Making Time to Write

Always the main struggle for any writer: making time to write.

If you are like me and writing isn’t your full-time job, it can be difficult to keep up with your writing when you have another job and other things in life that get in the way. Also, I am a massive procrastinator. If I don’t have any motivation or don’t have the best mental mindset at the time, I won’t write. Adding to my busy work schedule, finding time to write and sticking to it is really difficult.

I guess with any writer, you just need to find that spark. A moment in your day when that inspiration hits and if you have that moment, take advantage of it. For example, I was working when I saw a beautiful sunrise outside my work window. I took pictures and admired them, but I felt the urge to write them down. So on my first break, I took out my phone and wrote down a few lines of something. Then after work, I went home and wrote some more after that. Sometimes you make time to write and other times, it just comes on you. You just have to go with it. One time, I watched a YouTube video by the author Lindsey Cummings, where she talked about making time to write. All the video contained, was Lindsay going about her day and maybe getting one hour of writing squeezed in. It can be like that sometimes.

Like me, I am writing this blog post before I am set to do a closing shift. I won’t get out until like one o’clock in the morning. So between my lunch and getting ready for work, I write up a blog post or get some of my novel done. It’s always about making your own time for the things you love. That’s one thing I’ve been trying to fix. I never made time for writing and made excuses like I am too tired after work or I just want to watch tv instead. At the moment, I make time when I know I want to write. Like today, I wanted to write about this, because I always struggle with it. I wished I could write 1,000 words every day so I can finish my book in two months. I wish I could write different things every day so I can submit something every week. Sometimes you can make the time to write, but not feel like writing. For me, I always return to my love for writing but find it hard to maintain it. Lindsay Cummings said in her video, that if you love writing, you’ll always find time for the things you love. I adore writing, but sometimes it is just hard to find time to do it. I don’t know. I felt like talking about it because I have been struggling with it lately. But I know Ill always come back to it. Writing will always be my first love.

Kiss Her Once For Me Review

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Oh, how I wish I read this during the holiday season. But I did read it in January, so I was kind of in the tail end of the Christmas season. Anyway, this book would’ve been perfect for Christmas. In the first few chapters, Alice Cochrun envelops you in her crisp and sweet Christmas world. She puts enough sweetness and the feeling of the holiday into her story through the snow days, the warmth of locations, and the family events in the Prescott household. As I listened to the audiobook, the narration made me feel cozy.

That’s the best way to describe this book: cozy and chill Christmas vibes.

I saw a review on this book saying that it doesn’t feel like a Christmas book. There isn’t a massive amount of detail put into what Christmas would be, such as the smell of gingerbread men, the twinkly lights, or the extreme amount of sweetness and Christmas joy. That’s true. If you seek a book like that, Kiss Her Once For Me isn’t for you. It has a chill amount of Christmas delight and coziness in it and it never shoves it in your face. It lets you sit and enjoy this world, instead of overtly doing a sensory overload on the particular season it places itself in. I enjoyed that aspect of the book.

I enjoyed Alice Cochrun’s writing. A nice, easy read but she sits nicely in the cozy category of books. I loved the sense of warmth and familiarity she put into each aspect of her writing. I adored the moments of quiet such as the first time Jack and El first met in El’s favorite cafe or the times El would escape to draw in the kitchen/washing room in the Prescott house. Her writing looked, felt, and tasted pleasant. Every day that I threw on the audiobook, I felt snug each time I returned to El and Jack’s story.

Speaking of story, I knew what I was getting myself into when I picked up Kiss Her Once For Me.

I wanted an easy and fun read. I didn’t expect the greatest love story ever. I just wanted a silly, fun time. And I got that. I enjoyed the little romance between Jack and El. It wasn’t perfect and it wasn’t ground-breaking. But I enjoyed their relationship journey. The plot of the book was very unoriginal at its start. A fake marriage pact to get money and it turns out that you’re in love with your soon-to-be husband’s sister. A messy, but fun start to a cozy story.

The characters carried that through with some silly shenanigans, but with delightful dialogue.

I loved the main character Ellie. I related to her so much with her social anxiety, her fear of failure, and her sexual orientation. I didn’t find her a compelling character, but I thoroughly enjoyed her and wanted her to find her happiness. I identified with her so easily and related to her struggles. However, I did have a big question mark once I hit the moment where she reunites with Jack at the Prescott mansion. Ellie identifies as a bisexual demisexual. When I heard that, I was so excited because I’m finding myself in this fictional character. In case you didn’t know, demisexual means, you are a person who only experiences sexual feelings and attraction after developing a close emotional relationship and not on the basis of first impressions, physical characteristics etc. For me, to have a book where your main character is a demisexual was really important to me or I found that really important when Alice Cochrun did it. P.S if you know of any other books that have a bisexual demisexual main character, please let me know. I would love to read more of them.

However, I did find it strange that Ellie, who is demisexual, clearly fell in love with Jack after knowing her for one day. Is this possible, I thought. I literally had to google it, because personally, I can’t imagine falling in love with someone as quickly as a demisexual myself. According to Google, the length of time needed to create an emotional bond varies. Some people who are demisexual develop a close bond quickly, but others only develop a bond after several years of friendship with someone. So I guess in the case of Jack and Ellie, they made such as strong bond on that first day, Ellie felt sexual attraction. Maybe in fiction, I can let it slide a bit, but it did give me a big question mark in my brain. The usual trope in romance fiction of falling in love quickly didn’t serve as well when you had one of the leads as a demisexual.

The other thing I had a gripe with this book, would’ve been the Prescott family. I wish we had more time with them. I feel like I didn’t get to know them really well. Not as well as I had hoped anyway. I still enjoyed their scenes, but the real people I got to know in the book, were Jack, Ellie, Dillon, and less so, Andrew. It was a shame that I felt these characters didn’t get as much time to shine as I would’ve liked.

But overall, I really enjoyed this book. Technically, the book would get a 3 or 3.5 starts out of 5, but I enjoyed my time reading it and I would read it again. So it gets 4 stars for that.

Little tidbits that I personally liked:

I liked that El was a digital artist – I don’t know why. I just love stories where the main character is an artist, a writer, or something in that field.

Queer representation – my first book with a main female character who is bisexual. Dillon is non-binary and Jack is Jack. I loved that the writer incorporated pronouns into the story. It was very subtle with an expressed dialogue asking for pronouns or in the general narration, the character doesn’t express anyone else’s pronouns until told otherwise.