How do I even do this?
The TP Diaries, Summer 2025
Welcome to the Summer 2025 edition of The TP Diaries. Periodically, I share an update of what’s going on with my writing. This is NOT a glowing record of the perfect writing routine to guilt you into writing better. Think of this as the TP you need for your shitty draft. I get stuck all the time. I skip days. I change my mind. I start over. When I write, I make a MESS.
But, by reading my diary, you will also see the strategies I use to pick myself back up again and keep writing anyway.
Before I get into the bulk of today’s writing update, I wanted to share a few things I’ve been up to, and some opportunities for YOU to get additional writing help.
If you listened to last week’s podcast episode, then you know that I’m participating in WorldShift, a free online summit for spec fic writers that is happening August 20-23, 2025.
It starts today! And you can still get your ticket.
🎉 Day 1 of the WorldShift Summit is LIVE: starting with Lisa Cron
🎟️ Watch her talk (and others) free for 24 hours
🎁 Want lifetime access + speaker bonuses? Grab the WorldShift All Access Pass for $97
👉 Watch here or upgrade
*Affiliate Disclosure: As a summit speaker, I may receive a commission if you choose to grab the All Access Pass using my link — at no extra cost to you!
AND ALSO…
I’m a HUGE fan of Jessica Brody’s Save the Cat Writes a Novel. I’ve been a member of her online community Writing Mastery Academy for years. In my opinion, it’s one of the best bang-for-your-buck writing schools out there – as in low price to high value ratio! That’s why I am so excited to present my first ever webinar for WMA. It’s called What Every YA Writer Should Know About Teen Brains.
In this webinar, I draw on my decade of experience as a high school teacher to share some secrets about teen brain chemistry and provide exercises you can use to make your story more engaging for a teen audience.
The webinar is live on August 30, 2025 at 12 PM Pacific/ 3 PM Eastern time. You do need to be a member of WMA to watch the webinar live and get access to the recording. Click here for more information on how to access this webinar / how to join Writing Mastery Academy.
As you can see, I’ve been a busy bee between moving to a gorgeous new apartment, coaching my one-on-one writing clients, and also working on my webinars for Worldshift and WMA…but I’ve still managed to get some writing done this summer!
I am in a bit of an odd place writing-wise. A place I haven’t been in about two years.
I’m starting something…new?
It’s a jarring transition to go from polishing a draft that you feel confident in, where you know the story inside out and feel like you have all the answers to suddenly staring at a totally blank page again. Many times this summer I have sat down at my desk to write and find myself asking How do I even do this?
I know I can do it. I’ve done it enough times before. It’s similar to how I know that I can type accurately without looking at the keyboard, but as soon as I notice that I’m not looking at the keyboard, it’s like I’ve suddenly forgotten where all the letters live. (Typing out that sentence was SUCH a challenge.)
I’m also in a different place career-wise than I was the last time I started a new project. For one thing, I quit my day job, meaning, I now have a lot more control over when I write and how much. And also, I have an agent, meaning that without a ton of advanced notice I might need to table whatever I’m working on and pivot back to revisions for my “old” project which feels very “done” in my mind. It’s a good problem to have, but it does create a different energy.
One of the first questions I had to answer was what project to work on.
Do I pick up one of my shelved projects? Or, do I start something brand new?
When I started working on my queer Twelfth Night retelling, I was mired in a YA fantasy novel. While she and I both needed some space from each other, that story has never been far from my mind and I’ve had lots of ideas about how I can apply what I’ve learned the last few years to untangling that knot.
So, my initial thought was to go back to that story. I spent some time reviewing my materials before determining that I wasn’t ready to return to that project yet. For one thing, it is a bit of a complicated story. At the moment, I’m not feeling like I want to pick it up and put it down when I need to shift gears for other projects – although I might someday feel ready to do that. But, more importantly, while it isn’t a dark fantasy, the story is a bit heavy and serious. Frankly, I’m not feeling it right now. I’d rather work on something fun and light-hearted, like another contemporary queer rom com. Plus, from an author branding perspective, I thought it made good business sense to get some more of these rom coms ready to go. Not only is it an enjoyable niche for me, but it’s pretty marketable too!
So, here’s what I’ve been up to this summer with my writing.
1. In June, I finished up revisions on queer Twelfth Night and sent them to my agent.
2. In July, characters for a new queer rom com started talking to me, so I wrote 15k words of a new project over the course of about a week, and I’ve gradually been teasing out some ideas of where to go with it.
3. I’m hoping that when Twelfth Night sells, I’ll be able to sell it as a series. So, I’ve been working on developing what I hope will be books 2 and 3 of that series. For the first time ever in my life, I wrote a complete, detailed synopsis of a book that I haven’t yet written!
4. I took several weeks off to go on vacation, pack, and move. During those few weeks, “writing” consisted mostly of occasional brainstorming. And I did a good job of not freaking out about “wasting time” or “not writing enough” – something that a past version of Sam would have been upset about.
And now, it’s August.
For the first time in my life since I was like…four…I’m not tied to an academic calendar. My life isn’t suddenly going to become more chaotic at the end of the month. I’m settling into my new place, especially the new gorgeous view from my desk. Which means, I’m also settling back into a new writing “routine.” I put routine in quotes, because my writing doesn’t look the same every day. I’m spending at least an hour working on my own fiction 5-6 days a week. Sometimes it’s in the morning. Sometimes it’s in the afternoon. I’m toggling between two different projects. I'm either working on developing book 3 in my hoped-for series. Or, I’m developing the new rom com I started in July.
Nearly every time I sit down, I have an anxious moment, the voice in the back of my head saying How do we even do this? So, I remind myself that we can because we’ve done it before. Plus, I have a toolkit that I keep expanding and honing. Not only do I know what I’m doing, I keep getting better at it.
I just have to take a deep breath, listen to my instincts, and write.