Weekend Goals

Regular visitors here (ahem) will notice a trend here. I've taken to posting my weekend goals. Makes me sit and think about what needs to be done and gives me some accountability. Plus, it feels good to check off that list!

So, without further ado... my weekend goals:

1. revise... revise.... revise. I've revised the first third. The second third has some BIG changes. That's what I hope to tackle this weekend...
   
2. clean house (yipes!)
3. find suit in back of closet to wear to court on Monday. Hope said suit does not need dry cleaning. Buy new suit if needed.
4. tomato plants - uh, get them and bury them. I mean plant them. I guess...
5. walk the dog... walk the dog... walk the dog...
6. oh, and grocery shopping.
7. blog. Yeah, I owe y'all some real content.
   

So, not a bad list. Totally tackleable so long as I don't sleep the weekend away. As I am wont to do.

What are y'all's weekend plans?

Thanks! and what's next?

First of all, I really can't thank y'all enough for all of your congrats - you really made reaching THE END feel that much more special! And I'm sorry for not blogging more often - I'm gearing up for a very large trial next month and that tends to suck a ton of time.

Right now I'm in the process of revising my WIP... really, I don't think it should take this long for someone to read their own book. But I've gotten bored and other people have sent me their ARCs that I couldn't resist! My goal is to finish reading through the WIP and make the corrections on the computer by the end of the work week. Then this weekend my goal is to write all the new scenes, plot it all out on a plotting board, and get 'er ready to send out to beta readers! Go me!

So this weekend, as we were walking the dog, The Boy turned to me and said, "What's next?"

Good question. And, fortunately, one I've been pondering. My WIP is actually the first of a trilogy. Not that it can't stand alone - it totally can. It's a very lose trilogy (and yes, I do know I owe y'all another post on series...). But I don't want to invest in Book 2 of the trilogy until I know that the first one would... well... sell. No need for a follow-up if there's nothing to follow up. I could always start it, get a partial together just in case... but... eh.

At the same time, I'm a huge believer that once one project leaves the door, it's time to start on the next. So if I'm not starting on Book 2 of the trilogy, then what? This leads to a pretty complicated series of thoughts... my WIP is VERY different from what I've written in the past. It's dark. It's paranormal. It's YA. It's not really where I ever would have seen myself - but I love it.

Which leads me to a question that I come round to every now and again: how do I want to brand myself? Do I want to keep writing darker, speculative fiction YA? Do I want to go back to the lighter stuff - the chick lit YA? Or do I want to go back to straight romance where it all began?

Unfortunately, I don't see myself ever going back to straight romance. I hardly even read straight romance any more. I can't put my finger on it... but something has just changed in me as a reader and writer. Realizing this makes me a little sad because I've always dreamed of being a romance writer.

But at the same time, it gets me all excited too. Because I'm now in love with YA (young adult). I know that scads of authors are dipping their toes in the YA pool, and I really really hope we don't see a market correction like we did with chick lit. But I think it's awesome that all of this attention is focused on the next generation of readers. I remember so well all of the nights I stayed up late reading as a kid/teen. I swear that I learned to speed read because of Christopher Pike. To think that I could count myself as part of that tradition - that my writing could cause that same sense of excitement (getting a little ahead of myself here...)

One of the things I think I like most about YA is that there don't seem to be as many rules. So much of writing and storytelling is new to these readers. They don't know "trite" like adults do. They aren't tired of the same old same old. The don't say "well this book has X so it doesn't fit in Y genre" or vice versa. It just seems like the strict lines that adults place on their own genres is so blurred in the YA world.

I feel like as I ponder my next book that I could write anything - the world is wide open! And that's a pretty cool feeling.

So what do y'all think? Think YA is going the way of chick lit? Think there are rules that I'm just blind to? Any thoughts on branding as an author?

5,631 words later and... THE END

Hey all! I was going to post this as an update to my weekend goals post below, but I figured it was important enough to merit a post all on its own.

Yep, I typed "THE END" tonight on my WIP. I thought this would feel like a massive accomplishment, that I would feel great gobs of relief. Champagne corks would fly. Video games would be paused.

But the problem is, it doesn't feel like THE END yet. I have SO MUCH REVISING to do. I mean, so much that I'm afraid to even start reading it all from the beginning. The big story will be fun to fix. I think. But then it's those awful details. Like the fact that a wrote two characters as being married but now they're not married but kinda engaged and so I have to make sure there's never ever any reference to them as husband and wife. And let me tell you, she refers to him as her husband all the time.

That's the kind of stuff that I hate about revising. The little things. Too many little things to list and so you have to comb through the sucker over and over and over again.

*shudder* Maybe I should stop talking about all of that :) It's at this point in the process that I marvel that books ever make it to print. That books out there are consistant, that the plot holds together, that the hero's name is the same throughout (did I mention I'm still thinking of changing some character's names? At least that's just a "find and replace" job!).

