Reading & Writing With Rebecca: Issue 51
This week, I've been super-inspired by a friend who resolved to finish the first draft of her novel by April 1st and actually did it. As someone who has made and broken many a creative promise to myself, I have enormous respect and admiration for this incredible feat, which involved writing 50,000+ words in under a month. I think I speak for all of us when I say: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Obviously, I was moved to renew my efforts on my current WIP, which I have worked on with profound inconsistency for the past couple years. To keep myself accountable, I'm sharing with all of you my goal to finish my first draft on or before June 1, 2022. I'm 30k words in, and I'd feel good/smug/over-the-moon about a first draft between 75-80k words.
If you have a creative project that's been languishing/developing in fits and starts, I invite you to join me in setting a June 1 deadline and fighting like hell to make it. Maybe you, too, have a novel in the works. Maybe your house needs to be deep-cleaned and reorganized. Maybe you're throwing pots or crocheting a complex blanket or getting the garden in before it's too late. Whatever shape your creativity takes, I want you to lean in for the next two months and make something happen.
One of my friend's especially efficacious strategies for upping creative productivity is finding a sprint buddy. Writing "sprints" are short periods of intense work with one or more accountability partners doing their work at the same time. My friend and I shared a sprint just the other day, which basically looks like us talking on FaceTime for five minutes (to articulate what we'll be working on), then muting one another for a predetermined period of time while we work, then briefly reconvening to share our progress. If you don't have a writing partner in your life, you can usually find someone sprinting at any hour of the day on Twitter (search #writingsprint or "writing sprint").
Every day, I remind myself that drafts happen one word at a time. If I have five minutes to spare between finishing one task and starting another, I try to plunk out a single sentence. Throughout the day, my words add up. Of course, sustained periods of writing feel better and often yield more desirable results -- but I'm working hard to turn off my editing brain and accept that all words are good words if they lead to a complete draft. I happen to be a phenomenal editor (beep beep! just tooting my own horn, don't mind me), but I can't flex those skills unless I give myself a completed draft to revise/rip to shreds/set on fire.
I've shared my struggles with perfectionism in previous issues of this newsletter, and to be sure, I'm facing down those tendencies every time I sit down to write. While some of my pursuit of the "perfect" word or turn of phrase for every sentence is an occupational hazard, a large part stems from my baseline discomfort with anything that doesn't conform to my unreasonably high standards. In other words, I'd like to write the final draft first -- a yen I imagine many of you share. Of course, we all know this is impossible, but I stubbornly cling to the myth of perfection even as I recognize its toxicity.
Working on it! Working through it! Facing it head-on as I endeavor to finish this draft!
If you're accepting my challenge and joining me on this journey to finish a creative project by June 1, please take a moment to reply to this newsletter and let me know what you're working on. I can't be a bona fide accountability partner to all 500+ readers of this humble publication, but I'll be checking in with you in my intros each week and cheering you on from my corner of the Internet.
We lose nothing by trying, but gain nothing if we don't. Ready to make something happen?
So am I.
xRF
First Line Frenzy: Newsletter Exclusive
First Line Frenzy No.91-101, critiqued during the IG Live with special guest Violet Lumani (31 March 2022).
No.91 (adult mystery): Sophie Ferrari hadn’t imagined life was about to throw a big and murderous wrench her way as she increased her speed, jogging alongside the reflection pool at the National Mall.
No.92 (adult scifi): The heads of T’haral’s king and queen knocked a sticky beat as they dangled at his side, their heads and T’haral now belonged to him.
No.93 (YA fantasy): There was once a village so hungry and desperate that it created a god—for gods are created, not born.
No.94 (adult romance): At least Nora wasn’t dead, which was more than she could say for the woman who’d gotten her into this mess.
No.95 (adult thriller/suspense): I just spent six days hiding in my car and I’m pretty sure that Dan is dead.
No.96 (adult fantasy): A burst of color reflected from the silver bracelet laying on the black velvet pad, the prisms dancing across my granddaughter’s unruly raven curls framing her bent head, her focus intense on the chain in front of her.
No.97 (adult general/commercial): What it feels like to be alone and being alone are not the same thing, although 19-year-old Sienna Cipriano would beg to differ.
No.98 (YA fantasy): Sheltered amongst the clouds, Rhen eagerly awaited for the impending siege to begin; his tinted/shaded, body length wings the only disturbance to the sky’s otherwise tranquil slumber.
No.99 (YA mystery): How does one breathe? Because at this particular moment in time I can't seem to remember how to do the one simple thing that is supposed to come naturally to everyone.
No.100 (adult romance): I’ve always imagined that tiny patch of gray matter that stores emotionally charged memories in the brain to be like the back of my underwear drawer—the place I bury the super private things I don’t want anyone to find.
No.101 (YA fantasy): Quinn’s sweaty hands struggle to get a grip on her crossbow as it quivers before her.
