Category: updates

Posted in updates, Writing

Accomplishing Goals

Posted on by Kassandra Carrillo

The end of my summer vacation brings excellent news. Sure, I go back to work in two days, but I managed to finish one of my goals this summer. I wouldn’t have been able to do it without proper time management and the writing schedule I set up all those weeks ago.

I’ve finished editing a novel I’ve been working on for a while. Overall, I believe my book is finished. I’ve been looking for a couple of beta readers now and I have two so far. Possibly three. I’m thinking maybe five beta readers to start with is a good number.

The beta readers can finish reading the book by September. Having a deadline of three to four weeks isn’t bad. While not everyone reads at the same pace, it’s a realistic goal. In the meantime, I’ll keep building my agent list to query and definitely make sure my query letter is perfect. I think that’s going to be the hard part. Writing the query letter and even the synopsis will be difficult.

Either way, I’m excited to start this part of the journey. If all goes well, I can send out my query letters before agents start closing for the holidays. Wish me luck.

Posted in updates, Writing

August . . . It’s coming

Posted on by Kassandra Carrillo

We’re at the end of July which means my work is going to start up again. As far as I know, I’m teaching first grade again. Definitely going to have some changes this year. Hopefully, it won’t be too bad. It also means that my vacation is coming to an end. I won’t have the same amount of time as before.

It’s a little unclear how my work schedule will affect my writing schedule, but I’m hoping it won’t affect it too much. Granted the first two months will be super busy and thankfully, I won’t have extra training (?).

My biggest fear is to stop writing altogether. Sure, writing a sentence or paragraph is still writing, but I want to make faster progress on my WIPs. I’ve gotten into a groove and I don’t want to loose it.

In retrospect, this might cause me unnecessary stress due to the fact that I want to write more but can’t because of my schedule. Then, writing will become a chore and I won’t enjoy it as much and . . .

I’ve definitely been overthinking this.

I think I need to roll with it. Balance is everything.

Posted in updates, Writing

Back from Vacation

Posted on by Kassandra Carrillo

It’s been about two weeks since my last post and boy, has it been busy.

The five hour drive back home wasn’t bad. The heat definitely didn’t make it any better. We went shopping the next day before going to the beach and a water park the next two days. Luckily, I didn’t get sunburned unlike my family. I’m sure they’re still peeling even now despite wearing sunscreen.

My cats were not happy with me when I picked them up. Of course, they changed their minds when it was time for dinner and I fed them. My first cat, Princess, drooled when I petted her and held her in general. I definitely felt guilty for leaving her with the sitter. My second cat, Olive, didn’t seem too upset with my absence, but she has definitely been very cuddly lately.

It wasn’t all fun and games, however. There’s some family drama going on that (thankfully), my immediate family isn’t involved in, but it still put a damper on things. We also had a death in the family, a cousin. Been supporting his family this past week. I didn’t know him very well and it’d been years since we last saw each other. Despite that, it hurts. All I can do is be there for his family and for his parents.

Everything affected my writing schedule, but I know it wasn’t because of laziness or procrastination. Unexpected things happen and we have to roll with the punches. Sometimes, they can be good. Sometimes, they can be bad. All we can do is keep moving forward.

Posted in updates, Writing

My Writing Schedule – An update

Posted on by Kassandra Carrillo

Recently, I discovered a writing schedule for myself where three or four days out of the week would go towards editing/ rewriting chapters of one of the novels I was working on. The other days would be reserved for writing a new chapter for the second novel I’ve been working on. This only worked because I decided to limit myself to only focus on two novels. Having multiple projects at one time is not helpful to the completion of any projects. Plus, it helps that the projects are from the same novel series.

This past week, I’ve followed the writing schedule I set for myself and found two things that I’ve noticed.

First, while I usually aim to editing one chapter a day, it came to my attention that sometimes I want to do more. I had to remind myself that it was okay to work on two chapters a day instead. Limiting myself wasn’t the aim here.

Second, I’m having a little trouble with the writing portion of the week. I don’t necessarily have a word count for the day, and that hasn’t been an issue before. Mostly, I think it has to do with my plotting where I didn’t plan all the details and only focused on the major points. That can be taken care of easily.

Five hundred words or more is what I think is a good amount for the day. The novel I’m writing is an online novel so word count works differently. Three thousands words a chapter is pushing it for an online platform.

In general, I’d like to say that this writing schedule definitely works for me. Switching between editing and writing makes me feel a lot more productive. There are days where I don’t work as much as the others, but I don’t feel like I’m being lazy. Taking breaks is important too. Burning out or making this feel like a chore won’t be helpful in the long run.

Next week, I’ll be going on vacation. I haven’t decided if I’m going to take a break from writing and editing in general, but I’ll still take my laptop to do a little work just in case.

Posted in updates

Guess Who’s Back

Posted on by Kassandra Carrillo

So . . . .

It’s been a while since I last posted anything on here. Needless to say, a lot has happened. There were some seatbacks and detours but some of panned out.

I got married three months before COVID.

I became a teacher the following school year.

I adopted two cats (Princess and Olive).

Been teaching for two years now and it’s been keeping me so busy. Especially this past school year (just finished).

I’m still playing and running Dungeons & Dragons.

And lastly (?), I started streaming video games.

I haven’t stopped writing and I’ve tried sending out query letters before, but they weren’t chosen. Not giving up so I decided to try my hand at self-publishing (at least for one online work). My other works will (hopefully) be published traditionally.

Now that my summer break has started, I’ve really buckled down on writing more. I’m also hoping to post more on here as well.

That’s it for now. Sorry for any mistakes, typing on my phone isn’t the greatest. Thanks for stopping by.