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Friday, September 5, 2008

Friday Random

Random Conversation of the Week (or why you shouldn't answer the 6-year old):
*sirens in the distance*
Six- Mommy, what's that?
Me- The police chasing someone.
Six- Why?
Me- Because they broke a law.
Six- What law?
Me- I don't know.
Six- Like a tree log?
*pause to sort this out*
Me- ! No, honey, not a log a law. L-A-W not L-O-G
Six- Oh..... G?
Me- Yes. G as in girl.
Six- What girl?

Random Best News of the Week: Friends of mine who have been trying for several years to get pregnant have announced they are having a little girl. Because of genetic disease in the mother's family it is a very high risk pregnancy but they've made it to week 18 so fingers are crossed.

Random Character in Real Life: Here's a fabulous protagonist for you.... She's 24, widowed, raising a special needs son alone, former navy brat who almost went army. She goes to school for criminal justice and forensics and is recruited by a government agency. Just think of the mysteries she could solve, the murder cases, the general angst of the character.

And I've got her phone number!

One of my best buds has a son 2 weeks younger than my youngest and after the tragic loss of her husband in spring of 2007 she is pulling her life together again. I'm so proud of her! I can't wait to corner her and see how much I can write about her life without violating OpSec or embarrassing her. Forget Temprance Brennan, I have a much cooler heroine (prettier too).

Random Thing That Makes Me Irate: Politics. Is there nothing else going on in the world?

Random Progress of the Week: After sorting through chapters and editing over my extended weekend I have six shiny new chapters ready for line edits.

I still want to get the first section crunched into 250 words. And I especially want to get that done before Authoress has a AYH? contest for sci-fi Hint Hint.

Random Disobedience of Good Advice: I'm not sure how this will affect my long term career prospects but I genre hop..... and I write series.

Nathan Bransford had a nice list of things not to do on his blog Thursday. Query things he didn't want to see.

And there's a lot of negative energy at genre hopping. Which I understand. You want to build a fan base first. You want people to know your style and love you as an author before you go exploring the twisty by-ways of the bookstore.

But I have trouble convincing my brain to stay on target. I love sci-fi. I adore my monsters I've created for my ViS universe. But I also like swords and sorcery and I have books in the works in all those genres. I know that when I query I'll need to narrow this all down and stick with one genre for a few years. Ideally I'll have enough of a series done that I can work on polishing and publishing that before I press on with other works. But I don't have a crystal ball and I'm not sure what will happen next....

Random Worry of the Week: How long does it take for the average published author to write and edit a book. Should I be worried that I finished DoJ January 31st and that I'm still reediting the first 10 chapters? Am I way behind the learning curve here?

Come on, tell me, how long does it take you to write and polish a book?


So..........What's your random?

7 comments:

  1. LOL Got a kick out of your dialogue with your son and your Randomness lists. I'll have to come back later and check out your older posts. Looks like a lot of fun stuff here.

    Oh, I see you're on Shelfari too. :)

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  2. I can't say for book length - written a few, I've yet to start editing any of them... scarily big projects.

    The longest thing I've tacked was 25k. 10 days to write. 10 days to edit. (Writing full time without a family to look after.)

    On the other hand, I've written 2k short stories that have taken just as long. Some stories just need more bullying before they cooperate and become submittable.

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  3. I'm embarrassed to tell you how long it's taken me in the past. I'm in the process of learning how to structure a novel and write the first draft in one month. Gezz, easier said than done...the learning part anyway.

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  4. Totally adore your Random lists, especially the conversation with your son. Made me remember a hilarious conversation about amnesia that I had with my daughter when she was that age. Marvelous stuff. I just may have to start doing a Random day myself (with credit to you for the idea of course).

    Re: how long? Answer: it all depends. How much time are you devoting to the project? What else are you doing with your life? How much time does one need to assimilate and internalize that which we've written?

    I feel a blog post coming on. *g*

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  5. Go post, Joan!

    And feel free to do a random, I always like to see what other people are thinking.

    Re: Writing
    I try to write a couple hours a day but some of that is spent organizing, reviewing what I've done, and deleting. I finished the first draft in 3 months and I'm on draft 4.5 now but I think I've spent all summer on the first 10 chapters trying to make the opening click and add some depth to the storyline.

    Re: Son
    I need to go edit my post! I have two girls... HEr age is Six, that's not her name. I promise, I'm not that crazy!

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  6. When is a book truly polished?
    When you find that crystal ball, let me know!

    My random: I finally bought an incense burner. I've had some awesome incense for 6 months now but have neglected to get a burner until yesterday.

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