Andy's Writing Resolutions

Andy Porter has always wanted to be a writer. He grew up writing in a journal every day since he was 7 years old. Yes, he loved playing with his Power Rangers and reading. Andy wasn't the most popular kid growing up. No siblings, but he had a best friend named Matthew Oakes, who was much like Andy, a nerd. He loved "Treasure Island" by Robert Louis Stevenson. Andy and Matthew are still best friends 29 years later.

Writing has always been an escape for Andy. You could say that his journal was his best friend too. He could tell the journal things that he didn't want to tell his mother, Matthew, or anyone else. Yes, Andy could write any and everything in that journal and not be ashamed about it. He wrote about his first secret crush Suzy, who was a classmate of his in the 3rd grade. He wrote how much he was in love with her and she was so pretty.

Andy has several writing resolutions:

Publish his short stories written

Revamp his first novel idea

Take part in weekly writing sprints on YouTube

Host a writing sprint during CampNaNoWriMo in April and July

Host a writing sprint during NaNoWriMo in November

Start a writing blog

Take part in an online writing community

Read outside of crime fiction genre

Start a YouTube Writing Channel

Find Beta Readers

Andy has been creating New Year Resolutions, well actually, you can rename; writing Resolutions. Andy has a carload of novel ideas in his journals and notebooks, just waiting to get into the world. Andy has been entering writing contests and never won.

Andy was part of the April and July CampNaNoWriMo cabins. They were very active during the month with giving writing tips, inspiration pep talks, and doing extra sprints. They did those sprints through a Discord group. Andy was sad because after CampNaNoWriMo, cabin members ceased to exist. There was no communication with any of them after CampNaNoWriMo. During the NaNoWriMo in November, you didn't have the cabins like you had in April and July, but you had the forums to reach out, and buddies that you can communicate with, but once after NaNoWriMo ended, no communication.

Andy loved going to the library on the weekends when he was off. He made a resolution to write outside of his place. But now, he can't do that because of COVID-19 pandemic.

Andy researched online places to enter short stories: Medium, Inkspired and Wattpad, but he didn't follow through. He didn't have the courage to post his short stories online. He felt afraid that people wouldn't like what he wrote. So he put that writing resolution on the back burner.

Andy started going on to YouTube to watch Book Tube and discovered that the most talked books genres:

Fantasy

Science Fiction

Young Adult

Andy started reading Science Fiction and High Fantasy.

Andy setup a writing blog on Word Press. He would write on his blog every Saturday. He did this for 6 months straight, but he got burned out.

Andy started watching YouTube and discovered that were Author tubers that host writing sprint. He would attend them but some of them were so long that he couldn't attend at the time of the filming but he would go back and watch them but some were too long. Some writing sprints would be between 2-4 hours long. Some of those sprints would include random and writing chats.

Andy would watch Author Tube Videos to get inspiration to get back into writing. This would lead him down a rabbit hole and ended up watching Author Tube for hours. He wouldn't get anything done because of watching those videos.

Andy watch YouTube Videos on how to find beta readers. He had to do that if he wanted to have his first initial draft read, but he still had that nagging idea that no one would like it and someone trying to steal his story ideas. But Andy got to get the initial draft in shape before he can even send to beta readers. Andy was always good in English in school so he would use his knowledge and English Grammar reference books to brush up on sentence structure, punctuation, spelling and grammar. I know that beta readers wouldn’t focus on grammar but more on the story structure, characters, setting, plot, and conflict. This would help him a lot in knowing what needs to be correct before being sent to an editor. Andy was getting way ahead of himself. He hasn't written initial draft.

Matthew was always encouraging Andy to write. Matthew was also a writer. They had come up with an idea to write a book together but it fell through because they couldn't get the story idea that they had in mind to go anywhere so they squashed it. It looks like Andy couldn't get nowhere with his individual writing projects or collaboration with his best friend Matthew Oakes. Andy took a break from writing because he had lost interest in his projects. He started doing a lot of reading books: physical and eBooks and listening to audio books. He read everything from crime fiction(his favorite genre), Fantasy, Science Fiction, Horror and Nonfiction(including writing craft books). Andy took off 3 months from working on his writing projects. He still was writing in his daily journal. He loves to keep up with his everyday life and nothing does that like writing in a journal. This is where he kept his private thoughts that nobody knew about but him. That's what Andy loved about writing in journals. Those journals were his other best friend. He bought his journals from Walmart. If he couldn't find the journals he wanted, he went to Barnes and Noble. He just couldn't write a cheap notebook, it has to be a sturdy journal. Andy had to get his act together and finish that initial draft to send to beta readers.

January 1, 2021, Andy finally succeeded at his major writing resolution. Finishing his initial draft and sending off to his beta readers to read. Man, what a relief !!!