Aurora Dimitre's Books and Rambling

I don't believe in slumps when it comes to reading or writing in the 'I'm just blocked, I can't do it' sense, because I'm more of the belief that that's complete bullshit and you can if you actually tried, but I believe in a 'I don't know what to do' slump. This is more specifically writing-related, because this tends to hit me whenever I finish a draft of something. Especially my most recent project that I finished a draft of--it's a book that I worked on a lot in a relatively short period of time, and now that I've finished draft four (which I am now querying instead of going through again), I'm at a loss. Do I start (or... finish, I've already got one started) a new first draft? Do I continue working on a rewrite? Do I write a short story? Do I work on my for-fun project? I've been mostly working on my for-fun project, which is not very productive. My for-fun project is mostly just what I scribble on whenever I need to ...

I filmed a book haul today. It probably won't go up for another week and a half, but I filmed it today. I added 20+ books to my already huge TBR, and while the space in my room for books is shrinking, and while the current trend in the book community is downsizing, I... don't mind. I have had a huge TBR for the past couple of years, but this past year especially it's doubled in size. I'm talking hundreds of physical books crowding around my walls. Stacks blocking windows. This sounds like hoarder behavior when I talk about it this way. Sorry about that. The thing is, I don't feel constrained or pressured by my TBR. I know a lot of people are tending to downsize because they figure they won't read everything on their TBR... but I fully intend to read everything on my TBR, and I mean everything, from old westerns to children's books about hockey. My system of choosing my next book is completely random; I have a list of all of my TBR books and I go on a ran...

I picked up Beartown because I like hockey. I mean, I'd been meaning to pick up some Backman at some point. Everyone loves A Man Called Ove,  but to be honest, a book about an old dude just didn't interest me. But hockey does interest me, so I went with Beartown. If you've watched my latest June Weekly Wrap-Up , you know that this book is my favorite book that I've read so far this year. I cried for the last hundred and fifty pages. Just, sobbed, straight onto the page, which was kind of gross, because it's a library copy, but now I have my own copy to cry into so it's all good, it's all good. The funny thing about Beartown, though, is that a lot of people I've talked about have neglected to pick it up because it's about hockey. They've read his other books and enjoyed them, but they're just not into hockey, so they never picked up this one. Which is, first of all, how can you not be into hockey, pretty boys slamming into each other at ...

I recently finished the fourth draft of my current project, and this is it. This is the one that I start querying with--and I wrote up my query letter last night, so... this is it. This is not my first time querying and I know it won't be my last, but the anticipation of sending out a query letter is so much more than the anticipation of submitting short stories to magazines. Maybe it's because I've done so much more of the latter that it just seems like nothing now; I've only ever attempted to query one other manuscript, ever. So while this isn't one hundred percent new to me, it's not exactly a practiced art at this point. Finishing a draft is always exciting, though. The second draft is always the most exciting to me, because when I write, that's where it really starts to take shape. My first drafts are glorified outlines. My second drafts are where the meat really piles on; I completely rewrite, with an outline taken from my first draft as guideposts...