WRITING MY NOVEL📘 | chill + cozy writing vlog

A long-running struggle with a novel draft has turned into momentum: after months away and a health-related pause, Jalen is back on “Saltbirds,” now positioned at the start of Part Four and estimating roughly 35,000 words remain. The most consequential shift isn’t just timing—it’s process. Instead of stopping to edit while drafting, she’s committing to continuous drafting, treating revision as something to do later once the characters and plot have fully “unfolded” in her mind.

The book’s structure is built around a six-part plan, with each part targeting about 10–12K words. She expects to write about one part per month, which would put Part Four finishing by late March, Part Five in April, and Part Six by the end of May. That schedule is now being stress-tested by real life: construction season limits filming, and travel plans in late April through May (including a camping trip with family and possible additional trips) could compress the timeline. Rather than risk leaving the draft with only a small remainder, she’s considering a more intensive “write every day” push—similar to the daily discipline used during NaNoWriMo—so the book can be finished before traveling and then revised afterward.

Her earlier difficulty with the novel—an inability to “get into it”—was a major reason she tried NaNoWriMo and daily work. That approach didn’t magically remove the block, but it did change her relationship to the project: she eventually fell back in love with the story and its characters. She describes the plot as subtle and character-driven rather than heavily plot-driven, likening the drafting experience to writing short stories: clarity often arrives only after a scene or story is completed, when redundancies and missing setups become obvious.

That short-story-like clarity is also why she’s resisting in-the-moment editing. She used to revise while drafting to reduce overwhelm later, but she now feels comfortable with editing and doesn’t want to slow the draft’s momentum. The emotional payoff is character work—especially the central relationship between Rowan and Susanna, which she calls her most complex and compelling. Even when the characters feel fully “real,” she keeps learning new layers through their decisions, and that ongoing discovery is what makes her want to keep drafting rather than pause.

On the craft side, she’s also dealing with a chapter assembled out of order, including a flashback that originally aimed to explore one specific origin detail but ended up exploring something adjacent that still builds on established backstory. The result is a few scenes that feel rushed or potentially inconsistent, but she’s treating that as normal first-draft behavior—write it down, then refine once the full picture is clearer.

Finally, she’s balancing the novel with other creative ambitions, especially short stories. She’s noticing she’s less able to juggle “novel mode” and “short story mode” than she used to be, and she wants a better system to draft both without losing focus. Outside writing, she’s also resetting her reading life by bringing her TBR down to a small number, buying several anticipated books, and aiming to keep reading choices tightly aligned with what she’s excited to read in the moment.