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.

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.

How Depressing

I finished typing in all of the writing I'd done in the notebook, proving yet again that when I write by hand, I feel incredibly productive and powerful, yet manage to create much less writing than when I compose on the computer. My "Woohoo! I wrote 12 pages today. 12! I totally ROCK!" became "1011 words? Really? That's it?" Not to mention that 1011 words isn't nearly 12 pages when typed and double-spaced. Not even with a big fancy font.

I'm trying to turn it around. "1011 words! That's 1011 more than I had the day before I wrote them!" Or, "Hey! If I wrote 1011 words a day, I'd have my novel done in about 52 more days!"

It's not working.

The bottom line is, I need to write every day. 1011 words or not. I have all kinds of excuses for not doing so that I will not bore cyberspace with right now, but I know what I need to do.

"Progress:"

13,638 / 65,000 (21.0%)

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.