Busy few days

Unfortunately, all my time hasn’t been spent making writing my day job.

I have, however, managed to get a few things done.

  • On Sunday, I wrote another 1,000+ words on Meg and Matt’s story, bringing my total since Jan. 17 to 7,389.
  • Monday, I spent rereading/editing “Blind Date Bride.” After getting through the whole thing, it’s now ready for me to print out a few of the pages again — the ones with a ton of changes — and pass it on to one of my NARWA sisters who offered to read it.

Well, I guess that’s it. Tuesday, I worked and ran errands all day, so nothing got done. And today I’ve been doing the same thing. Ugh.

Not as impressive as it sounded in my mind. Oh well. At least I’ve accomplished something.

A successful writing week

Last Saturday, we had our NARWA meeting and I was inspired to launch “Operation Treat Writing Like a Day Job.”

Today I capped off my operation, which admittedly isn’t as amusing as “Operation Snag Mike Brad,” with another good day. I wrote 1,421 words on Meg & Matt’s story (still untitled) in two writing sessions — one at Starbucks and one at the house.

That brings the week’s total word count to 6,209. I’m 6 percent finished with NARWA’s 100K word count challenge. Can I get a woo-hoo?

I’d have stayed at Starbucks longer, but I was falling asleep in my chair. I left because I kept thinking about how embarrassed I’d be to wake up drooling. Well, that and the fact that I couldn’t stay awake long enough to concentrate … I really like my writing time at the Bucks, and I don’t want to do anything to embarrass myself so I can’t show my face there again.

Once I got home — and helped shovel off our deck (again!) — I was awake enough to start writing again. Now, about 400 words later, I’m ready to nod off again.

So even though it’s very early for me (only 10 p.m.), I think I’m heading off to bed.  The operation continues tomorrow with the start of Week 2 … perhaps it’s time to do a little more editing on “Blind Date Bride.” And Monday, I’ll ship off a couple more query letters.

Not much

Writing fell victim to necessity today: I HAD to shovel snow and then get to work early again. Then, since I was actually home early, I HAD to watch Conan’s last “Tonight Show.”

I did, however, spend about an hour writing after the show was over. Added 315 words to Meg & Matt’s story — and hit nearly 5,000 in my Word Count Countdown bar.

Unfortunately, I’m no longer on a roll. Getting those words out of my head and onto the screen was like trying to get a cat to do tricks.

I’m off from work all weekend. Hopefully, I’ll be able to recapture the roll — maybe a trip to Starbucks will help.

Internet outage

I couldn’t check in last night because the Internet stopped working. Unlike “the dog ate my homework,” this is no excuse. I was happily blogging away and couldn’t publish my post. Sometime between the time I started writing it and finished it to hit “publish,” I lost the Internet connection.

That said, I did get some writing done last night — a little more than 600 words on Meg & Matt’s story, which still needs a title.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I should do what I did during NaNo: Not waste time looking back at what I’d written before. If I let myself, I can spend a lot of time rereading and then not write anything new.

Now I’m on a roll

I sure am more productive when I can’t leave the house on my day off!

That’s not entirely true: I did make it to Starbucks for a couple of hours this afternoon. I got some writing done there — but I also did quite a bit at the house.

The end result: 2,702 words on Meg & Matt for the day — and I haven’t decided if the day’s over yet. (It probably should be. I have to be to work by 11 a.m. because we’re clearing the paper way early — by 7 — courtesy of the monster storm set to dump up to 5 feet of snow on Flagstaff Thursday and Friday).

Even if I don’t get anything else written tonight, I’d say 2,702 is a very good total — more than the last three days combined.

Why such a difference? Today, I was on a roll: the scenes seemed to write themselves. (It helped that they got to have nooky for the first time. For some reason, I have no trouble tearing through sex scenes that leave me tingling — and laughing.)

I was glad to leave Kara and Gareth behind and get back to the romantic comedy I do so well. (That was another one of Jennifer Ashley’s tips last weekend: “Learn how to write the story you write best.”)

For me, that’s romantic comedy — at least until someone tells me differently. 😉

I hope no one ever does that.

Readin’ & Thinkin’

It’s better than wishin’ and hopin’, I guess.

I did spend more than an hour writing today, so “Operation Treat Writing Like a Day Job” is still going strong on Day 3. The bad news is, it took me more than an hour to write about 550 words. I’m definitely not on a roll at the moment.

As usual, the dialogue comes easiest for me. (I’m giving my first presentation on writing good dialogue in March, to my NARWA sisters. Time to start doing some research on what makes good dialogue so I sound like I know what I’m talking about!)

