A flailing butterfly

Outfit photos? Who is she? Is this 2013? Not to worry, you’re not caught in some time vortex, thought I feel like after the last three years going back to 2013 might be idyllic.

Anyway, I was out taking photos of my newly finished Disco Mirror and I had on a cute look to show off the mirror, and figured I’d throw in some outfit pic and try to get some new headshots. These pants are my absolute favorite pants. I’d wanted them for at least a year, but they were out of stock, and when I finally saw they were in stock I jumped at the chance to grab them. At $108 they’re definitely a splurge for me (almost all my clothes are thrifted, so it doesn’t take too much for something to be considered a splurge, lol), but I’m willing to shell out more when it’s a special item, well made, and something I know for certain I’ll wear constantly. The idea of cost-per-wear is something I used to think about a lot back in my fashion blogger days, which is basically just the idea of dividing the cost of the item by the number of times you wear it, so if something is more expensive, but you wear it a ton, then the cost-per-wear of the item goes down.

My style has really been hard to nail down since I had Jack, which now is almost 7 years ago (whoa). I used to be such a vintage fashion girlie, then more boho, but I’ve had such a hard time finding my style since becoming a mom. In the past six months I’ve felt like I’ve finally dialed in a style that feels really me. In a way, it’s just dressing in a way that my teenage self would look at me and think, “Damn, she’s cool as fuck.”

Top: Target // Pants: P&Co // Boots: Amazon // Necklace: Amazon // Jacket: Thrifted + customized

After my two month break from social media, I’ve felt a little like a flailing, newly emerged butterfly. I was so adept at my caterpillar life as a DIY content creator. I knew how to do things well, I got great feedback from the algorithm that my content was getting good reach, I was working with brands… and then I hit burnout and things started feeling weird. So I went in to my cocoon over the summer and it was lovely and rejuvenating… but what emerged at the end was startling and unrecognizable. I didn’t want to do DIY content creation anymore. I didn’t even like the moniker “content creator.” Over the summer I’d rediscovered my artist self, and she was begging to be given space in my life.

As I thought and journaled about it, I realized that my DIY content creator self was created in the aftermath of having Jack and feeling completely and totally untethered in the storm of new motherhood. I was straight up not having a good time, postpartum depression was taking its toll, and I just desperately needed something that was totally and completely mine. Something I could do that felt productive and creative. A place I could pour myself into and find myself again.

And I did! But along the way I also created this platform that was wholly devoted to DIY. I’d marketed myself as a DIYer for over half a decade. I’d built up something that wasn’t going to serve me as I moved forward into a more holistic expression of myself.

And don’t get me wrong, I love DIY. I have been a DIY girlie my whole life and will continue to be a DIY girlie. But the DIY girl is also an artist and has been since I could hold a damn crayon. In 4th grade we had watercolor paintings of the northern lights that our class made hung in the hall, and some lady wanted to buy mine. In 6th grade my teacher dubbed me the “poetry queen”. I went to college and got my art degree. And over the years I’ve made a life for myself where I’ve been able to be creative on a daily basis and I’m really really proud of me for doing that.

But the one thing I haven’t done is give myself the space to create art. I create a lot of stuff. I make rooms, I paint murals, I make disco mirrors, I design merch, I build furniture, I design my website— all of that stuff is sort of in service of something else. I want to make art that I can hang in a gallery. I want to write books. And I know that it’s not like what I’m currently doing isn’t art, but there’s a difference in my mind, you know? Maybe it’s the difference between “fine art” and practical art. If there is such a difference.

Either way, that’s where I’m at. A flailing butterfly who hasn’t quite figured out how wings work, but feeling less scared about this new body and way of moving through the world.

Adolescent Dreams

My 2023 word of the year that I chose was Ease. Hilariously I got hit with such intense burnout that I was basically forced to take two months off this summer. Forced ease is still ease I guess. But one of the unexpected things that has come up in the past year is that I’ve allowed myself to like the things I liked as a kid and teen. I don’t think I ever thought those things were bad or dumb, but you know… you move on, you get different interests, find new friends and new communities, and along with that there’s a sort of falling away of the things that felt cool or magical as an adolescent.

One of my huge pleasures this year has been realizing that I can be a person that young me would’ve thought is SO cool. I can be the person I would’ve looked up to or idolized. I spent a lot of years in religion trying to be a certain type of person (righteous, pure, disciplined, worthy, etc). But now I can be who and whatever I want to be, and little whispers from smol Liz have been trickling in from the 90’s/00’s and it’s felt so wonderful to listen to them and run with it.

