Tag: september

Writing is Hard | WIP Update | September 2022 | Healthy

~ Jai Lynn ~ 10 Comments

Previous Post: Writing is Hard | WIP Update | August 2022 | One Step At a Time

September… that weird in between time where summer breathes its last breath and autumn starts to stir. I used to hate September. September meant school, it meant endless hours trapped in a classroom surrounded by people I didn’t want to be with and learning things I had no interest in.

Now I love September. It’s a season where life feels like a fresh start again, where I naturally start to feel more productive, and where that crisp rush of wind makes me reach for my nearest comfy sweater.

This past month I did a lot. I reinvested myself in editing The Lowell Saga, my current work in progress, by tweaking some of the main characters, reworking the lore and history central to the story and overall improving upon it to make it the best it can be. I spent hours listening to writing podcasts and reading articles all about craft. Susan Dennard is amazing and if you don’t follow her newsletter, and you are a writer, I suggest you go do that right now! Her insight on writing and the publishing industry itself has been so helpful.

My mental health has also been a lot better this month compared to the summer where I had more than a few rough days. This month I listened to my body, ate nourishing foods like oatmeal in the morning, fulfilled by cravings by going out for ice cream on the last hot day of the year, spent time with my family and my friends and overall was nicer to myself.

I have a bad history of bullying myself into productivity even if I know I am not up to it mentally, emotionally or even physically. I used to think (and still sometimes do) that if I am not actively working towards a goal I am failing. This September though, I took a step back. I let myself rest on days I needed to rest. I worked for an hour some days instead of five. I found myself happier than I have been in months and more productive ironically by giving myself the space to work at my own pace instead of the rigid schedule I usually set for myself. I may not work the fastest but I am working and taking steps in the right direction. As long as I keep going I will get there… with writing The Lowell Saga (TLS), with finding the right job, with exercising, with eating mindfully, with finding time for my passions, and with carving some time to spend with my loved ones. I will get there, and if I continue on the path I am on, with a healthy mindset.

Sometimes you just have to have someone tell you that you are enough. What you can do is enough. As long as you keep going. If you need someone to tell you, dear readers, allow me. You. Are. Enough.

Just keep going forward and you will get where you need to go when you are meant to get there.

I am very pleased with myself if I am being honest. I made some small changes that will have major rippling effects in the plot of TLS. Small changes that I am extremely pleased with. Extremely. I want to share more but that would mean spoilers and when this book is finished I want my readers to experience it as fully as possible. There is no other feeling like reading a book for the first time.

And hopefully I will write something others want to read. But if not and I am the only one who wants to read it you know, that’s okay. I need to write this story for myself either way and if others would find pleasure in it one day then this story will exist for you too, whoever you are out there.

My mindset has shifted greatly. I have mentioned this before in other writing updates over the summer but now it is really starting to take effect. I have stopped writing with the intention that I have to make the perfect book so I can be a writer and have my dream job and make enough money to survive alone on writing. Thinking like that only served to cause me stress and it pushed my perfectionism into overdrive. That wasn’t healthy for me.

Instead I have shifted into thinking I have to finish this story for me, and me alone. And that has made all the difference. It does not pain me to work on my story anymore, and I don’t have to force myself into working on it. I want to work on TLS, and I find joy when I do work on it. I started writing all those years ago because it made me happy, and it served as a creative outlet for me to put my imagination out there in the world and make it a little more bearable. The world can be a terrible place sometimes, as every human knows, but it can also be quite wonderful too.

Right now, the world is quite wonderful. 🙂

As always till next time,

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(Currently still revising the first draft of TLS…..)

Snapshot 9/30/21 // “Workaholic”

~ Jai Lynn ~ 4 Comments

Currently listening: “Astronaut in the Ocean” – Masked Wolf
Currently watching: Anne With an E S1 (rewatch)
Currently playing: Final Fantasy VII Remake
Currently reading: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

September wasn’t a real month. TBH in my head it is still August. I still feel summer everywhere even as I am staring down the fallen leaves in my front yard. Not much happened but at the same time I was constantly busy. Is there a word for this feeling? How do I describe it better…?

