This week was a “blogging prompt” week on #wordbound, and there’s really no excuse not to participate on those weeks (for me at least). It’s just so much easier than writing fiction, haha. So here I am! Being productive! Doing #wordbound!

The prompt is: Make 3 writing related confessions.

1. There are maybe 3 people on this planet who have ever read one of my book drafts in their entirety, and none of those people are family members or close friends. None of them is even Joe. One is an established and successful YA author I look up to, one lead a company that was thinking of publishing books written by YouTubers back before everyone decided to write an autobiography, and one was the then-girlfriend of a friend I only knew from online that lived in Australia. This is a very, very strange assortment of people and I really can’t tell you how each one came to read my writing. They all read the same book too, which is actually the one I recently dusted off and decided to work on again. I can say with certainty that what they read was not ready for external eyes, but you live and you learn. And then you don’t show anyone else your writing for many, many years. Haha.
2. I definitely worry that I’ve hyped up my writing and my NaNoWriMo wins for so many years now (a decade!!) that by the time I actually publish something, people will expect something much better than I am actually capable of. I hear all the time that to be actually pro level at something, you have to practice for 10,000 hours. It applies to anything – musical instruments, crafting, cooking, sports, etc. 10,000 is a long time – it’s a lot of hours. 10 NaNoWriMos is also a long time, but I chalk most of those years up to “practice”. I think it’s okay that I haven’t been ready to share yet, but the fear of not meeting expectations is real.
3. One of my biggest regrets, though, is not being one of the first people to write and publish a book about internet friendships, or fanfiction, or fandom, or cons. I’ve been practicing writing books about these types of topics for years, and they were still pretty novel even just a couple years ago. But now I feel like books about fandom are the new dystopian YA or vampire books, and so many of them are so obviously written by people who are jumping on a trend and not writing their personal truth. These types of books are so pervasive now days that I almost don’t want to write one anymore, even though I know I could definitely write something from a very unique perspective. Maybe I’m just bring a brat, but with the ever-constant desire to write something ‘different’, I feel like that experience has gotten a bit oversaturated in the YA book world.

What are your writing confessions? I’d love to read them!