When I was in second grade a girl in my school published a book and I wanted to do that. It burned inside me. But I think I thought it was too lofty a goal or something and it got buried. I’ve been in contact with a publisher since about 2015 about publishing a book but it’s never happened. And the reason is that I don’t want to publish the book they seem to want from me. Something self-help-y or to do with my platform niche. I keep self sabotaging because deep down I don’t want to write that.

So here I am, 30 years later picking up a goal I set down. Writing. Publishing. And this time I’m bigger and I know what I’m capable of.

Waking up

This past week has been a weird flailing dash towards the finish line of summer. I haven’t been writing much, I decided to change some details of my MMC which felt like something I needed to do to move forward with writing, and I think it’ll eliminate some issues with motive and clean up the plot a little. So instead of making progress I’ve been editing.

Ugh. I promised myself I wasn’t going to edit anything until my SFD (shitty first draft) was done, but in order to move the plot forward I want to button up a couple details so that things make sense. Interestingly, I’m not losing word count or even staying the same, I’m gaining word count, so that’s nice. Even though I’m swapping out details, they seem to be more fleshed out. Or something. I’m not sure, I’m a book writing newb so maybe I’m really fucking shit up. Fingers crossed I’m not though.

Either way, I do not want to get caught in an editing eddy, swirling around endlessly in story that’s already been written to avoid pushing the story forward. I’ve also been feeling a bit of anxiety about going back online after two whole months away. It felt good though. Good enough that I was like… maybe I’ll fuck around and #pivotabitch and come back as maaaybe not quite a DIYer anymore. I mean ya girl will always be a DIYer, it’s in my blood. But I’m, well, de-niche-ing. I don’t think I meant to niche down in the DIY world so hard, but I loved it and I was good at it so it felt good to do. Especially as a new mom who was STRUGGLIN to find herself in the postpartum hellscape. DIY helped me feel powerful. Gave me something purely my own to pursue. And it was a place I’ve always felt pretty confident, and I felt very much not confident in every other area of my life. DIY was a port in a raging storm.

But I let my artist hibernate. She came out to play sometimes, in service of DIY, but never to create art for art’s sake. And I’m waking her up now. Hibernation season is over.

Some of my favorite book series'

I wouldn’t characterize myself as a voracious reader. If I’m in the midst of a series I’m loving, I’ll devour it for sure, but I find it hard to pivot to a new book or book series after I finished one I adored. I think I’m afraid I’ll be let down? I don’t know. Either way, I’m definitely not a prolific reader, so this isn’t too long of a list.

The Shattered City Series - Meg Smitherman

Meg is an old blogging friend from way back in my fashion blogger day when I used to take daily photos of my outfits and put them on the internet. Anyway, one day I was perusing tiktok, as one does, and one of her videos stopped my scroll. I hadn’t been following her in years but I recognized her immediately and was so thrilled to see that she’d written a book! This is a dark academia fantasy duology and book two is coming out spring of 2024? I got to read an ARC of Sanctifier, the second book, and it’s wonderful. These two books are a great pair, perfect for spooky season too!

A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas

This was the series that got me back into reading fiction. There was just something about the perfect combination of magic and a powerful female lead, paired with a sweeping epic story and the delicious spice. It rekindled a love of immersing myself in fictional worlds and stories that I’d abandoned as an adult.

Crescent City Series - Sarah J. Maas

After ACOTAR, I dove into Sarah’s newest series, the Crescent City books. I think this series is my favorite of hers. The world building in the first four or so chapters of the first book gets a little confusing, and I think if you’re used to fantasy worlds being set in “olden-times” settings, the modern setting could feel awkward at first but I just ADORE it. There’s a crime fighting element of the first book that fed my love of crime novels, paired with sexy fae and a spitfire FMC. Ugh I love.

Throne of Glass Series - Sarah J. Maas

I read Sarah’s first series, Throne of Glass, last, which I actually really liked. I felt like I had some context from her other books that made reading it enjoyable. And even though the spice level on this series is a little cooler, it’s still a beautiful world, with incredible characters and the weaving she did in this series really hit home throughout the books. And don’t listen to the Tower of Dawn haters, I loved that book so much, certainly no less than the others, and it was a nice breather to get a different storyline, with the focus on some different characters, for a hot second.