Imagine a train station. There are so many people around, all with their own agendas and thoughts, getting on the train and others getting off. Then there is you, standing stock still in the middle of the platform. You have your own agenda too. But, your agenda was to take off on a plane… and you are at a train station. Being that there are no planes around and no other way to leave the train station but on a train… you are stuck.

That was what September felt like to me.

September Goals:

  1. Work on The Lowell Saga. Check.
  2. Maintain my healthy habits. Check.
  3. Be more open to possibilities. After this month I think I can handle almost anything. Check.

October (The month where I may reveal I have supernatural abilities) Goals:

  1. Work on The Lowell Saga. Always.
  2. Maintain my healthy habits. My life is a perfect graveyard of trying to be better and consistently falling short.
  3. Have fun. A major highlight this month is a mini trip to Salem, MA which I am ECSTATIC about. Perfect timing. I need to have some fun, badly.

What I Read:

  • Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig. August was a bit dark that was why I decided to pick up this book, and it was a good decision. The title says it all. Honestly. At some point in our lives we all might need this as a pick me up. I swear by Matt Haig, ever since I read The Midnight Library, and now I want to read all his books.
  • Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. This hit the right spot at the right time in my life. It’s a rare occurrence but when it does happen I know it does for a reason. If I had the resources and time I would totally follow in Elizabeth Gilbert’s footsteps. I want to travel and find myself for a year. Where can I sign up? All kidding aside though her struggle in this book is something we all as humans struggle with. Finding ourselves and our own version of happiness, a way to survive. After these past few years I think we could all use a way to survive, or a means to put things in perspective and find the will to go on with this crazy thing we call life.
  • Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery. This book was a joy to read. Right after I watched the Netflix show I bought all the books and nothing has made me feel calmer or more steady. Anne of Green Gables is so grounding and simple in the most pleasant way. That was a weird way to describe it. What I mean is that it helps to remind you that life is more about the simple things. The air on your cheek, the flowers outside your window and your loved ones all around you. Oh, and of course there is Gilbert Blythe too haha 😀
  • Kagerou Daze v. 2 by Jin and art by Mahiro Satou.
  • Blue Lily, Lily Blue by Maggie Stiefvater. The Raven Cycle is so cathartic and nostalgic at the same time. I wish I knew someone like Richard Campbell Gansey III. Maggie Stiefvater is a genius at nuance and atmospheric writing. Her characters are just so real. So real. I’m an articulate mess of emotions right now. All you need to know is that this series is on my all time favorites and that is all I am going to say. I read a lot of books but nowadays it’s rare to find one to even touch this list. All of us readers have that list. The list of favorites that just speaks to our soul. The ones that hit us at the right time in our life when we needed the story most and so will forever have a special place is our hearts. This series is one of the few on my list. Okay now I promise I’m done.

What I’ll Be Writing:

  • Poetry- posted every Wednesday
  • Writing Is Hard | WIP Writing Update- posted in the middle of the month
  • Snapshot! Monthly Recap- posted the last day of every month
  • Announcements- posted as needed

If you want more information about any of the above, you can check out the About page on my site or just click here.

Serendipitous Posts I Read in September:

My Round Up of July Posts:

I can’t wait, I can’t wait, I CAN’T WAIT TILL SALEM!!!!! I’ll take pictures!!!

If any of you guys have ever been, please give me some recommendations!! This is my first time ever visiting!!

Till next time,

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Snapshot 9/30/20 // “Feathers, Feathers Everywhere”

~ Jai Lynn ~ 7 Comments

Currently listening: “seven” – Taylor Swift
Currently watching: Gilmore Girls S1
Currently playing: Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Currently reading: Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl

Empty hallways, weathered books, slow breezes, Ancient Greek letters, philosophical thoughts and feathers floating down from the sky all tied into one month. That is what September means to me. Whenever it rolls around, as you can see, I tend to get moody.

Or totally rapt up in a dark academia aesthetic. Same thing.

