The nightmare is almost over. I've been living inside of a perfect storm this week, one that has two nights of parent-teacher conferences, has seen my sitting for the infamous puppies yet again, and has me shaking off the very last bits of what wasn't really a cold but more of a consistent bout with bronchitis. Nightmare might be exaggerating, and of course there have been many other moments along the way that have been successful and positive or hard to deal with, but Spencer and I are sitting here on the verge of things going back to normal, and I think we both appreciate that.
Things have generally worked out okay; I survived conferences and had young Mr. Bomani stopping over to let the puppies out, and I'll be taking said puppies back to their other home away from home at my sister's tomorrow morning, and at this point the antibiotics seem to have taken care of as much of the illness as they are going to. These days I'm just washing my hands compulsively and changing up my diet to get more of the healthy keep-you-from-getting-sick kinds of foods into my system.
But now that February is over, I'll be in a better position to write again. The girls who challenged me to go Personal Nanowrimo all over February wound up disappointed; if I had known the kind of month I'd been facing at the beginning, I wouldn't have taken on the project. But with life back to being as normal as it ever gets, I'll be able to dive back into completing their book with as much enthusiasm as I can put together for a book that feels more like a homework assignment than one I'm really excited about... at least at this point, and hopefully that will change as I get more into it.
I finish that, and I've got my to-do list pretty full through the summer. My huge family has one of our own in Afghanistan right now, where he will be for at least another year. Obviously we're concerned and praying for him to arrive home safely at the end of his tour. I'll be supporting him in the best way I know how - writing. I'll be starting a novel for him to read while he's there and sending it a chapter or so at a time to give him something that will hopefully offer occasional breaks in the monotony of whatever chunk of desert he'll be living and working in. Since his two favorite genres are fantasy and non-fiction regarding ancient history, I'll be taking a shot at fantasy; well out of my comfort zone, but all it has to do is give him something else to think about from time to time so I'm just focusing on making sure it doesn't suck.
Then, once the fortune cookie book (the one I'm doing for my personal nan0wrimo) is done, I'll be breaking back into a book I wrote about ten years ago called Grandpa, which I only ever gave a half-hearted attempt at getting published even though after recently revisiting it there's some pretty good stuff in it. I think the added experience of the past 10 years will give me a chance at revising it up into a much better manuscript. At that point I'm thinking (hoping) it will be about summer break, and I'll have three completed manuscripts out there and enough time to write the query letters that will (hopefully) get some agents interested in seeing them. Also by summer, I hope to have started my next real novel, which, given the ideas I have for it right now, could wind up as the biggest project I've taken on since writing my memoir four years ago.
I keep saying some derivation of "hope" while discussing all of this, because let's face it: The writing doesn't always get done. There's always a lot of other stuff that gets in the way during that time. After all, life happens the way it does.
Great. Three dogs just came walking into my office, and two of them are looking up at me with palpable guilt in their eyes. What did they chew up this time....
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Friday, February 12, 2010
Some Business
Open Message to Chuck at "Guide to Literary Agents":
Hey there, Chuck. If you're reading this, you followed the link, saw that I included you on my blog roll off to the right, and now see I'm mentioning the contest here on the blog. Don't worry about the small number of followers listed -- a surprising number of people tell me they read this. I imagine you're now pretty captivated by my blog writing and you'll want to work through reading many other of my entries, but I'll ask you to hold back. I have submitted two entries to the "first 150-200 words of your novel for kids" contest, and I'd really like for you to find them and read them so you can decide I'm awesome and you'll grant me the honor of winning.
Please?
Okay, non-Chucks, from that you likely can surmise that I'm entering a contest. And yeah, one of the qualifications was to mention the contest online while including a link to the site on my blog roll. Since I didn't have a blog roll until a few days ago, it seemed like a good reason to begin one. And I don't mind linking to that site - for someone like me who's trying to learn what I can about the business-end of writing (i.e. the non-creative parts of it that are less fun because they are hard to do and hard to understand and more frustrating), this site is very helpful.
Anyway. Vancouver Opening Ceremonies are about to begin. I've had a pain-in-the-rear cold all week, and I'm looking forward to falling asleep on my couch in front of the TV while I watch it....
Hey there, Chuck. If you're reading this, you followed the link, saw that I included you on my blog roll off to the right, and now see I'm mentioning the contest here on the blog. Don't worry about the small number of followers listed -- a surprising number of people tell me they read this. I imagine you're now pretty captivated by my blog writing and you'll want to work through reading many other of my entries, but I'll ask you to hold back. I have submitted two entries to the "first 150-200 words of your novel for kids" contest, and I'd really like for you to find them and read them so you can decide I'm awesome and you'll grant me the honor of winning.
