Category: The Next Step

Decisions, Decisions

By

On October 30, 2013

In Just Keep Writing, Organizing, The Next Step

I have about 24 hours to decide if I want to do NaNo. I do have a new project that I’m mostly ready to start, provided I can drum up the second half of the outline I’ve been putting off for weeks. It’s been awhile since I’ve worn my writing hat – when did I finish the first draft of The Unseeing, July? June? Since then I’ve been alternating between edit mode and query mode.

It’s hard to switch hats sometimes.

So, because I’m a write-out-loud-to-solve-my-dilemmas kind of girl, here’s my pros and cons list.

Pros:

  • Will force me back into a regular writing habit. I tend to start and stop projects when I don’t have deadlines.
  • Something to focus on. November is a hard month for me, mentally and physically. I hate the change to winter.
  • I miss my characters. I want to finish their story.

Cons:

  • I have to drag myself kicking and screaming through NaNo. I’m an edit-as-I-write person and that will never change. It can take me hours to make my daily quota.
  • Next week I leave for Montreal for four days, for a much-needed girls’ weekend. There is 0% chance any writing will get done, which puts me at a huge deficit early on.
  • November is also a month I want to focus on querying, since I imagine the slush piles grow tenfold in December with NaNo winners submitting their unedited first drafts everywhere. This could be my last chance to query until the new year. Or is there a polite way of saying “this is not a NaNo 2013 novel” in my query? I’m only half-joking. Is there?
  • I’m not sure I want to rush through this book so quickly! It’s the last of the series and writing half of it in a single month somehow feels like I’m cheating myself out of a slow, sweet goodbye.

Yep, when I write it out, it looks like the answer’s pretty clear. Even if the only con was that last point, it’s still enough for me to say no thanks to this year. Or is there such thing as NaNo-Lite? Maybe I’ll make it a goal to start writing November 1, and see how far I get without pushing myself. In the meantime, tomorrow’s task is to finish my outline, and set up the myriad spreadsheets I use when I write to track everything under the sun – word count, time spent writing, location and all the other vectors I love to analyze when I’m finished.

Good luck, NaNoWriMo participants! I’m over here, cheering you on from the sidelines.

Deep Breaths

By

On March 10, 2013

In The Next Step, The Road to Publication

I’m done my last round of edits on The Unravelling. It’s time to send it out into the wide world and see what becomes of it.

Maybe I need a paper bag to breathe into.

One of my latest goals was to have at least one query sent by the end of the month. Well that’s likely going to be achieved tomorrow (I don’t actually remember what the other goals were – I should probably go check those). At that point I expect to have an absolute crisis of confidence and spend the next few days in my pajamas until I’m over it.

The good news: I have a query letter I’ve worked my ass off on and a nice long list of agents I’d like to send it to. And today a friend sent me the nicest message about how much she liked the draft I sent her. That’s a great boost to start the query process, I think!

And being done with editing means that I can go back to writing, which is extra exciting! I’m still figuring out my point-of-view problems so I might take a week or two to ponder those some more/watch lots of Netflix.

Exclamation points!

And Away She Goes

By

On January 18, 2013

In Big Ideas, Just Keep Writing, Planning for the Future, The Next Step

I sent off my first query last night, after the eleventy-first revision. I think I like it. Just to be 110% sure, though, I sent it to the Query Shark. Hopefully I’ll be chosen for evisceration. I’ve also decided this fulfills my goal to send out my first letter by the end of January and my new plan, after some helpful advice I read on another blog (Query Quagmire I think?) is to wait until March-ish to start querying in earnest, since apparently many, many people who are either post-NaNo or fulfilling New Year’s resolutions are also querying right now. I’d rather wait until things settle down a bit and there aren’t so many fish in the water.

In the meantime, I was rudely awoken at an ungodly hour this morning (okay, 7:00, but I’m a special little princess who likes her beauty sleep) with a bit of an idea to add to The Unseeing. In adding it to my outline, I gave the rest of it a quick skim and got excited all over again to begin writing. There’s so much going on! I can definitely see myself starting writing for real this weekend, if not tonight.

I’ve also decided I deserve to have my own writing space. Right now, my “office” is the couch in the basement rec room, a few feet away from our only TV, and the majority of the kids’ toys. So if I want to work, I have to ensure that the kids aren’t around (really, only when they’re sleeping) and that my extremely understanding husband doesn’t want to watch TV. It’s also cold as hell down there and kind of dark because there aren’t any windows. At first I wanted to build a nice loft office above the garage, but that doesn’t look feasible based on the way the garage was constructed. So now I think I want one of these: minus the kitchen and trailer, but definitely with the loft. There’s a nice corner in my backyard where I think it would fit perfectly, and I bet I could build one on the cheap with salvaged materials. It would make a nice spring project, because I don’t have enough on my plate already…

It’s nice to have things to look forward to.

The Query, The Quandary

By

On January 11, 2013

In Learning, The Next Step, Things That Make You Weep For Your Sanity, Writer's Low

And I thought editing was hard. Writing a query letter, specifically the part of the query that describes the story, is enough to make me smash my head against the screen. I did that last night, actually. Twice. Thankfully my MacBook’s a sturdy machine.

There’s a lot of great resources out there to help writers along the way, but a lot of it’s conflicting. Loglines! No loglines! Reveal the ending! Don’t reveal the ending! Include a bio! Don’t include a bio!

And then there are helpful suggestions like my dad’s for a letter: “Yo bro’….what’s up with THIS??”

Love you, dad, but just no.

Slowly, I’m getting there, but it’s agonizing. I’ve re-written the damn thing ten times and probably have another ten ahead of me before I’ll be satisfied with it. The biggest problem right now, I think, is that I’m never going to know which one is best. And a lot rides on that letter, you know?

Back to head smashing.

NaNotQuiteANovel

By

On October 31, 2012

In Organizing, Planning for the Future, The Next Step

I already have a novel. I don’t want to write my next one in a month because I don’t think it will turn out as well as I want it to. So I’m giving myself a different sort of goal for November, albeit related to novels and writing.

By the end of the month, I want to have 30 writing-related actions completed. They may not all be writing. It could be working on an outline, writing a query letter, researching agents, editing my current work, and I’m even going to include imaginative story-building in there although it’s a bit of a cheat because most of my waking hours are consumed by my imagination anyway. But on days where I’m on a plane for 7 hours, that might be all I can accomplish. And I’m hoping that some days I can do two or three different tasks so I can take a break here and there.

Once a week or so I’ll post what I’ve done, for accountability’s sake, and hopefully by the end of the month I’ll have a nice list of accomplishments, ’cause I’m sure doing squat right now. Time to get back on the horse, and there’s nothing better for that than a NaNo challenge. And good luck to everyone that’s participating this month!

Archives

Categories