AS many of you know, my kids were very sick this week. It was a very rough week for me personally. I'm trying to focus on other things, but sometimes, that doesn't work. This week was one of those times. I did get some work done. But I'm not sure what is going on in the future. Not that anyone does, but my life feels very unsettled right now. I really need to paint but I'm out of Varnish. I have a special mix I use for my medium that is part varnish. Partly, I'm out of varnish because back when I got it to replace some when I was almost out, I got two bottles of varnish for acrylics. I paint with oils. That's not such a good idea.
My writing is going okay except for formatting issues! UGH I've priced down the full length novels while I fix these things. I got the print proof of Winds of Fire and almost cried. So many formatting issues. And I used their template. Instructions were copy and paste. Yeah right. I spent 8 hours fixing formatting, which I have to do again because it went wonky again when I tried to fix the other issue. and then guess what else? The template provided by Amazon doesn't put in page numbers!!! I want to scream and cry. And I don't like the cover. Maybe making my own, but they don't have the handy dandy template that's blank and let's you put stuff in anymore. At least not where I could find it.
These stories are good stories that I'm having fun with. Why does the rest of it have to be so hard? I know my work isn't perfect (if you see any errors not involved in formatting, please tell me!) but I want it as close to perfect as I can get it. I read a Harlequin romance recently that had bad errors in it and it reminded me that stuff gets missed even with experience and professionals. So I fix what I find and make it better. And I have no high-horse about people showing me errors. (not in style but in grammar. Style is personal choice.)
So, before I can really get going on my other books, I have that to do. And I got a provisional yes for a novel for a fantasy group off a synopsis and question and answering period. I HATE SYNOPSIS. I'm not big on queries either. And you know what? The person who was helping me, QUIT OFFERING WORKSHOPS. AHEM. LOOKS AT @CJREDWINE pointedly.
Not that I blame her. She has other work to kepe her busy, but I'm still not real happy about it. That last query I posted? Sounds interesting, but the book is hard, fast pace and slams you in the gut and I can't seem to get that into my query. I bet CJ could. She was so awesome and wonderful with that stuff. I'm still whining, I know. If she ever offers another query class, I'm going to sell my husband so I can afford it. Or something equally desperate :P
I haven't been posting samples of my writing lately because I was going to do it on my website. I have done some there, but I think I'm going to do some more...
How are my friends and followers today?
Showing posts with label CJRedwine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CJRedwine. Show all posts
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Pimping the blogs
So CJ Redwine has finally done the much awaited Rachel Vincent interview. I may have helped bring that about in cahoots with CJ's sister @HC_Palmquist. We sort of pestered the two of them so CJ HAD to ask her. Not that it took much arm twisting :D
So I've been politely watching, staying back as i've won so many things I've resisted entering anything until recently. It's been like 5ish months, I think, since I've won anything so time to start playing the rounds again!!!
What's at stake on her blog? The latest from Rachel Vincent, My Soul to Steal, the fourth in the series. You really, really, really, *counts the really's - needs one more* REALLY want to go read it and enter! for one thing, CJ does the most fun interviews I've ever read! Johnny Depp, Were-llama (which inspired me to get my own set of Weretoads which coincidentally enough happen to eat werespiders), and the Spork of Doom are the hosts of the interview and the author gets to choose who.
Let me tell you, it's a load of fantastic fun to read these. Rachel chose the less popular Spork of Doom. I don't know why it's less popular because I think it's something you can really sink your teeth into...
*ducks the rotten tomatoes the followers just threw*
Anyway, you want to go read this post and follow and read past posts. It's a lot of fun.
http://cjredwine.blogspot.com/2011/03/interview-with-rachel-vincent.html
Some other blogs to take a peek at:
Roni Loren: Her latest is stupendous as always.
http://fictiongroupie.blogspot.com/2011/03/ten-commandments-of-successful-author.html
She's a fun person to follow. Plus she follows my blog so that makes her made of awesome :D
Next up is another give away, this one 2 hardcovers by Deborah Coonts,
@SuspenseSirens sent this one in :D go to their site and check this giveaway out!
Wanna Get Lucky and Lucky Stiff are the titles. Go here to find all the details.
http://www.sirensofsuspense.com/Sirens_of_Suspense/The_Siren_Song/Entries/2011/3/28_Writing_Can_Kill_You.html
And lastly for today's pimping of the blogs, I give you my critique partner, Anee-Mhairi. New at the blogging thing, she's already surprised many people's expectations and caused quite a bit of controversy. She must be doing something right! :)
http://annemhairisimpson.wordpress.com/
So I've been politely watching, staying back as i've won so many things I've resisted entering anything until recently. It's been like 5ish months, I think, since I've won anything so time to start playing the rounds again!!!
