Tag: Writing

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 Writing

My Writing Schedule

Posted on by Kassandra Carrillo

Like most writers, I often struggle with having more than one project on my mind. Usually I take it a step forward and start writing said other project without finishing the first one. This cycle continues over and over again and I feel like I never get anything done.

I’ve been struggling with this dilemma for a long time. I always dreamed of “making it as a writer”, but I could never get past “I need a decent job to support myself”. While the latter is true, I feel like I haven’t’ done enough to follow that dream of “making it as a writer”. It’s not like I’m blaming anything or anyone for that. Teaching takes a lot of hours of the day during the school year. And yet, it sort of feels like it’s also an excuse?

With all those thoughts, I’ve finally buckled down on myself this month. If I wanted my writing career to go anywhere, I needed to start making some changes. I limited myself to two stories I can work on. Everything else needed to wait. The first one, is a novel that is in the midst of being written. At least, one chapter a week since I’m posting it on Wattpad first. The second one is a story that I’m editing/rewriting. So, one story to write and one story to edit.

With that in mind, I needed to figure out how much time I could dedicate to each story. Now, I can’t say what or how it finally clicked for me. To be honest, I don’t know why it took me so long to figure this out. It now seems so simple. I know my writing habits and how I like to procrastinate on certain things.

Even though there’s only seven days in a week, I decided to divide the week. You’d think that would be an easy thing for me to figure out, but apparently it wasn’t. The simplest things are always the hardest. So, I decided to dedicate the first three to four days of the week, editing three chapters of one story. The rest of the days are dedicated to writing. Of course, this only works when I have the plot details ready for that story.

Needless to say, I tried it this past week and it worked. However, it’s more than doing it. It also came with the discipline of knowing what I needed to do and executing it. Discipline played a huge role in keeping to the schedule. I stayed up late one day to make sure I got more writing done.

As it stands, if I can follow this schedule for the next two to three weeks, then I will know that it works for me.

At least with this, it won’t make writing a chore and I’ll have more fun with it. Maybe in the near future, I will start on the first step of “making it as a writer”.

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.