Category: Writing Tools

I’ve been working on revising and polishing my rewrite of Autumn and the Spiced Pumpkin Village this week. I’m trying out the free version of AutoCrit and a free trial of ProWritingAid to help with my editing and revising. I’d say ProWritingAid is more helpful to me so far because it gives better suggestions for how I can improve my writing (not that it’s perfect by any means, but it doesn’t twist your arm and force you to implement its suggestions. Human sensibilities will always outweigh robotic AI, at least for creative pursuits like writing.) I will probably end up purchasing the lifetime license for ProWritingAid, though I may wait until next tax year unless there is a really good Black Friday sale.

Some changes I made from my original version of this story include:

• Making the protagonist a teenager instead of a college student so that she is more relatable to 12-16 year olds.
• Making Autumn be out as bi instead of her sexuality being a big secret. I’ve gotten so tired of the sexuality-as-the-big-secret trope since writing the original version of this story. Give me more stories where it isn’t a big deal, and LGBT+ characters have worries other than being “outted.” In the original version, Autumn was only interested in girls, but I wanted to have some bi representation, especially a bi character that is kind of awkward and kind of shy about relationships. Bi characters are too often represented as… uh… the opposite of that.
• Added a new character, and more scenes where we get to know the side characters better.

I’m hoping to publish this book on KDP before Halloween. I’m taking a few days to step away from my manuscript, wait for some reader feedback to come in, then I’ll reread it a few more times to see what further changes I need to make.

While working on this book, which features a teenage girl as the protagonist, I couldn’t help but remember some feedback I got on another story I wrote for a class while working on by Creative Writing degree. My story featured a teen girl, a bit younger than Autumn, who’s personality at the beginning of the story was very must what you would expect a young teen’s to be. She definitely had a lot of room to grow as the story progressed, and she had very valid reasons for acting the way she did, even if she didn’t yet have the emotional maturity to handle things the way an adult would consider appropriate.

The professor, an older man, hated my character. She was too annoying and he couldn’t sympathize with her. Of course, this story wasn’t written with old white male college professors in mind: it was for young teenage girls who were a lot like my protagonist.

I guess the point of that anecdote is that the less some stuffy old white man can relate to your protagonist, the better, especially if you are writing YA or juvenile fiction. Or really if you are writing for any audience that hasn’t historically been represented very well in fiction.

Anyway, I haven’t had as much time to dedicate to my writing this past week, and won’t again until after next June. I just started my new position with Americorps this week! I took a half-time position with Horizon Education Centers working with preschoolers. I will be doing social emotional lessons for my students, as well as other activities to help the children, families, and the community. This past week was mostly training, but I did get to help out with a food pantry for the local community on Thursday. I’ll try to blog some about my Americorps experiences throughout my service term, and I’ll likely write some articles related to my experiences as well as I think of things that may be helpful to other members or prospective members.

Well, that’s all the updates I have right now.