Taryn East Writes

Wow! What a month! I did a full read-through of The Conjunction , editing as I went - adding in some more snappy lines and a few extra fixups based on some beta-reader commentary. I then did a hard edit using ProWritingAid . Goodness, that is a really useful app! Well worth the lifetime subscription! It pointed out a lot more things than I’d have thought, and by the last few chapters I was editing a lot of the things as I went, rather than waiting for ProWritingAid to point it out to me. I also played around a lot with Scrivener to produce a final-ish copy of the document - with table-of-contents, front and back matter, etc. I’ve now handed the complete novel off to the copy-editor/proof-reader and am eagerly awaiting their results (and the next round of editing) 😃 In the meantime, I signed up for the “5 day amazon ad challenge” (cos it was free). I set up a few ads - totally not expecting anything at all to happen, because: first novel AND only in pre-order. I got a few hu...

I was retrenched from my IT job in the first week of this month, so it's been a bit of an odd month. I managed to secure a part-time contract so I have been doing some work. But a lot of extra time has been spent editing The Conjunction into shape ready for release. I've got ISBNs and have been editing with the help of ProWritingAid, and am about ready to hand the first few chapters for my final copy-edit and proofread. All with an eye to publishing in the next few months. I picked a date out of the air and chose September 21st for my release date, and put The Conjunction up on Kindle for pre-order. So if you're actually reading this right now, you can in fact buy the book. It's just a soft-launch for now - I won't be doing any marketing until a bit closer to the date. In the meantime, I'm reading Happy the next Awaken Online book by Travis Bagwell. I've really been enjoying this series and have bought every book on preorder as soon as it comes out.

May is typically when SAD starts setting in. So I spent the month concentrating on work and parenting to conserve valuable spoons... but as it turned out I was retrenched in the first few days of June. So, looks like I have way more time to spend on writing this month. I'm working first up on the minutiae of getting The Conjunction ready for publishing first, then will get back to King Tide . I need ISBNs, I need to get a proof-read done, etc etc. So that's my priority for this month. In the meantime, I'm now reading my way through "The Twice-Scorned Lady of Shadow" (book 3 of the Guild Codex Unveiled series ) by one of my favourite authors: Annette-Marie .

April was an even slower month. I had a lot of external priorities to work through and writing took a back seat, unfortunately, to my IT job, parenting, and coping with basic mental health. So I only wrote around ten pages total for King Tide for the month, most of which was written in the first fortnight. I did get some dictation and writeup for King Tide, and I have begun plotting out the final quarter of the book. But it's a bit of a rough sketch still. I know where I want the story to end up, but not really sure of the steps to get there, and that tends to hinder my writing, even though I'm definitely a pantser. As for the first book: The Conjunction . Editing is still on pause pending spoons to pick it up. Thankfully I don't have anyone really waiting on it - nobody is going to get cross at me for not publishing yet, apart from myself. Meanwhile I'm still reading: Book 6 of A practical guide to evil. Though I'm finally approaching the end. There's o...

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 ...