What's at stake on her blog? The latest from Rachel Vincent, My Soul to Steal, the fourth in the series. You really, really, really, *counts the really's - needs one more* REALLY want to go read it and enter! for one thing, CJ does the most fun interviews I've ever read! Johnny Depp, Were-llama (which inspired me to get my own set of Weretoads which coincidentally enough happen to eat werespiders), and the Spork of Doom are the hosts of the interview and the author gets to choose who.
Let me tell you, it's a load of fantastic fun to read these. Rachel chose the less popular Spork of Doom. I don't know why it's less popular because I think it's something you can really sink your teeth into...
*ducks the rotten tomatoes the followers just threw*
Anyway, you want to go read this post and follow and read past posts. It's a lot of fun.
http://cjredwine.blogspot.com/2011/03/interview-with-rachel-vincent.html
Some other blogs to take a peek at:
Roni Loren: Her latest is stupendous as always.
http://fictiongroupie.blogspot.com/2011/03/ten-commandments-of-successful-author.html
She's a fun person to follow. Plus she follows my blog so that makes her made of awesome :D
Next up is another give away, this one 2 hardcovers by Deborah Coonts,
@SuspenseSirens sent this one in :D go to their site and check this giveaway out!
Wanna Get Lucky and Lucky Stiff are the titles. Go here to find all the details.
http://www.sirensofsuspense.com/Sirens_of_Suspense/The_Siren_Song/Entries/2011/3/28_Writing_Can_Kill_You.html
And lastly for today's pimping of the blogs, I give you my critique partner, Anee-Mhairi. New at the blogging thing, she's already surprised many people's expectations and caused quite a bit of controversy. She must be doing something right! :)
http://annemhairisimpson.wordpress.com/
Saturday, October 9, 2010
THAT story
You know? The one that I edited out my voice? Edited it so much so that one editor remarked that "your style of writing would be good for nonfiction"? THAT story? Well, I'd started a quick edit to put things back in. A couple of spots where it still hurt that I took stuff out. Added about 1800 words. Then you know what? I had to work on something else.
I finished my query workshop through CJ Redwine http://cjredwine.blogspot.com *you know, it's bad enough I can't do that fancy-schmancy hide a link under the words, but now, it won't even copy and paste the link! One of these days...* who is a fantastic and gifted query critiquer with a record number of only 3 tries. I don't remember the number from my first one. However, if you look back on my blog, you may find that I was so happy to have finally finished I may have dared to put it out there for all to see. Now, nope. Not happening.
So, with that query finished, waiting to hear back from queries, I went back to work on this one. However, before I actually opened up the file, I got word back on an art piece that I entered into forever nocturne's ezine. And you know what? They really liked it and said they had to find a story to match. So guess what? I wrote a short story to match. Now if only they like the story as much as the artwork! *bites nails*
So back to this wonderful fantasy and throwing back in those beautiful purple prose words that need to be there when you're world building. And guess what? I'll bet you can't guess. (Unless you follow me on twitter!) IT WAS GONE. AGAIN. Yep. It's happened before, despite this wonderful world of auto save and auto recover (a HUGE reason I still use Word, thank you.) I had lost it before.
During a woe is me pity party, a wonderful person @AuthoressAnon on twitter, asked if I'd sent it to anyone for critiqueing. Well, sort of I said. I sent a chapter at a time to a friend who then edited it and I, ehum, over fixed it, plus added a couple of scenes. That was gone. But then, this reminded me. Good little girl that I am, I had sent it to my husband as backup. The completed story with the edits. Yep. The day was saved. Well, that All happened again, except I kept the pity party short as I went straight to the back-ups to see if I'd sent in the corrections--and I did, of course. *Gulp*
So now, I'm putting in beautifully woven adjectives and description and when I went back through, you couldn't even tell. One more thing though. In all the rearranging I did (I moved a couple of scenes around in the beginning. mwah. Beautiful effect, I think.) I moved the description of the characters down a bit. I'll wait and see what the beta reader thinks. Then I'll worry. Now, it's there at the back of my mind as something that may come up.
Added another 1k last night. I'm jazzed. Rereading it myself and I can't hardly tell where the additions went. At least 2k words in the first 3.5 chapters and they seamlessly flow? *pats self on back* I am so relieved. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to add the necessary words without sounding stilted or contrived.
