Tuesday, July 28, 2009

The pesky internal editor

Ms. I. Editor has made her presence well and truly known this week. Just as soon as I'd rounded my 13K mark, she wouldn't be quiet. So I did the sensible thing. I stepped away from the keyboard and listened to her.

Sometimes the old gal knows of what she nags. This time was one of them. I went back, listened to my characters, analyzed what I'd written, bug the stew out of my critique partners, my beta readers and any unsuspecting person walking down the street that I could accost and ask, "So if you were reading a book about a woman who is ..." (Survey results: canvassing Unsuspecting People Walking Down The Street nets a 100% response rate of "uh, are you crazy or what?")

I figured out what was wrong. Now the question is, can I figure out how to fix it and make up all my lost ground in my challenge with Kate the BritChickLit writer? I'll bet she's fired her Internal Editor and just sailing along.

On a more personal note, my little angel caught her first fish today -- an oversized minnow. She's already told her dad that she wants to go fishing tomorrow. She asked, since the fish she caught was not quite frying size, if we could put it in our fish aquarium. Somehow I think that would have required A LOT of explaining to our goldfish.

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Isn't she lovely?

My blog, that is! My lovely and wonderful friend Bosey has removed the tentacles of HTML from around my neck and helped me update the template. Bosey calls me a technophobe, but that's not true. I'm more of a technifumbler -- sometimes I get it right, and sometimes I don't.

Writing ... is ... not ... going well. There, I said it. Another writer that I know, Michelle Styles talked about table-dusting, where two actresses in the role of maids dance around a table with feather dusters while their dialogue sets up the play. My internal editor, confound her, is now convinced that all 13K plus words of BeBe are the sum and product of table-dusting. Meh.

Still, all the more reason to write quickly and not let Ms. Internal Editor get her evil clutches into me. Why can't that woman ever go on vacation?? She could take the jaunt to Rome I want to take!

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY: Word count is 13,416. Still lots of writing ahead of me today.

WHAT I SHOULD BE DOING INSTEAD OF BLOGGING: Folding clothes, working on that writing challenge, visiting my mom.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Well, pride goeth ...

Okay, okay, so much for my big, fat mouth. In the past 24 hours, I've managed to write only a thousand or so words. However, in the spirit of my challenge, I've decided to post the good, bad and ugly.

Current word count: 11,195. (Do all the words your Internal Editor zapped count? Because that witch scrapped a bunch!)

WHAT I SHOULD BE DOING INSTEAD OF BLOGGING: Making good on that challenge, and feeding the kiddo and the hubby.

TO DO LIST: Figure out how to edit this blasted sidebar ... HELP! ANYBODY! I'm being strangled by HTML!

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

A challenge in the spirit of NaNoWriMo!

As I was researching how to replace my old non-working word meter, I came across a fellow (and better disciplined) blogger across the Pond, Chicklit Work in Progress (And wouldn't you know, I'm so technologically challenged, I can't even get the hyperlink to work. Blast.)

Kate, who writes British Chicklit (some of my absolute favorite writing, btw, though I can't write it to save my life!) recently cranked out an amazing amount of words in one sitting. She was wondering if perhaps she could finish her rough draft of her YA in two weeks if she kept up the present rate.

By sheer coincidence, I, too, had cranked out a similar number of words on Sunday (just over 3500) on my latest women's fiction project. I'd figured that I could be done with the rough draft by August 18 if I continued to write another 2500 words each day.

So what's a writer like myself to do except to challenge her? As one of my CPs just posted on my Facebook wall, "Um, insane much? :)"

The details are still being worked out -- Kate needs to finish her rough draft in two weeks, whereas I have the luxury of waiting until August 18. But I figure, hmmm, whoever gets to 50K words first wins ... bragging rights? A one-way ticket to the nuthouse? Or at least just the chance to type THE END.

We'll see. To keep me honest, I'll post word counts on this blog and on Facebook and perhaps eHarlequin.

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Been MIA for awhile

Uh, from the looks of it, about a three books-long while. Yep. In the interim, I've written and sold three more books. The last one was For The Sake of The Children (Harlequin Superromance Dec. 08.)

My lovely editor, Victoria Curran, has another proposal from me ... hopefully it will be a go as well. That's one thing they don't tell you (or maybe can't convince you about) before you sell a book for the first time: that squirrelly, nervous feeling about a project's prospects? It never goes away ... or it hasn't yet.

I'm tweaking another proposal for Victoria, and I'm also working away at two totally different projects, just for fun. One is a women's fiction MS, and the other is a cozy mystery.

WHAT I SHOULD BE DOING INSTEAD OF BLOGGING: uh ... grocery shopping? GROAN. I hate grocery shopping!
NEXT THING ON THE TO-DO LIST: Figure out how to get the word count calculator off my sidebar ... it never worked that well anyway!