September Goals:

  1. Continue researching, world building, prewriting, plotting, outlining & WRITING my WIP! Check. I’ve actually written a lot this month and am up to over 4K for my first draft! I wasn’t even planning on doing that much but it happened. Guyssssss, things are happeningggggg.
  2. Become more interactive on social media! Check! I was slightly more interactive than last month sooooo…
  3. Continue making submissions with my writing! Failure. Failure. Failure. At least I am being honest.
  4. Be more present/observant in my life! Check? Yes, unfortunately I may have been too present in my life this month, and it was a hard emotional month for me because the stress at work and in my personal life was getting a little too much. And if you are like me and tend to hyper fixate on things and over think to your wits end then… Yes, that happened. But at least I kept writing.

October (the month of EVERYTHING I WANT RIGHT NOW) Goals:

  1. Continue researching, world building, prewriting, plotting, outlining & WRITING my WIP! This should be no surprise. It’s been on my goal list since the beginning of the hELL year of 2020. I want to finish this first draft, and no better way than a last minute sprint in the last 3 months of the year. yay.
  2. Become more interactive on social media! My handle is @jaiiiilynn4 for both Insta and Twitter if you want to connect! I’ve recently had some inspiration and have a few ideas I’d like to showcase. Look forward to it guys in my beloved month of OCTOBER. I love October.
  3. Continue making submissions with my writing! Who knows if this will happen? I will probably get distracted by writing my WIP but just in case, I don’t want to forget this goal so I’m keeping it on here.
  4. Read & finish three books! My reading these past few months has been dismal. I want to change that and there are three books I’ve been dying to read when October rolled around. And now it’s here. Two are rereads: Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury and The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. But the last is new, Salem’s Lot by Stephen King. I’ve never read it before and I really want to. Really. Want. To. So much so that I am legit staring at it right now as I type this.
  5. Rewatch The Haunting of Hill House, and revisit Supernatural S4 and Gilmore Girls S1! I have been rewatching episodes of Supernatural here and there, but since it’s October now I feel like NOW IS THE PERFECT MOMENT to watch more. I watched my first episode of Supernatural ever on a Halloween many years ago. So the month and the show are tied together in my head. Gilmore Girls just makes me feel happy and good and safe and so I’m going to keep watching that too since I restarted the series from the beginning this September. The Haunting of Hill House though I have been craving since summer began and now, totally on the opposite side of the spectrum from Gilmore Girls, I want to be scared and haunted and filled with dismal longing. Or maybe I just want to see those feelings reflected in someone other than me. (September was tough, guys. My mental health sucked. But I’m getting better now.)
  6. Watch Halloween movies! I always rewatch Halloweentown, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Over the Garden Wall, and Corpse Bride without fault every October. This year I might even try Hocus Pocus again. Listen, I was traumatized as a child at the end when (SPOILER) the black cat died/passed on. Traumatized. I was seven, he was my favorite character and then he died at the end. That stuff sticks with you. Maybe this year though, I’ll give it another chance. Maybeeeeeeeeee…
  7. Go apple and pumpkin picking! This is one of my favorite fall activities that I do every year. Along with bringing out the boots and flannel. I’m going to be dressed for success and carrying home a ton of deliciousness that will keep me happy all month. All about the little things, my friends, the little things.
  8. Make Halloween cookies! I didn’t make my Halloween sugar cookies last year so I’m damn well doing it this year. Dammit.
  9. Eat healthier! Lol, right after I say I’m making cookies. Listen, healthy eating is all about moderation. I’m going to be eating cookies and apples! September I had a lot of stressful days and I ate a ton of garbage I shouldn’t of. Binge eating is a curse. Don’t do it. This month my Mom is teaming up with me to eat more healthy and not let our emotions control our eating. So far we are seven days strong. The key is to eat the healthy food first and only eat one cookie instead of the box. I can totally do that, and I also have a partner in crime. A burden shared is a burdened lessoned, I think that’s how it goes.
  10. Look at the ocean one last time! My August birthday wish was to go to the beach one last time but unfortunately we never got there. I hope this month, even if I can’t swim and am wearing a scarf, I can see the ocean one last time and say my goodbye. At least until next summer.

