In Which Break Free...er...Breaks Free...

So the other day I got second place on a blog contest, over at the awesome Lisa Amowitz and Heidi Ayarbe blogs. Second place won some awesome books, which, as stated, is awesome! Because seriously, I could always use more books. Right? Right.

The grand prize was  a blog banner design and a partial request from Lisa's sweeeet agent Victoria Marini. It was originally just going to be a 5 page crit from Victoria, but she was all, pshaaa, I'll read a partial. Because she's cool like that.

Anyway, Sandra, the chick who won the grand prize had some exciting news. Victoria was already reading her full MS, so that meant I got to have the partial request!

Super awesome great news for a Friday!





BUT! And it was a big but, Victoria had already seen my Glimpse of Another Shore during my first query rounds AND during a Secret Agent contest I participated in last year.

I sat down and thought about it really hard. Yes, I'm still revising Break Free, but also, I'm on the last legs of the revisions. And almost everything that needs to change is from the middle to the end. The first 50 pages only brought me to chapter four, I think, and those first couple chapters had been revised TONS, both by myself and critiqued by no less than 7 other people.

So after spending close to 8 hours on Friday giving those 50 pages a microscopic line edit, I made the decision to send Break Free out into the world.

I'm kind of freaking out a bit.

Here's the thing. I don't usually worry about my MSs once I'm querying them. Because if I've reached that point, I've also reached the point where I feel like I can't do anything more with them. I can feel confident in their query and their sample pages.

And though I'm confident about Break Free (I LOVE that MS) I'm also worried about it because I haven't reached the "there's nothing more I can do" stage. At least not with the stuff past those first 50-75 pages.

Sigh.

Anyway, really what it comes down to is I'm nervous for Break Free's baby steps into the big wide world, but also excited. Because this part of the writing business is always very exciting to me. I love querying and the accompanying roller coaster.

So, there you have it. That's a microcosm of what's been going on in my world.
How about you? What's been shaking?

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In Which I Return

Well, I'm back! The vacation was actually over last week, it just took me another week to get back to the Internet grind of things.




This post will just be an easing back in, with a list of what I did on vacay. Wednesday's post will be back to more writerly things (also, are we all ready for Write On Con?! I...am? I guess we'll find out later this week)

Anyway, here is a list of things accomplished on vacay (which was actually a staycay, meaning we hit up things to do locally instead of travelling anywhere)

1. Cousin's Wedding
2. Breakfast at Hell's Kitchen
3. Picnic with extended family with kneeboarding and tubing
4. Visit to the Mall of America - hit up Minnesota Sea Life Aquarium
6. Tour of Target Field and lawn bowling at Brit's Pub.
5. Sports Day: Disc Golf, Racquetball, Bowling (I bowled the worst three games OF MY LIFE)
6. Minnesota Zoo
7. Valley Fair (local amusement park)
8. More racquetball, board games.
9. Paintball

Coming up this weekend and next week is the beginning of RenFest and the MN State Fair! I'm going to be bu-sy.

Anything exciting happen over the last two weeks?

In Which I Provide An Update

So it's been awhile since I've given an update on my goals and junk and today seemed like a good day to do so.



see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!



I'm still querying Glimpse, though I've decided to take a bit of a break to make a change in the MS, then get back on the query horse. I'm hoping things will be back on track by the end of august (assuming amazing things don't happen before then and I get an offer or something. ohmygodcouldyouimagine?!)

I'm in the midst of my first draft of Break Free, and I'm totally loving it. I had a bit of a rough time with it the last week and a half, a combination of a tough couple of scenes to organize and write combined with a ticking personal deadline and a busy dayjob, but I think I've managed to power through the worst of it. I hit 50k earlier this week and suspect I may have hit or passed the half way point of the story. I won't know for sure, though, until its done. Just because I'm a plotter, doesn't mean there's no mystery. There's tons of mystery!

My current goals are to try and finish the first draft of Break Free by August. I don't know if I'll hit this goal (part of the reason I was having troubles with the writing) but I'm still going to try. Once I do finish the first draft, I plan to put it aside and make the change on Glimpse. Once that's done I'll send Glimpse back into query waters and start to revise Break Free. I was really hoping to be able to finish revisions on Break Free before NaNo, but the clock is ticking and I don't think that will be possible. I still have plans to participate in NaNo, at least right now I do, but we'll see how things are going closer to November.

