March Reflections

Another month is already here! It’s hard to believe how quickly this year is flying by.

March was an exciting month for two reasons. The first was that, after eight weeks of intensive writing, I finally finished my rewrite of my novel! I have to admit, writing was HARD in March. I thought that I’d get more motivated as I got closer to the end, but I just ended up getting more tired with each passing week. By the time I made it to the final week, I was just desperate to wrap things up.

Luckily I had my AMM community to keep me motivated. Seeing my fellow mentees make progress on their novels made me want to work on my novel, too. I honestly don’t know if I could have stayed as disciplined without the program and my writing group to keep me accountable. This is why it’s super important to have a support system as a writer.

My novel’s definitely not in perfect shape yet, but I am SO happy with how it’s turned out so far. I feel confident that I’ve addressed a lot of the issues my writing group pointed out in my previous draft. They’ve read about 10 out of 40ish chapters and they all agreed that it was a great rewrite and I was definitely moving in the right direction. Hearing that gave me a much-needed morale boost.

So what happens now? I’ll spend another two weeks cleaning up some chapters and then I’ll send it to my AMM mentor to read. If she doesn’t have any major feedback, I’ll spend another few weeks polishing up the prose and then send the whole draft to two additional beta readers, along with my writing group. At that point, if everyone gives me the thumbs up, I’ll start the process of querying my novel and trying to find a literary agent for it. It’s hard to believe that I rang in this year fretting about whether I was a strong enough writer to implement my writing group’s feedback, and now I’m here less than three months later with a strong new draft! Go, me!

The second reason March was exciting was that I signed a lease on a new apartment! It was love at first sight when I saw my new place, and not just because they were offering four months of free rent as a Covid concession and my new building has some amazing amenities like an indoor tennis court and gardening room (okay, those things were a pretty big part of it too). The funny part is the things I’m most excited for are features I’m sure most people would find pretty boring: actual counter space in my kitchen, a bathtub, a washer/dryer IN the unit (my fellow New Yorkers will understand what a big deal this is).

Everything happened so fast with the apartment. Within a week, I’d seen the listing, viewed the apartment in person, and signed my lease. I’m making the big move on April 30th, and I can’t wait!

March was very productive, but it was also pretty laidback. April, on the other hand, is going to be a different story. This month I’ll be:

-Getting back into dating after a four month break

-Doing another egg freezing cycle

-Working with my AMM mentor on revisions

-Doing an orientation for a new volunteer opportunity

-Job searching because my current contract will be up in a few months

-Moving

I should also be getting my Covid vaccine this month! My friends and family have all gotten at least one dose by now, so I’m the holdout. But I’ll finally be eligible in two days! If all goes well, I’ll have my first shot by the end of this week!

Now that I’m not writing 2000 words a day of my novel, hopefully I’ll have more writing stamina to post more regularly on this blog. I’ve missed you guys!

I hope everyone else had a great month. Here’s to another great month ahead!