Wit & Travesty

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Monthly McGruder Updates: June

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Monthly McGruder Updates via Wit & Travesty

It’s been a long time since our last update, and we’ve done a lot since then! Thanks for sticking around and checking in on us. Do give us an update on your writing life in the comments or on social media!

Update on Summer Goals

Writing Schedule: Travis has done more for himself in this regard. He’s been meeting with his writing group again, which always lends to a regular writing schedule. My kind of regular writing is more blog post and social media related. I am currently participating in Camp NaNoWriMo with the best cabin mates a writer could ask for! I’m sticking to my pleasant word count goal of 10,000 words, and I hope to get more chapters for Throwaway Queen finished.

Agent & Job Soliciting: I’ve applied to quite a few literary agencies and have gotten pleasantly-worded “no’s” from them. These are probably the nicest rejections I’ve ever received. A few even gave some constructive criticism that I could apply to my manuscript to get more acceptance emails in the future. I’m not too fazed by it since I’m still pretty early in the process.

As for jobs, we’re constantly applying and facing similar rejection. That’s how life is and we’re still trying to enjoy our summer regardless. We’re not sure what the rest of 2017 holds for us, and it’s easy to feel ebbs of discouragement.

We Had Our First Writing Retreat

Well, we’ve heard a lot about writing retreats and decided to take one ourselves! We stayed in this nice condo up in the mountains . . . and didn’t get much writing done. We didn’t take it super seriously, but the time we spent resting, reading, and working on other goals made it easier for us to write more in the future. I should give Travis credit: he actually did some writing and I got lost in a good book, Present Over Perfect.

We Launched Our #HalfYearMarkGoal Instagram Challenge

So far so good! We’re happy that a few people are participating and we hope to see more trickle in as July unfolds. You can check out our post about the challenge here or head over to Instagram to join! I’d highly recommend joining in the fun if you a) are motivated by online accountability to achieve a goal b) want ideas of what to post on Instagram or c) want to attract more like-minded followers to your Instagram. It’s a win-win, trust me.

We’re Upgrading Our Editing & Beta Reading Services

I’m particularly excited about this. As many of you know—or maybe don’t know—I have five years of professional editing experience and I want to use that experience to help other indie authors get publish-ready! In the coming weeks, I will be revamping our pages to include information about pricing, packages, services, and more to get a better idea of what I can do.

I’ve always been passionate about helping other writers. I want to train to eventually be a literary agent or even a publisher someday. But for now, I’m pretty jazzed about polishing manuscripts for reader consumption.

I’m also setting up a more official page where you can contact Travis or I for beta reading services. We will still do it free of charge, but we want something official so you know we’re available for these kinds of things.

Urg, I’m just really excited for this and I hope you are, too. A big THANK YOU to writing friends that have trusted me with editing your work in the past. You’ve made me confident enough to price my work better and even call myself a freelance editor.

Wit & Travesty Turns 3!

Last but not least, we’ve reached our 3rd blogging anniversary! Take a look at our posts—old and new—and you’ll see that we’ve come a long way. We have grown as writers, editors, readers, and humans.

We just want to thank you for following our blog, being interested in our lives via social media, sharing your dreams with us, and being the best internet friends we could ask for!

Sometimes it feels like no one is listening or paying attention, but we can tell that you are moved by our words and our #writerslife advice. In the coming years, we plan to share, start dialogs, and be a solid part of the warm and illustrious writing community.

Well, don’t mind us if we’re feeling a bit misty-eyed and yet pumped for our upcoming plans. What have you been up to this summer? Share with us in the comments or via social media!

Announcement: We’re Hosting an Instagram Challenge!

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After sharing my recent post about upgrading your Instagram game, I have a new fun announcement!

For the month of July, I will host an Instagram challenge! It will be called #HalfYearMarkGoal.

The idea behind it is that we’ll hit the middle of 2017 during July, and many of us still have goals, resolutions, or bucket list items that we want to get done! Since summertime is a great time to try out these goals, I figured this challenge could open up to include just about everyone I know to participate.

Here’s some insight on how the challenge will work. I want as many people to participate as possible and I wanted to give you a few weeks of preparation to pick out your goal. Much excite!

How Will This Work?

I’ll provide a prompt for each day of July on Instagram and you respond to each prompt with an Instagram post! The prompts will basically let you brag about whatever you’re working on. You can participate as much or as little as you’d like. Just put the hashtag #HalfYearMarkGoal on each post so I and everyone else on the challenge can see your posts. Bonus points if you comment or like each other’s stuff!

So who are some ways you can participate? Here are examples of goals or projects that you could use for the prompt:

  • Fitness/health
  • Cooking
  • Yoga/meditation
  • Writing
  • Blogging
  • Photography
  • Learning a new language
  • Visiting a new city
  • Starting a family
  • Adopting a new pet
  • Reading
  • Learning to sing or play an instrument
  • Bullet journaling
  • Collecting
  • Crafting
  • Decorating
  • Fashion
  • Sewing/cosplaying
  • Drawing/painting
  • Hiking
  • Gratitude/happiness

This is just what I could come up with off the top of my head. I’m sure you could contribute something unique and fun!

