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Accepting Change: Editing a Novel
I’m currently in the middle of editing my most recent book project. Editing and revising a novel always comes with a fun little jolt of nerves at the beginning. You spend months writing a book, then take a break. Once you finally decide to return to it, there’s always that small moment where panic sets…
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Subtle Self Sabotage
So I’ve been away from the website for a minute… sorry about that. To be honest, I’ve recently been struggling with writing. Not in a “writer’s block” sense. Quite the opposite, actually. I’ve had a lot of ideas circulating in my head. No, the problem is that my heart knows exactly what it wants to…
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Inevitable Imposter Syndrome
I would say my favorite moment so far in my writing journey was completing my first novel. There was a satisfying moment where I sat back, took a deep breath, and sighed. I had done it. I had written a complete novel. That feeling was immediately followed by an overwhelming wave of doubt. Had I…
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I Finished a Book… Now What?
So this week, I completed writing one of my novel projects! 116,235 word written over quite a few months finally led to the book being written in a way that satisfied my vision for it. But… now what do I do? I asked myself this question both after finishing this and my other novel project,…
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Distractions
Let’s face it, life has a knack for getting in the way of what we want to do sometimes… Okay, most of the time. For me, that is my family and my job primarily, but there’s also just those small little things that tend to get in the way of my writing time (like notifications,…
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Pivoting: The Future of JTLWrites
If there was one word I could use to describe the current state of the site, it would be scattered. There’s a lot here. Different creative works, blog posts across a wide range of topics… and while that’s been fun, it’s also made it harder to write for. It feels like there’s no real through-line holding…
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The Great Unknown of Writing a Novel
While working on poetry and the occasional blog post, I have been working on two different novels in my spare time… no, not writing two books simultaneously. Rather, I wrote one book, then started another while I began the editing and revising process on the first. Writing books is a different beast compared to what…
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Looking Back and Looking Forward
Happy Holidays, everyone! It’s been a busy year for me. A lot of things didn’t go as expected, but there were also plenty of new discoveries that made the year memorable. I thought it would be nice to take a moment to look back on the past year and look ahead to a few hopes…
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Winter is my Season of Choice!
As I look out the window on this cold December evening, I am filled with joy to see the snow gently falling from the sky. Looks like we might have a white Christmas after all! Whenever anyone asks me, “what season is my favorite”, I always say with a smile, “Winter!” Some people look at…
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The Chaos of Being Sick Together
Last week was the moment I truly realized that the “free and easy” days were gone. Don’t get me wrong: I love my daughter. Her being born is one of the greatest things that has ever happened in my life. I just mean that children change a lot of facets of your life—sometimes in ways…
JTL Writes 