you in on the secret if you twist my arm.

 Perhaps now that I've let the cat out of the bag, I'll follow up with more posts about my fan fiction writing process in the future. 

It's been refreshing to step back from the type of personal marketing that used to cause me a fair amount of stress. Rather than trying to sell myself, I'll merely ask you if you'd fancy an immersive story about one of Jo March's nephews, along with one of Laurie's proteges?

 If so, 'Longing for Home' may be just what you're looking for.