Hello! My name is Bree Buonomo (AKA Bea Lapka): a writer, poet, reader, and therapist! I post videos about my writing journey towards publication, the books I read, and have some in-depth discussions around various topics related to books and writing (usually incorporating my psychology & counseling degrees!). Hope you choose to stay!
Check me out over on twitch if you'd like to see gaming content!
The hike looking for the ghost town looked so pretty! Yay on submitting even if you are getting rejections. It's brave and awesome of you to try, and to share your journey with us. Good luck on the next draft!
It was beautiful! I had been through the area on an ATV but the hike was lovely (except for the bugs). I do love submitting even if they don't end up where I hope they will, but I'll keep trying :) thank you!!
I get that, rejections can be really difficult to handle (especially on your own) but they're very common and frequent so I like to share just to normalize the experience 💛
LOL, what a replot in store for you! Forgetting that houses have basements is a weirdly common occurrence, so you have everything to gain from this replotting as more possibilities open up.
Yeah it is but in some ways the things I already had written fit so well for the replot so it’ll be work but easier than I originally thought? and I literally have a basement too 😂😂 like what a silly goose I was.
It's definitely getting easier to brain rot and disassociate. I don't even think there's an actual reason. Had to go back in the video twice to wrap my head around your backstory thing where you say it didn't make sense for the guy to be 35 and not be married. Since it's a period piece my brain's just like "ohhhhhh okay", but missing the context the first time was such hardcore anxiety rooted in how rapidly I approach the age of 35 and the ticking time-bomb of my parents becoming more aggressive at me (than they already are) to stop being single.
I'm sorrrrry! Didn't mean to cause the anxiety spike 🥲 parents have a lot of nerve, like it's so easy to exist in this life and add romance on top of it lol But I hope the anxiety has passed and you can remind yourself that you're not a failure just because you haven't met your parents' social standards 💛
Querying as a NaNo goal is so much better! Good thing it's in autumn too, because when the house is boiling, there's next to zero productivity. My apartment has been on and off murder, though at least I have a dehumidifier. Sorry to hear about your headspace. I worry irrationally for you sometimes, but as you've said, it waxes and wanes.
I agree, it has a nice ring to it while everyone else is drafting I'm just focusing on me and getting my work out there! Yeaaah I am usually not as impacted by the heat but lately it had been ROUGH and I definitely don't want to do anything. And thank you for your concern, I'm okay overall and i always bounce back :)
My favorite quote is from the Lord of the rings! Bilbo says “someone must always carry on the story.“ It sounds like June was pretty progressive for you and that’s really nice. I hope your submissions go well! I have finally started really getting into the swing of writing again more consistently. I never really stopped through everything, but I may be got 1000 words a week. Which kind of sucked, but at the same time I was still doing things and normally I stop completely.
I love that quote!! Thank you, it was a breath of fresh air after several months of anxiety lol yay!!! so proud of you; it can be so hard to focus and get words down when life is on fire around you, so even 1000 words is progress, definitely an accomplishment!
@@JanetteGellarRomanceAuthor you can definitely submit a short story that takes place within a larger work as long as it fits the guidelines for the magazine! You will give the magazine writes to print THAT story but they will have no rights over your larger work!
I was so curious when I saw they had a course! Great review! It does sound great, particularly in the feedback! That's the #1 thing I look for in educational writing things :)
Yay, I'm so happy this was helpful for you! The feedback was definitely my favorite part and I wish I was able to participate more, but Tom was so great with answering questions and being an active part in the program!
I just recently watched the Turtles All the Way Down movie and absolutely loved it. Though I haven't read the book yet and will be doing so as soon as possible. Regarding Godzilla vs Kong, Godzilla movies have this really weird dichotomy between really serious drama or really silly action, depending on the movie, with very little in between. I definitely recommend Godzilla Minus One if you haven't already seen it. It's a very intense drama about survivor's guilt and much better than any other recent Godzilla movie.
Both the book and the movie are so fantastic, I was so happy with the adaptation! Godzilla Minus One is on my list, the trailers make it look amazing so I will hopefully get to that soonish, thanks for the solid review to keep it higher on my to-watch list!
"Books to Get Drunk To"??? The ultimate selection for such a thing is Finnegans Wake by James Joyce. That one ONLY makes sense when you are utterly wasted. Your approach to the ending (i.e. letting revisions be when you take of it) sounds good. The themes of your story will (arguably) really be made or broken in how you end the book. At least critics and most readers will see it that way. But with the process you're on, you've been allowing the true meat of your book to take shape on the plate in front of you before you garnish it ... which is a decent consolation for the pending frustration of people's fixation on the garnish. Thematically, before you have an ending that makes sense, everything else needs to make sense. There's no payoff without a setup. Your trail exploration on the 25th looked so peaceful. :) Rock on. LMAO, yes, that silly moment in a trivia night when people get mad at you. Been there. (Tell them it's just a game.) Here's my question about the deep cleans .... would you ever consider trading favors with your neighbors? they could help you clean, and you could help them at a future date with something else? And for the record, I swear I'm not a communist, I just think the whole point of putting up with society and other people is to make things easier. Congrats on a finished draft.
