is finally launched!!! I originally sold my art through redbubble and big cartel separately. RedBubble did in fact generate the most sales out of all my venture capitalist endeavors but to be honest, I wasn't as in love with the quality of the products as I felt I should've been, and if I'm being completely transparent the revenue I made wasn't even enough to cover the cost if I wanted to order some of my own products.
The huge variety of products I could never affordably create myself like pillows, metal prints, blankets, and notebooks was a cool option to have though. I'm still leaving my old sticker designs up for sale but I want people to buy something from me that I know for sure is high quality and I also want my products to sparkle like me. So after spending two straight months binge-watching other creators open their own small businesses and fixating on the idea of designing an entirely new line of stickers and hair accessories I re-opened PeachfulCreations and nearly fell out of my chair when I received the first order. The love and support from TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook have given me so much inspiration and motivation to keep moving forward and creating beautiful things. When I was in isolation (Read my last post for context) this was the feeling I was yearning for.
Hold up, you've been rewriting this novel for 5 years and you're just going to start over and make us wait another year? Are you crazy!?
During isolation, I had a long talk with my main Beta Reader about the never-ending series of plotholes. Every single time I made one change a new hole would pop up and I quickly realized the beginning of my mystery series (The J & S Adventures) was anything but a mystery novel. This was problematic considering the next six planned books were mysteries and the entire plot revolves around a detective agency. The project just became too much and the years were just constantly flying by. I had millions of ideas for the characters and fleshed them out but the more I went back to the draft file the more I hated it. Every change I made felt like I was straying further and further and further away from the original heart of the series. The largest hurdle was the main character.
I didn't want Juyne to feel like a self-insert anymore I made as many changes to her as I could solely for the sake of making her absolutely nothing like me. Writing became dreadful and every time I typed a new word I wanted to throw the entire document away and start from the very beginning.
My Beta Reader asked if I HAVE to start in the middle of the story at the end of a large battle that I completely gloss over because it was on the list of things that "will be explained way later"
"Why can't you start from the actual beginning of the story where the detectives take on a case?"
I was too tired to keep trying to make this the hill I die on. There were no more excuses I could come up with as to why I stubbornly wasn't going to start the mystery series about detectives with an actual detective case. And then it hit me all at once. They had a point. This time travel hospital zombie plot that starts after a life-changing fight that puts Juyne in a coma could actually take place after that life-changing fight instead of kick off the series after said glossed over fight.
The adventure I was more eager to write about the most was about the detective agency going to a haunted mansion. At another point in time, I wanted to make the novel series an anime instead of a book series so I wrote a loose draft of a pilot episode. I dug up those old drafts, combined the pilot episode with the short version of the haunted mansion adventure, took the key character arc components and plot points from the five-year in-progress draft, and nearly finished a new outline that actually has both sense and structure. And on top of that, I tried Scrivener instead of the old pencil, paper, and six versions of one google doc. That transition is a whole other topic!
Recently I had some downtime and started typing up the first chapter. It's hard to find the right words to explain the sense of childlike wonder and joy I felt working on this project again. The catharsis was off the charts! The novel had its original heart back, the character interaction was rich with authenticity and it actually feels like a mystery novel instead of whatever the other draft had woefully warped into.
With everything in my life I'm trying to juggle I think realistically the first draft will be done by the tail end of summer. We'll see what happens.
Thank you for reading my chaotic thoughts and supporting my journey. Start this coming week strong and chase a dream or two.
-Just anejira
"The most difficult thing is the decision to act; the rest is merely tenacity"
-Amelia Earhart
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