OMG!!! BIAM put on Hold

http://www.wrwdc.com/ee/index.php/marlene_awards/

I got first place and apparently a request for my Catch a Star novel!!!! I'm psyched and am dropping Forsaken (in the middle of a very intense scene) to work on revisions of Catch a Star. Woohoo!

Day 17 of BIAM

It's been slow going with a few set backs, but I can still make it. I have 12,000 of the 50,000 required to finish. Seems big, but it's 3000 words a day. I'm not done for the day and hope to write through the weekend as well. It's definitely easier to write 50K with a more defined plot. I have key points I'm heading to, but how I get there is up to the book giving it a more organic flow. It also makes it slightly frustrating to turn off and come back to since the thoughts of where I was going may not be there anymore. The beginning was a lot less epic battles like Fallen. Not that Fallen has "epic" battles, but it definitely has more fight scenes. We'll see how it turns out.

Day 8 of My Book In A Month

I challenged myself to write 50K this month to finish off Forsaken. I've written 8,452 words so far this month. By daily goals I'm behind 4,884 words, but I can pull off some 3000-5000 word days to recover. The story is going well. I need to start redirecting it to the next turning point. It's nice to concentrate on one thing and get it done. Unfortunately I allow myself to become distracted by bright shiny things like researching netbooks, which became a more intensified search when I realized my current battery on my laptop only holds about a half hour of charge now.

Right now I'm just eyeballing them and waiting for the next innovation on them. I typically go for Thinkpad noteboods, but Lenovo's offering has a strangely placed right shift key. That leaves Dell, HP, ASUS and MSI Wind. Some of the ASUS also have the shift key in the weird spot, but they've got a newer version with a 9.2 hour battery. I tend to be a power consumer, meaning I like having the screen super bright and run iTunes and a few internet windows open while working in Word and having my Excel spreadsheet to flip back to to update my word count. So a netbook might not be for me, but I love the idea of having something that will fit in my purse that I can pop out while the kids do gymnastics or while waiting at the doctor's office. Until I can go and feel a keyboard I'm not keen on dropping a couple of hundred dollars to get a secondary laptop, especially since I just bought this one in Dec 2007. I did compromise on this one. I was completely in love with the 12.1" tablet PC offered by Lenovo and almost bought it, but I ended up getting the 15" T61 instead with more processing power and better graphics for less money. *Sigh* Maybe I should skip the netbook and get my tablet, but then it won't fit in my purse. Arguing myself in a circle. Not very effective for a blog post.

If you've been eyeballing netbooks, tell me which one you think is the best and why. Note I'm a heavy keyboard user. If the keyboard is crap, I don't want it. :-)

Words Are Creeping Up

Yes, I'm adding scenes to Fallen and making it a longer book. Finally! So I'm plugging away at getting the important bits down and then will go through and make a pass through to make sure I'm not repeating myself later and there are a few scenes at the end that I know could use a little more beef. Then back to Beta Readers.

I also want to complete Forsaken this month. Meaning 50K in a month. I do it in November all the time. Except in Nov I have a bunch of folks plugging away beside me. So if anyone is left following this blog (Hi!) and wants to play too, let me know. We'll commisserate.

Forgive Me

Hmmm. Maybe that will be Fallen's new title if I need one. I got Fallen back from a Beta reader (someone who reads your book like a reader not a critiquer) and she made some suggestions I'm going to try. It means revamping the beginning, but it's adding the word count I need and adding depth to the characters. I wrote 2000 words on it today, so I'm slowly but surely raising the word count. I received my scores from the Enchanted Words contest from the final judge and her words were encouraging. So I'll keep pushing forward. Knight Agency is having a contest to pitch your story in 3 sentences so I'll need to work on that at some point as well. Keep writing.

Sleeping Beauty

My daughter has been home all day today since she woke me at 1:00am because she was completely clogged up. She's been fairly good and I got some writing in. Not as much as Monday, but 600 words isn't a bad day given the number of days with big fat zeros in them lately. I've found a new distraction. Twitter. While I enjoy it, it is a time suck with all the people I follow, but I enjoy it.

I was able to sprint with people on Monday and today which makes the writing so much easier for me. Major Procrastinator. Which brings us back to twitter. While I've been writing this blog post, twirl (twitter application) has been adding more tweets. Hey, look big distracty thing. I'm going to have to shut off twitter to get anything done.

Unfortunately, some really interesting things pop up on twitter, such as the call for submissions that I sent my MS in on. So I'm learning to scan twitter for tidbits and when I have time, I read through the posts. The allure is they are short, but the fact is that when you have 5 to read it's almost as long as this blog post. (estimated please don't check :))

Been a While

Wow, I've been negligent about posting. So I've finaled in a contest and I sent a full out as a submission. I've been busy on the business side, but not so much on the writing side. I took on a part time job that's sucking away my writing time, but I have Monday free to go crazy. Which means Forsaken is getting some attention. I left Kaitlin fighting off a daemon in her room and Caleb racing in to save her. I'm not sure where Eli is. Poor characters. To be stuck in a scene must really suck. I must give them my undivided attention on Monday which means *gasp* turning off the internet. I know, I know, my soul will slowly wither and surely die without constantly checking Romance Divas or twitter, but my characters won't get very far if I don't. We'll see how it goes. Smile, the day is just beginning.