one year later

reflections on a bookiversary & this is a love story's FIRST SALE!

it’s this is a love story’s (my debut illustrated memoir of poems and essays on friendship, love, and mental health) first birthday April 20! Skip to the end of the newsletter if you want to know my plans for celebrating or enter a giveaway for a physical copy of my book!

In preparation for this is a love story’s first publication anniversary, I took my book down from the shelf to skim through it in the bath for the first time in about a year. Yes, some of the formatting was off, and I wish this text was on a different page, and maybe I should’ve done this differently, and of course I can write better now, but I was pleasantly surprised to feel good about what I was reading. I felt proud. I know how much work went into every page, every paired illustration, every sentence. I know the hours of rounds of edits, the years of discussions, and the back-and-forths with editors and illustrators over miniscule details.

And I know the work that went into moving on from the places I was writing about. The places of anxiety, depression, people-pleasing, and so on. It feels right, somehow, to have a book out in the world that represents a turning point in my life. Of course I’ve moved on and grown and changed since the writing and the process of publication, but it’s kind of cool that I have this artefact of my own life history. I’m glad I’m able to appreciate this is a love story for all it is, and not beat myself up over the ways it’s imperfect.

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It's been a year since I published this is a love story, and you would think I wouldn’t still be learning the same lessons about the creative process. I’m back in the trenches of revision, ruminating over how I want to put this specific work out into the world. I’m once again wondering if I should be doing more on the “writing career” side of things, updating my website, focusing my newsletter, growing my audience. I’m back to wondering how to focus on writing with so many things competing for my attention, and I’m back to wondering how to balance it all.

But my book publication/pursuing a writing career journey ultimately started with a commitment to myself: to care for myself and be kind to myself. So I continually return to that.

These are a few things I’ve been reminding myself lately in an effort to be kind to myself. Maybe they can help you too.

1.     commitment looks different

Committing to my writing now looks different than it did two years ago when I started working on this is a love story. Two years ago, I was recovering from a mental breakdown, working very part-time with a lot of free time to dedicate to my writing. I was also committed to the publication stage: making connections, getting my work out into the world, and working on marketing plans.

Now I’m in the drafting/revising stage which means I don’t have time or capacity for other things. I work a full-time day job now and have other non-writing commitments. So right now, commitment to my writing means consistently sitting down and typing out some words, which for me is one to two times a week. I always catch myself thinking I’m not committed because I’m not all in all the time on writing-related stuff, but I can’t be and that’s okay. It’s okay that I have some balance in my life. Not committing to writing, for me, would be doing nothing at all.

2.    the necessity of staring into blank space

I’ve always wanted to be a writer that can churn out thousands of words in a sitting and get through half a novel draft in a week, but that’s just not me. I’m slowly working on accepting my writing process as it is and as it works for me. I spend a lot of time walking away from the page and ruminating over ideas and plot lines. This also means trying to leave space in my brain to wander. It’s so easy to fill every spare moment with a podcast, or a social media scroll, but it’s nice to leave space in my brain to fill with stories instead.

3.    slow and steady

This is the hardest one for me. Because I try to balance writing with other aspects of my life, need space to let thoughts and ideas fester, and don’t churn out thousands of words, increasing my word counts and getting through drafts takes me a lot longer. I’m trying to accept that my novel revision will probably take me a year or more, and that’s okay. Things are going to be slower, but that’s partially because I want to take the time to care for myself by resting. Slow is fine. It will get done eventually. There’s no race. I don’t have any immediate deadlines. For now, I’m trying to enjoy the process of spending time with my characters, learning about this world, and figuring out the kind of story I want to tell.

How do you care for yourself in your creative pursuits?

celebrations!

I have some plans for April to celebrate my “bookiversary” as I’m calling it! Keep an eye out:

• GIVEAWAYS! I’ve connected with some lovely and generous bookstagrammers to host giveaways on their profiles this month. Keep an eye on Instagram for those. I’m also going to giveaway one copy of my own to… YOU my lovely subscribers. How to enter:

  • Reply to this newsletter or email me at asherlockwrites@gmail.com with why you’d like to share/gift this is a love story to someone (if you’ve already read it) or why you want to read it (if you haven’t read it). I’ll choose a winner and announce it in my May newsletter, so you have until April 30th to enter!

• A SALE! I’m participating in the Indie Author Spring Spectacular April 12-15^th, joining over a hundred other indie authors in discounting my book.

  • this is a love story paperback will be on sale for $13.99 (that’s my price, retailers might mark it up a bit more) (regular price $17.99)

  • this is a love story ebook for $0.99!!! (regular price $9.99)

  • I don’t do sales often, so if you’ve been thinking about buying my book, for yourself or someone else, those days are your chance!! Make sure to check out all the other indie book sales going on for that event too! I’m definitely going to snatch up a few :)

• A LIVE READING! I’m wrapping up the celebrations with a cozy Instagram Live reading from my book April 18 at 7 PM CT.

Thank you for being here, whether you’ve been here since before April 20 or just recently. Excited for many more bookiversaries to come.

Happy April.

xo,

Alyssa

Dooty wants you to buy my book! hehe