I have a lot of goals this month but most of them are just there to remind myself to have some fun and enjoy life. I got so lost in September; I’m finding myself again in October. I’m calling it now. IT IS GOING TO BE A GREAT MONTH. Done.

(I will Robin Williams, I will, I promise!)

What I Read:

–If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio. With September always comes one of my favorite aesthetics of all time, dark academia. The two in my mind are just intrinsically linked and I have no regrets. This book has a psychological, in your head, murder, but also Shakespeare! spin that I just immensely enjoyed. The story revolves around a group of seven conservatory trained actors and the various works of Shakespeare they preform throughout. They all have their roles, the hero, the tyrant, the villain… and it isn’t long before that role starts to take on their real life. So of course there is a dramatic murder. I loved the story resonance throughout the book and how the characters roles shifted with their arcs. The tale was beautifully rendered but I admit this book won’t be for everyone. If you enjoyed The Secret History then this book is right up the same alley. One of my favorite quotes that really portrays the essence of the story is “How could we explain that standing on a stage and speaking someone else’s words as if they are your own is less an act of bravery than a desperate lunge at mutual understanding?” (pg. 114) and that line really hit me in the face. Why do I write if not for my words to reach someone else and, even though we are in different spaces, reach some sort of recognition or shared feelings? To know we are not alone. It’s so human.

What I’ll Be Writing:

  • Poetry- posted every Wednesday
  • Writing Is Hard | WIP Writing Update- posted in the middle of the month
  • Snapshot! Monthly Recap- posted the last day of every month
  • Announcements- posted as needed

All of my fiction writings are independent of each other and stand alone so no need to read any of the previous work to understand. If you want more information about any of the above, you can check out the About page on my site or just click here.

I posted a surprise this month! My discussion post about why Autumn is a GREAT thing was totally unplanned and totally an impulsive decision that I just jived with. The best part being all the responses I got!! Who knows? I might think up more discussions for the future. Thank you guys for commenting and sharing your thoughts, really. Each one means the world to me ❤

September Round Up of Posts from Stupendous People:

To my fellow bloggers, this section is for you! Great, beautiful work this month guys ❤ There are many different types of posts above and all of them are 100% worth a look!

My Round Up of September Posts:

I found feathers everywhere this month. At first black feathers scattered here and there, showing up when I least expected them. Then white feathers appearing in droves as I walked around my neighborhood. Even the other day I found a blue feather. September was hard but I want to believe that there was a reason for it. I know there was a reason for it. Maybe October will let me know…

Either way, I’ll be sitting here sipping my tea, analyzing philosophical musings, and wondering where this journey is leading. Oh and, as always, searching for the magic.

Till next time,

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Snapshot 9/30/19 // Waking Up Because September Is Ending

~ Jai Lynn ~ Leave a comment

Currently listening: “Wake Me Up When September Ends” – Green Day
Currently reading: The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Currently watching: Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir S3

I am going to be real with you guys right now. I sort of… faded in September. Nothing bad happened really, the weather wasn’t terrible and my friends and family were all doing great which at the end of it all made everything worth it. I, unfortunately though, sort of lost the swing of writing. I had to cover a lot of shifts at work, felt very uninspired with anything I attempted to write, and descended into a morose mood at the heart of which had me missing summer terribly.

(Me, beating myself up all month )

My goals for September were simple:

  • Keep working on my WIP which I technically did do, in dribs and drabs. I got nowhere near as far as I wanted to because my head was just not into it. It was a chore to write and think about, and that is not how this is supposed work. The reason I wanted to write it in the first place was because it was supposed to be something that I wanted, needed to get out and do. It’s supposed to feel like if I don’t keep pounding away at that keyboard I will never feel settled. It’s supposed to make the world around me fade and make me fall into the story. And I had none of those feelings. So for October I’m doing a reset. Reworking the plot and replanning the characters, that way I’ll be geared up for NaNoWriMo in November.
  • Focus back on my Living Life vignettes. I wanted to at least post two this month and trust me I wrote two but neither were nowhere near posting material. So for October, while I’m getting my head back on straight, I am going to try and focus on getting out at least one.

