I finally took my break after finishing writing book three. And of course by "break" I mean I didn't get my 15k words written.
I did stay busy, though.
I beta read a book for Ashley. I finished up edits for Kevin's book. I did a lot of brainstorming for my National Novel Writing Month story. And, I actually started edits on book three.
It's a very perfunctory edit. I'm tweaking minor things, but mostly I'm writing chapter outlines and adding editing notes for when I have the time and energy to dive deeply into it. Which, considering I can't stop thinking about it, will probably happen sooner rather than later. I'm really excited about it, still. I've figured out a few things I wasn't happy with. I've only made it about two-thirds of the way through at this point, but I will probably still try to juggle it with NaNo.
I've decided to follow my creative energies and have ultimately put off editing Druid Wars for sometime next year.
But, my creative energies come and go unexpectedly lately. My dear friend and colleague Kevin died a week ago. And the aftershocks of that keep hitting me. Mostly I'm devastated that I took so long to edit his book. He never got to finish it. Maybe if I'd turned it around in the two weeks I normally did, he would have.
Despite everyone assuring me to the contrary, I still can't help but have a lot of guilt about that.
And guilt is not great for writing.
Except when it is.
My NaNo project so far has been a lot of me dealing with my grief. Which, if you'll remember, was what the whole MystWatch trilogy was. And I was finally at a point in my journey, losing Mom, where I'd developed a healthy grieving process and moved on, in a way.
And now I'm starting all over.
But I think it'll go better this time. I'm balancing writing it with editing book three, so I have Diana telling me how to grieve properly. It's almost like she's speaking to my new MC through me. We're both going to be okay. It's just kinda funny to me that Diana of all characters is the one helping us through it.
Anyway. Yeah. It's NaNo. I'm writing and participating in events and active on the discussion board. But. I'm behind. Sorta. If I only count the words written toward my new novel, anyway. If I count work I've done on book three, I'm not. What I've realized is my relationship with NaNo has changed. I'm taking full advantage of the energy and other people writing and the events and all that. But at some point, maybe on day two or three, I realized I'm not actually expecting or even really aiming to hit 50k.
I have hit a point in my writing process where I write around 15k every month. I've already written 145k words this year. Back when I used to do the full NaNo experience, that 50k was about the only words I wrote a year. In the fourteen years I've been doing NaNo, I've developed a writing practice. And that's in large part thanks to NaNo, which is why I will always participate and always donate and always support people who want to throw their whole selves into it.
But the likelihood of me ever being a "winner" again is slim. I only need 25k this month to keep my monthly average at 15k for the year. More if I don't write in December, but I have no idea what I'll be up for in December yet, so I'm not making any plans. December is always my planned break month, so typically anything I get done in December is bonus.
So yeah. That's where I'm at this November. I hope I can get around 20k written on this new novel. Maybe more. More would be great. But I also want to get through my first editing pass of book three, and I need to write a Cafe story. That's enough stuff that even if I wrote 50k words this month, they won't all be on this new project.
And I've decided that's okay. NaNo is still a tool that I use. But I have learned, especially over this last year, that I need to follow where my inspiration is right now. I have the freedom to do that. Someday I will get published and have to force myself to work on X project by X deadline. But right now, I can work on what I am most passionate about.
And that varies throughout the month. I'm happier when I have more than one project to juggle each month. Also, writing 15k new words a month, whether in brainstorming, outlining, or actual stories, is extremely do-able for me. It's high enough that I have to push myself through the I-dun-wanna's but also low enough that if I have just a really crummy month, my really good months make up for it. It's also low enough that I can fit in editing and beta reading.
Some of this info would be better suited for the end-of-the-year post, but I wanted to bring it up now, so I don't forget.
That's about all I've got right now, though. Which is more than enough, honestly. I'm mostly just heartbroken about my loss of a friend. The world is worse off without him in it. He was truly one of the good ones.
Monday, November 5, 2018
Tuesday, October 2, 2018
October Update: No Rest for the Wicked
Despite thinking I'd take a break last month, I actually did quite a bit
of stuff. Lots of pictures were taken with my fancy new camera, of
course, but I also managed to find time to do some writing project
stuff.
I finally closed out my query for Tirgearr Publishing after waiting for 120+ days of no response. That was two weeks ago, so I think it's safe to say I'm not going to hear back from them.
Then, a couple days later, I took the next step. The last step, actually.