I'm behind on my goal to read 55 books this year. Not too far behind, (by the end of July I should have 32 read and I'm at about 28, 29) but still. It's no big deal if I don't make this goal. It's just for fun.

So how about you? I want to know where you're at with your writing goals? TELL ME!

In Which I'm Back

Here I am, back from my week long blog hiatus. It was quite awesome, let me tell you and I accomplished a lot of stuff.





Things I got done last week:

1. Read 2 books (Ship Breaker was excellent)
2. Finished watching Veronica Mars (sadface that it's over.)
3. Got a good chunk of reading done on the two manuscripts I'm beta reading
4. Cleaned the house a bit.
5. Heard back from almost all my Beta Readers about Glimpse and have some good ideas for some changes.
6. Drew a picture (it's not done yet)


And that's about it, but that's not bad for a week away from blogging.

I also have to continue working on my "agents to query" list. I've gone through all the agents on agent query that rep both Fantasy and YA, (about 70) and now I'm working my way through the agents that have their genres just listed as YA. There's like another 250 of those.
Needless to say, it's a lot of agents to wade through.

So, how are things with you? Did I miss anything super exciting while I was away?

In Which I Do A Dance

The "I finished a novel" dance of course!

It looks a little something like that, though to be fair I kinda hurt my back shoveling on Saturday, so it was much more restrained. You can ask twin, she'll vouch for me (she'd better...)

So, the working titled Glimpse of Another Shore is now completed at 58K words. Also, because I edited as I wrote (which was awesome by the way, I highly recommend it) I'm also technically done with my first line edit as well! wOOt!

Here are some fun stats:

This is my second novel completed in 2010 (though to be fair, Foxfire was started in late 09)

This is my first novel written in First POV (though I've done many a short story in first POV)

This is my first full length YA novel. I had a lot of fun and now think I may delve into YA more often. Also the shorter length required for YA is kinda nice.

I love it. A lot. I think some of my love has to do with the very minimal amount of editing and rewriting that needs to be done, but I don't even care. I LOVE IT.

So now I'm giving it another read through for a quick line edit. I'm also adding chapter breaks instead of just scene breaks. Then it will go to Twin for a read (since she's my alpha/beta reader) and also Hannah and Teebore who are my awesome crit partners.

After that I may look for a few other betas as well, peeps who read a lot of YA, preferably fantasy YA. So if that's you, we may be chatting later if you're interested (I'll make a post about it in the future)


So, how is your WIP coming?

In Which I Receive A Promising Rejection

My short story Hole Ridden has been out on submissions for just a little over 2 months.




It's received two rejections, all very nice, but I recently received a third, promising rejection.

More or less they said they can't accept it now, but if I wanted to make it a bit longer and perhaps draw more of a connection between the MC and the otherworldly aspect (the hole) they would be excited to take a look at it again.

Which is, of course, very exciting. Puts me one step closer on the road to publication.

Of course, now I need to figure out how to make it longer and rework it some. I'm not so worried about the reworking, but I am a little intimidated by the "making it longer" aspect. Since I don't make things longer. Ever. I always cut cut cut.

Ah well, hopefully the re-working will lend itself to a longer length. The key is to rework some of the middle without effecting the end and beginning all that much. Especially the end. The pacing is too tight, so any messing around in there could really muck it up.

How's things for everyone else? Anyone have a short out on submission as well?

In Which I Share An Update

It' s been awhile since I've mentioned Foxfire, especially with all the excitement about Hole Ridden.

I'm still on line edits. They're taking a bit longer than anticipated, but what can you do? I still hope to have most, if not all, revising done on it before NaNo, but we'll see. November is coming up pretty quickly. I'm going to try a few new things this NaNo, including allowing myself to read over the previous day's work and correct typos etc. All assuming I have time that day.

Right now I've got about 1/4 of Foxfire line edited. But that includes both on paper and on the digital copy. I do about 10 pages by hand, and then upload those changes on my computer. I've already seen a few big changes I want to make regarding scene organization and possible scene cutting, but we'll see. I'll have to come up with some sort of additional conflict or action if I decide to cut a few scenes, just to fill it out (not that you can ever really have too much of either)

I'll still need one or two more line edits after this one is done, but once first line edits are completed it'll be much easier to handle the other revisions with a cleaner manuscript.

