A. M. Shilling

As my part of the world heads deeper into autumn toward winter, the temperatures have dropped, and the hours of sunlight have begun dwindling. I have a hunch my seasonal depression will be worse this year than it has been in the recent past. I’m already feeling the first inkling of it, though it usually doesn’t hit me in full force until December. I’ll have to start preparing my defenses early—lots of hot drinks, slowing down my writing pace, and reducing my overall hobby activity. It’s a good thing I decided to stop setting arbitrary writing deadlines for myself after November.

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Writing update

This month, I successfully ran #PlotTober on Bluesky, a plotting prompt game and exercise for the Three Act structure. It follows K. M. Weiland’s story structure suggestion, which is how I currently plot my books. My goal was to encourage participants to come up with ideas for WIPs they haven’t fully plotted yet, hoping it would help them. From what I’ve been reading, at least a few people found the exercise very helpful!

In the spirit of the prompt game, I spent the first two-thirds of the month plotting out “SpaceWIP,” which I’ve decided to title The Crucible of the Broken Moon. I managed to write a detailed outline in seven days—a ridiculous feat for even me. It totals 23,700 words (48 pages), so there’s a solid amount of detail for me to use to write my first draft. In an ideal world, I would write the zero draft first, consisting solely of dialogue and stage direction. However, I want to start a proper first draft for this November’s writing challenge, so I’ll skip that stage.

My goal with the upcoming month’s challenge is to write 30,000 words. Crucible will be much longer than that—I’m aiming for 100,000 words—but it will be a good start. And who knows! I may end up switching to a zero draft style after these first 30,000 words and convert them to proper prose later.

In other news, my beta readers are halfway through the allotted time for providing feedback on The Devouring, and six have already finished. I’ve received some interesting and varied reactions and already have an idea of some changes I need to make in Draft 5 as a result. Overall, though, the reception has been positive, especially among the readers who are huge fans of cosmic horror. Hopefully the other two readers can provide some feedback by the deadline of November 30, though I can work with only the feedback from the other six if they can’t.

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Recent delights

• I resumed collecting Pokémon cards in full force this month, thanks to two local card shows where I picked up a handful of cards. My husband has accompanied me to every show so far, so it’s become something we do together. He’s always encouraging me to treat myself and helping me find the cards I’m missing for my collection. 💖
• Right now, I’m reading Asunder by Kerstin Hall. It’s one of those books that throws you right into a rich, vivid secondary world without explaining anything, so you have to piece together its politics, history, and cultures through context alone. The premise is interesting, but I don’t feel sold yet on the story, but I’ll keep reading. The first quarter or third of a book is always the slowest part for me, and I just have to brute force myself past it.