I submitted the book the DAW. I'd waffled back and forth on that, knowing in a few months all I'll probably get from them is a form rejection. But I decided I didn't care. This was a bucket list checkbox. I put together my query and sent my submissions packet their way.
And, strangely, the email I got thanking me for submitting was all I wanted from them. It gave me the fulfillment I needed. I worked hard to get to this point. Everything that first book went through. The writing, the beta readers, the editing, the second round of beta readers, more editing, struggling to write books two and three, more editing, and finally the submission process. I didn't jump in line to get here. I did each step as I laid out in my submission plan, and this submission to DAW was the final step.
It is the end of a journey. I have made it to the top of this mountain. Now, of course, I need to go scale that mountain over there, but I'm going to enjoy the view from this one for a minute.
The next big adventure, now that book three is written, is to start the self-publishing process. But I have to wait three months, at least, during DAW's exclusivity period. I mean, I will probably wait until I hear back from them, as long as its not more than 120 days (because apparently that's my limit for pretty much everywhere), but I already know who I'm going to for covers, and I'll probably get a quote from an editor Rachel recommended. So I'm ready to start the process, when the time comes.
That's the biggest news for the month. The rest of the news isn't all that exciting.
I participated in the 24-hour short story contest. The story I wrote for it isn't very good, but I powered through my doubt and disgust, finished it, edited it, and submitted it. I'm even looking forward to when they announce winners, because I think Amanda and Dianne both have good chances of winning something, if only honorable mention. And it helped me come up with a character and premise I really like that I will probably use to write a longer short story. Or maybe a novel. Hard to say at this point.
I also wrote a Cafe story for October. It's also not the best story I've ever written, but it's mainstream fiction without any fantastical elements, which I am pretty impressed with myself about, since the prompt lent itself to magic. And it had a bully in it, and it was bully awareness month or whatever, so that was timely.
I didn't have much luck with SP, but I did finally find the plot and the steps in the treasure hunt for the current adventure. And found a way to make sure more of the regular characters are in it. The first adventure in the second season is a huge deviation from the rest, but it also meant that one of the main characters only got a few lines at the end. It should be fun next time I sit down with it.
I also started a copy edit for Kevin, brainstormed for NaNo, and toyed with putting together a query for SP. I'm considering maybe floating it by Carina Press. I may change my mind, but I wrote up a very rough draft of a submissions packet. I'll make a decision on that next year.
Overall, I got my 15k words written. Most of those were within the first three days of the month finishing up book three, but in general, I did better in September than I thought I would once I wrote "the end."
This month, I plan to focus on Druid Wars and NaNo prep. I promised my siblings I'd have Ghosts of the Grove ready for them for Christmas, so no more putting off those edits. I've also got to finish up Kevin's edits and beta read for Ashes. I don't anticipate having any time leftover after all that, but if I do, maybe I'll throw a few more words at SP 2.2 I imagine it will be a low word month and a high editing hour month. Which will be fine. If I do manage to write 50k next month, that'll make up for all the months I didn't make it to 15k.
I finally closed out my query for Tirgearr Publishing after waiting for 120+ days of no response. That was two weeks ago, so I think it's safe to say I'm not going to hear back from them.
Then, a couple days later, I took the next step. The last step, actually.
It is the end of a journey. I have made it to the top of this mountain. Now, of course, I need to go scale that mountain over there, but I'm going to enjoy the view from this one for a minute.
The next big adventure, now that book three is written, is to start the self-publishing process. But I have to wait three months, at least, during DAW's exclusivity period. I mean, I will probably wait until I hear back from them, as long as its not more than 120 days (because apparently that's my limit for pretty much everywhere), but I already know who I'm going to for covers, and I'll probably get a quote from an editor Rachel recommended. So I'm ready to start the process, when the time comes.
That's the biggest news for the month. The rest of the news isn't all that exciting.
I participated in the 24-hour short story contest. The story I wrote for it isn't very good, but I powered through my doubt and disgust, finished it, edited it, and submitted it. I'm even looking forward to when they announce winners, because I think Amanda and Dianne both have good chances of winning something, if only honorable mention. And it helped me come up with a character and premise I really like that I will probably use to write a longer short story. Or maybe a novel. Hard to say at this point.
I also wrote a Cafe story for October. It's also not the best story I've ever written, but it's mainstream fiction without any fantastical elements, which I am pretty impressed with myself about, since the prompt lent itself to magic. And it had a bully in it, and it was bully awareness month or whatever, so that was timely.