How's your WIP coming? Are you writing, revising? And will you be doing NaNo 2011?

Also, did you see Inception? Cuz we did and it was AWESOME

In Which I Share Exciting News

So how was everyone's weekend? Did you have a good time? We did (well except for when we saw The Last Airbender. I'm a HUGE fan of the show. Mr. M. Night Shyamalan, I hereby revoke your movie license. The writing was terrible. Writing 101 - Show Don't Tell.)



Remember how a few weeks ago I requested some crits for Hole-Ridden, well they were super helpful, so thanks again everyone.

A few months ago I discovered a little community called the Online Writer's Workshop, or OWW for short. I actually learned about it from Colleen Lindsay and since I have a bit of a literary business crush on her, I do pretty much whatever she says.

It's an online writing community for sci-fi, fantasy and horror writers. You critique people's submissions which gives you a point and when you have 3 points you can post a piece of your own (up to 7k words) to be critiqued.

I had done something like this before, with The Next Big Writer about 5 years ago. At first I liked that system but then it became clear to me that the crits I got back from the other writer's weren't at my level and so therefore I wasn't getting out as much as I was putting in.

OWW seemed a bit better because they make sure the crits are valid (no one sentence, "good job" allowed) and also OWW has a lot of professional authors as members (Elizabeth Bear, Karin Lowachee (and you all know how much I heart her)).

The first month is free (cost is $50 a year) so I signed up and submitted Hole Ridden to see what kind of crits I got. They were OK. There were a few that were helpful and a few that were either below my level or just clearly didn't understand the story or horror writing in general.

And then, I got the email...

"Hi! A submission you made to the workshop last month has been selected as one of our Editors' Choices (to be reviewed in the next newsletter)"

I freaked out!

What is an Editor's Choice you ask?

"Each month our Resident Editors select one outstanding submission in each category as an Editors' Choice and review it in the newsletter. Editors' Choices do not count against a member's three-submission limit, and remain on display, with their editorial reviews, in our Editors' Choice archive for about four months."

If I had a sci-fi piece that was chosen as an Editor's Choice, it would be critiqued by Karin Lowachee (swoon). Alas this was horror so it would be Gary Braunbeck while Jeanne Cavelos is out.

This would be a crit to end all crits! I was excited because I knew after this crit Hole Ridden would be probably as strong as it could be. But I was also worried. I thought it was pretty strong as is, so what was he going to find wrong with it?

Tune in tomorrow for a special Tuesday post regarding my editor critique of Hole Ridden!

In Which I Provide An Update

I'm going to try and post more WIP updates to try and keep me more accountable. Which is one of the many things I love about blogging, the accountability. It's harder to call yourself a writer and have nothing to show for it if you have blogging buddies.

Or at least that's what I tell myself.

So I'm still working on first line edits, just trying to clean things up before I work an any more re-writes or adding in themes etc.

I've gone through about 50 pages, though to be fair I've done about two sets of line edits on chapter one so it may be closer to about 65 pages line edited. I've really hit a stride this week and am hoping to get through at least a third of it before the weekend.

Then I can begin some rewrites and correcting things that need to be changed - (both the first two scenes in chapter one need a mild re-write and scene 3 needs to be moved to chapter 2 or 3)
I've already cut about 4,000 words and I know there will be plenty more cut before I'm done. I hope it doesn't get too short. I don't want it to wind up as a novella. And I certainly don't want to be forced to beef anything up based on word count alone.

Still, taking a week off seems to have regenerated me.


Question:

For those of you who have business cards (and I mean writerly business cards) - when did you decide to make them? When you started to go to conferences? When you had shorts published? When you got an agent?

I just wonder. I think it's a genius idea and though I think it's too soon for me, I just wonder when those of you who have them made the decision to print some off.

Yay! We're one day closer to the weekend! And a holiday weekend at that - I hope the weather is nice on Monday so my fam and I can play badminton and grill. If it rains we will play board games.
But still grill.

Also, now that I think about it, I can't guarantee I'll have a post for Monday. I'll have to wait and see.

LOL CAT FUN!