Hitting the Home Stretch

Wow. I'm almost done. It's pretty wild that I'm actually doing it after so long. I haven't been very good on my nightly check ins but I promise to be better.

I ended up adding roughly 2000 words to the story this week which is not bad since I've been tweaking a lot and fixing things. It's still not ready by a long stretch for submission but I know that I will definately have it done by the end of January. First daft.

I can't tell you how long it's been since I wrote 15,000 words. I probably wrote more than that this month so far but I always get carried away when the story is hot and end up cutting because I have a bad habit of being redundant.

Looks like everyone else had a good week writing as well. Yeah us!

A couple of new artists I've found that I like, Plumb & Barlowe Girls which you see reflected in the You Tube posts I've done this week. I found them through Pandora. Love that website.

Will be writing more tomorrow.

Oh, and guess what I got this week? Books!!!!!! Yeah!!!!!! Wonderful, wonderful books. I'll be sharing about those as well! Thank you, J!

Writing Update & Check in. Sunday Night

Well, it was cold. Cold. Cold today. The water pipes burst down at the barn so we had to get all my daughter's stuff and get it dried off. Looks like it's going to be nasty this week. Or at least Monday and Tuesday. Argh. I'd really love a snow day but know that's not going to happen. Wouldn't it be great to wake up to a world covered in white? Oh, well. Miracles can happen, I guess.

Tonight, did a lot of tweaking and smoothing. Not sure about word count because that wasn't the focus of tonights assignment. I need to give this piece some continuity. So I worked on that for several hours and am very pleased with my progress. I've added in some sublties that I think will make the romance more believable and my characters a little bit more three dimensional.

Then I went and pulled out all my notes from TWAB. OMG! How many times have I changed this story line? Like a million. I've started to tweak the original synopsis I did to incorporate the changes that I've made in my TWAB notebook. I really like some of the elements of the original story and some of the new 'twists' which really make it a much more sound story, with a lot of action, and a strong romance between the two main characters. I'll be working on the synopsis in my spare time while not taking away from the progress of the short story. The short story comes first in the heiarchy. LOL. First things first. I know how I am. Easily distracted so I can't let myself get too carried away.

But I made some decisions tonight about TWAB. This story is really good. It brings in a lot of really strong emotions that I love. I've always loved this story. But it's scattered, and unorganized. Once I give it some time to stew and get my outline completed, and after I finish LK, I will begin work on it again.

Research: I also did some research on the middle grade series I want to work on. I found my house of which sometime later I'll post a picture of. It's lovely, old and needs a lot of work. I wish I had the money to buy it. But I need to do the research. And that is going to take a while.

So-bottom line. Report for tonight
Revised 15 pages
Revised and worked on synopsis (the first two pages of TWAB)
Did some initial research for PP

All in all a good day. And my Christmas tree is still up. Gosh, I hate taking the thing down. I love my Christmas tree.

I hope that all my sisters in crime had a great, wonderful, warm and productive day!

Honey it's cold outside

For real right? OMG! I about froze to death today. We had to go buy a new dryer. Anyone need one that will dry clothes fine as long as you dry them for three cycles? LOL.

Anyway, we're gonna hook it all up after church tomorrow if we don't have snow. I'm gonna have to get up early to see if we're gonna be blessed with the white stuff. We don't often get snow here in the piedmont of the state so we take what we can get.

(You all would laugh) I'm sitting here in my office wrapped in blankets because we are trying to be frugal and keep the heat on 68'. Argh. Spring anyone? Saw my brother and sister-in-law today. It was good to see them. It's been quite a long time.

On the writing front I think I've actually done pretty good. My wip is now at 10,192 words but needs a good bit of tightening up. Getting rid of redundancies which seem to be my speciality. Once that's all done I should be able to have a nice little scene to wrap all the loose ends up. Well, some of them. Some of them will you wondering but isn't that what you love about short stories?

Hope everyone has had a wonderful day!
Michelle is going to go snuggle with her hubby for a bit!

Steady as she goes

Well, I've made it five days. That's progress. Tonight I upped the tension in my short story. I'm really liking this now and have a decent villain. Hopefully.
I hit 8229 words tonight and yes they are going to need a lot of spit polishing before I'm done, but right now I'm just trying to get the words on the paper. I can already see that I've used a lot of repetitive words and will have to pull out my handy dandy thesarus to fix all those nasty little buggars. But hey, I'm just happy to get my words count.

1,117 words tonight.

Today was a good day, went to church, and then came home and made some supper. I should have done some work work but just couldn't bring myself to do it. Helped Megs take some pictures for her jewelry website. She sold a really pretty necklace last night. She's doing well and all her sales help buy food, and necessitities for the horse.

Megs finished Eclipse tonight and says she going to start Breaking Dawn tomorrow. I don't know what she'll do when she finishes but it will be fun to finally be able to talk to her about it. She's taking the Phantom of the Opera with her to school tomorrow so they can watch it. I'm sure we'll have more Gerry converts after that. Should be fun.

Wish me luck on making appointments tomorrow. Hopefully I'll find someone who needs international transportation. Oye.

Hope everyone had a great and productive day! Oh, and I talked to J tonight. Finally. She's one busy lady, I tell you! Hang tough girls. This is our year! Do or die time.

I'm on a roll

Well, I've made it four nights in a row. Granted, I've lost some sleep but who needs sleep anyway? I wish our weather would smooth out some though, it's killing my allergies.

There must be something funny going on with my word counts because when I started tonight my WIP count was 6024 and when I ended it was 7166 which is exactly 1142 words. Isn't that what I hit last night? Oye. Maybe not. Maybe I'm delirious. It's definatly possible. The Panther's let us down tonight. This city will be in mourning come next week once it all sinks in. Oye...

Anyway, I'm still in a Gerry mood so you get lucky and get to see his gorgeous face instead of mine! LOL

I hope everyone had a great day, and a productive one at that!

Three days in a row...

I've met my goal. I'm kinda proud of myself if not a little bit more tired. Every day that goes by it gets a little bit easier to come into my office and put my heinie in the chair. I think that is half the battle. Getting in here while there are no distractions and I can crank up my favorite Pandora radio station whichs happens to be Apocalyptica at the moment. Oh, and I found a new artist I really like a lot as well. Her name is Suzanne Ciani and the album is called The Silver Ship. Fantastic stuff.

Anyway. Now I'm tired and I did a good bit of editing today and then ended up with 1,235 words. Yeah!!!

Tonight's pic is of my favorite Gerard Butler from his younger days. Love that man's eyes.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year everyone! 2009 has got to better than 2008. We've been facing and still face a lot of financial hardships. I only hope and pray that thing will turn around this year for us.

However, I have made goals this year. I have spent a lot of time worrying and that doesn't really help anything does it? Nope. Not to mention I've put something that is very dear to me on the back burner due to stress. This year I have put some goals on paper that I'm going to accomplish.

January
Finish Last Kiss-A short story that I am targeting for the Harlequin ebook line Silhouette Nocturne Bites. Target 15,000 words. The trick to this one will be getting this story cut down to the bone.

February
Remember Me-Another short story targeted to the Harlequin Historical Undone line. Target 15,000 words again which should be fairly workable.

May 1st- Finish first draft of TWAB. I have been tweaking the plot and working hit or miss with this thing. I'm going to just put the internal editor away and just write the damn thing. Good, bad or indifferent. That's what first drafts are for anyway.

I hope everyone has a great 2009!