I didn't have much luck with SP, but I did finally find the plot and the steps in the treasure hunt for the current adventure. And found a way to make sure more of the regular characters are in it. The first adventure in the second season is a huge deviation from the rest, but it also meant that one of the main characters only got a few lines at the end. It should be fun next time I sit down with it.
I also started a copy edit for Kevin, brainstormed for NaNo, and toyed with putting together a query for SP. I'm considering maybe floating it by Carina Press. I may change my mind, but I wrote up a very rough draft of a submissions packet. I'll make a decision on that next year.
Overall, I got my 15k words written. Most of those were within the first three days of the month finishing up book three, but in general, I did better in September than I thought I would once I wrote "the end."
This month, I plan to focus on Druid Wars and NaNo prep. I promised my siblings I'd have Ghosts of the Grove ready for them for Christmas, so no more putting off those edits. I've also got to finish up Kevin's edits and beta read for Ashes. I don't anticipate having any time leftover after all that, but if I do, maybe I'll throw a few more words at SP 2.2 I imagine it will be a low word month and a high editing hour month. Which will be fine. If I do manage to write 50k next month, that'll make up for all the months I didn't make it to 15k.
Tuesday, September 4, 2018
September Update: Done and Done
BOOK THREE IS DONE!
This is not a drill. I wrote through the climax, through the immediate sad aftermath (a phrase I coined when trying to explain the next scene, and Jack said that's officially what it should be called, haha), and all the resolutions. I found an even better last line than I had before. And I wrote THE END.
And the last line is really great. I wrote it after the climax, then had to move it. It's a great line to really hit it home that this is the heroine's journey story arc.
ANYway. Finally. After months of thinking I'd be able to wrap it up. Months of "okay, just one more month, another 15k words." It finally wrapped up at about 142,500 words, a little before noon on Labor Day. A lot of those words are awful and redundant. But. All of the sand is in the sandbox, now. My next step is to shape that sand into a well-constructed sand castle. It's going to take time, patience, persistence, and perseverance. And probably a lot of blood, sweat and tears. But these days, I do really enjoy the editing process as much as, if not more than, the actual writing.
So, while the book is "done," it's not actually done, done. They never are. I'm already thinking about scenes that need to be moved and things I need to add. It's going to be a long book, don't get me wrong. But I'm hopeful that in edits, I'll be able to get it back down around 130k-135k. But as the last book in a trilogy, I think it's acceptable to be longer than the others. I've got book one down to 119k. Book two I think is around 125k. So, yeah. Not more than 135k, I think. I hope.
I thought it might be fun to share some stats, real quick, to show how hard I worked to wrap this book up by this past weekend. I wrote 8k words over the three-day weekend. I wrote over 15k words in a week. And I wrote 15k total in August, and that was after writing about 4k in the first week, then barely writing until the last four days of the month.
It was really important to me to wrap it up over the weekend. The main reason is because August 31 is the anniversary of my mom's passing. She's been gone eight years, now. And as I've been writing this trilogy, I've realized that it parallels my journey through dealing with grief. I realized as I neared the end of book three, planning Diana's resolution, that all of these books were about dealing with the loss of my mom. I was all like "and in the end, Diana will let go of her anger and find healthy ways to grieve those she's lost and...oh. Right." It me. So yeah. Writing "the end" the weekend of that anniversary had a lot of synergy. Diana can finally be happy. And so can I. And I have been.
I also started writing this crazy trilogy in August seven years ago, so wrapping it up in August was also important. Especially since I wasn't able to finish it during Camp NaNo.
Anyway. TL;DR: book three is done and I'm happy.
And I ordered my camera. I'll get it this weekend. I'm so excited.
We'll see what the next month or so brings. It may bring me diving full speed into edits of book three, I may jump into SP, or I may try to write a Cafe story or two. I may do absolutely nothing for a month or two. I'm kind kind of just listening to myself to see what I'm up for. I'm strangely not as tired as I thought I'd be after all that. I'm more invigorated than anything. It's weird.
Also, in the last month, I've decided to table querying Druid Wars until next year. I may still work on edits for it before the year is out, but I won't plan on querying until spring of next year. In hindsight, all those rejections really did a number on me, so I'm not in a hurry to put myself out there again. It probably means burning the SFFpit like I got, but at this point, I don't care. I am not in a place where I have the energy to query and receive rejections, let alone deal with an acceptance if I happened to get one.
