fall

summer update + autumn goals

Liesl Young14 Comments

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Quote, Unquote!

I stepped outside this morning to pick some fresh raspberries for my pancakes (yes, raspberry pancakes–they were delicious) and there was a bite in the air. Even as I write now, the scent of cinnamon is drifting from the breakfast cookies baking in the oven and a cool breeze blows from the open window. I got to wear my favorite sweater the other day, and it made me think, Ah, yes. Fall is here.

And if fall is here, that means it’s time for another seasonal update! I love writing these posts, truly. It gives me time to reflect and think about what’s going on in my life and how I can grow throughout the coming season.

My summer was…nuts. It was just one big life event after the other. I got (and kept!) a job I love, started studying at the Author Conservatory, met one of my best online friends in person for the first time, went to the YDubs Conference, and fell back in love with writing, among other things.

There were a lot of things I planned or intended to do but never did, but there were lots of things that I did do that made my summer an overall success.

Some small joys included:

  • reading Brandon Sanderson for the first time and surprising myself with how much I liked it
  • really long bike rides with my sister
  • a youth gathering on Mackinac Island and hiking ten miles a day
  • buying new books, including two that have been on my wish list for ages
  • a day trip to Frankenmuth, Michigan with my best friends (and some old friends surprising us there)
  • a retreat at a local Lutheran college to learn about church work and hearing their organ
  • lots of visits from the neighborhood cat
  • buying my online friends pizza during the YDubs Conference
  • a day trip to Cedar Point with my (extremely chaotic) youth group
  • plenty of Taylor Swift (especially during August)

Now that we’ve overviewed my summer, let’s look at the goals I made back in June, shall we?

goals from summer

stay on top of schoolwork and balance time well

I’d give myself a seven out of ten on this one. While I’ve mostly been doing a good job of staying on top of my Author schoolwork, some things fell by the wayside during July and August. I’m catching up on them now, but I still can’t help but feel like I’ve put myself behind. Which, technically, I guess I have, but I know what I need to do to catch up, so it’s not a big deal!

As for managing time well…I could probably have spent a little less time scrolling through Pinterest and a little more time being productive this summer. A lot of times I would get home from work and utterly crash, needing to give my brain a break, which meant an excuse to scroll through my phone endlessly. In reality, that was probably making things worse.

But I can’t get that time back, so all I can do is scold myself and not do it again. I’ve learned my lesson!

restart my email list

This…did not happen. It’s kind of a big project, because it requires creating additional content on a somewhat regular basis, and I did not have the brainpower to do it over the summer with everything else going on.

I did ask some people if they would like to join for the relaunch, and I got a couple of new emails, but I never sent anything. I will be putting this on my list of autumn goals, though! It will happen. I hope.

read more good books

I hit a reading slump during the midsummer. No matter what I did, I just couldn’t force myself to read more. It was a weird feeling, and I didn’t like it.

However, I did manage to find two new favorite books: Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens and The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. Plus, I reread the Harry Potter series and some childhood favorites like Harriet the Spy and Little House in the Big Woods.

I recapped my summer reading journey in last week’s post–if you’d like to see some thoughts on those books, check it out!

goals for autumn

restart my email list

Oh look, it’s back.

For real this time! I plan to create content with lessons that I’m learning in life that don’t necessarily belong here, publicly, on my blog. Things that God has been teaching me, experiences I’m having, and, probably the most fun thing, updates on my actual writing projects. I’d like to do emails every other week or every month. If you’re interested in signing up, I’d love to have you!

sign up for my email list

re-teach myself Latin

Latin isn’t a part of my core curriculum anymore since I left Classical Conversations, but big things are coming (oooo…) that require it. I just can’t escape it, as much as I’d like to. So I will be going back to the basics and relearning everything that I thought I could forget for my senior year of high school.

Funny how that works. I thought I would never need it. Guess all those crazy homeschool moms were right. (Love you, Mom!)

learn something new

I have so. Many. Hobbies. Yet for some reason I am never satisfied and always want to do something else. This fall I’d like to pick one thing–yes, one–and stick to it. I want to practice it and get good at it.

I don’t know what that will be. It might be something I do but don’t do often enough, like archery, or it might be something totally new, like machine sewing. Whatever it is, I plan to create a schedule and teach myself as much as I can about it.

figure out budgeting and money management

This is one of those adult skills that I know I have to have but am too intimidated to actually start. Fortunately, my mom is a budgeting wizard and (hopefully) will be able to help me. Plus, I’m taking a personal finance course for my senior year, so I expect to get at least an overview then.

make connections and engage

I’m part of a community on the Author Conservatory now that’s relatively small and close-knit. I know some of the students, but I’d like to be more outgoing and make real, deep, personal connections with other young authors like me. It’s hard for me to make friends online, but that’s mostly due to the fact that I forget to respond to messages for days at a time, which means that that’s really on me.

final thoughts

This fall, I will not be going back to Classical Conversations like I have every single year since I was about six years old. Instead, I’ll be learning at home, working on my writing projects, working at my job, and juggling all the normal teenager things. It’s definitely something new that’s going to require adjusting, but I know that with discipline, I can accomplish all these goals and more.

