Upcoming blogfests...I know of 2

They both look like heaps of fun to me! If you haven't signed up and are interested, do it now!!

So I thought I'd do an update on how my goals are going. I started out the year with a list of goals I would achieve this year. Since 2011 began, some of the goals have been altered/added to. Others have been crossed out already, once I've achieved them. I love being able to cross things off my list! It's a very satisfying feeling. Anyway, let's recap (in blue is stuff I've finished, and red is what I'm still working on):

1. I finished an edit of SUNDOWN and ordered my proof copy (it has been sitting on my shelf for a while now)
2. I finished another edit of SUNDOWN
3. I started another round, which would leave me with draft #...I think it's draft #5?? Honestly, I've kind of lost track. But this is the revision I'm still working on (and I have two chapters to go, people!! That's all)
4. Next, I'm printing out SUNDOWN to do a paper edit. I was going to wait on ElitistCritiques crits, but I've decided I'm too impatient for that! So paper edit, coming right up.
5. Once I'm done with the paper edit, I'm going to look for some beta readers!
6. I won NaNoEdMo 2011 - after chopping & changing my plans for what I'd edit so many times, I wound up working on SUNDOWN
7. Write 52 short stories in 2011 for the Chrysalis Experiment - this is something I cannot possibly win until the end of the year...but so far so good, with 27 stories written in 27 weeks...and the 28th brewing somewhere in my subconscious where I can't see even a glimmer of it yet. hehe
8. Write once a week in this blog - again, I cannot achieve this till the end of the year! But as of today I'm well on track!
9. Win NaNoWriMo 2011 - yep, another goal I can't achieve till November comes and goes. This year I have some especially lofty goals for NaNo, as mentioned in this blog post a while back...
10. I completed the first draft of STORM, and while the novel is an ugly best-ignored mess right now, that doesn't matter to me! What matters is I finished a draft, at least.
11. Complete a preliminary read-through/edit of NAUSICAA - um, yeah, no. Not done yet. But I've got plenty of time!
12. Read more than 21 (amended to at least 25!) books in 2011 - yes, I achieved this! I'm currently reading my 26th book of the year.
13. Participate in (and win) BuNoWriMo 2011 - achieved! I wrote over 50k, even if I didn't stick to just one story, and didn't complete any new novels. I did complete a novella!
14. Participate in A'vron Ayende's Classics Book Club - so far we have done 4 months of this, and I've participated in each one. I have a feeling it may be on hold for a while...but we'll see where it goes! Can't really call this an achievement till the year is over.

So, there you go. Latest goals update! To date I'm pretty happy with how the year has gone, but it can only get better from here!

How are you going with your goals this year? Anything you're proud of? Things you want to improve on for the second half of the year?

I swore I wouldn't post on Sunday till this is done, but...

I just need to share my latest news about revisions - I finally got under 100k!!! My goal is 95k, and at the moment I'm at about 98k. I am so cloooose! Soon enough I will be done with my 3rd draft, and will be onto the revisions for draft 4. Once those are done, it'll be print-out and paper edit time. Then it will be beta-edit time. :)

I think once I'm done with draft 3 though, I'm going to take a look at my other goals on the list and see if I can't get some of those struck off. Like finishing off STORM - it's so close to being finished! And I doubt I'll ever try to publish it, but I still want it finished!

Anyway...now let's return to radio silence, aaaaahhh blessed silence. This A-Z thing really is crazy!!!

Time for me to go visit some new blogs.

Oh my, it's here! A-Z blogging challenge... letter "A"

It's time indeed to kick off the A-Z (this is my first go!). If you want to join or just find out more, click on the image above! Anyway, onto business!

Guess what letter I'm starting with? Yeah. A. Just to be different. Ha. Thinking about it last night, I decided to go with (A)ngry Moments as my theme, with various characters of mine in mind. Below you will find some excerpts (very brief) from WIPs about angry moments I've forced some of my characters into.

Let's start with Daphne:

Her back is to me so she doesn’t see me. I’m no longer aware of anyone but her and myself. The fury is rising within me as each second passes, with each step I take, and I am increasingly certain that this is my destiny—to end the monster’s life once and for all, right here and now. After all, this creature doesn’t deserve to live, not when other creatures have died so long before their time.

