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.

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.

August Update: Tough Goodbyes

Okay, bad news first.

Book three is still not done.

The good news is, I did spend most of the month working on it, adding about 20k words and moving it up so that it's very, very near the climax. The rest shouldn't take more than 10k-15k to write. So. I'm aiming to have that done in the next couple of weeks.

The second half of this month, I am really going to try to dive back into Druid Wars and at least get the dev edits done. I'm getting antsy to get that out. I'd really like to start querying this year, if at all possible, and I'm running out of months. They say most agents don't read much in December, even if they don't close, and I'm planning to focus solely on writing something new in November for NaNo. So that leaves August, September, and October to clean it up and query.

I think it'll be easier to shift focus to editing Druid Wars once book three is done. It's taking up a lot of my creative space right now, and I'm just so, so close to done that I can't think about anything else, even though some days I wish I could.

Hard to believe I started this journey seven years ago. It'll probably be eight years, all told, once I get edits and stuff done. Three books, start to finish, in eight years. That's not bad.

I would like to get more consistent though. I'm in a weird limbo where I'm working on old projects, trying to get them where they need to be. Once I settle into a write, edit, query routine, I'll be able to better put a timeline on books. Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe I'll always be all over the place.

 I still need to write one more Sally Prescott novelette this year, too. I got the alien one written (although it needs a really big edit in the middle), and the opening to the forest one. It should only take a month to crank it out. It'll be hard without Camp to help me through it, though. Hell, maybe I'll spend NaNo proper writing two SPs. Or even three! That math checks out. I need 15k more on 2.2 and two more would be 35k.

I'll consider it. I think I'll be pissed at myself if I do that, but it would put me back on track. I really would like to do three a year. Hell, I'd like to do five a year, but that's probably too much. They're supposed to be fun and laid back. I can't be that silly on command that much.

No, I really think I need something brand new. Although I tried that last year, and it didn't work. I love the world and story I created, and I really want to go back and find out what happens, but not for a NaNo.

I have to admit that the last month, I've been teetering on the edge of, do I really want to keep doing this? And I know I doubt myself from time to time and always come back to writing. But I think once I finish writing Mystwatch book three and editing Druid Wars book one, I may take a break for awhile. Maybe I'll do the SP adventure, but I have promised myself the freedom to not work on anything once all my projects for this year are done.

We'll see when I get there. I might not get there this year. I may drag these lingering projects into the next year. I hope not. I'd like to wrap up this "chapter" so to speak.

I want to switch gears for awhile. Maybe just a month. But I want to buy a new camera and take some pictures. I want to switch mediums and spend my free time photowandering rather than thinking so much about writing and editing. I want to tell stories with light rather than words. Probably not forever. Just for a bit. Until I get tired of it. Until I get antsy again.

I've written consistently for the last three and a half years (or at least written a writing blog once a month since then), so I think it would be okay for me to take some time away from it. I'm strangely not worried about losing momentum or anything. I'm already so behind on all my goals. I'm ready to throw my timeline out the window. If anything, I think a break might help recharge me. Give me some new stories and some new perspectives.

This is all tentative right now. When the time comes, I may not take a break. I may not actually know how to do that, anymore. But I will take pictures, either way. When I finish writing book three, I am going to reward myself with a new camera.

I'm dragging my feet, though. In part because once it's done, that's it. The end of something huge. In part because in my mind, I already know how it ends. I've imagined the final scenes over and over since the very first chapter I wrote. But I owe it to a lot of people--my friends, my brother and sister, my main character, and even myself--to put those images to paper. The end of the end. Diana's closure.

I'll be sad to say goodbye.

But the good news is, I'm already seeing Diana and the rest of the cast of characters through Eden's eyes, so I know it's only "see you later" not "goodbye." I'm not done writing in the MystWatch world. I'm just going away for a little while. I know I can always go back to visit.

Anyway. I digress.

Goodbyes are hard. I've lost a lot of coworkers at the day job the last several months, and that's been really sad. So many of them are off to better places, so in a way, I am jealous that I'm being left behind at this weird job that isn't really editing in the strictest sense. It's hard because I'm not even looking for another job. My plan has always been to work this job until I can make a living with my writing. I'm starting to worry it won't last that long.

Case in point, I just made $50 on a short story. Which, hey, someone wanted to buy one of my stories, paying me for a story that took me two days to write! But that was after sending it out seven times, and all the rest of the stories I've sent out have been rejected (or are in limbo).

It's so hard being a writer. It's demoralizing sometimes. As is the day job sometimes. I don't want to look for something new. But I might have to, out of fear for my job security.

Anyway. Life is chaotic and I have no idea what I'm doing. And I'm not even the one who just had a baby and moved into a new house (my sister), or got a new job and am moving to a new state (my coworker).

This turned into more of a look into my personal life than just my writing life. But sometimes it's hard to pull the two apart.

Anyway. This isn't goodbye for this blog. Not now. Not yet. But if I do finish my projects and decide I need a break, I may take a hiatus from posting here. Or hey, maybe I'll just post pictures. They do say that a picture is worth a thousand words.

I guess we'll see when the time comes.