Thank you so much for tuning in! Your support means more to me than you know. I’d love to hear about your goals for the fall–go ahead and drop them in the comments.

I’ll see you next Wednesday!

The Ultimate Preptober Checklist

Liesl Young1 Comment

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Quote, Unquote!

NaNoWriMo looms on the horizon, and it can be a bit daunting (she says while shivering in terror). I mean, the whole 50,000 words in 30 days? What sadist invented this?

But it doesn’t have to be scary! Preparation is the ultimate tool to keep you from getting overwhelmed. So I’ve put together a checklist you can use throughout October to help you get to know your novel and your habits.

Let’s go!

1. Nail down your characters

Without characters, you can’t have a story. It’s important to know them before you start to write. Nail down the basic things like their appearance, likes and dislikes, and possibly their personality type, if you’re into that sort of thing. You can use a character questionnaire (thank you, WordPress, for helping me with the spelling on that one) or character development questions to round them out, or even ask a friend to “interview” your characters.

Related Post: How to Make Your Characters Come to Life

2. Outline

I learned the hard way last year that outlining is super beneficial. Even if you’re more of a pantser, please have a basic outline. I’m begging you. It will help so much. Find an outlining method that you like and use it.

3. Set up a schedule

Check your schedule for November and plan accordingly. Are you going to stick with the basic 1,667 words per day? It’s fine if you do, but then it forces you to write every single day. Account for things like busy school days or Thanksgiving dinner. You might do well with writing a few hundred words on the weekdays and then churning out a few thousand on weekends. Figure out what works best for you and do it!

4. Get good habits in place

Start early! If you work on your consistency now, it’ll be that much easier once November rolls around. Practice slamming out a thousand words (or however many your daily word count is) now, so that it’s not a total shock once NaNo hits.

5. Get organized

Make a NaNo notebook–you’re going to accumulate random scraps of paper all over the place, so you can just tape them in your notebook to keep them in one place. Create a folder for NaNo in your Google Drive or computer desktop. Pre-write blog posts if you need to. Prep grab-and-go meals if you live alone. Let everyone around you know that you might disappear. If they really love you, they’ll understand.

6. Create a writing environment

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: Your surroundings are one of the most important elements that will impact your writing. Find a place where you can hole up for an hour or two per day and make it comfortable, someplace you’ll actually enjoy being in.

Related Post: How to Create Your Perfect Writing Spot

7. Communicate with fellow NaNo-ers

A community is one of the best things you can have when attempting something drastic like writing 50,000 words in one month. The NaNoWriMo website has an inbuilt community with groups, I believe (I’m not on it, but I know people who are). Even if you can’t or don’t want to join something as big as that, find a few friends who are also doing NaNo and keep each other accountable. Last year, two of my friends and I set up sprints on Zoom every weekend, and that was a huge help for me.

8. Get excited!

How are you going to immerse yourself in your story if you aren’t immersed in your story? Make Pinterest boards! Make playlists! Make mock covers! Shout from the rooftops about your story and get others excited, too. (If you have a friend who really loves your story and will be more than happy to beat content out of you with a stick…even better.)

That’s it for this week! Are you planning on doing NaNo this year?

Thanks so much for reading, and I’ll see you next Wednesday!

Until next time,

Summer Updates and Autumn Goals

Liesl Young5 Comments

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Quote, Unquote!

Did you guys hear that? That was the sound summer made as it flew over our heads.

I know. Can you believe it? It was a weird summer–it felt like it was really slow but really fast at the same time. I don’t know why, it just was. Anyway, now it’s time for fall! Leaves changing and cozy days and fires. And cardigans. I can dig out my cardigan collection!

And fall also means a new set of goals. But first, let’s go over what I got done this summer!

Goals from Summer

1. Learn the ins and outs of outlining.

I’m pleased to announce that I did do quite a bit of research on this over the last season! I’m still trying to figure out what will work best for me–nothing’s going to be perfect, but that’s okay–but I definitely have a base to go off of now.

