Well, hello.....

Been awhile.  Let's catch up shall we!

Let's see.  I'm still working on the edits of NaNo '09.  I set it aside for quite awhile but I'm getting back into it I think.  I still have my Zombie story that I really want to finish.  Doesn't look like I'll get to it before this NaNoWriMo though.

Aside from novel length things, I'm going back to my roots!  Short stories!  Lol.  I started one about treasure hunting and one with an interesting twist on zombies.  I'm stuck on zombies a little, aren't I....  Ah well!  :D

I don't have any idea what to do for NaNo this year.  Though I'm not worried because I try not to think to hard about it until October rolls around.

I've been reading as well, of course.  I just finished the Fall of Angels series by Keary Taylor.  It was pretty good.  Now I'm reading The Future of Us by Jay Asher & Carolyn Mackler.  I'm loving it so far.  Next up will be Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver.

And I guess that's it.  What's been up with you??

Update on updates!

I finally got done with my new outline a few days ago.  I like what I've added so far.  I think it will make it a better story.  But there is also SO MANY WORDS I'm going to be taking out.  In fact, I'm going to be taking out the entire first chapter.  It was really good for me to rewrite my outline because I did have a couple chapters that felt really unimportant when I read it on the outline.

Now that we're halfway through Camp Nano though I'm wondering if I should go on with some more edits or start on the story that I wanted to finish during camp.  Both?  I haven't even written the outline for it yet. :/  Perhaps next month?  Or next camp even.

Anyway, I just wanted to update here.  So there it is.  :)  See you guys later.

Cleaning out the Story Stash

I think I'm the type of person that feels like I have to be done with one story in order to do another one.  I never liked being halfway done with one story then get an idea for another to be tempted to start on.  I don't even get good ideas while I'm working on another one.  I'm pretty sure a lot of my problem is just not finishing half the time anyways since I have about a hundred unfinished projects...  But moving on.

So I heard that March is 'National Novel Editing Month', 50 hours of editing this month, (not in affiliation with NaNoWriMo to my knowledge) and I thought 'Great!  This is just what I need to get moving again.'  Maybe if I feel like I've cleared the slate of one mostly unfinished project then I can get my creative flood gates open again.  Even if I don't make it to 50 hours I'll at least have made progress on my book.

I've just felt blocked lately.  I don't know if it's just that a lots been going on lately that I just can't put enough mental effort into my writing like I want or what.  So I think this will be a good start, just fixing what I already have.  And it's been going slow but steady.  I want to do an outline of what I have now, add in notes of what I want to change, then officially make those changes.  Right now I'm in the last leg of the outline.  It shouldn't be long now before I start adding note then actually start tearing the story up and putting it back together!

Just a Query Letter. Not scary at all.... Right?

Earlier this week I finished editing my NaNo novel from 2009. (Yay!) I'm excited. Quite. But with the excitement comes apprehension. I've crossed an editing threshold into a new one, the Query Zone. (Oooh...) I've only heard about the Query Zone, never been there myself, but I've heard things. Word searching, hair pulling, almost as bad as writing the book itself! It's the making of the dreaded query letter! (Gasp!)

Ah, the query letter. Such a little piece of paper with so much importance. The letter that sells your book. The letter that will show an agent why your book is going to be perfect for them. The letter that's suppose to make an agent fall so deeply in love with your book that they come beg you to let them represent you. No pressure, right?

Well, yeah, there's a little pressure. This is new territory for me so I'm going to need some help. I know close to nothing about a query letter except for what I researched a little. So I ask you, any suggestions? Have you written a query letter before? Where did you research, a website or a book?

Well, my novel is still no where near ready for being queried so I'll try not to stress about it for now. I'll just sit in the holding area between editing and querying and wait my turn. I believe that place is called revision, right?

PS- Don't forget about the Blog-iversary Giveaway!

Week of the Writer: Day 3

You know what? I am really proud of myself. The only thing that I didn't get around to today was my shorts. I did laundry, recruited dad to help move something around in preparation for my desk, edited a chapter, and went to Writer's Group. I even went to the gym and washed my hair. By golly, I've been, what's that word... productive. Wow, I don't see that word too often. Looks funny.

Anyways, I don't have any of my shorts to share with you but I do have a question. Remember back on my list of things to do this week when I mentioned a facebook fanpage? What do you think about that? I've been tossing the idea back and forth in my head. It would be more for me as an author rather than a blogger, though I'll put links to blog posts on there too. Let's put this into a pros and cons list.

Pros



• Access to more people (A lot of people have facebook though I know a few who don't)


• Easier to share (If I'm not wrong there's a button on groups or fanpages that you can 'suggest' it for a friend)



Cons





• Copyright issues? (Would it be easy for someone to take stuff I write off of facebook? I guess that's really anywhere.)



What do you think? The pros out weigh the cons? I think I might go for it. Let me know what you think.

Week of the Writer: Day 1

Actually, I did the first thing that anyone does when they have a week of doing nothing ahead of them. I got lazy.

Yeah, I didn't do much today and didn't even leave the house except to get the paper and the mail. I've been reading. Still working on Graceling. I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out. It's getting into some really exciting stuff.

I'm also taking a break on editing my 'Nano 09' novel. I wanted to see if I could finish it this week and it turns out that I have the same number of chapters left as number of days off. I figure I'll try to do atleast one chapter a day and that will get done. Whoo!

So lets see, things left on the agenda for today:
Read more
Finish editing a chapter
Wash and put away laundry

Turns out if you want to put a desk in your room you have to have somewhere to put it. Gees. The fine print of life. Well, back to work. I'm realizing that this wasn't exactly a thrilling day... The posts will get more exciting! Lol. If you really want to know what my day was like than go play QWOP. (Caution: It's very frustrating and addicting.) Ha! I'll see you tomorrow. :)