Please?
Okay, non-Chucks, from that you likely can surmise that I'm entering a contest. And yeah, one of the qualifications was to mention the contest online while including a link to the site on my blog roll. Since I didn't have a blog roll until a few days ago, it seemed like a good reason to begin one. And I don't mind linking to that site - for someone like me who's trying to learn what I can about the business-end of writing (i.e. the non-creative parts of it that are less fun because they are hard to do and hard to understand and more frustrating), this site is very helpful.
Anyway. Vancouver Opening Ceremonies are about to begin. I've had a pain-in-the-rear cold all week, and I'm looking forward to falling asleep on my couch in front of the TV while I watch it....
Saturday, January 30, 2010
More Self-Indulgent Wannabe Author Nonsense
Here he goes talkin' like he's a writer again....
I kind of feel like an actual writer though, because I've been receiving actual letters of rejection from actual literary agents. And actually, I kind of like that. Not because of some literary self-flagellation I'm into, but because even rejection is forward motion at this point. The book I'm currently shopping is something I'm very proud of, and more of me than I would like to admit honestly feels it's more a when than an if regarding its publication.
And the one I'm currently editing and revising will be at that level as well. This is my Nanowrimo novel from this past November, which I have to say has seen nothing but very emotionally charged responses, and every time I get to polish it up some it gets a little better. Also very proud of that one even though I still don't have as much of an emotional tie to it, which is ironic considering the way people respond. I guess when you write a whole book in under a month the process has to be so abbreviated you yourself don't get time to bond with it.
I bring this up because I'm about to do the same thing all over again. My two manuscripts are making the rounds these days between the people I teach with and several students. So, long story short - a couple of my girls have challenged me to write another book during the month of February. This mostly came from discussions of how my Nanowrimo book, while being one girl's preferred genre of realistic fiction, is really sad. And she felt I needed to write another realistic fiction book, but one that was much happier. I said, "You know, these things don't happen overnight." She pointed out that my last manuscript was just under 200 pages and written in less than a month. So Monday will see the beginning of the next book while I'm still editing the previous one. All I know so far about this new one is that it will be a broad comedy with fortune cookies at the center of the plot. That literally is all I know. The rest will just have to happen along the way. Since I envision this book being a quick little 100 page effort, I'm setting my goal for 30,000 words during the month.
What bites about this is that Bejeweled Blitz just added some new features I'm not going to have as much time to mess around with... but maybe if I really am going to make a concerted push at becoming a published writer, I should focus a little less energy on the weekly high scores of my Facebook games....
I kind of feel like an actual writer though, because I've been receiving actual letters of rejection from actual literary agents. And actually, I kind of like that. Not because of some literary self-flagellation I'm into, but because even rejection is forward motion at this point. The book I'm currently shopping is something I'm very proud of, and more of me than I would like to admit honestly feels it's more a when than an if regarding its publication.
And the one I'm currently editing and revising will be at that level as well. This is my Nanowrimo novel from this past November, which I have to say has seen nothing but very emotionally charged responses, and every time I get to polish it up some it gets a little better. Also very proud of that one even though I still don't have as much of an emotional tie to it, which is ironic considering the way people respond. I guess when you write a whole book in under a month the process has to be so abbreviated you yourself don't get time to bond with it.
I bring this up because I'm about to do the same thing all over again. My two manuscripts are making the rounds these days between the people I teach with and several students. So, long story short - a couple of my girls have challenged me to write another book during the month of February. This mostly came from discussions of how my Nanowrimo book, while being one girl's preferred genre of realistic fiction, is really sad. And she felt I needed to write another realistic fiction book, but one that was much happier. I said, "You know, these things don't happen overnight." She pointed out that my last manuscript was just under 200 pages and written in less than a month. So Monday will see the beginning of the next book while I'm still editing the previous one. All I know so far about this new one is that it will be a broad comedy with fortune cookies at the center of the plot. That literally is all I know. The rest will just have to happen along the way. Since I envision this book being a quick little 100 page effort, I'm setting my goal for 30,000 words during the month.
What bites about this is that Bejeweled Blitz just added some new features I'm not going to have as much time to mess around with... but maybe if I really am going to make a concerted push at becoming a published writer, I should focus a little less energy on the weekly high scores of my Facebook games....
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