Weekly Check-In

This week is back to ‘normal’ in my world.  Normal being subjective of course.  Last week was a gauntlet of exhaustion and I appreciate everyone around me for their patience and understanding.

I did write last week, but not as much as I would have liked.  I feel like I’m becoming a broken record with that phrase.

This week is kind of a big week as far as writing goes.  Suzan and I made an agreement that we would both submit our stories on the same day (Thursday).  So I’m avoiding counting down the days, hours and minutes until we hit send.  So that means that we have a lot to do to get ready over the next few days. There are synopses and queries to polish, not to mention the manuscripts themselves.  Excuse me while I freak out a little.

Blogging.

I gave myself a pass on blogging last week.  With all the family stuff going on I didn’t have the energy.  This week I’m going to bounce back with the blogging.  Suzan and I are planning to continue our series and I want to start blogging about the documentaries I’m watching and how I think we can use real life events and research to beef up stories and writing and cool stuff like that.

Revising.

Not much has been happening on the revising front, which is a disappointment to me.  That said, July will be all about revising as I have a Revise in Company class coming up.  Also, there’s a workshop deadline of July 15th for a writer’s workshop selection I need to be able to hand in with reasonable confidence as to where the story is going.  I’m slightly worried that the story I use for the workshop will be done and out on submission by the time the workshop comes around, but what can you do?

Plotting.

The Warrior Writer Boot Camp crowd is going to hate me.  I have a killer idea for an Urban Fantasy I want to write.  I’ve slowly been fleshing out the world and things in my head while not allowing myself to really think through the plot.  It was my way of telling myself to not work on it, but it’s not working.  I really want to write it.  So the Urban Fantasy might be what I write next, pushing Little Spirits to the project I write for NaNoWriMo, which would be fine since it will be a shorter book anyways.

Writing.

I’ve been averaging between 1-2,000 words a day.  It’s not as much as I would like, but it is progress.  I think I’ve been spread too thin over the last few months.  July will be less crazy in that regard at least.

Project: I Spy You (formerly known as Booty-Call Bust)
Genre: paranormal romance
Type: short novel
Progress: I’m crossing my fingers that I can write The End on the draft tonight.  It needs work.  It started out as a novella and is now a novel.  The beginning needs a better lead in for it to be a novel.  There needs to be some more subplot, not a lot since the book is almost entirely the two characters and only one POV.  Overall I’m happy with this project.  It’s fun, it’s made me laugh and I got to write spies.

What I read.

I don’t really remember what I read.  That’s bad, isn’t it?

• Magic Slays by Ilona Andrews

Weekly Check-In

I don’t even know what to say about this week.  It was both productive and lazy.  I worked on things every day, but not tons and tons.  This update is going to be brief and a little anorexic because I forgot to do it….

Blogging.

The writing sex blogging series Suzan and I have been doing is going well.  We’re pantsing some of it and other parts are really planned out.  Any other blogging I’ve been doing has been light and well, not that impressive I know.

Revising.

My effort really has been here.  I’ve been revising my zombie project and it’s been going well.  I need to rewrite the ending of it so that it’s stronger but I’m hopeful about it!

Plotting.

Nothing to say here.  Missed WWBC again this week and I’m more focused on wrapping up projects than starting new ones.  I’ve jotted down some ideas but that’s about it.

Writing.

[talk about the weeks focus on writing]

Project: Booty-Call Bust
Genre: paranormal romance
Type: novel
Progress: This project has informed me that at 35K, it’s going to be a novel. I expect to wrap this draft up in 5-10K and then add to it.  It’s not the best process for how to proceed, but I think that it’s the right decision to make.

What I read.

• Deadline by Mira Grant

Pictures

Weekly Check-In

Despite this being the last few days of the Savvy Boot Camp, it was a lazy week.  I read Kiss of Snow instead of sleeping, and slept instead of writing, and as soon as the clock rolled over to June 1st all responsibility to write like the wind was gone.  We still don’t know the results for who won the boot camp, but it was a close race to the end.  June is the month that I want to do revisions rather than writing, but I’m still writing.  I got off to a good start, but I’ll talk about that below.