What Should You Post?

You can go about this any way that works best for you. Start by sharing this post or my Instagram post on your social media to let everyone know that you’ll participate. Accountability is key for achieving your goals!

Next, just answer the prompt based on your preference. One idea is to share a picture that reflects the prompt, then explain more in the caption area below. Or, you can have a generic photo (like this one that shares the prompt) and explain everything in the caption area. For that, you can simply regram or reshare what I post. Some even provide a written response to the prompt in their photo. You could even do a mixture of these ideas with the new swipe feature on Instagram.

Whatever best reflects your goal or project is the name of the game!

I Want In!

To get a headcount before we begin, just comment below if you’re joining, or comment on my Instagram challenge post if you want in. Also, reshare or regram the image with all the prompts to tell your followers that you will participate. Please spread the word!

Check this post for further updates and answers to questions you may have. I want this to be a fun summer Instagram challenge, and I hope it inspires you to do something new and special!

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Monthly McGruder Updates: April

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Monthly McGruder Updates via Wit & Travesty

Hey, friends! It’s been a while since we’ve shared an updates post, and for a good reason! We felt that it would be best to share these kinds of posts once there’s substantial stuff to share. That’s not to say that we’ve been twiddling our thumbs up until now, but we’ve built up some excitement and want to share a bit more of what’s new with us! Without further ado, here’s some fun and writing-related stuff from the McGruder household.

Travis Graduated wit & travesty celebrating graduation

Yes! We’re both officially done paying for college tuition! Yay for adulting! Travis graduated with a BA in English and minor in editing, so now we have matching degrees from Brigham Young University! He’s pretty excited to be done with school forever, and he’s even more excited to find a career-happy job in writing or editing. But mainly he’s excited about reading books for fun and not for class.

We’ve Been Married for Three Years

That’s right—we’re still best friends forever! Since we had family in town over the last week of April, we mainly celebrated with them. Maybe we’ll do something fun to officially celebrate, but we shared the obligatory social media posts, so we’re on the right track.

Since you’re obviously wondering, we’ll give you our favorite piece of marriage advice: love everything about your partner. You will each have your own quirks and hobbies, so stick with someone that you can fully support, no matter what they want to do with their life.

Take us for example: we know that not many people see a Humanities degree as something truly fulfilling or profitable, but we love and support each other with what we want to do. What’s the point of being married if you can’t stand each other’s dreams or passions, right?

Remember that this definitely overlaps into budgeting. It can be really easy to tell your partner not to spend their money on something because you don’t see the intrinsic value. We still budget our money to allow each other some wiggle room to buy things we enjoy, and that has helped us stay true to ourselves but not go completely broke. I’m looking at you, comic con.

Travis and I are at our happiest when we can full-fledged nerd out without judgement. We’re not perfect, but this is one thing we excel at and enjoy practicing.

Any bits of advice you married people would love to share in return?

Whitney Reached her Camp NaNoWriMo Goal

Yes, as a matter of fact, I have been writing—something besides blog posts! After a dry writing spell, I finally made a public NaNoWriMo goal and reached it! It made me insanely happy to finally start a new project, The Throwaway Queen, and get back to the basics.

It’s sort of weird and difficult to write while soliciting for a literary agent, since I sometimes don’t know which project deserves more attention. For now, I’m happy that I’m finding a writing groove that works for me and helps me feel accomplished.

Did you participate in Camp NaNo, and how did it go?

Summer Goals

Oh, boy. Ever look to the Summer horizon and not have a single clue what could happen or what you’ll be doing? Yeah, that’s us right now. Since Travis is done with school, we’ve got a pretty blank slate of where to go and what to do. A lot of people ask us what our next step is or what our goals are, and it’s tricky!

It’s not fun having any answers. So we’re doing our best to stay above water.

We’re trying not to freak out (read: Travis is not really freaking out, but I certainly am), but we have a strong belief that things will unfold the way they should.

In the meantime, we have some goals that we hope to achieve this Summer:

  • We’re both looking for jobs, specifically writing or editing related. The dream would be working for a publishing company. Wish us luck!
  • Whitney is looking for representation for her novel, Destiny Seeker. It’s time to finally get this thing published!
  • We’ll continue adding to our blog! There will be future posts on book reviews, tackling self-marketing, and even some tips on geek fashion.
  • No excuses: we’ll both start regular writing routines. We’re both working on projects that we enjoy and can’t wait to share more about them!

So that’s about it for us—we’ve got a lot ahead of us!

Just as a gentle reminder: if you’d love to hear more from us, take two seconds to add your email to our subscription list. You can get our posts right as they’re published and be in-the-know about our projects. You can also follow us on social media to catch up on our work, enjoy writing-related memes, and discover recommended posts from other writers and creatives.

So what’s new in your world? Share your goals, updates, and recent victories with us below!

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