So, yeah. Done with the first draft. Terrified to read through it. Afraid it will all be worthless crap. Very afraid of that.

But for tonight it's WOOHOO! And let me tell you, I'm pretty proud of myself for knocking out that 5.5k word count in one afternoon.

Weekend Goals

Hello all! I've lots to talk about but unfortunately not a lot of time to write. Which is ironic, I think, because I'm in the middle of crafting a post about time and finding time to write. For now I'll just say that thanks to Diana and Erica, I've lit a fire under my behind and have been writing every day in April (except for the two days that I worked 15+ hours...). Unfortunately, I've been called into work tomorrow (Sunday) morning, so I have even less time to get everything done this weekend that I wanted to (like blog, write, clean, relax, etc).

I was able to pay the bills, conference with RotoRooter about the sad state of the pipes in our house (stupid roots), and file my taxes (yay for losing lots of money writing!). Looking towards the rest of the day I'd like to get lots of writing done. Because, my friends, I have a big scene to write. I've been putting it off all week so that I can writing it in one go, really sink into the emotion and tension of it.

Wish me luck!

meme: 5 things about me

I know, I still owe y'all my thoughts on sequals. Lets just say I've been a little distracted by my day job...

Erica tagged me with a meme asking me to list five things y'all don't know about me. Since I have a terrible memory, I'm not sure what I've talked about on this blog and what I haven't - ha! Hmmm... how to tread that line between telling y'all interesting and juicy tidbits while remembering that blogs are public info forever....

1. In college I was diagnosed with Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) because I went to school in New England and didn't see enough of the sun. That's why when I was looking at law schools I didn't look farther north than UVA. For a while I had to sit in front of a light box but now that I'm back in the sunny south I'm doing fine. Winter solstice is one of my favorite times of the year - I love it when the days get longer and there's more sun! The Boy calls me a sun sponge and jokes that I'm solar powered. I think he's right.

2. One time when I was in high school and my dad was out of town and I was alone in the house it started to snow. Since I grew up in SC, snow is a BIG DEAL. I decided to skinny-dip in the hot tub and streaked down the path in our backyard, threw off the hot-tub cover and jumped in before I realized there was a problem with the heater. The water was SO COLD except for like an inch at the surface and before I could climb out our neighbor started to do some sort of "yard work" along our fence (which meant he could totally see me). So I ended up trying to float in the 1 inch of hot water before I gave up and streaked back into the house.

3. During college I renovated an old landmark pub on campus and opened it back up for student use. In the winter there was free hot chocolate in front of the fire and a few nights a week we had a band, open mike night, or a DJ and beer on tap. It was the type of place where students would scratch their names in the tables and there were tables there with names going back to the 50s and 60s - a pretty cool place. It was exciting to see it in use again.

4. The Boy was the first person I really fell in love with. I totally didn't plan it that way. Growing up I always wanted to have my heart broken once just so I would know what it felt like. Now my heart is very safe in The Boy's hands.

5. Sometimes at night my cat will stalk around the house with his favorite toy (a long tail attached to a stick) meowing. And I mean to say, this cat can holler! He'll bring his tail to bed for us to play with and sometimes I just can't deal with it and so I pretend to throw it and hide it under the covers. I like to think he forgets because he certainly shuts up. I rarely feel guilty. I'm such a horrible mom :)

So there are my five! Hope you all were entertained! Um, I'm not sure who to tag because I've been blogging so sporadically recently, so I tag anyone who wants to write about five things we don't already know about you :)

I'm out of town this weekend for Easter - will check in again on Sunday!

April Fools!

Wow, tons of great comments about my last post - I love it! I definately already knew what I wanted to say next about series, sequals, etc., but now I'm forced to rethink a bit. So, as I do that I wanted to throw out another fun little topic...

Anyone out there have any good April Fools Day stories?

I tend to forget about the day. And the best I've ever done is pretty lame. You know, calling my mom to tell her I'm preggers or engaged when I'm not. Even I can't keep a ruse up for more than a couple of seconds. The Boy was reading an article about the top 100 pranks which was pretty cool. Apparenly some guy in Alaska set off a huge tire fire in the top of a dormant volcano so that the residents of the town nearby would think it was about to erupt. That's pretty ballsy. Google is getting people with their new paper archives (gmail.com - but you can't be logged in which is why I can't get a better link for you).

So I didn't do anything pranky today and don't really plan on it. I have to fly and I don't like to tempt Karma when I'm about to do something as unnatural as being hauled through the air with hundreds of strangers in a massive metal container with faux wings. Seriously, anyone else ever find themselves at 10,000 feet wondering how the hell these things work? That's where a good book comes in handy - great distraction (today I will be alternating between writing on the WIP on my new alphasmart and reading Fear No Evil by Allison Brennan... and maybe napping.)

So share those fun April Fools Day stories! I'll be back in a few days with more on series.