Now Work

I was in a total whilrwind from yesterday morning until the evening when I finally crashed. Emotionally draining and mentally draining day and I didn't get any writing done. Ugh! Today is the eye of the hurricane, so I have Word open and am about to do some major writing today. Well, at least put Chapter 7 to bed.

Life Stuffs

I made progress on my rewrite with Chapter 7. Well, one page down, but at least it's a start. Though today life stuffs are getting in the way. The proof for my husband's book, Billion Dollar Graphics, came back from the printer. The book is graphic-intensive, so it's really important that the colors are correct. Unfortunately, there was banding in the graphics and colors off so the book will be sent back at the printer for them to produce another proof. Right now, I'm helping him fix it, not to mention go through the multitude of household things like bills, etc. And it's almost 11 am. Ugh! So I guess writing will have to come this afternoon.

Getting There

Next draft of Chapter 6 is finished! My husband read it last night and enjoyed it, though had a few edits, so now I will upload it to my CPs. I'm on to revisions of Chapter 7 right now. Yippee! Progress!

Moving Forward

Are you done, yet? Are you there, yet? How much farther Papa Smurf?

Smurf off! (Okay, so maybe he didn't say that but it would've been funny.)

BTW: "Only turkeys are done" as my 4th grade teacher would say. People are "finished" something.

In my case, these revisions are killing me! Maybe because I've had so many people reviewing them and getting excellent comments back, but that means I need to do all said comments (at least the ones that are essential), so ack! I'm stuck on this one chapter on page 68 of 288 pages. Equivalent to a mental back-up on the same scale as Northern VA traffic, where I'm idling at the Lorton exit and I need to be downtown in 20 minutes (those of you from DC know exactly what that means). Ugh!

Maybe part of this mental traffic jam is that I reviewed some of my earlier chapters and found all these things that need to be fixed. I think my later chapters are now stronger. Yes, I should look at this as, "I've gotten better." But I sent those chapters off to an agent, because I needed to get something accomplished this month and after all the edits from CPs and my revisions, I thought it was there.

I'm not there, yet. And it's a hell of a lot farther. And my brain is about to overheat from all this stop and go. And there's some smartasses zipping up the shoulder to pass everyone.

Enough with the blog. I'm going to smurf to work.

A New Week

Yeah, yeah, Monday sucks. However, since I've been doing freelance and working from home, I now see it as a brand new start to finish all the things that I left hanging on Friday. Also, since I am freelance, I tend to work weekends so the weeks blend together for me. Fortunately, I didn't work on Sunday as expected. Yippee!!! Though the next few weeks will probably be crazy for me ... but I'll think about that tomorrow.

Weekend was great and flew way too fast for me to get everything done that I wanted. My writing goal this week is to get through revisions for Chapter 6. It's an emotional scene and the story slows down a bit as my main character comes to terms with what happened to her and the hero admits his feelings for her. I'm trying to be realistic here. I get so angry when something happens to a heroine in a story then "Bam!" she's okay, she's accepted everything without a blink of her eye, and everything contiues on. No emotional journey to acceptance. No freak out fest before finally calming down and saying, "alright, I need to accept this." Sure, she can be strong about it and continue to press on in the story, but even the strongest would have to face the facts at some point and come to terms with it. That's what I'm struggling with right now. How to keep the reader in the story and have no reader think, "it wouldn't happen that way." Wish me luck!

Had lunch with Karmela Johnson, who is a very strong writer and has one book under her belt with another soon to follow (agent is sending out now, so it is only a matter of time!). Thanks to Karmela for sharing her experiences with me. We had met last year at the RWA conference in Reno. A few months ago, she had read over my first few chapters and ripped me a new one about what was wrong with my writing. After I lifted myself out of the ashes of what I had thought was a good 4th draft, I reviewed her comments and realized that I agreed with most of them. So I went back to the ole' drawing board and figured out how to make it work. Karmela told me that she'd written 8 drafts of her previous story before she got it right. Eight drafts from scratch, where she started over each time! Ack! So, good luck to Karmela with her latest and greatest. She definitely worked hard to get there.

Check out the Bookends, LLC post. It has a great blog about shameless self-promotions that authors do. Kind of obsessive ... some of them at least.

Writing and What Not

I am a writer. Right now, I mostly do marketing copywriting and graphic design ... but my hope, my goal, is to be a published fiction writer. Writing has been the only constant thing that I liked to do in my life since I was a child. And, right now, I want to make a profession out of creating stories and worlds. It's hard. I won't lie to you. I've read and reread sentences over and over again for hours at a time trying to find the perfect way to say it. Then some days the story flows and everything I write is perfect (until one of my CPs looks at it, but we won't go into that right now). I go through major highs and lows, self-doubt and confidence—a roller coaster ride of emotions—as I soldier on to make my writing better and better. If anything, I hope my blog can inspire others traveling on this long, winding, boulder-ridden road that they're not alone. It'll also be something to which I have to answer. If I do no writing and fall behind on my goals, my blog will reflect my failings. Failure is not an option.

Keep me honest. Keep your own stories going. Words of wisdom and war stories are always welcome. As I get deeper into the publishing world and pushing my writing to the limits, sometimes I need a light to guide me and helping hands to shove me forward.

"Write your own ending" is a line from a song in The Muppet Movie. (Yes, I'm a total dork and geek and I won't even mention my age. And, no, I have no kids. I just always loved this movie.) When I was a kid, I used to listen to the last song on The Muppet Movie album over and over again. Hopefully, I won't get in trouble for quoting from the song but, hey, this if for educational purposes:

"Life's like a movie, write your own ending. Keep believing. Keep pretending."