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

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 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

Hello productivity!  The Savvy Boot Camp has really amped up my writing game.  I’m not writing anywhere near like what I did for NaNoWriMo this last year (it’s hard to beat 205,000 in one month) but I’m not slacking.  My goal has been to write 5K a day and revise 20 pages.  So far it’s a success!  Okay, except for the weekend and the days I’ve gone shopping.  This next week will be tough because I’ll be crewing for my mom’s cycling event so I’ll be getting my words in when I can.

Blogging.

I did say that I was easing up on the blogging.  And I have.  I feel bad that the blogs are shorter and less frequent, but sometimes something has to give.  For me right now it’s blogging.  No worries, I will return!  The blogs I have been writing are off the wall and a little kooky.  Check back tomorrow for an example of kooky blogging, lol.

Revising.

I’ve been working on an older project from last year called Maliginus.  The characters are good, the story is okay, but the voice is killing me.  I decided to emulate a more formal style of writing.  Unfortunately it totally sucks.  I read through it and roll my eyes.  My revisions right now consist of a little copy editing and a lot of rewording, removing things and fixing plot holes.  Like, the fact that a carriage mysteriously disappeared.  Yeah.  I’m thinking about taking a page from Suzan and doing a complete rewrite of the story, cutting it to one POV and scaling back the romance in favor of the bigger story.  I’m not sold on it being a worthwhile project but it’s good to go back and see what I wrote like this.

Over the weekend I cracked open this short story I wrote during NaNo called Gentleman Pirates and Lady Smugglers.  Basically I wanted to write something with lots of action, some adventure and this was the product.  The story is good and I like the characters.  Not sure what I’ll do with it, but it’s fun.

Plotting.

It’s no secret I’m in love with all things super spy, a la Alias.  I have never planned on doing a spy story because I don’t think I would have the know how to be able to do it, but I figured out a way of being able to have my cake and eat it too.  It’s also going to use some lore I created for an old book I wrote called Sing Softly which is a 100% trunk novel.  I was disappointed I would never get to use the lore, but combining it with the spy element I think I can do it and get a good novella out of it.

Also, I figured out where my plot for Little Spirits is going.  This is something I don’t really have to worry about until weekend after next.  The key for when I’m unsure where a plot is going is to write a rambling synopsis.  I did the same thing for the superhero story I want to crack open and write next week, and the plot is a lot better.  I now have a love triangle and everything!

Writing.

Like I said above, the Boot Camp has been great for my writing.  The daily goal has been to write 5,000 words of new fic, which means I’m getting a lot done, especially when you consider that my current focus are novella length works.

Project: Decoy
Genre: zombie hunter romance
Type: novella
Progress: I really love this story.  I have two adrenaline junkie characters living in the middle of the post-rising zombie apocalypse.  It’s not without the hardships, like writing myself into a corner and trying to figure out how two emotionally scarred people connect, but it’s been awesome.  I’d hoped to finish the novella by this weekend but after too any distractions it won’t be done until either Monday or Tuesday I think.  The story has undergone several changes, but I think it’s stronger for them.

Project: Unnamed Paranormal Spy Romance Thing
Genre: romance
Type: novella
Progress: This was a hair brained idea I had and I started writing bits of it.  I probably won’t write it until later this month or later this summer.  The characters are fun and the story is full of secrets and crazy.

What I read.

• Friendly Fire by Megan Hart

ROW 80 Check In

I’m going t do a proper check in this week.  I’ve been blogging less so I might as well do the proper check in, right?  No excuses!

Okay, this last week was the kick off of the Savvy Author’s Boot Camp, which translates to uber focused writing and editing time.  I’ll talk more about it tomorrow when I do my big weekly check in.

ROW 80 Goals…

1. Finish Casual Love

Done, and done, and done! I need to write a new beginning for it but I’m not ready for that. I’m still exhausted from just writing it.  I’m kind of hoping that the last week of May I will have the three stories I have slated to write for the boot camp done and I can churne out a new beginning then, but in the meantime I should probably read over the book so I get a better handle on what exactly it is I need to establish in the beginning of the book.  This is more on the revising of this book, but oh well.

