Really, I Should Pack...

But I'm not. Why, you ask?

Because in order to pack, there's Mt. Laundry to climb and conquer, the girls' fundraiser to tally and prepare for turn-in, and a spreadsheet of activities/school pick-ups/day care arrangements to make for my husband, who will have to be me for an entire week and has no idea how to go about it.

And amidst all of the preparation madness, another agent requested my manuscript today (yay!) but wants an exclusive, which puts me in a bit of a quandary as said manuscript is already firmly entrenched in another agent's pile o' reading. I offered a semi-exclusive, which I hope will provide a good compromise. I hope she responds in time for me to send out the full before I leave for VP.

Oh, and apparently, there's a blog to update.

However, I have organized and packed my little file folder of bus tickets, ticketless plane tickets, ferry schedules and traveling buddy/ roommate phone numbers. So if nothing else, I'll be checking an empty suitcase with a folder full of info. Priorities, yes?

Really, I just don't know what to pack. The best answer I get about the weather is that it's "unpredictable," which means that I pretty much need to pack my entire (paltry, pathetic) wardrobe. I also have a winter clothes problem. I've gained * pounds over the summer, so the few warm items I possess are a little clingy and bring unnecessary attention to my chubby bits. My jeans fit (see post below!) but only because 1/2 my stomach and 1/4 of my butt now flop over the top (compounding aforementioned chubby bits issue). So far, all I've managed to decide is that I: a) need to buy new jeans, or b) need to buy looser tops. What I will most likely choose, given my current poverty of both time and funds, is c) suck it up, suck it in, and smile.

But I digress. Packing will, eventually, happen. By 6:00 a.m. on Saturday, I will have made a final decision about whether or not to take my laptop and/or printed copies of my work (as of now I'm leaning toward both). I will have clothes, shampoo and mascara, which is really all I need.

And all of this stressing about the small stuff? Is to keep my mind from spinning out over the fact that in TWO DAYS I will be at Viable Paradise!

Ready or not, here I come!

C'est Finis! (Again)

Boy, do I need deadlines!

After a very exciting request for the full from my #1 choice of agent, I spent a harrowing weekend resuming the temporarily postponed Book One revision project. I am happy to say that I have cut over 5,000 more words and tightened up the book considerably. I am very pleased with the outcome. While I could nitpick eternally, I don't think I could find too many more nits to pick. Hopefully, I will soon have an agent who will do that, and, ideally, an editor, too! While I will cheerfully revise upon demand, I am now content that Book One is in top submission form. Away she goes tomorrow afternoon.

And, in other news, I even wrote a few pages on the YA this weekend. I discovered that switching from the revision part of my brain to the creative part was difficult, but not impossible. This is good.

Now that this project is finished, I hope to switch permanently to the creative part. Viable Paradise approaches (exciting! terrifying!) and I'd like to speed the YA along now that one of my characters has popped on-scene a little earlier than planned to try to convince my rat of his destiny. I must be careful not to allow the characters too much freedom in writing their own story, although I did appreciate the help. Otherwise, I may not have had anything for writing group.

Tomorrow, after an early morning commute, fifteen diet cokes, and four classes of remedial Freshman Comp, I will think about goals and deadlines. But for now, I'm going to babysit the printer and pray it doesn't run out of ink before my ream-of-paper long book prints.

Then, I'm going to pass out.

Shouting into the Void

For whatever reason, today ended up becoming my annual Query Day. With only a few breaks and a lunch, I researched and narrowed a list of 89 literary agents who accept e-mail queries, and queried the 15 who accept fantasy.

I discovered that e-mail queries are much more time-consuming. Chugging them out a rate of about two per hour is really discouraging. Even worse, the rejections started coming in before I'd even finished the list. That was fun.

On the upside, I saved so much postage! I didn't have to send the query or waste money and time on SASEs. Not to mention the agony of waiting.

An interesting development: one agent sent me a very nice rejection, and asked to see my YA, even after I replied that it was unfinished. So I got a little two-for-one. I really liked the agent, too, so hopefully her response to my YA synopsis and pages will be positive.

