I’m officially a published author

It happened. I’m officially published. It’s a crazy thing to think about. All that hard work—plotting and planning and writing and writing and writing—and it’s finally out the door and in the world. So what did I learn? What would I do differently?

A fuck ton/EVERYTHING.

Haha! Let me explain.

When I first started planning Earning Her Trust (EHT), I had it in my head that it would be one story told in two different novels from two different POVs. The first book would be Damian’s POV of events, the second book would be the same events (with a few differences) but told from Marrin’s POV. For years, this was The Plan.

But when I started writing the story… a few things happened.

The first was that the trend of writing one story twice, and from two different POVs, was largely over. The second thing that happened was that I didn’t want to tell Marrin’s story from a male perspective. Something about that just felt icky.

So I decided to just write one book with two POVs.

This was the best/worst idea I’ve ever had and a writing mistake I will never make again.

Let me clarify, writing the story as one book with two POVs was the best idea. What made it the worst idea was that I hadn’t considered how I’d then have to take two distinct, separate stories and shove them into one book.

I had to shoot a lot of darlings (as they say), and it was hard.

Hard to decide which elements of each character’s background should stay and which should be cut, which elements served the story and which were ultimately useless.

This was a daunting task and there were so many days when I wanted to give up. Days when I knew I hadn’t explained something well enough, or days when I KNEW element X needed to come out of the story but I couldn’t figure out how to do it effectively and/or without damaging another part of the story.

It was the worst. But it was also an amazing learning experience. It challenged me as a writer and storyteller, and I’m better because of it. (Or at least I hope!)

Are there things I’d still like to change about EHT? Hell. Yes.

Are there things I knew needed to change but didn’t because I couldn’t figure out how to do it? ABSOLUTELY.

There is so much about EHT that I’d like to go back and tweak or take out. So much that I wish I’d explained better or not at all. Perhaps one day I will go back and edit the story to release an updated version. But maybe not. I’m not done writing Marrin and Damian’s story, there are unfinished things I left hanging in EHT that I’d like to explore in the future. Little things I’d like to tie up better or more fully explain.

But right now I’m focusing on what writing their story taught me, on mistakes I don’t want to make again, and on areas where I’d like to improve. I’m elbows deep in Elle and Conor’s story and doing all I can to build it out so that it’s better than the first book, but with less of the things I wish I’d done differently.

Writing is a process and all I can do is learn from my mistakes and try not to recreate them in the future.

Now I’m off to finish Elle and Conor’s story! Talk to you all later.

—Adore

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