All About Accountability

So last week I had some really lofty goals. The biggest reason I started writing the blog is that I needed accountability so I am reporting on my progress. I am being completely honest too--

Get another draft of my query ready

Yes I did. I posted it at AW and got feedback. And I also tried a worksheet that I found at Beth Revis's blog about creating a pitch. She adapted it from a post by edittorent. This actually was very helpful. I may post it later this week. I want to sit on it and think about it for awhile.

Work on my draft of my synopsis

I looked at this. Read it once, and left it completely alone. My biggest thing is I don't want to change some names that I know I need to change. The good guy society is Damia, and the bad guy society is Ares. My problem is that my two protagonists names are Dane and Isis. Much too similar Damia/Dane, and Ares/Isis. And I like the names too much to change the character names, but my societies have those names! Agh! I know I need to change it, but it is so hard.

Write a detailed synopsis for my trilogy

I totally did this and loved it. It is only a rough draft, but it got me completely excited about my series again. The characters still have so much opportunity to grow. The next two books are going to rock, but I'm not going to write them until I sell the first. Partly because I'm still super excited about twenty years later.

Design and order business cards for the Writer's Conference

So this didn't even happen. Not at all.

Keep working on 20 Years Later (which will soon have a new title, since I have to slightly change one premise of the book--thanks to feedback from writers group)

Well I did add a 1000 words, but I didn't go back and fix what I needed to fix. And I only worked on it one day--shame, shame on me.

Do Third draft of First Novel and Name it

I got some great ideas, and started my read through. But I didn't make significant changes yet. Not that I'm not going to. I got some great advice from the AW forum, and it's going to make me look at this draft a lot more closely.

Start blogging more regularly (This may or may not happen)

Obviously this did not happen. But it shall. In my defense I did get a lot of work done this week.

So I've been thinking a lot about balance this week. Finding the balance between being a mom, working from home and writing a novel. And I've decided I don't get as much done as I could, because I'm out of balance. I need to assign specific tasks to specific times and stick to them.

Goals for this week:

Reestablish a working writing versus novel writing schedule.

Another Draft of My Query

Third Revision of My Novel

Give My Novel a Real Title

Order the business cards (I'm running out of time on these)

Add 3000 words to Twenty Years later. That should be another chapter.


So how do you find the balance in your writing vs your normal life?

I'm Back!

So last weekend I went on vacation. I was silent for two weeks because I was getting ready for the vacation and then I was on the vacation. I told my husband I wouldn't work/write while on vacation this time. And so I didn't. I didn't get on and surf the Internet, or anything. I had over 500 blogs posts to read and catch up on, but I did it today. Finally! As an aside it was a great trip to Florida to see family and spend a day at Disneyworld. My three kiddos loved it.

Honestly I haven't worked on anything since then. But I'm ready to go.

My writer's group gave positive feedback to my first chapter of my new book. I'm super excited about it. It's got so much potential. I just hope that I can carry the story through. The tension level is going to be high, high, high through most of the novel. I like it so much that I almost want to sell this before my other novel, but it's not done yet.

However, I still like my first novel, and don't want to abandon it or the series. I got the best phone call today. I sent out my second draft to a few readers, and I hadn't heard anything back from them yet. I sat next to one today at church, and almost asked, and then didn't. I decided that she didn't like it, and so I didn't want to make her uncomfortable about it--even though I don't mind a negative reaction (well not much), since I need feedback.

Then I got a phone call. She called just to let me know she was half way through and didn't want to put it down to go make dinner for her family! She wanted to finish it. Well that totally made my day!

So goals this week:

Get another draft of my query ready

Work on my draft of my synopsis

Write a detailed synopsis for my trilogy

Design and order business cards for the Writer's Conference

Keep working on 20 Years Later (which will soon have a new title, since I have to slightly change one premise of the book--thanks to feedback from writers group)

Do Third draft of First Novel and Name it

Start blogging more regularly (This may or may not happen)

Well I think that's all pretty ambitious. We'll see what happens!

A New Novel

So last week I finished up my second draft, and sent it off to a new batch of beta readers. And I've temporarily decided to abandon my WS manuscript. Something just wasn't flowing. It may be because I'm not in the mood to write my romance novel. I will one day though.

Instead, I'm very excited and pleased to announce that I began a new novel. This ideas has been simmering in the back of my head since December. Funnily enough it started as a dream. One of those really vivid dreams. And I wrote down the impressions--the scene I had was awesome, but and this was a big but. I didn't know what to do with it. I didn't know where it took place or what would happen as a result.

Until I was editing the first draft of the current novel, and watching a documentary on aliens with my father-in-law. Now I can tell you with unwavering certainty that my novel does not involve aliens. But something in the documentary triggered a whole bunch of what if questions, which I promptly wrote down. And bam it hit me that the two scenarios match up perfectly.

I've got another pretty cool science fiction idea boiling in the background as well. Totally cool, and possibly creepy--which is weird to me since I don't do creepy. This was also a dream, but I woke up with a lot of questions about why, how and the results.

I don't want to go into too much detail since I love these ideas so very, very much. But I just wanted to share that I'm super excited about where this novel is going to go.

And my husband read my first little bit and told me that my beginning is better than my first novel. So I know I need to still work on that, but we'll get there.

See ya!