LOL well we were more looking for good-time, silly books for the month (and I think we succeeded) but I feel like that will not be a novel I will be pursuing drunk or sober 😂 As I edit it may certainly change the ending. Nothing is final until it's final! The trail was so lovely and much needed! Trivia night is my jam and I am super competitive so I was like LET THEM BE MAD (in my head of course lol) While I love that idea, I am no where near comfortable enough with my neighbors to even ask that - so many people have moved out and in and out again that it's hard to keep up. But I have done that with friends sometimes. I personally like cleaning I just wished I could take a week off to do it yanno? lol Thank you!
Life is life-ing 😂 ain’t that the truth. I’m honestly so impressed you’re still moving along. You’re getting so close to the end! If you want eyes on your vampire story I got a pair 😂
I honestly have no idea how I function let alone continue to write a book LOL even though my routine isn't perfect, I've established enough of a habit that I keep it going ! I will definitely need eyes soon!! (Maybe after another draft though lol)
I'm wrapping up paper line edits on my book, right now! Gonna publish it next month, no matter what! And yes, write the things. Best advice I found to push on was "THIS IS THE DUMB VERSION". If you're stuck on a scene, write that in caps before the offending scene, get down what you can of it, and move on. You can always go back and fix it in edits and revision. I do some editing as I go, but mostly make notes to come back to later.
Ahhh it's SO close!! And yes, I keep telling myself that it just needs to get out and I can always edit later, some days it's harder than others but we'll persevere!!! The end is nigh!!
@@BreeBuonomo You can do it! Just keep repeating "You can't edit a blank page". That's been my mantra through this whole thing. That and "Rough drafts are better than no drafts."
Man, you're up on some really recent releases! We're just releasing an audiobook review from Other Valley and I just saw an interview with Emiko from a friend...!
I am!! It helps that the small flex I have is that I get a ton of ARCs from publishers lol I am trying to slow down the amount I get because I can't keep up with new releases and my back log lol
Glad to hear you've kept things flowing. It may not feel that way when you set the main project down after every 50 words, but the fact that you're also doing brain-dumps for the next 2 novels means your inner writer has mapped ahead. You know what you want deep down, and that's good. Having a "forever single" friend who gets married is one of the most surreal feelings. We're all held hostage by the passage of time, aren't we.
yeah my creative process isn't completely tapped out, but I will be excited to take a little break and recharge after this draft is done. I'm hoping to write/edit some short stories in June and then Camp July do draft 2 of vampire! Time is so strange lol
Beautiful U r never find specifically you again. Make sure to remember any lies u ever told and to share food with the poor and never lie reverse all lies ever told very important for you
I've been trying a new word count goal method recently. My only goal is to write one more word than I did the previous month. Last month, I was having a difficult time, so I only wrote 5,000 words during the entirety of April. So my goal for May is just 5,000 + 1. If I have a good month, my goal is to keep the pace. But if I have a bad month, the following month will have a much easier goal. It's all about improving on myself.
That sounds like an amazing way to conceptualize word goals and still make progress! I think our lives fluctuate so much that having the same goal ALL the time might not be sustainable!
You can do it, Bree! I've got to wrap up and revise my book I've been hammering away at, so I can publish it in June. The mental health has not been good, the past few months. But the sun coming out has me feeling like we're finally on the upswing!
Thank you! How exciting that publishing is so close for you, congrats and wishing you all the accomplishment vibes while you reach your goal! Definitely feeling the sunshine and the positivity it is bringing for me and everyone else! 🥰
@@BreeBuonomo ❤I started writing this story 7 years ago, when I was still married. So pushing to finish this, and succeed with it, is a weirdly significant thing to me. My ex hated that I wanted to spend time writing, so until we divorced... I largely didn't. Even if it doesn't sell much, finishing it is proof to me that I've creatively recovered. So to heck with him.
@@RandomRandisRamblings I'm so happy that you're able to rediscover what makes you happy and fulfilled. Not having a partner who supports you is awful and this is a great way to process and heal and attain your dreams 💛
Hey! I'm a man and not all my dinners are a production! (LOL) Writing a household or (in some cases) a whole community that's behind on tech is a fascinating conversation to have with oneself ... deciding which aspects they'll be 10 years behind on, or 20 years behind on, or 50 years behind on, and whether you want to cheat and make it uniformly the same in all aspects OR go the extra mile to map out every facet of their life so that the *degrees* to which they're behind on x, y and z carry separate meanings. Throughout this video I've felt your exasperation. I can see the "page loading; please wait" look in your eyes. Self-imposed deadlines vs. the brain being everywhere remains one of my struggles too. I've reached a point where all the projects have slid fully onto the back burners. There are no front-burner projects. Now that it's on my mind, bulking something in the edit has happened surprisingly little in my plays. Bits and pieces of dialogue will be added, cut or shuffled around but the basic length of a play tends to stay the same once it's drafted. (The major exception was my 1st produced play, a one-act that got cut down from 46 pages to 25.)
