These author updates are a little tardy due to the fact that we flew in after a relaxing week-long cruise! It’s been our last legit vacation from the world since our honeymoon last year, so that should tell you that we’re hard workers right?

Writing

Note that this is the two of us combined, y’all.

• Blog Posts Written: 6
• Fiction Words Written: around 20,000 words
• # of Days We Wrote Fiction: 5
• Current Manuscripts: 2

Travis wrote the bulk of this word count. He took his laptop with him on the cruise and churned out some scenes. I on the other hand read like a bandit. It’s nice to unplug from the WiFi and have literally nothing else better to do than write a chapter or pet a dolphin. You know.

I’ve been doing more cleaning up—writing and editing simultaneously. As in, rewriting and connecting ideas for a better flow. Cleaning up a manuscript I worked on during high school means a lot of updating on my actual writing style which has luckily improved and blossomed since then.

Editing/Revising

We’ve had a couple of editing sessions with our writing. Can we say how much we love our writing group and their current projects? We expect to meet more regularly now that we aren’t preparing to leave our busy lives or enjoy being off the radar.

Books 

Whitney:

• Books Finished: Crown Duel by Sherwood Smith, Yes Please by Amy Poehler, & The Turnip Princess by Franz Xaver von Schönwerth
• Currently Reading: The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black

Travis:

• Currently Reading: Shadows Beneath: The Writing Excuses Anthology by Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, Howard Tayler and Brandon Sanderson

Author Activities

Whitney:

• Weekend Writing Warriors. Still on the blog hop venture. I’ve been posting 8 lines from my WIP. So far it’s been fun receiving feedback, sharing what I’m working on, and reading what the others are up to.
• Getting story ideas from some of the freaky and fantastic stories from The Turnip Princess. They’re so interesting, leave out so many details and flip the bird to any and all logic and reason. I really want to try my hand at retelling one of those stories. Probably one of the stories that involve tricksy mermaids.

Travis:

• Weekend Writing Warriors. Fully on board now, I’ve been sharing my 8 lines for the past couple of weeks. It’s a good feeling, getting your words out there. Eight sentences doesn’t take long to share; I definitely recommend this challenge.
• My side writing has been of the fan fiction flavor, in a high fantasy setting. I’ve done it mostly in the interest of rebuilding the writing consistency I had while doing Nanowrimo.

  

Fun Activities

• Okay, the cruise. We’ve been bragging for decades and decades. Some top activities: visiting ancient Mayan ruins, kayaking, and playing with dolphins. The first two are sort of research-beneficial. It was cool for me at least to be at an actual set of ruins like this, knowing Travis is writing about archeology in The Ancients Stirred.
• I also have a scene in Destiny Seeker where Reshma and Ilsi canoe on the ocean. Since I tried my hand at it with Travis, I can say I could better describe how it feels or treat it more realistically. As in, sunburns for everyone. Also we love dolphins with all our hearts.
• We’re totally enjoying our little Star Wars tabletop RPG adventures with our small group. It’s a fun way to step outside of yourself and think like a different character. More on that in coming posts.
• Camp NaNoWriMo. I’m setting a fair goal of 10,000 words to add to my novel. I’m working with high-caliber folks this time around!

Goals for June

Well, this month was fairly enjoyable. Numbers-wise, we didn’t get a lot of writing done, but rather did a standard amount of editing for our writing group.

But with few goals, it met few setbacks or failures. I like not having so many goals because most of my old goals were meant to look good to you guys or other writers—see how productive I am! But really, it was stressing me out, and I’m fairly sure that you don’t follow us as a means of stressing me out.

So I will go at the pace that works for me, knowing that I don’t bum around my house doing nothing. We’ve got a month and a half left to soak up some summer fun and sun, so we’ll probably do that before Fall approaches again.

Have any stellar goals for the month? Share below!