I haven’t been talking about A Round of Words at all, and for that I fail.  I haven’t forgotten that I’m working on that challenge, but I haven’t been as mindful of updating my progress on it.  I solved that yesterday.

Blogging.

Judging by the twitter conversations and the comments left on Suzan’s blog and here I would say that the Let’s Talk About Sex series is off to a good start.  We discussed underwear and what that says about your characters.  Suzan took the girly side and I discussed all things buff and hunky.  This week we’re talking about heat levels and language particular to the romance genre.  While a lot of people already know this stuff, not everyone does and it’s good to talk about it.  We’re also having a blast while we’re at it, so that’s all that really matters.

Revising.

I started revisions on Rescue Me – again.  These were pretty light, going over what one of my critique partners suggested.  A lot of it was grammar, and of that commas.  I have comma issues.  I conquer the apostrophe and now the comma and I are at odds!

I’m really happy with Rescue Me.  I have it up over at Book Country for review if anyone is a member there and feels like giving me some feedback.  I plan to submit it next month after I take my submission package class and hammer out the submission details.  I’m less confident about those, but that’s the reson behind taking the classes!

This weekend I broke open Decoy.  I’m almost halfway through it and hoping to be done with this first pass in a few days.  It’s kind of ugly at this point and there’s a lot of red, but I’m hoping that in the end it will pay off and it will rock.  I’m crossing my fingers that I finish this draft Tuesday or Wednesday and then the super picky stuff starts.

Plotting.

Um, I’m kind of stalled out on plotting.  I’m worried that letting an idea stew this much is a bad idea.  I get bored of the shiny and move on to something else.  I still like the idea and I want to write it but it’s not a driving desire of want any more.  I’m afraid that this is bad.  Very bad.

I replotted my superhero story I was supposed to write during Boot Camp.  It’s a whole new idea and more naughty than the original, but again I waited too long to write it.  So I’m going to write the naughty one and just go for it.  If it flops in the draft process it flops and I’ll move on.

I plan on doing more reading this month to get myself in a place to write certain things.  We’ll see how this goes!!!

Writing.

Yeah, so since it’s June I’ve slacked on writing….

Project: Booty-Call Bust
Genre: romance
Type: novella
Progress: I had an idea for this while watching Deadliest Warrior, of all things.  The story is actually at a very interesting part, so it shouldn’t be hard to jump back in and hopefully hammer it out soon.  My problem is that I’ve been distracted by being lazy.  And revising.  I’m going to attempt to write 1-2K a day on this a day this week in tandem to doing revisions.  It’s not a lot, I know, but I want to keep the ball rolling and finish this sucker.

What I read.

• Kiss of Snow by Nalini Singh

#ROW80 Check In

I haven’t done a proper accounting of what I’ve been doing as far as my ROW 80 goals.  Though I’ve been working on them, everything has been overtaken with my Savvy participation.  It’s worked because the goals have matched up, but I haven’t been focused on this.  There’s two weeks to go, so here’s hoping I can do a good showing of myself over the next two weeks.

ROW 80 Goals…

1. Finish Casual Love

The story is done.  This week I’m going to do a read through and begin writing the new beginning.  I’m disappointed that I need a new beginning, but it will be stronger if I start the real tension earlier in the story.

2. Finish at least two short stories.

I’ve finished two: Rescue Me and Decoy.  I’m working on a third with a ridiculous name because I couldn’t come up with something that worked.  Names are difficult for me.  *sigh*  I’m hoping to finish it by the end of ROW.  I’m well into the story, but thanks to June and the boot camp I’m a little burned out on solid write, write, write!

3. Do writerly things every day.

With a few exceptions, I’ve written almost every day of the last three months.  That’s a major success I think.  Building that daily habit is important.  My day doesn’t feel complete unless I have written something.

4. Juggle revisions and writing.

This has been fairly successful.  I do better by large when I can focus on revisions or writing, but I can do both.  Right now I’m doing deep edits on Decoy while polishing Rescue Me and making progress on the zero draft of Booty-Call Bust.  It’s difficult, but I think I’m learning!

