It's almost 80 outside and I'm tempted to grab the kids and hit the beach. Very tempted. It's a half-day at school too...These are the sorts of distractions you deal with when you're a writer close to the equator. Seasons tend to breeze past in a matter of weeks. Spring, summer, autumn, winter, and then we roll right back to spring a week later. The peas in my garden are blooming and the yard smells of honeysuckle. And they'll probably all die come Sunday when the frost hits, but for now everything is beautiful and spring-like.
In writing news...
EVEN VILLAINS FALL IN LOVE is getting an edit. I'm expanding the ending a little, possibly adding a new scene or two. I'm in debt to my beta-readers who gave me such wonderful advice, and who were willing to pick it up over the weekend and help me with edits once again. You guys rock!
JANE DOE is hanging tough right around that 85k mark. I've spent the week shuffling scenes to tighten the timeline. The changes are cosmetic for the most part, I want to balance the two main plot lines a little better. No word from the beta-readers yet to tell me if it's working or not.
In baby news...
I am 33 weeks pregnant today, and on target to meet my 2012 New Year's Resolution of having a baby. I'd like Youngest to arrive in January, not December. This means extra time lounging in bed and no rock climbing, even with a safety harness. It also means I'm lining up guest posts for January and February. I'll update you with the big news, but Science in Fiction, Publishing, and On Writing posts will be on hold unless something really grabs my interest.
This also means I'm looking for new books to read while I'm stuck on bed rest. If you have a title to recommend, hit me with it in the comments section.
In other news...
It looks like 2012 will be a quite year here at the Brooks' Ranch. Hubby's new job is going to keep us here for at least another year, if not several. The kids are all adjusting well to our new house. Even Dog has forgotten his fear of non-carpet floors long enough to venture out to the dining nook and grab scraps. I'm planning a spring garden and looking forward to a quiet year without packing, moving, or significant travel.
2012 will be the Year of the Query. Unless something derails my current plans (see: pregnancy news) I intend to query JANE DOE this year. Depending on how that goes I'd like to write and begin editing the second book in the series. I'm also planning on writing/editing/querying two novellas in 2012 and a non-JANE novel.
I'm not tying myself down to any of those projects because I don't know how the querying and editing process will turn out for EVFIL or JANE DOE. If the stars align and books sell before July I'll be working on a deadline and other projects will become secondary. I know some authors (Rachel Caine, Ilona Andrews, Rob Thurman... just to name a few) can write over 5k a day. I'm writing this blog post with Bambino on my lap, and my word count is rarely over 2k a day, far less if I'm editing. Since I've never tried juggling an official deadline with writing new projects I'm nor sure it's feasible. Work under contract needs to come first.
On the other hand, if everything moves with the glacial slowness that we've come to expect from the publishing then I'll have plenty of time to edit, write, query some more, and cover my bases by writing something out of the JANE series.
So... what's your random?
P.S. The flowers in the picture are from a Scarlett Pitcher Plant at the Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia, SC. If I could grow them here, I would, they look fantastically alien.
ReplyDeleteYou do realize you've probably cursed yourself by saying you're hoping the baby holds off on coming until January?
ReplyDeleteSounds like you've got a full slate for writing projects for the next year. Good luck with all of those!
I can't even fathom 5,000 words a day. :P I've only recently bumped my goals up to 2,000 words a day, and I can hit that, but I rarely go over by much. Still, you can get a rough draft done in two months that way, and there's nothing shabby about that.
ReplyDeleteIt's just a theory, but I think some of the faster writers end up having to do more editing. I won't write if I don't know what happens in a scene, and sometimes I have to go off and mull that over before I'm ready to start typing.
Take care, and enjoy the holidays (as much as possible when carrying around an extra little person everywhere!) :)
Lindsay - I can hit 1-2k comfortably when I know the scene. If the stars align I can do more, but that's something rare that's only happened once or twice. I need to know the scene before I edit or write, just like you. So there are days I just growl at my computer and putter around while my brain tries to link things together.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure why editing takes me so long. Part of it is that I don't fully understand that story until I have the first draft done. Part of it is probably that JANE is the first novel I've set out to polish and there's a steep learning curve there. I had to figure out how I edited and what process would work for me. I'm hoping that future novels won't take a year. :o)
Two days with no writing hope nothing happened at the beach. Got my X-mas early. My daughter and son in law got me a large screen monitor and I love it. I can open Google search on one side and a document on the other half and drag straight from one to the other with no minimizing. Then they taught me how to organize my files so I can find stuff quicker...Being a free Santa evidently pays dividends in the form of blessings. Have a Happy Holiday Season....
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