Goals...What Goals?

August's goals:
1. Reach 50% completion with current work in progress, My Demonic Love.
2. Finish synopsis of All or Nothing.
3. Work on short story for Chapbook competition, Relief.

Accomplishments in August:
1. 50% completion with My Demonic Love.
2. Finished synopsis of All or Nothing.
3. Worked on Relief

Yep, August goals have come and gone. Yay! For September, the goals include:
1. Finish Relief for competition deadline of September 30th.
2. Reach 75% completion for current work in progress, My Demonic Love.
3. Final read through and start of querying for All Because of You.

Checking In

The past couple days have been very productive. The completion of my August goals are in sight and looking better with every passing day. I finished another chapter of My Demonic Love last night, making a total of 8.5 complete. This morning, I was up bright and early working on the synopsis of All or Nothing, which, of course, I put off till the last of the month. I have about two paragraphs of that written, with another 6 or 7 to go. If I put my mind to it, I can finish the thing before August 31st, which was my original goal. I also worked a little bit on my new short story, Relief, my contest entry into the Pudding Chapbook contest and first chapter of All Falls Down. In the original chapter, I have the hero, Daniel Banvard, released from prison, but not a lot from his POV. That is changing. I am making the ENTIRE chapter/chapbook from his POV. There are a lot of emotions playing around in that kind of situation and I intend to explore all of them in this revision.I'll be posting the short story on my "Other Works" page when I'm through and hope to get some feedback on what my readers think. It's not due till Sept 30th, so don't hold your breath.

Yesterday, I heard from my beta-reader about All Because of You and he gave me some great advice when it comes to my characters. I was surprised he didn't have more to say, but am a little relieved at the same time. I'm hoping September will be the month to start submitting to agents for this MS. I have a read through I need to do apparently, but then it's out to query.

A Little At A Time

I've slowly been working on revisions for All or Nothing. Up to Chapter 2 now. It's slow work, a lot of errors to fix in this MS. I did, however, finish the synopsis for All Because of You this week. Once my critic is finished reading it, I'll be submitting my work. Still waiting on my membership for RWA and to hear back from Nevada State College. I have a feeling I'll be waiting a couple more weeks.

Dreaded...

I'm back to working on the dreaded synopsis for The First Romantic Suspense. Since I had revised so much in the last session of editing I had to redo nearly the entire thing. It's a good thing, for the better, but still a lot of work. I revised it again today and now I will have to go back and edit again. My next project is to revise the query letter. Right now I have two very intelligent friends going over the MS for me and I'm nervous about what they might say. I would like to find a local writing group to get more opinions, something to keep my focused and grounded when it comes to writing. So I need to do a little more research. Once I'm finished revising the synopsis and query letter, here's my next goal:

Here's a quick assignment: Make a list of markets to which you would like to submit your work (using WritersMarket.com, of course). Then, make one submission each day until you've run through the list. Once you get into a daily submission routine, you can continue throughout 2010.

And Away We Go.

It's off. My 1 page synopsis and query letter are off to a prospective agent. I'm sending it snail mail, which will give me about 2 months to hear from the Gival Press contest I entered into. Takes a long time, but I wanted to make sure to do everything right. If this one doesn't work out I have an entire list of agents that I've researched to fit my book. :)

Oh For The Love...

Is this finished yet? Technically, yes, but I feel like I will never be done with the synopsis. No wonder Carolyn Jewel calls it "dreaded". I thought this would be the easy part. I wrote a 351 page novel in one year without worry, but this sucker is a beast of it's own. I do, however, have more than one sentence done now. I have approximately 9 paragraphs. The only problem is making them play together nicely. I've probably rewritten each paragraph about 5 times already and I'm close! I'll keep you updated :)

Synopsis

I've finally had the time and energy to start working on the synopsis for The First Romantic Suspense. I would have just sent in my query letter and then started working on a synopsis if an agent was interested, but most of the agents require a synopsis to be sent along with. So far I have one sentence done. Lol.

There are many different opinions on what a synopsis should be. Some say it's more about feelings and tone, but others say it's a step-by-step telling of your book. I'm writing both. It depends on how long the synopsis should be and that depends on the agent. If they want 1 page I'm going to give them the feelings and tone, but if they want 10-30 pages I'll do the step by step.

Off to work...

Who Has Time?

Seriously...who has time to do the things they want? Work, studying, working out, eat, sleep. It seems I never have time to work on my current project and it drives me nuts. I haven't even been working on the synopsis for The First Romantic Suspense.

I want to be a serious writer, but where in my day can I fit it in?

The best advice I've heard is from both Janet Evanovich and Stephenie Meyer. "If you want to be a serious writer, be prepared to put in the hours." I can't even imagine how long it took me to write All That I'm Living For. Hours at the computer over the period of a year, but I don't have that kind of time anymore. Where did it all go?

Welcome to the Writer's Blog

So I made this as a place to keep you updated on my writing. Where I'm at in the writing process, contests I enter, tips for aspiring writers and resources. I've placed some up already. Check 'em out.

I moved the link to The First Romantic Suspense here and put up my cover of The Second Romantic Suspense.

Currently, I'm working on my synopsis for The First Romantic Suspense. I think I will wait to submit my manuscript to agents until I hear about the 2009 Gival Press Novel Contest I entered into. I should hear about the results this fall.