June Goals

This month has been a gauntlet.  I knew going in that this would be difficult, but I didn’t think about how long the cycling event would take me out of the game.  Neither did I plan on getting sick, which has really put a damper on my writing for a week.  But, you do what you can and get to it!  I’ve also learned some important things about my writing life this month, which I’ll talk about below, but first let’s review what I wanted to do, and what I did.

May Goals!

• Write bunches.
• Ideally, I will finish the rough draft of 3 novellas/short stories.
• Polish one short story (Rescue Me) and get ready to submit it.  Write the synopsis, query, etc.

What I did…

• I wrote the most this month out of any month this year.  At this moment I’ve crossed 90K, and there are still a few days to go in the month as of when I’m writing this.
• I wrote 2 short stories, Decoy and one I’m mockingly calling Booty-Call Bust
• Rescue Me was polished and handed over to be critiqued.  With my month being so busy I pushed the date back for my crit group to the end of the month so most of this goal is being pushed out to June.

I’ve discovered a few things this last few month.  I try too hard to be involved, to do challenges, and be part of things.  At one point I sat back and realized that all these other published authors weren’t doing the same things.  When I looked at what I was working on for the boot camp and thought back on the time tables I wrote up for myself I realized that because of my challenge commitments I can’t work on the things I want to work on.  I would have liked to revise and finish Blood Bound.  Where am I with it?  It’s ont he back burner, and I am more focused on other things that it’s slipped between the tracks.  I want to write the new beginning for Casual Love, but I’m too busy focusing on the challenge writing to do that.

So, from here on out I’m going to restrict myself on challenges and classes.  They’re dictating too much of what I’m writing.  I feel that I could be further along on a few projects than I am if I weren’t being pulled in different directions for my challenges.  Granted, I’ve agreed to do June Revision Hell and a Write-Along Class that I will be fulfilling, but for the rest of the summer until NaNoWriMo – no more challenges for me.

This is not to say that challenges are a bad thing.  Challenges are great for connecting people and motivating people by example, that’s just not what I need at this point in my writing life.

June Goals!

• Revise Decoy
• Submit Rescue Me
• Write my superhero story
• Work on my alias

I referenced the issue of writing under a pen name before and after this I’m not going to reference it.  I will attempt publishing under a pen name, and I’m beginning to use it, to be present online that way and work on building that ‘brand’.  I look forward to the goals for June.  While I would like nothing more than to dive into Casual Love and hammer out the book, I’m going to wait for July and fulfill these goals and do some reading time for myself and see the Book Addicts event through to the end.  After that, though, I’m following my gut for what I want to work on and focus my efforts.

Do you have goals for June?

Weekly Check In

This week kind of sucked.  I talked about it last week on Monday, but the food poisoning has really done a number on the this week.  I had a few social obligations and then my brother hijacked me on Saturday and I just want to whine about not having the big writing week I wanted.  I had one huge writing day that was coordinated with my Savvy Boot Camp teammates, but other than that I feel like I could have done more or better or something.

Blogging.

Ideally, Suzan and I are kicking off a fun blogging event this month.  Stay tuned!  Hopefully the blogs will go up Thursday, which is departing from my typical system, but what does that matter?  In other blogging news?  Nothing.  I’ve been pulled in too many directions and exhausted and ug!  So blogging has slacked. 

Revising.

I so want to be revising right now.  After taking Angela James’ self-editing class I like editing and I can’t wait to make my stuff better.  I talk about this more tomorrow when I review goals and talk about what I want to be doing, so I won’t hash it all out here but leave it for tomorrow.

Plotting.

I wish that I would have revised the outline from last weekend earlier in the week but the FP knocked me out and I slacked.  As much as I wish I could be working on Little Spirits right now, it’s looking like this might be my NaNo project, or at least a project I work on in the fall.  It’s kind of a bummer, but logistically it’s the best plan of action.

Writing.

Like I said, haven’t written as much as I wanted to, but I have written.