LOL ok not *every* man but at least the one I live with 😂 Yes that was a hard thing to decide on and I wasn't expecting it to be so difficult. I knew I didn't want my vamp to be like the Cullen family with their infinite wealth but I don't think keeping him in the 1900s would suffice either lol the page was loading for a verrryyyy long time haha I imagine that plays are probably a little different than novel writing, but I haven't written the former so I wouldn't really know!
5,000 words a week is a good goal. I’m going through the same thing kind of. Trying to keep a schedule. Please don’t be so hard on yourself. And be proud of every little progress made.
Thank you, I needed that reminder! It's easy to be hard on ourselves when we're sharing our journey online and trying to juggle so many things at once! I hope you're able to get on that schedule and also be easy on yourself as you work it out :)
Great vlog! We definitely hit those highs and lows with writing and it can be so frustrating 🥲 but you're working through it all and I'm SO proud of you! I cannot wait for Vampire. This story is going to be so strong by the time it's in readers' hands!
Murphy's Law, amiright? I'm one of the outliers who looks at To Kill a Mockingbird (the book) with a certain degree of frustration. Harper Lee goes off on many, many tangents prior to Tom Robinson's trial, and while some of those tangents shed light of Scout Finch's path to maturity, they also have the tonal feel of a lecture. Horton Foote adapted the story to film with a much tighter focus: the way Scout and Jem see their father, plus the way they see Boo Radley, and that's it but you lose none of the thematic power. There's also a much better balance of showing and telling. Got really lucky on eclipse day because eastern Ontario was in the exact path and the nearest cloud was 3 hours away. Almost any callback to Labyrinth is a win. As far as I know, Jim Henson didn't live to see how Labyrinth grew in its reach. Made more frustrating because he compromised the artistic loftiness he went into the 80s with and tried to make something more audience-friendly than Dark Crystal was. It was a generous middle ground to have the MC be a human actor rather than a puppet, and to have the MC's goal be to come of age through rescuing her baby brother from chaos funko-pops and a codpiece-wielding David Bowie. Labyrinth's box office competition was Ferris Bueller's Day Off, which is just bad luck I guess. The resemblance of Dungeons & Dragons to improv theatre is, for me, too close for comfort. LOL. A huge percentage of work during the day is most certainly the house errands and shit you have to do *after* work. That mental block sucks; hope you feel things pick up soon.
I'm happy you got to see the eclipse! Hopefully I'll live to see another lol Yeah my novel isn't really like Labyrinth (I do have another novel in my idea box that would have way more Labyrinth vibes though!) but I love that movie and it is sad he didn't get to see how beloved it became! D&D is basically you make this really cool character and plan out how awesome they are going to be and throw them in an improv situation where everything you've built up can be destroyed by the DM's whim lol Yes, I live with just one other person but i ALWAYS have to clean something when I get home, and I hate that it takes so much time away from fun. Like i could forsake the cleaning, but then it makes my mood plummet lol Thanks friend, hope you are feeling better too!
Typed an entire comment and then my laptop decided to glitch and close the video. I will not type the entire goddam thing again ... my day has been long enough ... so just cliff notes: Nobody on a Monday huh? That figures. Dialogue as your strength will make word-of-mouth easier. (People will quote it.) Boston itself is a nice chance to breathe some sea air. Crossing 2 state lines, however, I imagine is a pain. What are state borders like these days? curious as a Canadian. Well wishes to your family.
Ugh i hate when i lose my comments!! Yeah Monday was a weird time, this week it was Tuesday lol I like to think I'll have some quotable lines in this book ;) I'm not sure how it is in Canada but crossing state borders is like nothing happened here lol occasionally some states have tolls, but the states we went through I actually had to ask my partner several times "which state are we in?" because we would blink and not realize we crossed a state line lol
Sometimes the writing is my only sanctuary, you know? Other days I can’t concentrate on anything, but I am kind of impressed at my resilience this time around 😂
"how is this book going to end? Not with a bang but with a whisper" 🤣 I nearly spit out my water lol. I will always love a Bree rant even if you weren't really ranting. You had an awesome month! I'm so happy you've been enjoying your writing and able to squeeze it in when you can! I hope April treats you just as well as March did 💛
Alas friends, we were given an honorable mention! Which still feels nice considering there were over one hundred entries!! 🥰 If you want to read the magazine, check it out here: www.elegantliterature.com/magazine/