Somebody calls my name, but all I can see is my mother turning to face me, eyes widening, mobile phone flying through the air. My hands and feet lash out at the one who gave me life and then viciously took it away, day by agonising day.

Now Jared:

"I'm all right. In fact, I'm better than all right. I haven't felt this way in…well, I don't remember ever feeling this way."

"What way?" Adelai asked, stepping back to give him more room. And perhaps because she wasn't sure what to make of this new him.

He smiled at her, a grim smile. "What is this, therapy?" When she opened her mouth, he said, "No, it's okay. I'm happy to talk about it. I'm pissed. I'm angry. I'm…infuriated." He tilted his head in thought. "Maybe I've always felt this, but just didn't know it. Maybe it was always in there. Waiting."

Aaand finally, Squeaky:

“Don’t mind McLean,” Rodentia said to the bird. “Seriously—he’s always overreacting. I mean, just two weeks ago I was innocently lying on a beach in the Ballama–”

“That’s it!” Squeaky held up a dramatic paw. “I can’t hear anymore of this cat food. You two can go on having a nice chat, and I’ll go and do my job. Or our jobs, really, Raines,” he added with a pointed look at his partner. “Enjoy!” he snapped, and turned away.

And I'm done. But I'm curious - have your characters had moments like these? :D

Back in business!

Yesterday I finally made it home after a looong series of flights that took me in this direction:

Spokane - Las Vegas - Los Angeles - San Francisco - Sydney - Melbourne - Perth.

And that was all so I could save $1,100 on flight costs. I guess it was worth it in the end, but it sure felt like a trial as I staggered through various airports of the world (including two in Sydney, international and domestic). Then I had a taxi driver who insisted on driving 10kph below the speed limit! That irritated me just a little.

But anyway, here is a picture of me as a bridesmaid!

Anyway, I've finished this week's Chrysalis story, and while I think it won't go very far, and I may never edit it again, it was fun to write. I wrote about a pair of ghosts who get stuck in purgatory, or what they call "the After".

I did indeed submit to the ABNA competition, and thankfully my query was in relatively good shape (compared to former shapes it's known) so I felt pretty good about submitting that.

In other news, I'm still slowly working on editing SUNDOWN, and am nearing the end of the first draft of STORM. But I'm looking most forward to NaNoEdMo when I can sink my claws into FIRE and get it shredded to bits. Yay!!

Sorry I have been out of touch with everyone! You have not been out of mind, only out of sight, for the last two weeks. :) I will work on getting caught up on everyone's blogs, and more importantly their adventures in writing. Hope everyone has been safe and happy!

ABNA...why not?

Has anyone else entered this yet? I know the deadline's not till Feb. 6, but I've already put mine in. I've gone with SUNDOWN. Every now and then I go back and edit what's there, i.e. the pitch.

It's exciting!

In the critiquing circle I'm participating in via AW, I'm the next up for having my chapters ripped apart. Should be fun, and hopefully helpful too!

Meanwhile, I have written a bit more of STORM in the last few days, and I am currently halfway through the 2nd-last chapter. I'm pretty sure there'll only be one more after this one, to tie things up. But who knows what'll happen during revisions.

I've really been looking forward to NaNoEdMo, when I can really get stuck into editing FIRE. I can't wait to see the words slough away under my iron editing thumb. Er, yes, my thumb is iron. Or it will be.

And that's about it for updates. Except I wrote a story this week for Chrysalis which involves my idea of the most pathetic girl on the planet. I feel sorry for her, because her entire life is her jerk-faced boyfriend. And guess what happens? He dumps her.

As my critiquing buddy Jenn put it after reading... "Ouch."

Speaking of both Jenn AND Chrysalis, Jenn's story is up for this week. And I must say that after reading it, I was in a state of shock and awe. It's pretty AWESOME.

Wait, wait, waiting for Prompt #3

Not long now until Jenn's prompt appears on The Chrysalis Experiment blog. Weeks 1 and 2 were really fun and interesting for me. Can't wait to see what Week 3 brings. So far I've written sci-fi and horror/mystery, so what will I write next? I love not having a clue!