2. Begin outlining a new story.

I’d give myself partial credit on this one. I do have a very rough, broad outline, and I’ve been gathering ideas and scribbling them down on random Post-Its, but nothing comprehensive yet. I’m planning on using this idea for NaNo this year, so you’ll get an introduction soon enough.

3. Write, polish, and enter a story into our library’s Teen Creative Writing Competition.

Done! The story I wrote was titled “The Wishing Tree,” and it won third place in my category! If you’re on my email list, you got to read it. If you aren’t (and you should be…okay, self-promotion over), it was basically a very dystopian, very poetic story about a single willow tree and the allusion of hope.

4. Keep up my blogging streak.

I’m pretty sure this one speaks for itself. (Also, on the day I’m writing this, I got a notification from WordPress that I registered one year ago today! My one-year launch anniversary is coming up…)

Plans for Fall

1. Win National Novel Writing Month.

This is the biggie. This is the thing I really want to accomplish this fall. I barely started on my NaNo project last year, so I’m hoping that the habits I’ve picked up during the past year will help me push through to the 50,000 goal.

(Plus, if I play my cards right, I might get my best friend to do it with me. Emma, if you’re reading this…the entire Internet knows now. Good luck getting away.)

2. Go through some serious editing on Shadows of Dreams.

This is vague, I know, but I’m not exactly sure how much editing I want to aim for in three short months. I think I want to at least wrap up my current round of alpha feedback and implementations and then do a micro edit, but we’ll see how much more it needs after I finish this round. I’m super happy with how it’s turning out already, though.

3. Read more books about writing and apply the techniques to my own works.

I’ve heard of so many great books that have helped a lot of my other writer friends out a lot, but I haven’t actually sat down and looked at them. I want to start reading those a little more and figuring out how I can apply them to my writing to make it so much better.

That’s it for this post! What goals do you guys have for this fall? What are you most excited about?

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next Wednesday!

Until next time,

Fall Wrap-Up + Game Plan for Winter

Liesl Young3 Comments

Well, we’ve almost made it through 2020. Winter started officially on the twenty-first (though for me, the start of winter is always December first). Autumn is over, which is sad, but also a good thing. Now we have hot cocoa and cozy fires! And, of course, Christmas and the new year. (Fingers crossed that 2021 goes a little more smoothly than 2020.)

I thought that the beginning of each season would be a perfect time to give updates on my writing, so here we are! I’ll cover what I accomplished in the fall and what I plan to do during the winter.

What Happened This Fall

This fall was one of the most productive seasons I’ve ever had in terms of writing, especially considering my love of writing only really took off in May. I accomplished several notable things–probably the largest of which was launching this blog!

I’ve loved blogging so far. I’ve managed to post every Wednesday since I launched on September 30 (that means that I’ve been blogging for a quarter of a year now–!), and the support and feedback I’ve been receiving on my posts is so uplifting to me. I think one thing that was the most surprising to me was all the connections I’ve made through blogging. A lot of my friends on the Young Writers Workshop (YDubs) have blogs and I only really expected to meet other bloggers there, but I’ve met so many other bloggers through WordPress, and I am grateful for that.

Another thing I attempted during the autumn was National Novel Writing Month, or NaNo, with my novel As the Night Falls. Whew, what a ride. I did not win (unfortunately), but I did make some pretty amazing headway on it. I also participated in Christine Smith’s writers linkup about my novel, the third part of which I posted last week.

All in all, it was a pretty productive autumn! I’m hoping to attempt and (maybe) win NaNo next year, too, so I’m glad I learned some lessons this year.

What’s Happening This Winter

This winter holds the ultimate challenge: become a plotter.

I’m a pantser. I’ve always been a pantser. I cannot plot to save my life. So this winter, beginning with my new novella Seaglass, I am going to plot the entire thing–in detail–before I start writing. It’s going to be rough, and I most definitely will need lots of chocolate, but I will do it. Mark my words.

(Keep in mind that this post is partially for accountability, so if I come back in the spring and say “I failed at plotting,” you have my permission to yell at me or take away my chocolate.)

I’m also hoping to make it to at least 30,000 words on As the Night Falls, because I figure that my charries deserve at least that much. And I’m planning on fixing up Quote, Unquote some–adding some more pages for my writing, posting short stories, and possibly a new logo, now that I’ve gotten the hang of blogging.

Look out for a special announcement here as we enter the New Year, too! My friends Mia and Lena and I are planning something amazing, and I can’t wait to share it with everyone. But I can’t tell you just yet…

I’ve enjoyed this season, despite the coronavirus and the uncertainty in the world right now, and I can’t wait for winter! (I mean, I can wait for February, but we don’t have to talk about that now.) I hope you have a merry Christmas!

How has this season been for you? What are you hoping to accomplish this winter?