For a while now I’ve been struggling with writing The Warlock’s Awakening (Book III in The Witches’ Sleep Trilogy), but I didn’t try too hard to do anything else, honestly. I kind of just… gave up on myself. I told myself, You’ll come back to it, Kait… when you can. When the time is right. But then I still thought about writing a lot. It never left my heart. Writing has always been part of who I am, and waiting for my story or my life to be ready wasn’t working.

I still wanted to CREATE.

So (secretly at first shhh) I sat down and jotted some fun ideas down in my “braindump” notebook (we all have one of those, right?). I also went back in time, so to speak, and looked over previously started story ideas and half-written manuscripts.

And that’s how I came across an old flame that has been in my heart for ten years now.

I happened to stumble upon a certain folder titled something weird from when I was 13/14-ish, so I’ll spare you the bad titling. But the feelings that were evoked from just seeing that folder on my USB were overwhelming.

I knew I had to investigate… and investigate I did.

Mind you, it had been YEARS since I’d opened that folder (probably 5+) and I was a bit worried about what I’d find. To my surprise, I had multiple documents scattered in a very unorganized manner. I don’t remember writing so many rough drafts and different versions of the same story. There were probably 15 different word documents that I had to go through — some were 150k word manuscripts, some 2-3 chapters only with random bullet points. But the characters and the main, underlying plot always remained the same…

And you know something? All those rough drafts weren’t horrible either (I’m not saying they were good; they just weren’t horrible). I knew at the time that the story wasn’t quite right, and I had continued over and over again to figure out what it needed, but nothing had been working for me. While reading over some of the stuff, I realized something…

I still love this story so, so much. It’s probably one of my favorites.

One of the best writing tips I’ve ever received was “Write something, anything, but don’t ever stop.” I had stopped. I had felt defeated by my lack of motivation and inspiration to continue The Warlock’s Awakening. It’s not that I’m bored with it. I’m just stuck.

So even though I have to put it away (for a while), I’m working on a project regardless.

I suppose that’s what I’m getting at here: I started a new project. It will be a dystopian romance and is untitled still.

I’m pretty sure I have the name of series down, but I won’t spoil it until I’m 100% sure it’s right for the series. For now, I’m planning them as novellas (~30k words only), but that could change with more in-depth planning. I know I have a tendency to tell a long story…. so at least I’ve admitted I’ve got a problem. That’s the first step to recovery, right?

But please don’t worry about The Warlock’s Awakening!

That book is still very much on my heart. It’s a story that I HAVE to tell, but I just don’t think it’s time yet.

I’m just glad to be back in the writing seat, spilling all of my crazy thoughts onto a page.

In the meantime and between time, take care!

(P. S. I added a progress bar in my sidebar so you guys can check in every now and then and see where I’m at on my serious projects. The pink bar is for The Warlock’s Awakening and the blue one is for the Untitled Dystopian Romance.)