Friday Fun

Yvie's back! To chuck you at the weekend like a fast-ball special (extra points for anyone who gets this super nerdy reference. Teebore and Twin can't play).





How are things with you, ape-friends? Good? I hope so.
Things have been cray-cray around her. First it warms up. Then it snows again. Then it warms up. Then it rains and snows again. Then it warms up. Then it rains.
I mean, for realz? All this is playing havoc on my doggy allergies. Good thing Mom bought me some benadryl.

Ah well, sooner or later spring will win out. We just have to be patient.
Onto the fun!!





Camel being tickled. That is all.

In Which I Query

I tried to find a picture related to the topic at hand but couldn't. So instead you get this

So, as the title says, and as I hinted at last Wednesday, I've jumped into the query waters.
So far I find them pleasant and warm. And exciting to finally be in them!

Though one thing I didn't expect was this obsession with my gmail, and some mild impatience. I know everyone tells you to expect this, I just though I wouldn't have to worry about it.

I mean, waiting for responses? I though that'd be easy. I've submitted short stories and had to wait on those. I've got a story on submission right now that's been with magazine for 4 months now, and I've still got another possible 2 months wait on it. Just to wait to see if they're interested. That's half a year for like 2500 words.
After that, I thought waiting for possible query responses would be easy.

Wrong. I think the reason why it's different is because some agents get back to you right away, so you get a taste for quick responses. Which means I check my gmail like 3 times more a day than I used to.

Also, checking my gmail is totally bittersweet now. I get both excited and nervous to do it. What if I have a response? What if I don't? I'm not even necessarily worrying what the responses will be. All of this wars inside me the moment I sign in to when my inbox opens up.

All in all, I'm having a great time.

When I got really serious again about my writing (about 2 years ago) one of the things I was looking most forward to was querying. Even though it's an emotional roller coaster, it looked so fun to me. And it's definitely one step further along in the journey. So yeah, now that I'm here, I'm determined to have a good time, no matter what.

Also, I love filling out little databases and stuff with submission stats (like duotrope digest for short stories) so now that I actually get to do that in query tracker, I'm all smiles.

So, how about you? Where are you at with your current writerly process? And most importantly, are you having fun?

In Which I'm Behind

I've been working really hard lately (as evidenced by last Wednesday's post) on all things writerly. Which is great, I love having the feeling that I'm accomplishing things.

One thing, though, that writing tends to get in the way of, is reading.
Normally I'm a pretty fast reader, but lately I've been chugging through books at a ridiculously slow rate, well for me anyway.

I've been reading Behemoth for over two weeks now, and even though I'm loving it, I'm still only on like chapter thirteen.

Normally it wouldn't be such a big deal, but I set that goal to read 55 books in 2011. So far, I've read 13, which is a little over 3 a month. That is not even close to cutting it.




I think what I need to do is get some more of the Ranger's Apprentice series (LOVE IT). Those are short and fast, so I could read some of those, update my list and feel like I'm moving in the right direction.

The only problem with that plan, though, is I already have a huge TBR pile with some great books I'm excited to read (an ARC of divergent, as example) so I don't think it would be fair to get some new books and move them to the top of the pile, just to inflate my numbers a bit and make me feel better.

Sigh. Ah well. Clearly I just need to get down to it.

How's your TBR pile coming?

Friday Fun

Hi Ape-friends! Yvie's back after a short break!

Mom forgot one big thing on her list of accomplishments on Wednesday. And that is - we celebrated Tula's 2nd birthday!

at the airport, on the way home

Yeah, frequently sometimes she stinks. She's whiny and barky and bugs me out in the yard when I just want to sniff sniffs. But also she plays with me while Mom and Anne workout in the morning, and sometimes we wrestle during the day, or play tug, which is my favorite.




So, all in all, she's pretty cool.


Happy birthday Tula!



Now, Onto the fun!

if you only watch one video today, make sure it's this one

would you join the dark side?

In Which I Accomplish Things

A list of things I accomplished on my short hiatus:

1. Finished reading Glimpse out loud
2. Wrote my synopsis
3. Edited my synopsis
4. Judged youth poems for an annual B&N Poetry Contest with Hannah and Teebore. All time favorite poem? "Video Games Rule! (except for educational and baby ones)"
5. Tweaked Glimpse
6. Decided to test the query waters with Glimpse first, before I make any more large changes
7. Began to psych myself up for querying
8. Finished Elana's Possession

I feel like I'm missing something obvious, but hell if I can remember it.
All right! Share with me some of your recent accomplishments - I want to hear all about them so I can cheer you on!

In Which I Read A Book

Guess what I finished up during my short hiatus?

That's right! Elana Johnson's Possession!