Heading into October then this is the plan:

  1. Rework my WIP
  2. Post 1 Living Life vignette
  3. Go pumpkin and apple picking, because honestly this is fun and puts me and Autumn on better terms lol. (I don’t hate you Autumn, I don’t I promise. Summer is just like the peanut butter to my jelly, or like the Cat Noir to my Ladybug.)

What I Read:


–Gift From the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. I started this book last year and vowed to only read one chapter for every time I went to the beach. I finished it this summer, one year later. It was written in 1955 but even though that seems so far away, the lessons it teaches are still relevant today. The book has a magic to it in two ways, or at least it did for me. 1) It will keep you calm, I promise, the prose is very mellow and thoughtful. Then, 2) It demands to be read by the sea. I took away a great deal from it and its simple, but often overlooked in today’s world, lessons gave me clarity to reflect on my own life and give me the mental capability to relax. So if you need a major mental chill, or a 1950’s revamp to simplifying your hectic life I highly recommend.
–Tiger Lily by Jodi Lynn Anderson. This is my second reread of the book. The first time I read it was a few years ago and this time around it was still a good read but I liked it less then second go round. Still glad I read it though! I really liked Peter’s message at the end, “all things end happy”, because it gave me hope, even if the ending overall was bittersweet. I also loved that it was narrated by Tink. On the other hand, I didn’t really connect with how the author handled some things so skip to the next bullet point if you want to avoid some spoilers. I really hated how the author handled Wendy and how everything went down with her. That plot point seemed weak and she was written with the intention for the reader (at least in my mind) to hate her. This portrayal of Peter I also didn’t want to grow up. It didn’t seem to fit his character for me so when he left to go to England with Wendy and grow up, IDK , it just really rubbed me the wrong way. He was depicted as wild and untamable in the book and it didn’t connect for me that Peter would want to leave Neverland. The bittersweet ending though made sense to me in that Tiger Lily and Peter shouldn’t have ended up together but they were still soulmates and each served their purpose in the other’s life to help them grow and change. Not all soulmates have a happily ever after but their impact on the other’s life still remains in how they both grew from the beginning to the end of the book.
– The Secret History by Donna Tartt is what I am currently reading and let me tell you this book is good. It’s very dark academia aesthetic and I only have maybe a third left of the book to go. Next month I’ll talk more about it but damn. I highly recommend this book. It was the perfect pick to distract me through my September blues.

What I’ll Be Writing (hopefully, fingers crossed):

If the fates and my will power allow be on the lookout for at least one Living Life vignette this month, maybe a poem (I was dabbling with two this past September but neither is finished yet…), any book tags that hit me like a car crash, and then at the end of the month my strong and steady Snapshot! update post. At least I can do these on time lol. Small victories!

Here are some links to posts I enjoyed this month:

– Siobhan @ Novelties “Beyond the Blurb | Bloggers, Embrace Hiatuses, Don’t Run From Them“
– C.G. @ Paper Fury “Pantser Vs Plotter | Which Is The Best Way To Write Your Book?!“
– Caro @ bookcheshirecat “Getting Back To Writing #2: Into The Editing Cave“
– Sophie Li @ Sophie’s Corner “My Editing Process Part 1 (template included!)“

Wow, it felt really good to actually sit down and write this. It has been a long blah month. Watching Miraculous (it is so CUTE and I am both equally in love with Cat Noir and Luka ❤ ) got me through the doldrums but moving forward October is going to be a lot better. I’ll make it better, and get back into the swing of things (or the spook of things because it’s almost HALLOWEEN!). Now it’s time to turn off the repeat of Wake Me Up When September Ends.

How did yall’s September’s go? Hopefully a lot better than mine. What sort of things do you do to get through the blah days when all you want to do is sleep?

Till next time,