Here in France, the first week of September is called “la rentrée”, literally “the return”. It’s the return to real life after the summer holidays, not just for students, but also for most employees.[1] Many companies actually shut down for some time in August, including the one I work for. July and August are the time to be with family, reflect on life, or maybe: invest in your craft!
Late last year, my family and I decided 2024 would be the year I went on the offensive regarding my writing. I planned several items, all of which I’ll be writing about in more detail over the next few weeks. In Q1, I hired a developmental editor to work on my writing and find out why I was getting all these rejections — is my writing bad, or am I just at the wrong place at the wrong time? (Spoiler: my writing isn’t perfect, but it’s more of the latter.)
For the summer, I booked a trip to Scotland to two very writerly pursuits: first, a few days of the Writing Excuses 2024 retreat at magnificent MacArthur Manor close to Edinburgh. Directly after that, I went to Glasgow for the 2024 WorldCon! As mentioned, I’ll write about all three in more detail later, so for now I’ll only say: all three were marvelous in their own way. Useful for my writing, and (hopefully) also useful for my place in the writing community.
I already mentioned the three short stories I published this year. The push to publish A Basquet of Cats (my YA fantasy novel starring magical cats) is progressing — I’ve restarted querying agents, and an indie publisher I met in Glasgow has expressed interest; fingers crossed that this goes somewhere. Glasgow has also given me some thoughts around (early) marketing. I might have to bite the bullet and try out some TikTok, considering the audience for the book. And write some more stories in the Basquet “universe”. I’d already been mulling a book 2 and 3 to make it a series, and several people have suggested writing short stories.
My brainstorming pad is starting to fill with ideas. Summer might be over, but fall is the time to sit down with a cuppa java (or anything else) and convert the ideas into stories. And blog posts. I promise more blog posts. (*cough*)
Notes:
[1] Except if you work in a tourism industry, of course — around where I live, la rentrée is the time to take a week off.