So yeah. My goal this month is to take it easy and work on those things I feel like working on. I might try to hit my 15k words by writing a Cafe story or throwing a few words on various projects, but if I fall short, it's fine. Next month, I will try to work on edits on Druid Wars before diving into crazy writing in November.
I have no idea what I'm writing for NaNo. And I'd like to keep it that way until a few days before it starts.
I have no idea what I'm doing this month as far as writing. I don't even know if I'll have anything worthwhile to update about next month, so it may be quiet here for a bit.
All I know is that I'll be taking some pictures for awhile.
This is not a drill. I wrote through the climax, through the immediate sad aftermath (a phrase I coined when trying to explain the next scene, and Jack said that's officially what it should be called, haha), and all the resolutions. I found an even better last line than I had before. And I wrote THE END.
And the last line is really great. I wrote it after the climax, then had to move it. It's a great line to really hit it home that this is the heroine's journey story arc.
ANYway. Finally. After months of thinking I'd be able to wrap it up. Months of "okay, just one more month, another 15k words." It finally wrapped up at about 142,500 words, a little before noon on Labor Day. A lot of those words are awful and redundant. But. All of the sand is in the sandbox, now. My next step is to shape that sand into a well-constructed sand castle. It's going to take time, patience, persistence, and perseverance. And probably a lot of blood, sweat and tears. But these days, I do really enjoy the editing process as much as, if not more than, the actual writing.
So, while the book is "done," it's not actually done, done. They never are. I'm already thinking about scenes that need to be moved and things I need to add. It's going to be a long book, don't get me wrong. But I'm hopeful that in edits, I'll be able to get it back down around 130k-135k. But as the last book in a trilogy, I think it's acceptable to be longer than the others. I've got book one down to 119k. Book two I think is around 125k. So, yeah. Not more than 135k, I think. I hope.
I thought it might be fun to share some stats, real quick, to show how hard I worked to wrap this book up by this past weekend. I wrote 8k words over the three-day weekend. I wrote over 15k words in a week. And I wrote 15k total in August, and that was after writing about 4k in the first week, then barely writing until the last four days of the month.
It was really important to me to wrap it up over the weekend. The main reason is because August 31 is the anniversary of my mom's passing. She's been gone eight years, now. And as I've been writing this trilogy, I've realized that it parallels my journey through dealing with grief. I realized as I neared the end of book three, planning Diana's resolution, that all of these books were about dealing with the loss of my mom. I was all like "and in the end, Diana will let go of her anger and find healthy ways to grieve those she's lost and...oh. Right." It me. So yeah. Writing "the end" the weekend of that anniversary had a lot of synergy. Diana can finally be happy. And so can I. And I have been.
I also started writing this crazy trilogy in August seven years ago, so wrapping it up in August was also important. Especially since I wasn't able to finish it during Camp NaNo.
Anyway. TL;DR: book three is done and I'm happy.
And I ordered my camera. I'll get it this weekend. I'm so excited.
We'll see what the next month or so brings. It may bring me diving full speed into edits of book three, I may jump into SP, or I may try to write a Cafe story or two. I may do absolutely nothing for a month or two. I'm kind kind of just listening to myself to see what I'm up for. I'm strangely not as tired as I thought I'd be after all that. I'm more invigorated than anything. It's weird.
Also, in the last month, I've decided to table querying Druid Wars until next year. I may still work on edits for it before the year is out, but I won't plan on querying until spring of next year. In hindsight, all those rejections really did a number on me, so I'm not in a hurry to put myself out there again. It probably means burning the SFFpit like I got, but at this point, I don't care. I am not in a place where I have the energy to query and receive rejections, let alone deal with an acceptance if I happened to get one.
So yeah. My goal this month is to take it easy and work on those things I feel like working on. I might try to hit my 15k words by writing a Cafe story or throwing a few words on various projects, but if I fall short, it's fine. Next month, I will try to work on edits on Druid Wars before diving into crazy writing in November.
I have no idea what I'm writing for NaNo. And I'd like to keep it that way until a few days before it starts.
I have no idea what I'm doing this month as far as writing. I don't even know if I'll have anything worthwhile to update about next month, so it may be quiet here for a bit.
All I know is that I'll be taking some pictures for awhile.
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