Hey!
I’ve got:
A free Holiday Game
Lots of new recommendations (#notspon)
Thoughts on trusting your intuition
Happy December! I'm so excited to get into Christmas movies. I'll watch one every night with my peppermint bark or cinnamon apple tea while I knit or embroider. That's pure bliss.
READING & NEW METHODS
Lately, I’ve been reading Write for Life by Julia Cameron. She mentions how nice it is to make your writing portable—a pen and paper are all you need. But I’ve tried this multiple times. I love handwriting poems and shorts, but not long-form books. I hate transferring all of it.
But I’ve found another way to make it portable. I used to type straight through my phone (which caused me to go back a ton to fix autocorrect) or on my Alphasmart (which is great but pretty clunky). Now, I connect my little Bluetooth keyboard to my phone and write with my phone face down.
I’ve also started writing “slower” and more intentionally. That came naturally to me in the beginning before I got bogged down in craft.
I would visualize the snippet, write, then visualize again and write further. I loved it. Then I listened to all these authors who said, “Just get it down as fast as you can and skip what you don’t know.” I became detached from the book doing that, and all the fun of playing in that world was taken from me.
Now I have to re-learn what came naturally to me.
Same with editing. I loved editing. Maybe even more than writing because it let me read the book like watching a movie and I would see ways to make the scene better. Then it became more about style guides and where commas go, and all the fun of editing went away, too.
Now I’m spending time learning what works for me, and that goes for every area of life.
There's nothing like being yourself, and when I wrote “Find the Forgotten,” I hadn't realized I was writing the exact lesson I needed to learn.
I highly recommend this if you're interested. About every six months or so, I create a mind map of all the things that haven't been working for me and how I can better customize them.
I focused this morning on “writing slowly” to immerse again and see it like a movie, enjoying the world and savoring the details, and in about thirty-five minutes I got 985 words. I knew I could write 1000 words an hour but apparently, it’s gotten much faster even at my “slow” intentional pace. That’s a really exciting find!
DOMESTIKA
Another thing that helped me was this Domestika course. I resonated with how he worked slowly and intentionally and how he played with writing. I bought my own little writer’s sketchbook so I could play with scenes and try new ways of brainstorming. It’s been fun writing sketches inside.
I was inspired by a spooky ambient video the other day that got me telling a very short story that sounded something like a short from Bedtime Stories (not sure if you watch that on YouTube but it’s one of my go-to’s for spooky stories.)
FANTASY TABLES & CHRISTMAS
I’d also been hard at work on my Fantasy Adventure Tables because I wanted to play a few games and, being solo, I needed guidance. I was so excited to release those because I wanted to play so many fantasy games like Midnight Muscadines, Apothecaria, and Ryuutama. I’d also created a Cozy Catalogue on our Itch page so you can check those games out for yourself if you like. There are even free ones in there.
My husband and I have also been working on our newest game that we made for the Tabletop Stocking Stuffer Jam on Itch. It’s available for free download but it’s not fully playtested yet. It’ll be ironed out by Christmas (2024). You’ll only need a deck of cards and a six-sided die.
With only eight days ‘til Christmas Eve, your bakery is working around the clock to create treats for the townsfolk of the snow-covered village. Each day brings new challenges, from restocking ingredients to handling last-minute holiday orders. Running your own bakery, you'll need to manage your resources to make sure everyone gets their treats on time. Play alone or compete with others as friendly rival bakers in the village, each striving to become the top bakery before Christmas Eve!
UNTRAP FOR YOUTUBE
This has helped me so much with overwhelm on YouTube. It’s the only social media where I spend much of my day.
I love watching games, movies, and informational things about writing. But I spend too much time on it. Just because I'm learning something doesn’t mean it's sticking. I have to process it and put it into practice, and when I switch from one video to the next, it gets all jumbled, and my head feels bad.
Untrap for YouTube has a ton of customization options. One is to turn off comments, which I highly recommend. I also turned off sidebar suggestions and made my subscriptions my home page.
GAMING
Lately, I’ve been playing DC Universe Online (free to play) with my husband. For a superhero action game, I find it really cozy. Combat is usually super simple and the story is interesting (and cheesy funny).
TV
Back to watching Vampire Diaries. They hit me one after the other with twists I never saw coming. How do they do it? Maybe I’m just not good at seeing clues or predicting what will happen next, but that’s fine because I love it when the twist makes my jaw drop.
BOOKS
Spirit Ears and Prophet Sight by Brian Harmon. Not only do I love everything he's written, but I have soft spot for him because his book Rushed got me back into reading after hating it because of school. His books also inspired one of my short stories.
THANK YOU
Thanks as always for being here. If you know anyone who might like these letters, please share my publication with them.
From the Archives: How I Planned My Year (in one hour)
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Hi! I’m Candye. I write Paranormal Mystery and Sci-Fi with dark, cozy vibes and light-hearted adventures. I aim to invite awe into daily life and provide a place where you feel seen and heard.
When I'm not writing, I'm either reading my Kindle in the sunlight, playing cozy games, watching movies and cartoons, or drinking herbal tea with extra honey.