The Dragonriders of Pern Series - Anne McCaffrey

This series is CLASSIC. It’s the perfect melding of sci-fi and fantasy, and McCaffrey does world building so well. There isn’t really romance, there are relationships, but it’s never the focus of anything. These books are super nostalgic for me, I read them as a kid, and the pacing and writing style is definitely different than a modern novel, but I still love these books so much. I started re-reading them earlier this summer and have blown through about six so far

The Will Trent Series/Grant County Series - Karin Slaughter

A little genre shift here to detective/crime novels, these two series’ are connected (The Will Trent Series essentially being an extension of the Grant County Series). I actually started reading these books a couple years before I got yanked back into the world of fiction on a recommendation from my mom. As a true crime aficionado (have I watched all 14 seasons of The Forensic Files more than once? Maybe), I really loved the crime/mystery/detective storylines and there is a little bit of spice/romance? Like not a lot, but enough that it makes me like these books even more. ALSO: if you’ve watched the Will Trent TV series and hated it, don’t discount the book series. I watched the trailer for it and it didn’t look or feel anything like how the book series does.

Fourth Wing - Rebecca Yarros

I didn’t read another fantasy romance book after Sarah J Maas because I was just so afraid that another book series wouldn’t be able to follow in their footsteps, but goddamn if this book isn’t firing on all fuckin cylinders. Iron Flame comes out in November, and I believe this is slated to be a five book series so buckle up, bitches. MY BODY IS READY.

Q+A: Do you use a special program to write?

Historically I’ve always just written in your standard word document or Google doc (which is nice because it’s available online, and on my phone), but I like to have some extra support to help me trick my ADHD into getting more dopamine from writing, so I looked up some novel writing apps and found Novlr. Did I do extensive research? Not really. But it was one the options that was free (there are paid tiers that have more features, which I have not purchased as of yet).

I’m liking it so far, which to be fair, hasn’t been long. I’ve used it for about a month and a half. The main dashboard shows your projects (Right now I just have the one), then we have dopamine station #1, which is the writing days streak. Gamifying things! We love to see it. then you’ve got your monthly writing goal, which I like because it’s a visual representation of how far along I am towards my monthly word count goal. All of your goals (daily/monthly word count) are adjustable, so you just pick whatever works for you. I haven’t written anything yet today, so you can see the daily writing goal is at 0. There’s also some other resources, which I haven’t really dug into, and I probably won’t, but if you’re into that kind of stuff, it’s there!

On the left side you can see the nav bar, I only really use the writing drop down.

When you click on your project, it’ll take you to this page, which gives you your overview for that specific project. You can have multiple projects going at once, so I feel like this app would be nice if you had several books going at once, keeping each organized in it’s own folder.

On the side you’ve got separate areas for the actual book content organized by chapters, and below that a spot for notes, which I’ve used as a spot to do Character descriptions, world building/history, my plot outline, etc. It’s nice because it’s easy to click over and refer to while I’m writing chapters.

The paid version has two options, a $5/mo one and then an $18/mo option. So far I don’t feel like I need any other features. The paid versions have a writing analytics page, but I don’t necessarily care to analyze my writing. Novlr says it has publishing support but I don’t really know what that means, and at this point isn’t really a concern of mine.

I also have a super hefty notes app note that’s basically just a dumping ground for ideas, brainstorms, questions I’ve asked myself about plot/characters, and even chunks of writing that I’ve tapped out in the middle of the night or when I’m out and about. The notes app basically holds my life together. I like it too because it syncs to my laptop so if I write anything in there it’s easy to just copy it from the notes app on my computer and paste that into my Novlr draft.

This is getting a little ahead of things, but feels somewhat relevant:

If I decide to go the self-publishing route, I’ll pull my final manuscript into Apple Pages and format the manuscript for publishing there. I formatted my mom’s memoir in Pages, and have formatted several e-books in Pages and I like it for formatting. Some things aren’t perfect (page numbers got a little weird when I was formatting my mom’s book), but overall I like it and I’m familiar enough with it to work around any bugs.

For publishing an ebook/Kindle version I used Kindle Create, which is Amazon’s in-house e-book formatting app. I believe you can also use that app to format a paperback, but I’d already formatted my mom’s book in Pages at that point so I didn’t use it.

I can go more into formatting stuff, but I figured I’d touch on those programs since we’re talking about writing apps. I also did the cover design for my mom’s book as well, so maybe interior and cover formatting/design deserves it’s own post.