My Work In Progress (Codename: Aspen)

I don’t talk about my writing as much as I gush over awesome books, but here it goes. I’m writing a book! (Obvious? Maybe. Worth repeating? Always.) I call it Aspen, after the main character. I wrote the first draft in NaNoWriMo last year, and I’m now editing it. I’ve done some things differently with Aspen than I did with my previous WIP. First of all, I became a pantser, which is totally not my style. Then, after I finished writing the first draft, I read through it and wrote a summary of Aspen. I spent a couple weeks writing and tweaking a four-page summary of the book, and now I'm editing my draft to match. So far this method has been working for me, but then I’m only about a quarter of the way through the edit.

Since it seems weird to spend so much time on something and rarely talk about it, I thought I’d share some stuff about Aspen. Here’s the description (which I just wrote last week and I’ve already changed about a bazillion times, so it’s by no means perfect):

Aspen's just seven years old when she wanders past her grandpa's shed and into another world. Even though she's there for only fifteen minutes, she sees something she’s only seen in storybooks: a unicorn. After she returns to her own world, she spends the next ten years dreaming about the blue grass and green sky of the world she calls Unicorn Valley.

Trying to escape her problems, seventeen year-old Aspen returns to the portal, hoping to find the same simple fantasy world that she left behind. But when she crosses over, she’s captured by Oliver, the Prince of Cal Mere. As she delves further into this world and it's problems, she realizes this journey might not the straightforward fairy tale she was hoping for after all.

Last week I posted the prologue, which is the tale of Aspen’s first journey into Cal Mere, on Wattpad. Check it out here! And I recently updated my WIP page to include a short excerpt from after Aspen arrives back in Cal Mere. Read that here!

Please let me know what you think! A writer can always use constructive criticism. J