Hey friends,
March was a whirlwind, and I’m excited to share what’s been happening! Here’s a look at what I’ve been working on, what I’ve been reading, and what’s new in my writing world.
On the Blog This Month
This month I wrote several substack pieces. In case you missed them…
A Cherry Red Claire - a short story work in progress
Want to Ditch Amazon? Here’s Where to Get Your eBooks Instead
Writing Progress
My work in progress, Godspoken is moving steadily into its restructure in draft two. Nia’s tense relationship with the gods is taking complicated turns, and a love triangle is taking shape as Kai is proving to be more than just her Shield, and Ven is… well tolerable and handsome (that’s good enough right?). I’ve been working on deepening the world building and thinking seriously about story structure which has meant letting go of a lot of scenes and lines that I’m really in love with.
Since this blog is about “learning how to author” let’s talk about that. Killing your darlings can be hard for any writer and it’s a skill I’ve been really working on. You might write the most beautiful line, or a great character, or a great setting, but at the end of the day if it’s not working for your story… it’s gotta go. I have probably deleted 20k of Godspoken at this point. In part because everything I am learning about writing, I am learning in this work. And that means I’m going do a lot of it wrong while I navigate learning my style.
And I’m finding it…. surprisingly easy. New words always find me.
A lot of people recommend putting those in a document for later, for safe keeping, and I tried that for a long while (probably over a year), but it’s not for me. I have never revisited those thoughts to repurpose them. Mostly because new words always come. And they are almost always better stronger ideas.
Other Projects
I finished outlining a project I’m calling Dark Artifacts. It’s a dark academia, dark fantasy with, of course, a romantic subplot. (Look… it’s just what I like ok?)
I’m also contemplating a memoir about my experience with a TBI. This project is a whole different beast. Who knows if I’ll stick with it, but it’s been cathartic to put the story into words even if that’s just for me.
Books I Loved This Month
I am, and have always been, a slow reader. But I spent most of March sick which meant I read two whole books!
I finished Ruthless Vows by Rebecca Ross. This is the sequel to Divine Rivals, a YA series that follows two journalists through their documenting of war, and the lives they are trying to live in between. The sequel was even better than the first and I have to say, I’ll be picking up more of Ross’ work. This book is for you if you like YA, Final Fantasy, cozy cottages, and being a lil sad and happy at the same time. Its a book for curling up in a window seat with tea and warm blanket. And… its a book for people who love love.
This month, my old ladies’ book club is reading Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel—a book that’s been on my TBR for years. As a writer, I can’t help but analyze everything I read, and this one was a fascinating study in breaking the rules.
Novels follow certain conventions, but when an author bends or breaks them with intention, that’s where style shines through. Station Eleven does this masterfully. Character points of view stay confined to individual chapters—until they don’t. Dialogue is typically separated into its own paragraph, yet Mandel occasionally weaves it mid-paragraph instead. And then there’s a single run-on sentence that spans an entire paragraph, defying structure but working beautifully within the story.
I loved it.
This book will be for you if you’re a writer interested in craft, if you enjoy apocalyptic stories without supernatural elements, if you enjoy literary fiction, or if you want a light thriller.
AI Conversations
This month, I’ve been thinking a lot about ai and how our extreme opinions about might be problematic. I had a very interesting conversation about ai with my author’s group and we discovered that as a collective any level of ai use in a creative field is “bad” but when we broke it down, we all had different levels where ai might be acceptable. And this is what was fascinating! Some felt that using ai to outline or name generate was acceptable use while others felt its allowed use until ai is generating sentences or paragraphs. It was an interesting conversation I was intent to write about until the very next day when several problematic stories came out about ai. We learned that Meta had illegally taken countless books to train their ai. Then later in the week Open AI released generative “art” in the style of beloved Studio Ghibli.
I just thought, “I can’t publish anything about ai right now”. There are so many ways in which ai is unethical before a user even touches it, that makes any conversation of ethical ai use impossible right now.
Writer’s Groups
I want to remind everyone that TikTok might be on its way out—again. They’ll probably swoop in at the last second and save it, but this is a good reminder of an important conversation: our communities shouldn’t be at the mercy of social media platforms that can disappear overnight.
If your entire audience is tied to a single app, now is the time to start building connections elsewhere.
For me, both my writing group and my author community exist almost entirely on TikTok. If the app shuts down, I’ll keep my core people, but the nearly thousand others who follow me? They’ll likely be lost in the shuffle. (I know, 1,000 isn’t a huge number—I’m small, don’t judge.) Looking at my other socials, my following there is a fraction of what it is on TikTok, which makes me realize just how important it is to diversify.
If you have a writing or reading community, now’s the time to talk to them about where they’ll go if TikTok disappears. Maybe you bring them over to Substack, like I’m trying to do. Maybe it’s Instagram, Discord, or somewhere else entirely. Whatever you choose, don’t wait until the last minute to figure it out.
Where’s your backup plan?
Let’s Chat!
What have you been reading this month? Any new favorite books or tropes you can’t get enough of? And I’m always looking for book recs that are like Final Fantasy!
Let me know in the comments—I love hearing from you!
Until next time,
Ash Wren
I used to keep the stuff I deleted at the bottom of my chapter. Now, I just chop it. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. I left Meta because they stole my books and they knew they were stolen because they took them from a pirate site. Using our work to create a commercial product without permission or payment is wrong. Using our work for a purpose it was never intended is wrong. That's a whole bag of messy worms, isn't it? Twitter was my place until someone ruined it. So, then I moved to Insta and started branching out more. Now I left Meta and am branching out more to smaller venues. I also have my mailing list. But I'm liking Substack. I'm still really new, but this seems like a good place. I also started a Discord Server.