I don't want to get into details too much, because I know not everyone has access to an arc, but I will say it was fun and sassy and filled with cool tech that I want. Like a cube that makes food you wish to eat.

Who doesn't want that?

No one, that's who.

Also, there's been a lot of talk on the blogsphere about how great bad boy Jag is in the book, and yeah, I like him OK. But know who I really like? Jag's brother Pace. MMMM, much more to my taste.

Good times. Good times.

In Which I Am Unplugged

Hi All - I'm going to be unplugged this week.

Real life has been real busy, and I just want to finish up Glimpse as fast as possible. I'll still be around your blogs, though, so no worries.

Regularly scheduled posts will resume next Monday.

Have a great week!

Friday Fun

Yvie returns, ape-friends, to fire you out of a cannon of fun into the loving net that is the weekend.

That's right. I can metaphor too. Bam!

The weather has been great this week! All the toys in the yard that were buried under the snow have been picked up and washed, and all us dogs started working on learning new tricks.

Tula is going to learn how to roll over. And play dead.

George is learning how to spin.

And I'm going to learn how to go out (where I head out in the yard and find a target).

So far, it's all going good.

Onto the fun!

SQUEE! PETITE LAP GIRAFFES!

In Which I Revise Backwards

(OT - is anyone else having blogger formatting issues? It now makes me code with html all my paragraph breaks and hard returns. It makes me want to punch every bee in the face.

Sorry. Onto the real post.)

So whenever you read articles or books about revising, almost always people will tell you the same, or similar, thing:

Do the big stuff first, then the little stuff. Which, for the most part, makes sense. I mean, it would stink to do a whole bunch of line edits, then change things around and have to re-do the line edits.

So, logical. But that's not for me. I mean, first off, I rarely have to make any huge changes. Or at least, I have yet to have to do so.

Sure, I may delete a few scenes here or there, or maybe need to add some scenes but nothing massive and crazy. And certainly no huge amounts of rewriting. You know how I feel about that.

This is probably because I'm an outliner, and once I have that story structure built, I don't realy veer that much from it.

SO, because of this fact, I tend to revise backwards. That is, I line edit first. Crazy? Maybe. But I can't stand moving scenes around if there's clunky prose and typos.

Also, I tend to revise as I write as well. Once I've written my bit for the day, then I read back over it and fix it up some. Since I'm a sloppy typer, there are always things that need fixing - so I don't end up with typos like "She had long, stinking back hair" when I meant to write "She had long, striking black hair".

True Story.

Anyway, that is why I line edit first. Maybe sometimes I end up editing something that I then later delete, but you know what? I'm OK with that.

What about you? Anyway you break the revision mold?

In Which I Didn't Get Much Done

So last week I had a plan. I was going to hit the ground running and get my synopsis done. Or at least started.

Then Monday rolled around and all my best laid plans went to hell. My day job was cray-cray the whole week, so I pretty much got nothing done at all.

I wish my job was like this...

Also, I barely found time to read blogs (which is why my commenting was more infrequent last week).

But here we are, another Monday, and my plans this week are the same as last week. Get My Synopsis Written!

Since, as we can see all see, it's April, and my goal for this month is to begin to query (Excitement! Fear

And since I'm a person that doesn't like to start things half cocked, it's not an option to me to start querying without a synopsis, even to agents that don't need one.

Because I know if I don't write one before I start to query, my laziness will kick in and I'll probably never write one and therefore lose the opportunity to query those agents who request one.

It's just the way I am.

So cross your fingers for me this week. Synopsis - here I come!

In Which I Participate In A Contest

As mentioned on Thursday, Shelley Watters from Is It Hot in Here or is it This Book? is having a followers contest where you post your pitch on your blog today or yesterday, and enter in a chance to win a full manuscript request from SUZIE TOWNSEND.

Yeah, that's right.

The pitch could only be 140 characters (ie twitter) so I had some advanced thesaurus usage to get mine down 16 characters, but here it is!

Title: Glimpse of Another Shore
Genre: YA Fantasy
Wordcount: 56,000

Pitch: In a land where one family member must join the navy in the war effort, Pier rescues a sea serpent and finds a way to save his home from war



There's a linky on her blog if you're interested in seeing the rest of the entries, otherwise you can check the comments on her blog tomorrow for all the entered pitches.

Now I'm off to play some racquetball, where my racket "Wesley Crusher" and I are planning on dominating.

See you Monday!

Friday Fun

Well, here we are, another week gone and the beginning of another rockin weekend. How are all of you, ape-friends? Staying warm and comfy?




Our snow has started to melt again. There's still quite a bit left, but we all know that soon it was be gone and things will be sunny and warm again. Onto the fun!

























Check out these Solar Roads. For reals. It's amazing.



See you next week, Ape-friends!