Chilling

I had one of those "need a weekend to recover from the weekend" weekends where I always seemed to be running from one thing to the next. As a result, it took me forever to wake up this morning and I could probably fall asleep right now if I just sat still for too long. I may finally have enough tea in my system for coherence. It wasn't that I was so stressed out or doing anything truly exhausting, so I don't know why the weekend left me so tired. It's possible that I was tired going into it.

I had a minor epiphany Friday afternoon when I realized that I was stressing myself out over an arbitrary deadline. I was desperate to finish the draft because of all the stuff I need to do this week, and so I was getting impatient and rushed, and the book was suffering. So I made the executive decision to chill. I'll deal with the stuff I need to deal with this week, maybe go back to do some revision on what I wrote last week, and not worry about self-imposed deadlines. I think the stress from feeling so rushed and driven last week had a lot to do with the weekend exhaustion.

Now, some follow-up to Friday's post. I am aware that not all young adult paranormal books follow the formula I outlined. I've even read most of the ones that were mentioned in comments as not following the formula. I'm aware that you don't have to follow that formula to sell a book or have it be successful. However, the fact remains that this formula appears to be wildly popular among that audience, and if I don't get it at all and don't understand the appeal of it among that audience, then I worry that I don't understand what would appeal to that audience, which is important even if I write something different. If that makes any sense at all. I think part of my issue is that I should probably avoid the more "romancey" books where the focus is on the developing relationship between the heroine and the sexy supernatural stalker guy and focus more on the books where the emphasis is on the action part of the plot, with perhaps some incidental romance.

And now to do one final scour of the house for any stray receipts that might apply to my taxes. Fun.