Project: Superhero Unnamed Story
Genre: romance
Type: novella
Progress: This is a completely different line than where I wanted to go for my superhero story.  In short, Samhain is doing a superhero anthology and I wanted to try my hand at a submission.  I had a whole plot figured out that was very sneaky and cool… And I just couldn’t write it.  So I retconned the idea, set it many years down the line from the original idea and went with it.  This is an ultra steamy story now, like, I don’t know if I’ll ever share it, but the idea works.

Project: Booty-Call Bust
Genre: romance
Type: novella
Progress: I will finish it!  I’d hoped to have the three day weekend to hammer this out but it’s not going to happen.  I’m at the point just before all hell lets lose in the story and there’s too much to write for me to finish it this month as a boot camp project.  Bummer, but what can you do?

What I read.

This was my week to read knockout books.  Every single one of these was an amazing read.

• Eat Slay Love by Jesse Petersen
• Never Cry Wolf by Cynthia Eden
• The Naked Truth by Lily Cain
• Trace of Fever by Lori Foster

Weekly Check In

This is the glad-I’m-alive edition.  Yes, I’m being melodramatic when I say that and that I felt like dying would have been a better activity than a post-drinking-bout-of-food-poisoning.  This last week was all about recovering from Stampede and getting ready for my bestfriend’s visit from Oklahoma.  Oh, and I had Massive Work Things going on.  I’m shocked I wrote what I did each day, but as always I think I could have done better, more, etc.

Savvy boot camp has fallen at an unfortunate time for me.  I know I’ve written a lot, and people are amazed with it, but I could have written more.  I could write more, really.  But with the cycling thing and this weekend gone to catching up with friends and a girl’s weekend I feel like I’ve lost two out of the four weeks of the month.  Bummer.     With that said, our team is in the top handful of teams.  Last I saw we were in the lead but I don’t know how we stand after a difficult few days between several team members being sick, out on vacation, and other realities of life happening.

A Round of Words is still in the back of my brain.  I should do better about the check-in’s and commenting on others blogs.  I haven’t been doing very well with that.  Hopefully when I rebound from all this icky feeling I will get a handle on that.

With that said, I’m still on track to accomplish those goals.  I won’t write as much as I thought I would when I began this whole adventure, but I’m doing great considering how many things I’m juggling right now.  So, lets move on, shall we?

Blogging.

I did three blogs last week based on things I heard from Reality TV shows.  They’re funny, but it’s also good examples and introductions to talking about things.  Writers aren’t the only people who need to learn to edit themselves, and other people need thick skins to deal with criticism.  Maybe I can work in a lesson based on The Real Housewives of New Jersey…

Suzan and I are discussing an upcoming blogging series we’ll do in tandem, but until plans are in place I don’t want to let the cat out of the bag.

I’d just like to take this moment to say that I don’t understand the WordPress stats on my site.  Normally I’ll get from 50-150 hits a day from unique viewers.  Awesome for someone without major publication under their belt just talking about writing and stuff.  The last few days my hits haven’t been under 600.  That’s awesome.  Lots of exposure, but I have no idea where those people are coming from.

Revising.

I did a pass on Decoy and I’m excited about diving into it for Revision Hell in June.  I’m starting to think a lot about doing revisions on Casual Love.  I’ll be rewriting the beginning of the novel and changing a lot of stuff so I’m cringing, but I think that the story is worth the effort.  There’s a lot going on in that story but I like it and I want to see it through to a finished product.

Plotting.

This was an awesome weekend for plotting, sickness aside.  It was my turn to bring my plot points to the writing group.  I wasn’t sure what format to use, and there was some confusion about how I presented everything, but I got some useful feedback especially on how to wrap the story up and make it cohesive as far as the tension and conflict goes.  I think I’ll do some work on that and bring it back next week even though I don’t like bringing stuff to the group twice, this is the plot and I think it’s important.

Writing.

Project: Booty-Call Bust
Genre: romance
Type: novella
Progress: I’m still in love with this story.  There’s action and romance and secret spies and I’m having a blast writing it.  I just didn’t think it would take me this long to write it.  I’d hoped to finish it last week but I never got myself into writing gear long enough to crank it out.  This is my mission this week, to crank it out.  The story is brainstormed and plotted, I just have to write it.

