Been thinking about writing a long thread about my last two to three years as a writer, but it hurts too much to lay it all out in public. So I’ll just give myself space to mourn, and maybe move on forward.
— Stella Torres (@TheStellaTorres) August 13, 2019
I’m going to be honest with you: As much as I would like to think that I’ve triumphed over everything that has kept me from writing, the truth is that ultimately, 2019 has not been my year as far as my actual writing is concerned.
Yes, I was busy for four months writing a story that seemed perfect. It was a good story that had potential, but like everything that I’ve written in the last three years, ultimately, I was in over my own head with the story, and it wasn’t executed as well as I thought it was. Add to the fact that I was writing it with my creative well half-full, and…well, not even my love for the oppa who inspired it was enough to overcome the problematic flaws in the manuscript.
So I decided to table it.
Then I went back to Ten Truths About Us, and I tried to revise it, but I wasn’t satisfied with it either, so I sent 90% of the manuscript to the scrap folder. I wasn’t happy about that either.
#10TAU update: The meet cute is cuter now, but there’s something about the MC that bothers me. She’s too spoiled, and not strong enough for me to follow. Putting this aside for the next few days while I read and watch more movies.
— Stella Torres (@TheStellaTorres) August 13, 2019
Then there’s this:
Here we go #11MOB pic.twitter.com/ybVJm8Gr5K
— Stella Torres (@TheStellaTorres) August 12, 2019
I wanted to write this, so much, so bad. But this was also the last book in the Hideaway Trilogy, and I was already having a hard time with Ten Truths that I realized I couldn’t write two books at the same time.
It took some soul-searching and a few conversations with my loved ones to realize that I was on the verge of burning out. Mind you, it wasn’t like I was crying all day and/or cursing the day I was born, but I was on that path myself. That meant I needed to get off the hamster wheel that I’d put myself on for the last three years, in the quest to get something–anything–published.
And thus, I’ve decided to take the rest of the year off.
It’s going to be hard, because I’ve built my identity on being a writer for longer than I’ve been publishing my books. But like I’ve said, my creative well is running empty, and I have too many unread books on my Kindle. I need to love writing and romance again, to feel actual kilig despite my own status as an unattached fortysomething. (There are a lot of other, more personal things that I need to think about for myself, too, but that’s another story.) So yeah, a break is definitely overdue.
While I don’t know what’s going to happen next, I will be updating this blog from time to time, perhaps to write about things that don’t usually end up as long threads on my Twitter account. (There might be a few book reviews in store!) Until then, I’ll be out here, with a cup of coffee and a few good books.
