what I wish I knew before I started writing this book | 8 days til cover reveal

The journey from "idea I had on a random Tuesday" to "actual book someone will read" is a long one. During that journey, you will end up editing, revising, and rewriting... a lot. Inevitably, there are some mistakes you feel like you could've easily easily - if only you'd known!

Here are mine.

1. Don't have major characters with names that start with the wrong letter. You will have to change one of them, after you've been calling them by one name for months or even years, and you will take forever to remember what their new name is.
2. Once you're in proofreading mode, do a CRTL+F for the words "quite," "even," "very," "even," "like," "basically," "totally," "a bit," "a little," and "seriously." If you're like them, you use them WAY too much.
3. TEXT-TO-VOICE. USE IT. YOU WILL CATCH SO MANY MORE ERRORS THAT WAY. Shoutout to whoever it was on Twitter that talked about that and inspired me to try it.
4. Tragically, going to bed at a reasonable hour actually does help your productivity.
5. Posting your daily word count on Twitter is a great motivator. Alternatively, it might just make you sad.
6. Scratch that - Twitter is a great motivator, alternatively, it might just make you sad.
7. The authors who put out multiple books per year are magic and must be admired and feared from a safe distance.
8. Audiobooks are your friend, because after staring at Microsoft Word for hours every day, reading an actual physical book or e-book will just feel like more work.
9. Social media is vital to marketing, and a death knell to actual writing.
10. You probably don't know as much about commas as you think you do.
11. Worldbuilding is a lot of fun, and a bigger timesuck that Pinterest and Spotify combined.
12. Speaking of worldbuilding, expect a lot of it to get cut from the final project. Not that the work isn't important, or even vital - but too much on the page just slows down the action.
13. You are never going to be sure if the pacing is good. This is why books have editors.

I learned all this and more while writing HEARTS FORGED IN DRAGON FIRE, a young adult fantasy romance that comes out June 5, 2023. On February 24, I will be revealing the cover, so keep an eye out! You can add the book on Goodreads here, and follow me on Twitter here.

What do you wish you'd known before you started writing your current WIP? Let me know down in the comments!