Want to throw your hat in the ring? Fill out the Google form linked here to submit your line to the First Line Frenzy queue. Please note, I'm unable to alert individual authors when their line is featured, so the best way to keep track is by following me on Instagram.
Reading Now & Next
As longtime readers of this newsletter know, I'm something of a mood reader. Sure, I can usually be relied upon to read an ARC in a timely fashion, regardless of genre... but left to my own devices, I inhale a healthy baseline of historical romance on a weekly basis, punctuated by titles in nearly every genre save horror. Lately, I've felt a bit guilty about posting so many HistRom reviews here -- not because I regret these reading choices in any way whatsoever, but because I hope to offer recommendations for readers of a broader variety of genres. To that end, I'm opening this week's Now & Next with my Aspirational TBR, which features plenty of books that have nothing to do with the English ton, the dangers of impropriety, or gentleman rakes destined to be reformed by true love. All to say: Hang in there, Dear Reader. (And while you're waiting for my next non-HistRom recommendation, why not pick up a romance novel??? You won't regret it.)
Aspirational TBR
I adored the wit, heart, and character work in Elissa Sussman's adult debut, Funny You Should Ask (out 4/12), so I'm eager to read her 2021 YA release, Drawn That Way. The setting -- a summer internship for aspiring animators -- is bound to teach me things I don't know, and tbh I like a preternaturally talented teen (there are bound to be some of those running around in a novel like this).
Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel, blesses us with another novel on April 5th, and I for one cannot wait to get my hands on it. The description of Sea of Tranquility gives big Cloud Cuckoo Land vibes, which as far as I'm concerned is all to the good. I'll be devouring this the moment it's available.
Reema Patel's debut, Such Big Dreams, follows Rakhi, "a twenty-three-year-old haunted by the grisly aftermath of an incident that led to the loss of her best friend eleven years ago. Constantly reminded she doesn’t belong, Rakhi lives alone in a Mumbai slum, working as a lowly office assistant at Justice For All, a struggling human-rights law organization headed by the renowned lawyer who gave her a fresh start." This one doesn't release until May 10th, but in my forever quest to get ahead of my ARCs, I'm diving in this week.
The Devil and the Heiress by Harper St. George is book 2 in the Guilded Age Heiresses series. (You didn't think this week's TBR would be totally absent of HistRom, did you???) I'm obsessed with the gorgeous cover, the vivacious and head-strong heroine (who readers met in book 1), and the pretentious, entitled earl who's about to have his ass handed to him by a woman he can't resist. Ah, bliss...
The League of Gentlewoman Witches by India Holton is a companion to The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels, the aBook of which delighted me no end this past week. I have the hard copy of League from the library, but Elizabeth Knowelden's narration on book 1 was so exquisite, I might be tempted to switch to audio. Either way, I'm eager to return to the relentlessly clever, witty, sharp, but ultimately deeply felt world of Holton's creation.
I've got a great week of reading ahead, but the week behind me just as delightful. I finished The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels by India Holton which, as you may have gleaned from my comments above, was charming in the extreme. I mentioned last week that Holton's work is perfect for Susanna Clarke fans, but the irreverence and linguistic play in the prose would also appeal to Monty Python die-hards, Parks & Rec binge-watchers, and anyone who loves a dramatic aside.
After seeing Harper St. George's Gilded Age Heiresses books all over social media (because those covers were made to be ogled), I finally got around to reading the first in series, The Heiress Gets a Duke. If you loved the drawing-room politics, glamour, and new-money drama of The Gilded Age TV series on HBO, you'll love St. George's sumptuous settings and eye for fashion. More compelling, though, are American heiress August Crenshaw and Evan Sterling, Duke of Rothschild -- forced to marry an heiress to save his estates from his father's reckless spending, but unwilling to fall in love in the process. Swoon level: 10/10.
Last week, I read and loved How to Be a Wallflower by Eloisa James (released 3/29 -- review below!), a companion novel to 2016's My American Duchess, which I finally got around to reading. There's something enticing about irreverent American women clashing with the cultured, rarified members of the English ton -- in fact, I'd say "American vs ton" is a bona fide trope in historical romance. My American Duchess has that in spades, plus adversarial siblings, unexpected facts about rented fruit, and an absolutely un-missable trip down the aisle.
Now Available: A Relentless Rake by Anna Harrington — rebeccafaitheditorial.com
I adored this book so much, I immediately started deep-diving Harrington's backlist after I read it. The writing is pristine and full of feeling, and the chemistry between Alec and Olivia sparkles like good champagne. Bonus: This title, as well as a good hunk of Harrington's backlist, are now available on Hoopla.
Now Available: How to Be a Wallflower by Eloisa James — rebeccafaitheditorial.com
If you like your historical romance heroines smart, strong, self-possessed and secretly in love with brash American entrepreneurs, I've got great news for you. And the news is: How to Be a Wallflower.
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