You know what else? This fantasy is what I wrote for last years NaNoWriMo. At the end of that month, it clocked in at 64k. Now it's 86+.
So for last NaNoWriMo, I wrote 64k on one book, and over 2k for another one. (I didn't clock the other one.) Talk about pressure on myself that I have to live up to. I'm thinking I may need to shoot for 70k That means, if I follow my own rule of taking 2 days off a week, I should aim at 4k a day. Definitely attainable if I put my mind to it. I had over 7k one day last year on this manuscript alone, plus some on the other. For the day I was around 8300 words. And I did hit 4-6 consistently.
So, do I have any writing buddies? Or people who want to egg me on, er, encourage me? And in case you missed it, my twitter handle is @L_Bushman now. Will be for my writing networking for ever and ever, amen. Well, maybe not that long :P
I finished my query workshop through CJ Redwine http://cjredwine.blogspot.com *you know, it's bad enough I can't do that fancy-schmancy hide a link under the words, but now, it won't even copy and paste the link! One of these days...* who is a fantastic and gifted query critiquer with a record number of only 3 tries. I don't remember the number from my first one. However, if you look back on my blog, you may find that I was so happy to have finally finished I may have dared to put it out there for all to see. Now, nope. Not happening.
So, with that query finished, waiting to hear back from queries, I went back to work on this one. However, before I actually opened up the file, I got word back on an art piece that I entered into forever nocturne's ezine. And you know what? They really liked it and said they had to find a story to match. So guess what? I wrote a short story to match. Now if only they like the story as much as the artwork! *bites nails*
So back to this wonderful fantasy and throwing back in those beautiful purple prose words that need to be there when you're world building. And guess what? I'll bet you can't guess. (Unless you follow me on twitter!) IT WAS GONE. AGAIN. Yep. It's happened before, despite this wonderful world of auto save and auto recover (a HUGE reason I still use Word, thank you.) I had lost it before.
During a woe is me pity party, a wonderful person @AuthoressAnon on twitter, asked if I'd sent it to anyone for critiqueing. Well, sort of I said. I sent a chapter at a time to a friend who then edited it and I, ehum, over fixed it, plus added a couple of scenes. That was gone. But then, this reminded me. Good little girl that I am, I had sent it to my husband as backup. The completed story with the edits. Yep. The day was saved. Well, that All happened again, except I kept the pity party short as I went straight to the back-ups to see if I'd sent in the corrections--and I did, of course. *Gulp*
So now, I'm putting in beautifully woven adjectives and description and when I went back through, you couldn't even tell. One more thing though. In all the rearranging I did (I moved a couple of scenes around in the beginning. mwah. Beautiful effect, I think.) I moved the description of the characters down a bit. I'll wait and see what the beta reader thinks. Then I'll worry. Now, it's there at the back of my mind as something that may come up.
Added another 1k last night. I'm jazzed. Rereading it myself and I can't hardly tell where the additions went. At least 2k words in the first 3.5 chapters and they seamlessly flow? *pats self on back* I am so relieved. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to add the necessary words without sounding stilted or contrived.
You know what else? This fantasy is what I wrote for last years NaNoWriMo. At the end of that month, it clocked in at 64k. Now it's 86+.
So for last NaNoWriMo, I wrote 64k on one book, and over 2k for another one. (I didn't clock the other one.) Talk about pressure on myself that I have to live up to. I'm thinking I may need to shoot for 70k That means, if I follow my own rule of taking 2 days off a week, I should aim at 4k a day. Definitely attainable if I put my mind to it. I had over 7k one day last year on this manuscript alone, plus some on the other. For the day I was around 8300 words. And I did hit 4-6 consistently.
So, do I have any writing buddies? Or people who want to egg me on, er, encourage me? And in case you missed it, my twitter handle is @L_Bushman now. Will be for my writing networking for ever and ever, amen. Well, maybe not that long :P
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Contest @ CJ Redwine's blog
http://cjredwine.blogspot.com/2010/04/interview-with-lisa-mantchev.html
This is also the person I took recent query workshop from. I'm in love. The first check I get from any book that I use principals learned from her workshop to query, I am buying everysingle one of her books, and a few she's interviewed!
She is awesome :D
Please visit her blog and follow her as she is hilarious!
her twitter is @CJRedwine
This is also the person I took recent query workshop from. I'm in love. The first check I get from any book that I use principals learned from her workshop to query, I am buying everysingle one of her books, and a few she's interviewed!
She is awesome :D
Please visit her blog and follow her as she is hilarious!
her twitter is @CJRedwine
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