About my personal project: Write a book with me

The first two months have passed since I started creating the Write a Book with Me project and I decided to approach it here, on the public blog, and describe how these two months went. Most well-known writers who have at least a bookshelf full of their own books and choose to give advice to aspiring writers will tell you not to let even your partner read your work until it's finished, until you've crossed out 10 percent of useless things, and until you're sure that you want to share it with someone else who can throw criticism right in your face. I rejected this advice and created a project where I go to the market with the leather, without the text going through trimming off useless things and proofreading, and it is created in real time in the presence of readers.

Not letting your work be read until it is finished and has passed the author's basic proofreading is also treacherous because possible criticism and a large degree of self-criticism can make a beginning author stuck. On the other hand, it is a very lonely activity, spending hours at a desk, often isolated from the world and other people only in the thoughts of one's own head.

Feedback and reactions can motivate and recharge me in moments when I might have postponed the story indefinitely, when there will be less work, less worries, more time, more motivation and one can find a lot of similar excuses. This is precisely why a publicly open project gives me the opportunity to continuously find that starting spark.

For the first month, I was motivated and managed to stick to my writing challenge: 1000 words a day. But my biggest enemy is sadness, which has a paralyzing effect on me and creates my writer's block. Therefore, the second month was not so productive. I was coming to terms with the last sad and tragic events in my family, which, although they are part of life, only sometimes happen unexpectedly and at the same time. Therefore, I have to remember the feeling when I created the first chapters and laughed at them not only in my mind.

So what am I writing about?

Several of my friends have asked me if the story is about Wolf that lived above the bookstore or if it is about my pets. Although I have written down countless ideas for shorter and longer stories, the fairy tale that I fully embarked on was partly inspired by my niece Olivia, partly by my other nieces and nephews, as well as by the memory of the wonderful Gothic villa where my husband and I spent the fifth anniversary of our wedding and last but not least the idea of ​​writing a story about understanding where not everything is really as it seems.

Zoe dreams of a bombastic holiday by the sea so that she can join in the annual praise of her classmates. Her mom works hard at two jobs to give her the vacation she's been dreaming of, but an accident ruins their plans and Zoe goes abroad for the holidays to her aunt, whom she last saw so long ago that she doesn't even remember her anymore. Aunt Victoria lives in a haunted villa and looks like a ghost herself. The whole impression is not helped by the story of the neighbors, who reveal to Zoe that her aunt is being whispered about as a vampire. With the help of her new friends, Zoe comes up with a plan to uncover her aunt's secret and survive the most terrifying summer vacation in good health.

The idea to write Holidays at Aunt Victoria's came about gradually. First of all, it was the atmosphere of the place where we spent a few days and I imagined what it would be like to live in such a house permanently. Subsequently, during the summer holidays on vacation by the sea with my mom and Olivia, we spent time talking about this idea of ​​mine and together we came up with characters and plots, and these moments of fantasy interspersed with real vacation adventures fed the story, until the main character Zoe began to come to life before my eyes and Aunt Victoria too, who are a little bit like us and a little bit like from another magical world.

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How does the project work?

By purchasing a monthly membership, you get access to a closed page, which I called the Reader's Club, and to a closed blog, where you can find not only chapters, but also contributions from behind the scenes of the creation, giving you the opportunity to follow the creation of the book from beginning to end. I myself am curious about the journey that awaits me and my story, but I don't want to get ahead of myself, because I know how much work is still ahead of me.

All other information about the project, membership benefits, a preview of the first chapter, as well as feedback from my readers, can be found in the Write a book with me section.

Have you always wondered how the very first book is made? What goes on behind the door of a budding writer? Where do ideas come from and land on paper? So go with me on this (even for me) completely new path and let's create a fun story book together.

The project is in the Slovak language, so please use the translation icon in the top right bar of your Google Chrome browser for the moment.

• Monthly
• Yearly

Napíš spolu so mnou moju prvú knihu

€5.00

Every month

€50.00

Every year

Pridaj sa do môjho súkromného čitateľského klubu, kde budem pravidelne zdieľať tvorbu svojej prvej knihy. Dozvieš sa o všetkých mojich nápadoch, uvidíš skice na ilustrácie, budeš si môcť prečítať kapitoly, navrhovať zmeny a podieľať sa na vývoji deja. Možno práve vďaka tvojmu nápadu sa z knihy môže stať bestseller. Je to jedinečná príležitosť ako nahliadnuť do zákulisia tvorby mojej úplne prvej detskej rozprávkovej knihy a byť tak súčasťou od začiatku až do konca.

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