writing – Pretty Little Scribbles

On November 22nd 2021, at 3.32 p.m., I finished the first draft of my novel.

It still feels surreal to finally finish it; I wanted to scream from the rooftops, but I had to settle for yelling into a pillow, running around the house while my sister stared at me oddly. This is the book I’ve been working on since early April this year, and I got to about 134k in November. (I have created a monster.)

But, regardless of its many, many flaws and imperfections, I love it with all my heart, and I’m SO pumped to have finished it!

As the year comes to a close, I’m planning to put it aside for a week or two and focus on other projects before I get back to editing and writing a little more. I wrote a whole chunk of the book this NaNoWriMo – let’s get into all the details!

Ever felt the need to channel all that mental energy you’ve built up somewhere? Or perhaps you have a plethora of thoughts you need to jot down somewhere: but you don’t know where! Well. you’ve come to the perfect place.

I’ve had piles of notebooks stacked up on the top shelf of my wardrobe ever since I was a child. The ones I received from birthday parties with Frozen characters tattooed onto the spine, those bound by secrecy with a lock and a key, and my favourite of them all – the ruled notebooks with floral quotes on the cover.

It’s always been hard for me to start using a notebook: I’m always second-guessing myself – ‘is a travel journal really useful’ or ‘this notebook is too pretty to be used as a dream journal.’ And the cycle goes on and on, and hoarding notebooks is now my speciality.

Honestly, though, this never seems to stop me from buying them. Nevertheless, on my thirteenth birthday, I finally found something that stuck: journalling. So, let’s get into why I love it so much!