Reaching the Midpoint of a Pride and Prejudice Retelling: A Writing Update

I've been busy with my multiple writing projects lately. Project Prehistory is still resting after I finished the fifth draft, but I have been doing query prep, researching for agents, and drafting a query letter and synopsis. I have a query letter critique scheduled in late October, so I still have plenty of time to polish the letter before the critique.

I finished final edits to a cozy fantasy short story and sent it to a literary magazine. Unfortunately, I got an almost immediate no from the magazine. Now I have to wait for another magazine to open their submissions.

Most of my writing time I've spent editing the second draft of a modern Pride and Prejudice retelling. I reached the midpoint a couple of weeks ago, and I'm now securely in the latter half of the story. The second half needs a lot more work than the first half, but I'm slowly working through it.

You can find out more about what I've been up to in the writing vlog below.

Book Review: Galatea by Madeline Miller

Galatea by Madeline Miller

Book title: Galatea
Author: Madeline Miller
Genre: Ancient retelling, fantasy, short story
Published: First published in 2013; this edition from 2022
49 pages
My rating: 5/5

It was almost sweet the way they worried about me.
“You’re so pale,” the nurse said. “You must keep quiet until your color returns.”
“I’m always this colour,” I said. “Because I used to be made of stone.”

Galatea is Madeline Miller’s short story that retells the myth of the sculptor Pygmalion and his statue-come-to-life Galatea. The short story is based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which narrates several ancient myths where people become animals or plants, or as in the case of this myth, an inanimate object comes to life. In Ovid’s version, sculptor Pygmalion is horrified by “shameless” and “lascivious” prostitutes and instead carves himself a woman from ivory, making her more perfect than any woman can be. He falls in love with his creation and after many prayers, the goddess Venus brings the statue to life. Ovid's version seems to indicate that the couple lives happily ever after.

Solo Writing Retreat / Writing Update

This week I had a fun time going on a solo writing retreat in the Finnish towns of Hämeenlinna and Tampere. I started the second draft of my Pride and Prejudice retelling that I wrote the first draft of last November. As all my other writing projects are now on hold, I decided it was the perfect time to get back to this project!

I finished the fifth draft of Project Prehistory in June, and in July I have been preparing for querying. I've read books and watched hundreds of YouTube videos on the querying process, and I've written the first drafts of both the query letter and the synopsis. I have a blog post about how I wrote my synopsis, but since I wrote the synopsis while I was working on draft three, it needs to be updated. But luckily, it seems to be mostly in order!

Editing a Cozy Fantasy Short Story and (Almost) Finishing Draft 5

I've had a productive May so far! Yesterday, I finished the first pass of draft five of Project Prehistory. I still want to read it through once more and make some minor tweaks, but it's getting ready for querying.

I also started draft two of a cozy fantasy short story that I wrote in November 2023. It's been waiting for a right moment for me to edit it, and I decided the moment was now. It's set in wintertime, which makes it bit odd text to edit at this time of the year, but the worldbuilding and the characters are so much fun. I'm really enjoying the editing process, although I've only had time to edit the first third of the text. Hopefully I can finish it in June and get it ready for submission before the fall.

Check out my most recent writing vlog below if you want to see more of what I've been up to!

Short Story Submission and Writing Contest Feedback

Past few weeks have been very productive for me! First, I sent out a literary fiction short story to three literary magazines. They are my top-tier magazines that are currently open for submissions. It will take several months before I hear back from them, so now I can only wait.

In the meantime, I'm continuing on with draft five of Project Prehistory, a coming-of-age story set in a matriarchal prehistoric society. I'm doing so well that instead of the originally intended two chapters a week, I'm now editing three chapters a week. Last week, I reached and passed Chapter 20, which is the midpoint. At this speed, I should be done with the first round of edits by early June. Then I'll do another pass of the draft in case there are still some things that I've missed.

A Week in My Life: Working on Two Projects and More

Want to know what my week looks like as a self-employed indie author? I filmed a week-long vlog where I show everything I did in a week. Last week, I was working on two projects: editing the fifth draft of Project Prehistory and revising the third draft of a literary fiction short story that I plan to submit to literary magazines soon. I also entered a first page writing contest where I will get feedback on the first page of Project Prehistory, read a bunch of books (although I only finished one of them), and baked a delicious blueberry cheesecake. Check out the vlog below for more!

Writing Goals for 2025

It's almost the end of January, and it feels a bit late to do a post about my writing goals. But honestly, I've been busy making my goals a reality, so that's a win. Without further ado, let's talk about how my writing went in 2024 and talk about my goals and plans for 2025! Big things are happening and even bigger things are in store for 2026...

How I Wrote and Self-Published a Short Story

In the Shadow of Death (a fantasy short story)

It’s the release day of In the Shadow of Death, my urban fantasy short story about love and loss. What better opportunity to share with you how I wrote and self-published the story. In the Shadow of Death (*Amazon affiliate link) is an urban fantasy inspired by the myth of Castor and Pollux and takes place partly in the modern world and partly in the Underworld.

In the Shadow of Death: Urban Fantasy Short Story

Urban fantasy short story In the Shadow of Death coming out August 15th!

“She said she’d walk to hell and back for me. Little did I know she meant literally.”

Robin and Jamie have it all: a loving marriage, a beautiful home, and a successful pottery shop. But when Death snatches one of them to the Underworld, they are faced with a heartbreaking decision that will change their lives forever. How far are they willing to go to save each other?