Project: Secret Life of a Sex Blogger
Genre: romance
Type: novella
Progress: The title says it all, honestly.  I had this idea and I’m doing some ground work to research it.  I want to write a non-white heroine, which makes me nervous, but I think there needs to be a little less vanilla in my literature.

Project: The Revenge of Baba Yaga
Genre: Fantasy/Horror
Type: novel?
Progress: I’m skeptical if this will ever be completed.  What happened was I took a Steampunk workshop last month and brainstormed a Russian steampunk story using traditional fairy tales and the degradation of magic as steam technology pushes it aside and people move on.  Since it was already on the dark side I used it for my horror workshop to create a more horror type story.  We had to write the opening scenes and submit them to the class.  A little nerve wracking, but I’m happy with what I produced.  Now will I ever write the story?  I don’t know.

What I read.

• We Kill Dead Things by Sommer Marsden
• Eat Slay Love by Jesse Petersen (OMG the book rocks, but I keep flipping back a few chapters and rereading them and moving forward.  It never takes me this long to read a book, but between wanting to reread it already and all the crazy Other Stuff going on it’s taking me ages to read anything!)

Weekly Check-In

This week was devoted to my mom’s cycling adventure, which means it kicked my ass and I wrote very, very little.  I knew this going into the event, I mean, most people get a few hours sleep over the course of four days of cycling and crewing.  I’m lucky I wrote what I did!  Still, I always think I could do more, be better, etc.

Blogging.

This last week I only really wrote two blogs about what I learned from America’s Next Top Model.  Super deep stuff, I know but lets face it: writing is most important this month, and blogging falls somewhere in the optional category.

Revising.

I did a pass on Decoy. I can’t really remember what day I did that, but I did it.  It was mostly a spelling/grammar quick check to brush over it and see what I had and to eyeball my known plotting issues.

Plotting.

I’m rolling around ideas in my head but until today I haven’t worked on actual plotting this week.  I want to do some work tonight for what I will hand in for Warrior Writer Boot Camp this week, but that’s something that can honestly wait a few days.

Writing.

Like I said above, writing time was little and precious.  I wrote a lot on Monday and whatever night we stopped over in Sealy, Texas but other than that I wrote very, very little.  Partly because the battery on my laptop is dead and I can’t stay unplugged for more than 30 minutes or else the laptop dies.  If I had two hours of battery life there were several stretches of sitting around in the car waiting for cyclists to pedal by that I could have used.

Project: Decoy
Genre: zombie hunter romance
Type: novella
Progress: It’s done!! I finished it Monday, I believe.  Wrote the ending, made myself tear up a little, and called it a night.  There are a few plot holes I’ve noted but nothing major that can’t be worked out in revisions with a little whittling.  Very happy with it, and really wanting to write the next installment.  Better do my submission package for this quick!

Project: Booty-Call Bust
Genre: romance
Type: novella
Progress: This project is really shaping out to be a lot of fun.  I didn’t really go into it with anything more than the idea of, “I really want to use this lore I created, and I want to write about secret spies.”  The plot is going to be fun and very action packed in the next few thousand words so here’s hoping I can create something that’s loads of fun!  Which means that this is my current ‘Project’.  The one I’ll focus all my effort on in the coming days to write and churn out lots o’ words.  Also, it’s not really going to be called Booty-Call Bust, but I have no idea what to call it.  My Boyfriend is a Super Spy and I Didn’t Know is a little long.

Project: Superhero
Genre: romance
Type: novella
Progress: I wanted to write this for the Samhain anthology call for later this year.  I started trying to write this Tuesday while camped out in the hotel room but I couldn’t get into the head of the alpha male hero and everything just flopped.  I have a story, but I think the characters are too weak to actually write.  Since I was out and about without my usual books to use as research I didn’t try to write it.  I put it aside to come back to this week and try to figure out what’s wrong and what isn’t working.

What I read.

• Apocalypse Scenario by Mira Grant
• Why I Let My Hair Grow Out by Maryrose Wood
• Eat Slay Love by Jesse Petersen (still reading it. amazing!)