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This will be the first of my monthly updates, and because it’s been a long while since I’ve posted, I’ve got a lot to say.
Memoir Status
The first thing is about the status of my memoir. I completed my second draft, exceeding 72,000 words. But I realized that the story simply isn’t working as a memoir. A big component of the story I hoped to tell was about my mother’s and grandmother’s histories, and I’m finding it difficult to tell their stories in a compelling manner while also telling my own first person narrative.
Current Writing Projects
So I’ve been dabbling with writing a fictional short story of my grandmother’s history. I have two goals in exploring the story in this way:
1) To see if I can complete the writing process (creating a polished and publishable work) with a shorter piece of writing.
2) To explore the possibility of telling my family’s story using a more fictional approach, which I may later work into a novel length work.
Blog and Social Media
The next thing is about the state of my blog and social media presence. I started this blog four years ago, and in that time, I have stopped almost as many times as I’ve started. Ultimately, I’ve lost momentum each time because my direction wasn’t clear enough.
The last time I returned from a writing hiatus, I had explained how reading had been a big part of my healing journey. And when I went on my latest hiatus, I again went on a reading binge, this time reading 58 books over the past 10 months, and what little I did share on social media was largely about what I had been reading (both on my personal Facebook and on my Goodreads account.
I’ve been rolling around the idea for a while about turning this into a book review site, but there were two books that I recently read that pushed me to decide I was ready to try.
The first was Elena Armas’s The American Roommate Experiment (which I loved). It inspired me because I always read the acknowledgements and about the author sections, and I realized that the author started as a book reviewer who loved reading so much. So I thought, why not me?
The second was Falon Ballard’s Just My Type, which I reviewed here, which is a romantic comedy about a magazine writer who wants to more than anything write book reviews.
So I am taking these as signs from the universe to follow my passion.
If you started following me because I was writing about my healing journey, to be honest, I find that reading books is part of my healing journey. So I welcome you to stick around, so I will continue to tie that in. But if it’s not your jam, no worries.
What I Am Reading
I tend to read from multiple genres. I mostly like romances, and usually have at least a few in my monthly reading lists. I also enjoy historical fiction; women’s lit; fantasy; memoir; some self help and non-fiction books, particularly related to writing, parenting, sexual health, feminism, mental health, or spiritualism.
Currently I have on my Kindle or bedside table:
Twice in a Blue Moon by Christina Lauren
- How Not to Fall by Emily Foster
The Vibrant Years by Sonali Dev
20 Master Plots: And How to Build Them by Ronald B. Tobias
Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown
Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld
Happy Place by Emily Henry
What book are you currently reading? Or if you aren’t currently reading anything, what is the last thing that you did read? What did you think of it? Please leave a comment below.
Lisa Futscher 