Inspired by the myth of Castor and Pollux, this urban fantasy short story explores the themes of grief and loss—and love’s power to conquer everything.

In the Shadow of Death is coming out August 15th, 2024. You can preorder the short story here (*affiliate link. As an Amazon affiliate, I earn from qualifying purchases). 

I Got My Short Story Back from the Editor and Project Prehistory Updates

It's been a while since I posted an update on how my writing is going. So here's a vlog documenting where I'm currently at with my different projects!

In May, I did some final minor tweaks to my low fantasy short story that I'm planning to publish in August. I sent it to a line and copy editor. Lila LaBine did a fantastic job, and if you're looking for an editor, I can highly recommend her services.

Project Prehistory is making steady progress as well. I finished editing Chapter 13 this week, which means that I'm officially one third of the way done with the edits. At this rate, I might even finish the edits by the end of October! I already have plans for what I could write during NaNoWriMo...

But I'm trying hard not to get ahead of myself. There's still a long way to go before draft four is finished, and I might not have as much time to dedicate for edits during the latter half of the year.

In any case, my plans of self-publishing a short story and finishing the fourth draft of Project Prehistory in 2024 are well on their way! Stay tuned to find out more how the publication and editing processes will go.

How to Outline a Short Story – A Simple Five-Scene Structure for Short Stories

Short stories are a fantastic way of honing your writing skills. First, as they’re shorter, there is no pressure of putting tens of thousands of words on paper (or computer file). Short stories are typically somewhere between 1,500 and 7,500 words long. Secondly, if you’re an overwriter, writing a short story will force you to condense your story to only essential details. Or, if you’re an underwriter, it lets you be as concise as you want! No pesky description or details needed. And if you’re struggling to understand plot structure, writing a short story can help you identify the key moments of a story in a more manageable scale than a full-length novel.

But what if you’re a plotter like me and want to plan out the story in advance? How do you outline a short story? I ran into this problem last November as I was searching for a short story outlining method that I could use in preparation for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). You see, during NaNoWriMo 2024, instead of the usual 50K word novel, I decided to write ten short stories of around five thousand words each. I found this exercise refreshing, as I had just finished editing the third draft of a 158K word manuscript – I definitely needed much shorter projects to work with while I let my WIP rest!

Camp NaNoWriMo Week 4 Recap

Well wasn't the last week and a half of Camp NaNoWriMo a huge success! I finished editing my problem chapter, Chapter 7, already on Thursday morning and had extra time to spend on Chapter 8. That chapter was a breeze. I finished it right on time before Camp ended on Tuesday evening. So instead of the planned four chapters I wanted to edit in April, I edited five.

I also finished editing the second short story, a contemporary women's fiction. It's in pretty good condition, although there might be a minor addition I want to make. I need to reread both short stories in May, and then I can start thinking about when and where to publish them.

You can find out more about my final week of Camp NaNoWriMo from the writing vlog below.

Camp NaNoWriMo Week 3 Recap

Week three of Camp NaNoWriMo was a bit of a struggle. I started editing Chapter 7 of Project Prehistory at the end of week two, and I finished editing it on week three of April. Then it was time to move on to Chapter 7. That chapter is the one that needs the most edits of all the chapters in the manuscript. I'm changing the setting of the first scene, and that meant major rewrites. The second scene needs only minor edits, but I'm swapping the order of the last two scenes. That means that I need to change a lot of things to make the scenes make sense, but I think the chapter will be stronger after that.

The first scene of Chapter 7 took the rest of the week to figure out. I took some time off to visit the nearest library and to go houseplant shopping. You can watch the vlog below to find out more about what I got.

I spent Friday editing the second of the two short stories I want to revise during Camp Nano. The second short story is a contemporary fiction, and it was a difficult piece to edit as well. It took me some time to get into the story and reacquaint myself with the narrator's voice. I had hoped to edit half of the short story on Friday, but I only ended up editing about one third of it.

I expect week four of Camp Nano to be full of more struggles as I continue with Chapter 7 and the contemporary fiction short story.

Camp NaNoWriMo Week 2 Recap

Like my first week of Camp NaNoWrimo, the second week of Camp was very productive! Project Prehistory felt like a bit of a struggle, but I managed to finish editing it on Thursday. I'm mostly doing sentence level edits, and it's sometimes difficult to try to figure out how to make an okay sentence even better, or how whether I need to delete a sentence or to add in a new one to make a paragraph flow smoothly.

My major win for the week happened on Friday, when I switched gears and edited a short story instead. I wrote the first draft of this particular story last November during NaNoWriMo, and the first draft is already in such a good shape that I didn't need to do any developmental edits to it and could move straight to line edits. I edited the whole 5000 word short story in one day.

You can find out more about how my second week of Camp went from this video:

Camp NaNoWriMo Week 1 Recap

I had a very productive first week of Camp NaNoWriMo (you can find out more about my April writing goals here). I edited Chapter 4 of Project Prehistory, and I read the two short stories I want to edit in April three times in preparation for the edits. The first short story is a modern fantasy. It's an emotional read, and I cried while reading it for the first time in months. The first draft is so good that I think it only requires minor line edits before it's ready for publication. The second short story (contemporary fiction) needs a lot more work, but I have a clear idea of what I want to do to it to make it better.

If you want to learn more about what I did during my first week of Camp Nano, check the video below!