Sappy moments, double stream days, & an experiment poll! (Patreon)

Helloooooo writer friends. Long time, no talk, so sorry about that! I feel like I blinked and the entire past week upon coming home flashed and now I'm here and it's Monday bahaha.

Before I get too deep into business, I'd like to get a little mushy gushy for a second.

Way back in 2017, before I even knew there WAS an authortube, I didn't have any writer friends. There was a deep longing, an ache of missing. I'd had writer friends in college, and knew how valuable those relationships were, but it had been years since I'd graduated, and most of my friends that I still had from that time had stopped writing.

So kind of on a lark, I decided to start making videos. And making videos turned into watching videos, which turned into making friends, and making more videos, and slowly but surely finding that community I'd been missing.

And now, six years later, I got to meet one of y'all, a writer friend living halfway across the world!!

(The above photos show the two times I wrote on the entire trip. Also look at me cheesing, so excited!)

I had such an incredible time chatting with Amanda, talking about our stories, about writing and life in general (and not poisoning one another, lol) and it just made me so thankful for everyone in this community. I wish I could sit down, in person, with each one of y'all. Maybe eventually! Bahaha.

But for now, streams are the next closest thing, and it still blows my mind that I now have writer friends from all over the world, where we're all sharing our progress and trading tips and encouraging one another.

Thank you all so much for being here. Words truly can't tell you how much I appreciate it. If 2017 Kate could see me now!! 💜

Okay, okay, sappy time over. Moving onto business! :)

Livestreams!

For our monthly Double Stream Day, I'd like to do things a little bit differently. Normally I try to hit the two streams on back-to-back days, but I think this time there might need to be a little gap.

I'm going to try to record my first audiobook (for a short story!) on Wednesday at my house. Most likely it will be too noisy with the dogs bahah. So if it doesn't work, I'll be heading over to my parents' empty house on Thursday for a full day of recording.

Is this the audiobook I was talking about recording even BEFORE my trip? Yes, lol. It's finally happening!

So with that said, our FIRST stream will be this Wednesday, May 24th @ 8:30am CDT. 

And our SECOND stream will be this Friday, May 26th @ 4:30pm CDT. 

I will, of course, let y'all know how the audio recording goes and everything I learn!! My friend Becca C. Smith has some incredible videos over on her channel that I'm using as my reference. Keep your fingers crossed for me that it works! :)

Writing experiment!

This needed to come after the livestreams, because one of the options directly involves BEING on the stream for the experiment!

Option 1: Write & Edit a Short Story on Stream Using Viewer Suggestions & Oracle Card Chaos

Okay, this is a bad title, but here's how I'm imagining it: I pull a few cards that will control not only our sprint time, but ALSO the character/conflict/setting/resolution/etc. for a short story. I'd also take suggestions for names, additional conflicts, random wrenches, etc. from y'all. The goal would be to completely draft this during our first Double Stream Day and then use the second Double Stream Day. Is this possible? How short will it need to be to MAKE it possible? WHO KNOWS. We'll find out if you want to lolol.

Option 2: Write Like I was Back in School for a Week

Okay this is ALSO a bad title, but I mean more pretending I'm back in school? But for writing? This is making less sense bahaha. When I was in university, I had Monday, Wednesday, and Friday classes. Then on Tuesday and Thursday I would have different classes. So basically for this challenge I'd have, let's say 5 classes (maybe representing 5 different projects, or even a Short Story "class," where I could only work on short stories, a "Poem" class, where I could only work on poems, etc.) and I'd have to alternate between them for whatever my "class schedule" was.

If y'all pick this one, I'll (hopefully) figure out a better way to explain it bahaha. Think of it like way back when I tried doing my old corporate work routine as a writing experiment instead.

Option 3: How Much Can I Draft in a Week?

Okay, so I actually saw a lot of these as I was binging some crochet videos and vlogs. It's been a while since I've actively counted my words, especially draft words. So I thought it could be fun to see, if I was exclusively drafting, how much could I actually write? This would be a push, definitely, but not like 24-hour writeathon levels.

Option 4: How Much Can I Edit in a Week?

Literally the same concept as above, but exclusively for editing & revising bahaha. I have more stories in this phase of the process, so it could be fun to jump around more potentially. Who knows!

And finally, a quick project update! I'm getting A Closet Full of Cauldrons all set up in my Aeon Timeline and am just about to start working BACKWARDS from the very end to about the Fun & Games section. If you've written a mystery like this before, PLEASE LET ME KNOW. I'd love to hear what worked for you (or what didn't work for you). I want to make sure I lay the clues 🔍 as best I can! This also means I'm still on track for the #24hrnovel and all the chaos that entails. Let me know if you've decided to for sure participate! (Or if you'll be cheering us on and relaxing instead bahaha!)

Thanks y'all and happy writing! 🍄