I've written about half of the third-last chapter of STORM. I could even imagine getting the thing (i.e. the entire novel) done before I hope on that plane on Thursday morning. But we'll see. I'm not pushing myself, particularly. I do have the entire year to get it done after all.

As for other goals, I'm looking forward to NaNoEdMo so I can get stuck into editing something new for a change (watch out FIRE, you're gonna get shred-DED!).

Meanwhile, I've got a plane or 3 to catch this week, a wedding to attend (in the Canadian Rockies, and as a bridesmaid, woo!), and...well, I guess that's it really! It'll do for the time being.

Last night I had a weird dream about attending a Smashing Pumpkins concert and seeing a friend get back stage with Billy, while I was left behind. The friend wasn't even a fan. LOL. It was a weird dream. Do any of you ever get inspired by dreams? I've written a few stories based on dreams before, and intend to write more in future. I've had some wacky dreams for sure.

Bad, bad writing

I've taken to writing some of STORM again. It's one of my goals for this year, to get a rough draft finished. And what I am writing is definitely rough. In fact, I'd call it bad. Thankfully, that's okay with me. I'm just writing to get the thing finished. To get the story down on paper (so to speak), I guess. But it's interesting to think that the stuff I'm writing now will undoubtedly cease to exist in future revisions.

Revisions for STORM are of course so far in the future they're not even worth thinking about. But nonetheless, I think about them!

While writing this series of novels, I have at times found the need to rearrange the plotlines in big ways, moving huge chunks of writing to a later point in the story, or a sooner point, for it to make more sense, etc. Changing the setting in which a scene unfolds, to make it more realistic. Blah, blah. I get the impression that STORM may be no exception in this regard. I actually get the impression it might take over the title of "Novel that most needs to be MESSED with!" in this series.

The stuff I'm writing is not meaty. It's not pretty, or sparkling, or gasp-worthy. It's just, "Okay, let's get back to the hotel already! Jared's waiting, and we miss him!!!" Or more like, "Hurry up, I want to finish this chapter so I can start the next one, and then the next one..." I only have about three chapters to go. Maybe four.

Another thing that's troubling about this novel is...I'm not sure what the underlying novel-length theme is. It does involve both Jared and Louise "cleaning their slates" so to speak, so they can start fresh together. A lot of crap goes down, a lot of agony and pain and the like. But it feels like things just kind of happen. First one thing, then another. There is possibly a lack of continuity. I'm also not sure whose issues in the novel are more important: Louise's or Jared's. Louise is telling the story, and she has her own struggles throughout, but a lot of it is Jared's story unfolding.

In other words...what point am I trying to make here?

Again, not that bothered by the question at this stage. It's just another of those things that I've thought about, and will need to think about again in future, with this particular novel.

Now that I've rambled on for such an impressive amount of time, I'm going to be quiet and save this, and then get ready for bed! I've got a book to finish reading before Wednesday night (Towers of Midnight in the Wheel of Time series), and it's a pretty epic damn book. Anyway... Hope everyone is having a great weekend. :)

Talk about 'taking a break'

I was saving DAPHNE editing for NaNoEdMo. But guess what happened? I gave into the compulsion to start editing NOW NOW NOW. I'm finding that the parts I haven't really edited seriously for 11 years (yes, I started this novel at the age of 19, which happens to be my protagonist's age too, and only finished it at the beginning of 2009, when I was 28.5 years old. Now can we got on with the blog post?! Cheers.) are kind of easy to edit. Of course, I cut out a whole chunk of Chapter 1, put the polished remains on AW, and got feedback very quickly that made me see how I needed to pretty much rewrite the chapter. Which I since did, and I'm a lot happier with the result. Got to wait on some feedback on that now. But I'm feeling positive.

Still, my whole point was...you know how people say it's good to take a break once you've finished your novel, to catch your breath/gain some perspective/recover? Well, I guess I took a two-year break after completing the novel. But from the vast majority of it, I took a ten-year break! That oughta give me perspective, don't you think?