Now that I've got a raging backache, I guess I'll quit procrastinating and get back to polishing Book One. I worked through it some more the other day, and so far, I haven't wanted to change much. It's definitely ready to send off to anyone requesting the full. The story is solid, the writing is solid; all I'm doing is picking at words, and I could do that forever. I am about to officially rename this process "nit-picking" and declare Book One done.

A Long Dry Spell....

Procrastination is an ugly thing.

A blank brain is uglier. Not only have I not had the time to write/ revise; even if I had the time, I don't have the brain. Until this morning, when I channeled a completely random scene from the sequel to Book One (which shall henceforth be known in blogland as Book Two), I literally haven't had a thought about my writing.

Hmmm.

I think this is all J.K. Rowling's fault, actually. Had Deathly Hallows not been so all-consuming and freakin' brilliant, I might have gotten a lot more done. Oh well.

Time to recommit. Happily, the scene I downloaded from the mothership this morning solves a longstanding plot problem that led me to put that book away last winter. Unhappily, I have too many irons in my writing fires to go back and spend any length of time on Book Two. After all, I've got polishing of Book One to finish (although I'm convinced that I'm through the worst of it) and characters to Get Out of Danger in the YA. I'll make it a goal to jot down that scene tomorrow, then onward with the other projects.

On the business side of things, I've started officially sending off my almost-contest-winning short story. It hasn't come back yet, but if it does, I intend to make it my publishing ping-pong game of the summer, slamming it back over the net until I score. Wish me luck.

Done

There. First three chapters, all polished. I am very happy with them. I've managed to cut about 2,000 words as well, which is lovely. On the last read-through this morning, I didn't even miss them.

YA chapter has some glitches, according to writing group. It's awfully tricky when a handful of unnamed boys beat up another boy-- lots of pronoun issues. But I will tackle that later. Overall, the beating up was well-received, and the story moved along nicely.

For the two hours that remain before it's time to get the kids from school, I'm going to plug on through my polishing of the rest of Book One, which doesn't have as much to change from Chapter Four on.

At some point, writing became less of a hobby and more of a priority for me. I love that.

Even if it does feel a little too much like work.

Starting to Feel Like Work....

I have been a good little writer bunny the past few days. I worked for hours on Thursday and Friday, and I've almost got the first three chapters all polished and shiny. As they seem to be the worst of the first ten, I'm feeling much better about Book One as a whole. I also solved a plot issue that's been nagging me. Reading the book again is going well overall; as it goes on it gets better, and I absolutely love my ending. If only I could send the last 300 pages to the agents....

Today, I got up early to shift gears and work on the YA, which was really difficult at first, but I think I've got a good chapter going after all. I did start this a couple of weeks ago, but I had the characters taking baths, which didn't really work in terms of story or plausability (how does a girl posing as a street boy go into the public baths unnoticed? Answer: she doesn't). I have a fondness for baths in general, but every time I write them, they get cut (see Book One). I imagine this is why Aragorn only cleans up twice during the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy. I bet Tolkien wrote lots of dips in the Anduin and such, but they just didn't make the final cut. Too many words.

Instead, I beat up my characters. That worked much better.

Today's progress: a nice 1986 words. That's 25.5% done. And I'm not even late for Writing Group!

16,570 / 65,000 (25.5%)

Getting All the Suck Out

So. It's been almost a year since I deemed Book One completed forevermore, amen. Then, I revised Chapter One.

But the rest was great, right?

Wrong.

I revised up through the end of Chapter Five in my hard copy yesterday, and discovered that distance is a very good thing. Now I can see all of the unpolished bits, the improbable plotting, the occasional laugh-out-loud bad dialogue that I missed during the course of Summer Hackandslash 2006.

I realize that I'm being a wee bit hard on myself. Overall, I can see the good parts, too. Of course, they just make all the bad bits look a whole lot worse.

Lesson for the day? It is a very good thing to go back and look again. That's why it's called re-vision, folks.

And hey, I'm cutting more words! Woohoo!

Hey, Look! I'm a Writer!

What an amazing week! On June 29th I left for Writer's Weekend in Seattle, a wonderful conference that provides an opportunity for writers to network and learn about the craft of writing and the business of publishing. My Master's Class with agent Nephele Tempest and four other talented writers was incredible. The writing and feedback were excellent! I came away not only with some great ideas to improve the first five pages of my draft, but also feeling lucky to have had the opportunity to read the first pages of some amazing stories. Ray Rhamey's flash editing workshop was also excellent. I now understand the importance of those first two pages, and will definitely take another look at my own to see if they compel the reader to read on.

