Taryn East Writes

Bit of a slow month for me. I made some progress writing King Tide , but it was a bit of a slower slog. I don't have much of an improvement in word-count because I haven't managed to dictate much, it's all still handwritten. So I still have ~75K typed up, and ~26 pages of handwritten first-draft (which would mean maybe another 7800 words). I've had a month of working hard at my other job instead, plus COVID-based make-up-xmas and kidlet birthday party instead. As for the first book: The Conjunction . Editing has been on pause as well. I had the first chapter returned by my english-teacher friend who is editing it, but I haven't had the spoons to take that and run yet. I find it hard to mix up writing with editing tasks - the mind-set for each is very different. My internal critic has to be locked away in order for me to write well. If I let it out to edit, then it'll also pounce all over my ability to write. Meanwhile I'm still reading: Book 6 of A p...

When I was 5 I liked to do jigsaw puzzles upside down (to make it harder) and blow bubbles off the balcony -- watching them drift over the street. I liked to walk to school by myself (one block) and learn Origami from the lady in the flats behind us. When I was 7 I wished on every star that I could have a baby sister. When I was 8, I got one. When I was 10 I liked to explore the backways of Oyster Bay, picking flowers to make perfume (which smelled terrible). I played fantasy make-believe games with my cousins - involving magic and unicorns, where we saved the world. When I was 12 I got another sister... I stopped wishing. :) When I was 13 I liked to play make-believe with my sisters and all the younger cousins. We plotted adventures for us all, in-amongst the bamboo. When I was 15 I liked to climb up on the roof and watch the clouds drift by. I liked to ride my bike home from school and play LARP in the park across the road. When I was 17 I liked to swim in the backyard po...

My writing process is a bit chaotic, but I do have a process. Step 1: starts with roughing out a basic arc of the book. I'm more of a pantser than a plotter, so this is really just a basic synopsis - to make sure it has all the exciting plot-points and I haven't missed the rising tension or other main beats. Step 2: my first draft I write long-hand. Yep, pen and paper. It gets me into Flow much easier than typing and I spend less time staring at an empty page. Pictured right is a page from The Conjunction to show you what I mean. I ususally write with no paragraph breaks, just everything on the page and sort it out later. Step 3: after most writing sessions I'll also dictate some of what I previously wrote. I'm usually behind by a few scenes. I copy that up into Scrivener, which is how I keep track of all the writing for my book. Then I go through it to fix the autocarrot mistakes. Step 4: after dictation, I print out a copy for editing and take to it with a ...

I'm still madly writing my way through King Tide (the second book in the The Hope Gray series ). I'm roughly 75k words into the first draft. My first-draft final wordcount was around 110K, so that means I'm a bit under three quarters, which matches up with where I feel I am in the story right now. I still have a bit ore action and the stunning conclusion to write up before I hit the editing hard. As for the first book: The Conjunction . The first edit is complete, but I still have some hard editing and proof-reading to go, to polish it up ready for publishing. I aim to publish in June on both Kindle and Kindle-Unlimited, and shortly after that I'll hopefully get a paperback version available through Ingram Spark. At which point I'm hoping I'll also have King Tide ready enough to put up for pre-order too. I'm not yet ready to start plotting out the third book, though ideas are bobbing about on my backburner. Meanwhile I'm also building up a quick...