When I started this story, I didn't know where it was going. That's how I've written most of my stories. No clue how they were going to end. There have been a few exceptions, namely last year's NaNo efforts (SUNDOWN and friends), but for the most part, I've made it up as I went along. So I fully expect Daphne to be a complete mess (not just the character, I already know she's a mess; with that family, who wouldn't be?). But it feels good to already have some idea of what I am going to need to look out for during my edits/rewrites. I think it's really helped me, working on formulating a query letter for Daphne. I've been forced to think about what the real heart of the story is about (guess that's the glory of query letter writing, isn't it?), and I'm going to carry that into the editing process.

Anyway...what's NaNoEdMo gonna do without Daphne?

I'm thinking I'll either go back to Plan A, which was editing FIRE from last year's NaNo series. And that novel sure as heck needs editing (I won't even repeat the word count here, it's so obscene). OR I could look at this year's NaNo story, NAUSICAA. But...I don't know if I'll be ready to face that for a while to come yet.

Oh, and I should mention I did work a bit on writing out more of my travel memoir. But it's hurting my brain. I think my plan there should be to finish transcribing what I can of my actual journals (it's hard to read my handwriting sometimes...not good!), then print it all out, THEN get around to the actual writing out of the memoirs.

I think that's all I feel the urge to say about where my writing/revision is at for now.

I hope everyone's going well with their own revisions/story writing. And happy holidays to anyone who's going AWOL for Christmas/New Year's!

P.S. I also tried to get back to writing STORM, book 5 in last year's NaNo series. But there was no flow. I think my plan there is to re-read from the start, to get back into the feel, before adding any new material. And actually, THAT is a novel that could use a blog post all of its own, so I can discuss the peculiar 'disjointed' feeling I got while writing what I have of it so far. But yeah...some other time maybe I will get around to talking about individual works of mine, when I'm not in the midst of a "AHHH must edit EEEEVERYTHING in sight!" frenzy.

Writing G O A L S + 2011

2009 Achievements:
1. Finished off DAPHNE, after 10 years of writing it (I was 19 when I began, and 29 when I finished). Still needs editing!
2. Wrote little bits and pieces of stories, and edited bits and pieces of others, during the year, until November, when...
3. During NaNoWriMo I finished a 116,000 word story (the first in the Midnight SUNDOWN series) and quickly started in on its prequel, for which I wrote about 20k before the end of November

2010 Achievements:
1. Completed 3 novels in the Midnight SUNDOWN series, then realised that the 2nd novel actually needed to be divided in 2. The second half of it made a complete novel, but the first half needed some better ending. I still haven't given it that.
2. Started book 4 (which since the division of book 2 became book 5) in the Midnight SUNDOWN series, and still have not finished it.
3. Completed first revision of SUNDOWN, taking word count from 116,000 to 147,000. Yikes.
4. Cut about 19k from SUNDOWN during 2nd revision (have not finished this revision, but hoping to get there in the next week or so).
5. Participated in NaNoWriMo 2010, and won with a 94k novel.

And now onto the point of this blog entry: things I want to achieve in 2011.

Things I know I can do in 2011
1. Finish current edit of Sundown and order a proof copy of it via CreateSpace (this is free!!)
2. Participate in NaNoEdMo 2011, working either on book 4 of the Midnight SUNDOWN series, or my DAPHNE novel - at the moment I'm leaning further towards concentrating on Daphne
3. Participate/run the short story year-long workshop project with my critiquing buddies, possibly will be showcase this on Blogger - the Chrysalis Experiment
4. Keep my writing blog at Blogspot going & hopefully prospering a bit
5. Win NaNo 2011
6. Finish off first draft of STORM from the Midnight SUNDOWN series
7. Maybe look at doing a preliminary read-through/edit of Nausicaa (NaNo '10 novel)

Things I'd like to look at but probably will not get done in 2011
1. Preliminary edits of FIRE and EXCISION from the Midnight SUNDOWN novels
2. Figure out how to finish off CARNIVAL from the Midnight SUNDOWN novels series
3. Finish off 2008's NaNo novel (TURKEY BOURKE)
4. Get through 1st proper edit of SQUEAKY

Things I KNOW I will not get done in 2011
1. Finish off RAGEWATER book 1
2. Finish off SOMANA from the RAGEWATER series (probably has 40k to go)