A short post to give an even shorter update on my writing:

After grappling with the most pessimistic of my doom and gloom writer's anxiety, I've decided to put off looking at publishing. 

...well...for now at least.

Of course I'd love to see Marry the Moon as a beautiful hardcopy or a well-worn softcover. I've pictured that illustration and can still see the sketches I'd lovingly drawn. Of course I'll never stop working and finessing Children of the Apocalypse--heck! I had a skype call with my illustrators this morning! Of course I'll keep toying with my more complex fairy-tale, Library of Untold Stories, all the ideas I'm pushing around in my head as I quietly research and accumulate info. Of course I want to write that book about Cyprus. About my family.
 
But the anxiety of trying to get published took something from me, and I need to get it back in the most authentic way I can.

So here's to 40 weeks of writing prompts. I can make them standalone pieces, fanfiction one-shots or mini-series, scenes for my characters that may or may not make it into final manuscripts.

40 weeks of falling in love with my voice again (no matter how vain that sounds). 40 weeks, the remainder of this year. It sorta fits into my New Year's resolutions, doesn't it though?

Create Art For Myself
         As any creative will tell you, it's daunting to post our work in a public forum of any kind. Even more so when we don't  get responses and feel antsy about our skill level. Essentially, though, I want to return to creating art for the sake of art.  Art for myself, and finding value in that.

Below the cut, you'll find two different lists of prompts since I want to have options if a particular concept doesn't sit with me right. I've started this week's, and I hope to add my drawings back into the mix, too.  Now the only question remains....where will I post them?  👀 (chances are fanfiction will go to Tumblr and all other pieces will stay private). Anyway...without further ado...

Writing isn't easy. If we talk about craft alone, then there are the usual frustrations. Plot-holes, weak characterization, melodramatic voice, stilted dialogue. 

But emotionally.
It isn't easy.

I sometimes wish I was young again, staying up late to read and write fanfiction. I didn't get a lot of readers on my one-shots, but I churned out more and more and wrote AUs and enemies-to-lovers and roommates/soulmates and self-insert and...and...

Of course...I also wrote my own fiction. Eva being the first character I can remember as authentically my own. I can still picture her. Bobbed hair, green dress, perpetually skinned knees from kickball in the sandlot next to the orphanage. She was fierce, protective, brash. I didn't have those words to describe her, being about six years old after all, but that's who I'd wanted her to be. When the inspiration for Eva's story pattered out, it was Sandris next, a dust-covered girl living in a fictional desert. Then after Sandris it was Giseline, and Kara, and back to fanfiction, and then--finally--Alpha. Laurie, James, Carmen, Donovan, Edelina, and Phin. These characters who I now shower with my own fierce, brash protection. (Thank you, Eva, for teaching me how.)

And then I took a break from them when my life fell apart in 2017. I turned to such self-indulgent writing that, ultimately, I know is worth more than a brief stint in publishing.

Eat Stars and Marry the Moon. 
Arguably, this manuscript saved my life...and it's okay if literary agents or publishers don't care about that.