Because this year's conference was smaller, I was able to spend some quality time outside of the workshops meeting and talking with Nephele Tempest and Mary Louise Schwartz, who are incredibly hard-working agents and wonderful people. I was also happy to spend more time chatting with Karen Junker and her husband, who are the unsung heroes who put together Writer's Weekend every year despite the stress and financial hardships running such a conference presents. And I loved chatting with all of the other writers in the halls and over breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, an opportunity to connect that doesn't really happen at big conferences.

After an extra day in Seattle, possibly one of the most beautiful cities in the nation, I came home to the news that I've been accepted to this year's Viable Paradise workshop! I could not believe, after all the drama getting my application there, that they would accept me! I am so excited! I am also out of excuses. After this past week's successes, I may have to admit that I can actually write, and that I should spend more time writing to increase my chances of getting published. This is going to seriously interfere with my self-sabotage and procrastination plans.

So now I've got plenty of work to do: I've got chapters to send off to one agent and the entire manuscript to another, so I'm going to spend the next couple of weeks taking another quick pass through the novel. I know all of the major edits have been made, but there are always a few little tweaks I could make here and there. Even if it were published and on the shelf, knowing me, I'd find something to tweak. It's my OCD. I have dirty floors, but I will never be satisfied with my own writing.

I've also got to figure out how to get from California to Martha's Vineyard without arriving completely fall-down exhausted.

But these are all very good problems to have.

Revision

Okay. It's crunch time. Writer's Weekend is approaching, and I have not been a good girl about getting my work done. There have been too many distractions of late, but as I am determined to keep this a blog about my writing and NOT life in general, I won't mention them. I will only say that three weeks is not enough time for a fourth grader to completely write and illustrate a 26 paragraph ABC book about California.

My Book One Chapter One is driving me nutty, so today I decided to revise it again. I ended up taking it apart completely and patching it back together again. I've eliminated some information completely, which I don't really miss so I don't imagine the reader will, either, and I added other little bits of genius that I hope will make better transitions. I moved other bits of information around so completely that I don't even remember where they used to be.

I'm so confused!

In the end, I'm at least a page shorter than the last draft, which was a bit shorter than the previous draft, which means I'm down some words (very, very good, for Book One). I'm also trying, perhaps unsuccessfully, to match the Good Writing to the Mediocre Writing.

The only thing I'm sure of is that this is driving me absolutely, certifiably, nuts.

Whatever. This is the sucky part of writing. I'm going to work on the YA novel tonight just to make myself feel productive.

Shout out: happy birthday, Ginger P.!

Return of the Writing Blog

Step 1: Find blog link.
Step 2: Hack into old blog using all possible old user names and passwords.
Step 3: Discover that Google has taken over blog, and blog must be "reclaimed."
Step 4: Redouble hacking efforts.
Step 5: Reclaim blog.
Step 6: Find Something Interesting to say.

This is why I don't blog. I can't remember where I left my keys, let alone where I left my blog lying around on the Internet.

Since my last post a very long time ago, I've shelved Book Two. Book One has been rejected by everyone who asked for it (although tagged "well-written" by all the nice agents and editors who just "didn't love it enough" to add it to their lists), and I have commenced serious work on the YA Fantasy novel that's been knocking around in my head for a while. The challenge: write a refreshingly short 65,000-75,000K word novel by June 30th (Writer's Weekend).

Ha. Haha.

It's not going to be done by then. But I do have a ripping good start on it. Does that count? And now that the semester's over (yay!) and I'm not fool enough to sign up to teach summer school again this summer (double yay!), I'm writing every day, which is better than I've been able to do the past few months.

New goal? Finish by the end of summer. I like impossible goals, after all.

In the meantime, I will continue to pimp out Book One, which will have the best revised first 30 pages EVER the way things are going.

Progress:

12,627 / 65,000 (19.4%)

A Respectable start, really. This word count doesn't even include the 10 or so handwritten pages I have yet to type. Cool.