2. Finish at least two short stories.

These are more like novellas.  The first one I wrote, Rescue Me, is out making the critique rounds.  I told the group origionally two weeks and realized that with the boot camp I should wait until June, so in a monthish I’ll circle back to this and work on it again.  I have a general plan for the siblings of the sister introduced in this story in case I can write the whole family.

Decoy is what I’ve been working on in the last week.  It’s pretty awesome.  I’ll talk more about it tomorrow.

3. Do writerly things every day.

This last week was a return to the dedicated mentality of doing things every day.  Yeah, I felt guilty for the two weeks I was laying around reading all the time but I needed that.  It was writerly in that I needed my ‘word tank’ refilled.  It wasn’t obviously writing or revising or whatever time, but it’s still an important part of being a writer.  And I’m okay with that.  This last week though has seen me at the computer until all hours of the night getting in those words and pages!

4. Juggle revisions and writing.

The boot camp has made this really happen.  I revise during the day at lunch or before work, and then write and blog at night.  It’s really working out well.  The revision project this last week was a fantasy book I wrote last year called Maliginus.  I’ve been writing on Decoy.  Last night I did a quick pass through a short story I wrote during NaNo called Gentleman Pirates and Lady Smugglers.  Sometimes I really surprise myself with my writing.  All things are awesome!

Writing in a Zombie World & Drawing on Pop Culture Sources

So it’s Day 3 of the Boot Camp, second month of ROW 80, and I’m writing this blog way in advance so it’s kind of confusing for me.

Also, May is National Zombie Awareness Month.  So be aware of zombies.

My first project for the boot camp is a novella called Decoy.  I started it during last year’s Story a Day in May.  I wanted to do something with zombies that embraced that lifestyle, daring danger and being reckless.  I picked it up a few weeks ago and decided to go for a real plot this time.  I always like writing zombie stuff, and I’m all for using other sources of inspiration.  With zombies it’s getting harder and harder to twist the story to make it new and exciting, which is why this idea drew me back after almost a year.  It’s the characters and their motivation that’s really special.

Since Friday I’ve been rewatching the tv show, The Walking Dead.  I started watching it in the fall, but thanks to NaNo I never really watched it.  As a side note, season 2 has been set for October of this year – yahoo! 

The story I have planned is nothing like the show, but drawing on something from the genre I’m writing in is handy.  I can see how society is translated into that situation.  I’m not writing a zombie breakout story like The Walking Dead, I’m writing a post-rising story more in line of how Mira Grant’s Newsflesh series. 

Because I’m embracing the whole, write what you know, my zombie story is done Texas style.  If you’re not from Texas, heck, even if you aren’t American you’re still probably aware of the distinct Texas pride.  It’s like they inject it into us at birth.

Since Texas was its own country prior to joining the US, there is still a certain juvenile glee in the idea that we could theoretically survive as our own country.  There is an entire sect of people who believe that Texas was never even legally admitted into the USA.  People in Texas believe strongly in owning guns, protecting our property, and independence.

In the event of a zombie infested world, there’s no other place in the country I would rather live.  So my little zombie story is set in an independent Texas.  Castle Laws are key.  Overall it’s not a bad place to live as far as zombie infestations go.

But what about the zombies?  Reading books like Warm Bodies, or the Newsflesh books, or Married With Zombies show you the history of how the zombies came to be.  The zombies in Warm Bodies are created thanks to our culture.  In both the Newsflesh and Married With Zombie trilogies the zombies are the product of a virus.  Still yet in the Half-Past Dead anthology, Zoe Archer’s zombies were spiritual.  In Night of the Living Trekkies they’re aliens.  Movies run the gauntlet of zombies too.  From the Resident Evil kind to the 28 Days/Weeks Later, Zombieland or any other series.

The overall accepted source of a zombie outbreak is medical these days.  I think that of the above examples Zombieland is the only one that doesn’t explain how or why the zombies happened.  If the movie wasn’t so funny it might be the most frightening one on the list for exactly that reason.  Not knowing makes us see shadows where there aren’t any, monsters out of nothing.

There’s nothing wrong with knowing the established norms of a genre.  I know that if I write my zombies as being the product of a plague, virus, aliens, or a spiritual something I’m in good company.

