It's been a while since I made a blog post, so I'll create a few today. For one, when I'm writing a Facebook post and it starts to look like a blog post, I realize I probably want to write on my blog. Also, I need to post a review of the other book I read via Netgalley so that they might give me more someday, LOL. And I had a draft post that I'd still like to publish, so that will happen, too. So, here we go...
Yet another gross weather day, which is fine. Nasty weather lends itself well to writing, especially in the coziness of my house with the woodstove running. And I have a lot of writing on my plate - #NaNoWriMo, on which I'm still behind; a marketing project (again); a marketing mid-term makeup (that I must kick butt on, since I got spanked on the exam itself); a project to polish for Pitch Wars; and edits for Only One. Yep, that's on top of the list of regular life stuff, plus I'm going to see Catching Fire tomorrow.
I finally finished the major changes to my latest draft of Only One. Did I say this on my blog or just on Facebook? I can't recall. Either way, I said that my muse smacked me around a bit and told me that I was going to make some plot changes for Only One, whether I liked it or not. I'd had a discussion with Laurie (for those of you who don't know, my mentor is author Laurie Breton) after my last draft review and she made a good point about where the story should end. Since I wanted it to end at a certain point, I had to make the rest of the story work toward that. And one major issue was making it...difficult to see why the story should continue after a certain point. So, I made a minor tweak to the plot. Nothing crazy, just changed the timing of an event.
Oh? Did I say nothing crazy? Okay, I lied. I mean, the plot change really wasn't crazy and it makes the story so much better. But once I did that, I had to make some big adjustments to the story to reflect it. Along the way, I came to a couple other realizations about character motivation and BLAM! The story was blown wide open. Questions I hadn't even considered before (but should have) needed to be answered, new scenes were written. On top of all that, I'd been restructuring the manuscript to reflect a more chronological approach, which allowed me to answer those questions and simultaneously enrich the story. More conflict, layers of the characters that were there but not shown well, these things appeared as I made the changes. Best of all? I didn't set out to give an explanation for something in Back to December, but I realized today that anyone who has read both stories will hopefully appreciate the information.
Now, I'm going back through to make sure my changes on Only One are consistent. I'm hoping to finish today. As you can see, I haven't been writing on NaNo, but I have been writing. I still have 8 days to finish my last 16k for NaNo, and for me, that isn't as big a challenge as it might be for others. I tend to write a lot. But I really wanted to get Only One out for a holiday release, and if I don't get the latest draft ready for review, then it won't be possible. Book 2 takes precedence over Book 4. If I can manage to actually finish Book 4, maybe it can be my Pitch Wars submission. I don't know; I was thinking I didn't need a 100% finished manuscript, but I guess I do. *shrug* We'll see; this might not be the year to do it. Maybe next year will be better. My class has to take priority, since it is being graded.
I'll post two more blog posts, one of which will be a review for Temptation Bay by Anna Sullivan. The other is about writing. Enjoy! And wish me luck getting that To-Do list done...
Showing posts with label Pitch Wars. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pitch Wars. Show all posts
Friday, November 22, 2013
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
NaNoWriMo and Pitch Wars
I just officially signed up to do NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month. You can do it independently (I basically did last year), but if you go to their site and sign up, you're tasked to write 50k words between November 1-30. To give you an idea of what that is, it's ~1,667 words/day. Final word count for Back to December was around 138k words, so it's actually a small volume for me. In the last year, I think I counted and just in my novels/fanfic, I wrote over 1 Million words. That doesn't include emails, blog entries, or the stuff I wrote for my class so far this semester. What can I say? I'm verbose. Or prolific. Take your pick.
During NaNo (as it's called for shorthand), there are people who can give you feedback and encouragement at their website. I'd wanted to do it before, but I guess I was afraid. Now that I have a novel out there for public consumption, it's a little late for the fear stuff. At least in my mind, it is. I'm really looking forward to interacting with other authors.
If anyone else out there is doing NaNo and wants to come along for the ride with me, let me know! My handle over there is PKorbetAuthor (same as my Twitter handle). I'm not sure if I'm going to task myself to complete one of the works I already have started or if I'm going to start something new. The only stipulation is that you have to write 50k words. I've got Book #4 in the Ward Sisters Series, This Year's Love, that still has a long, long way to go before it's done. I could probably write 50k on that. Same with Book 3.5, Buying the Cow - 50k might actually complete that book (it's at about 12k now), since it's a novella. I've got a couple days to decide. I think I'll let my muse speak to me and see what she says.
Regardless, I'm really excited about this project and another one I'm planning to undertake, Pitch Wars. My marketing class has me creating a Marketing Plan, as I've said. One of the things I had to do for the Plan was set objectives for my first two years. Then I need to come up with strategies to meet those goals. I set my goals in my most recent Plan assignment and one of them was to network with other authors. It just so happens that the timing for some of these things is perfect. What better way to do that than a writing contest or two? Pitch Wars involves submitting a manuscript to mentors - authors who have agents and who are often published or about to be. The mentor chooses an author to work with them, critiques their work and readies it for submission to agents. If I get nothing out of it other than exposure to other authors and get someone else to check out my work (and even better, encourage others to do the same), then I'll have won, even if I don't 'win'.
So, that's what I'm doing over the course of the next month. I'll be participating in NaNo and hopefully completing an official first draft of something. I'll be readying a manuscript for Pitch Wars (has to be submitted by 12/2) and then, of course, I'll be completing my final draft for Only One. Oh, and working on my marketing class, but that almost feels like part of my job as a writer, so it's all good. I'll keep you all posted!!
During NaNo (as it's called for shorthand), there are people who can give you feedback and encouragement at their website. I'd wanted to do it before, but I guess I was afraid. Now that I have a novel out there for public consumption, it's a little late for the fear stuff. At least in my mind, it is. I'm really looking forward to interacting with other authors.
If anyone else out there is doing NaNo and wants to come along for the ride with me, let me know! My handle over there is PKorbetAuthor (same as my Twitter handle). I'm not sure if I'm going to task myself to complete one of the works I already have started or if I'm going to start something new. The only stipulation is that you have to write 50k words. I've got Book #4 in the Ward Sisters Series, This Year's Love, that still has a long, long way to go before it's done. I could probably write 50k on that. Same with Book 3.5, Buying the Cow - 50k might actually complete that book (it's at about 12k now), since it's a novella. I've got a couple days to decide. I think I'll let my muse speak to me and see what she says.
Regardless, I'm really excited about this project and another one I'm planning to undertake, Pitch Wars. My marketing class has me creating a Marketing Plan, as I've said. One of the things I had to do for the Plan was set objectives for my first two years. Then I need to come up with strategies to meet those goals. I set my goals in my most recent Plan assignment and one of them was to network with other authors. It just so happens that the timing for some of these things is perfect. What better way to do that than a writing contest or two? Pitch Wars involves submitting a manuscript to mentors - authors who have agents and who are often published or about to be. The mentor chooses an author to work with them, critiques their work and readies it for submission to agents. If I get nothing out of it other than exposure to other authors and get someone else to check out my work (and even better, encourage others to do the same), then I'll have won, even if I don't 'win'.
So, that's what I'm doing over the course of the next month. I'll be participating in NaNo and hopefully completing an official first draft of something. I'll be readying a manuscript for Pitch Wars (has to be submitted by 12/2) and then, of course, I'll be completing my final draft for Only One. Oh, and working on my marketing class, but that almost feels like part of my job as a writer, so it's all good. I'll keep you all posted!!
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