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