Different zombie cultures have abilities others do not.  The Night of the Living Trekkies zombies have a hive mind.  28 Days/Weeks Later zombies are stronger, faster, and frightening.  Resident Evil zombies evolve, become new things the longer they’re infected and consume.  Some zombies can open doors, communicate, and perform some basic functions while others can only move forward.  In Bianca D’Arc’s zombie paranormal romances the zombies develop claws because after death hair and nails continue to grow.

Don’t ask me why zombies fascinate me, they just do.  It’s probably sick and twisted how much I enjoy creating a new zombie infested world, but I do.  I think I enjoy the research the most.

What media outlets do you use for inspiration?

May Goals

April was more about recharging myself than writing or revising more.  I had my goals set light, but ended up slacking off even more and just reading.  It was good.  It was needed.  And I’m glad I did it.  So, getting on to the point of this whole blog!

April Goals!

• Finish Casual Love.
• Go through my completed novels (Absolutely and Maliginus, mainly) and evaluate them for revision worthiness.  I think they’re both worth looking at and working with but we’ll see!
• Side project short stories.  Write a few.  Get them out of my system.

What I did…

• I finished Casual Love!!!
• I read through Absolutely, cleaned it up a little, and gave it to my friends to read for fun.  I also waded through the mess that was my roller derby story and decided that it’s a lost cause.  The characters are great – but the story sucks.  I didn’t get through Maligimus, and I’m sad about that but I’ll hold off on the project for later.  I have hope for the book in the long run.
• I started several short stories – but – ah – didn’t finish anything except Rescue Me.  It’s currently out on critique rounds.

May is Savvy Author’s Boot Camp month.  I have but one goal…

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.

So bring on the challenge!

Goals: Participating in group challenges.

This month I’m talking about something super important to me as a writer: Goals!  So far we’ve discussed the importance of goals, setting achievable goals, keeping ourselves accountable, giving yourselves deadlines, and rebounding from goal-depression.  Whew!  Today I want to talk about something I touched on when I talked about accountability.  Today is all about group challenges.

I’m a highly competitive person.  Putting me head to head with someone else when I think I can win is a guaranteed way to make me double my efforts.  You can set up challenges with your friends or people you know.  My friends and I actually met thanks to a writing challenge, NaNoWriMo.  These group efforts stir up a lot of encouragement and frenzy to do things.

Here’s a list of writing challenges that can help you meet your goals:

• #1k1hr – These are sprints done on Twitter.  This isn’t so much a challenge as a way to make a focused effort on writing for a solid hour with the end goal being to have written 1,000 words.  You can do these at any time, just twitter with the hash tag!
• NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month is a division of Office of Letters and Light that challenges participants to write 50,000 words in a month.  Many people who have never written a novel join NaNo and write more than they’ve ever written in their life.  This is held annually in November.  The OLL team has a NaNoWriMo forum, and volunteers that moderate each region, setting up local events for writers.  It’s very exciting!
• Story a Day in May – This is going on it’s second year in 2011.  The challenge is to write a short story a day, every day in May.  I’m not participating in it this year, but I’m going to be sponsoring a prompt challenge.
• April Fools – This is similar to NaNoWriMo, but smaller.  Participants can set their own goals.  There is a forum, but it lacks the regional face-to-face interaction.
• A Round of Words in 80 Days – This just started on April 4th.  Participants sign up on the blog and create their own goals.  Unlike the other challenges that have goals set for you, you set your own.
• Savvy Author Boot Camp (paying members only   ) – I recently signed up for a Savvy membership.  In May they are separating us into teams of about five people, and we write or edit pages.  The team who does the most wins a workshop credit.

Do you know of any other writing challenges?

Less Blogging

I’ve had a pretty hefty blogging schedule on here these last few months.  It’s been awesome, but it’s also exhausting.  Since I’m doing A Round of Words in 80 Days, Savvy Author’s May Boot Camp & June Revision Hell, blogging will suffer.  I have a very light blogging series to do in May, but I’m going to give myself permission to slack off on the blogging.

This does not mean that my demands on myself are changing.  In fact, after a seriously lax month of little writing, lots of reading, and not much to show for it I want to kick it back into high gear and do stuff.  I’m not going to be working on what I wanted to work on, but oh well.  I’m accepting that.  I need to read up on stuff and do research.  When I’m finished with that I plan to do a blog series about stuff I learned from the research.

Well, this is enough rambling from me.