Track 5: "Autumn Outfit"

• IDEA: Hm… guess I’ll start with the 'almost-wedding' details. ahem here goes:

• the proposal: it happened in the fall, in an apple orchard. I mean, duh—it couldn’t have happened any other way, and it was the cutest.

• the dress: was gorgeous—an off-the-shoulder A-line gown, embroidered with lace—and these adorable puff bell sleeves, because obviously they were a must.

• as for the ring: white gold band, long oval-cut (thank God, because pear is blehhhhh—it’s overused and deplorable) set with slanting rows of glittering tiny round diamonds

• venue: a cute chapel next to a quiet river. one of those locations you’d never find in a magazine, the kind you just stumble upon by accident and instantly fall in love with and know, you know?

What else? Oh yes, and the bride who didn’t make it down the aisle. That would be me 🙋🏽‍♀️.

– – –

• KIDDING. Totally kidding.

(although I was not kidding about loving bell sleeves and hating pear-cut. (🤮)).

The idea for “Autumn Outfit” truly stemmed from thinking about those first few years after graduation. You know what I mean: soon as you log on IG, someone’s getting engaged, getting married, or having a baby. You see the potential for so many fairytales to unfold, and many of them do. But a few… fall to the wayside. I wanted to write about the ones that fall. And the lost, dazed feeling they get when they land.

• WRITING PROCESS: Dominooooooo. (which comes as a surprise to absolutely no one lol)

“The top toggle button on her trench coat…” just kept snagging in my brain. I couldn’t let it go. 

I knew I’d wanted to break down her (the character in my head) entire outfit. And I’d had a perfect picture of her in my mind’s eye: the coffee shop she was in, the walk she was taking in the town square, with holiday string lights glittering all around her (because Christmas was coming) I just… wasn’t sure how all of this was going to unfold poetically lol. So I just wrote the first line down and waited to see what would happen next. And well... you know the rest 😉.

– – –

I think when I wrote the ending, it surprised me at first; I wasn’t expecting those words to come out, to end it with the loss of the ring. (Or at least not in such a matter-of-fact way? 🫠😆) So whenever that specific domino fell and I looked  down and read back what I’d written, it was a bit of a gut punch to my inner lover girl—made me start hoping that that was one of the parts of the book that no one would cry at 😂 . 

You’d be surprised at the amount of times an author actually shocks themselves while writing. The words honestly do what they want, we’re just the pens behind them 🤷🏽‍♀️.

• MY FAVORITE LINES: 

• just one:

  • “Whether they were memories she longed to forget or memories she longed to never forget, she didn’t honestly know, but she’d done her best to figure it out since his absence.” This is literally the beginning of a narrator’s monologue in one of those extremely predictable Christmas movies that would be named Christmas in Sunshine Patch or something. Which, rest assured, I hate those movies, but in this one particular instance… I will allow those vibes.

    
    

• AFTERMATH: Another work that ended in relief 🤪. The main thing I’d wanted was to get her outfit breakdown perfect, exactly the way I’d seen it broken down in my mind—so much so that I'd almost screwed up the natural order of the dominos by overthinking it and nearly changing everything around whenever I was done. 

• Which btw, here’s my main piece of advice to writers—overthinking will literally kill your creation. Think as little as possible, honestly. Get outta your own way; it’s so much more fun (and loads easier—please just let your brain work and tell you what it wants first lol work out the kinks later).

Ladies and gentlemen—I believe that’s it for the IASwaPG tracks 💜. Hope my shenanigans thus far have been nothing short of (kind of) entertaining and (somewhat) insightful 😘.

BUT ☝🏼… 

this meanssssss… 🥁

BTS: Vol. I 🤍: your time is arriving—

 checks watch

✨ shortly ✨

I shall see you all very soon 💓.

xoxo 💋

IG: @joyyy_reads ✨