35,000 to go

I went to bed at 2am last night/this morning. But that's okay because I only have 35k left to write! I finished a chapter and a half last night. I write rough drafts in 2,500-3000 word chunks per request of my critique group. The chapters aren't set in stone and I'm inclined to kill chapter headings in all my books because I think they tend to get in the way, but for rough drafts 3k chapters are good.

I usually don't write on Sunday but I figured out how to work writing in lipstick on a mirrored office building into a sci-fi story. The scene is memorable, at least to me, and should you ever catch it in a book you'll always have to wonder.

In other news, I entered three starter paragraphs into a first paragraph read-through on redlines and deadlines blog . I found them off of another agents website and I like their advice on how to be an author, even if I doubt I'll publich with them. They specialize in e-books (a coming thing I'm sure) and romance. None of the starts I entered are from finished scripts, or even partials, they're from ideas that I plan to outline and maybe write next year sometime.

Still, I like the idea of getting some solid feedback from an agent on whether the opening grabs them enough. I probably should have used something from a finished piece but all my openings are in a chaotic stage of flux as I work on edits.... such is life.

So, that makes two opening contests that I'm in (for a given value of contest). I'm waiting with eager anticipation for the results from the Bookends LLC contest. Chances I won are right around 1%, but I'd be jazzed if I earned honorable mention. If not, well, it was my NaNo novel, it hasn't been edited, and I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it anyways. It may never see the light of day, that's the way things are. I tend to write a lot, and I expect I'll publish less than a quarter of the stories I start, if I publish any at all.

Still, fingers crossed, I can be optimistic!