When I finished writing the 500 or so words, it was after 1 p.m. — time for a lunch break. After lunch, I started looking for a paper I wrote for my English novel class my senior year of college. It compared and contrasted the heroes of “Jane Eyre” and “Wuthering Heights,” and theorized about the effects the Bronte sisters’ brother, Branwell, had on both. The book club was reading “Jane Eyre” and I thought it’d make a good addition.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a hard copy. I think it’s on disk somewhere, if I can find a computer that reads small floppy disks anymore.

I did, however, run across something else: The first novel I wrote that I consciously tried to make NOT a romance. The “hero” — if you can call a drunken 20-year-old who occasionally slaps the heroine around  a hero — is dark and tormented; the heroine has her own demons.

What did my characters do? They ended up getting together anyway, but not necessarily in a good way. I never finished it, because I think to give it a satisfactory ending, I have to break them up and leave them broken because their relationship is so dysfunctional … but I can’t bring myself to do that. I want them to make it, and be happy.

The thing about it is, some of it’s pretty darn good. I have no idea where it would sell … parts are a mess. It tends to be superficial, and doesn’t do much more than scratch the surface of my characters.

There’s no head-hopping, though, because it’s told completely in first person, from the heroine’s point of view — until she goes into labor. Then I switch to his POV, and I think that’s part of the reason I’ve stopped writing. It’s much harder to be in Gareth’s head than it was to be in Kara’s — she was, as all my heroines are, somewhat like me.

It’s so different from what I normally write, too. I usually do lighthearted romantic comedy. This is much, much darker, with abuse on lots of levels, an incomplete trip to the abortion clinic and visits to see Gareth’s father in jail.

I’ve no idea what to do with it. Probably nothing. I don’t need to go back to the place I was when I was writing it. I don’t remember liking that place all that much.

An hour later …

Not long after I finished my last post, I decided to check my gmail account one more time. I certainly wasn’t expecting what awaited me there …

… a reply from one of the agents I queried this morning!

They want to see the first 30 pages of “Operation Snag Mike/Brad.”

I was floored — and thrilled at the same time. Once my heart stopped racing (and I texted the Boyfriend with the good news), I followed the instructions to upload the pages to the literary agency’s database.

Now, I get to wait. They said it could take up to two months to review the submission. That’s about the same amount of time until Golden Heart finalists are announced.

Good thing I have other stories to keep me busy in the meantime.

Mission accomplished

Checking in again: I didn’t spent quite an hour treating writing as my day job today (Monday), but I did accomplish what I set out to do.

That’s right — I sent out two query letters. Yep. You read that correctly. Two agents now have my query for “Operation Snag Mike Brad” sitting in their e-mail inboxes. I hope one of them likes the idea enough to request the full manuscript.

With the snow falling, we cleared the paper early tonight, so I’m about to head home. Maybe I’ll get some writing done.

Wait a minute — that’s not the right attitude. I WILL get some writing done. That’s better! 😀

Checking in

I’d call Day 1 of “Operation Treat Writing Like a Day Job” an unqualified success.

I spent about 2 1/2 hours finishing the read-through on my rough draft of “Blind Date Bride” and revised my query for “Operation Snag Mike Brad.”

So even though I didn’t get many actual words written, I did accomplish quite a bit. Lucky me, I’m done with work early … so it’s time to head home for more computer time. I may actually even write a few words so I can say I have a word count for the day.

I think I’ll try to write a couple of pages on Meg & Matt’s story tonight. Hmm. Maybe I need a title for that one. Can’t keep calling it “Meg & Matt’s Story” for the rest of my life! 😀

But first, I need some dinner. I started work at 3:45, and by the time I hit a breaking point, we were so close to finished with the Monday paper that I didn’t want to leave for an hour. That means now, I’m starved!

* * *

I’m back. Had a surprisingly filling baked potato topped with cheese, veggies, bacon bits and reduced-fat sour cream for dinner, then wrote some more.

Added a Word Count Countdown ticker from writertopia.com to my sidebar. That’s right: 307 down, 99,693 to go! (I’m stepping up for the NARWA Word Count Club challenge — 100K words in 2010.)

Inspired

Again, I went to my NARWA meeting … and again I was inspired by a great speaker. Jennifer Ashley talked about how to finish that manuscript and get it published. And as usual, I had to come back to Flagstaff and head straight to work when I wanted to go home and write.

Agents and the business of writing were on the table, but the most important take-home point for me was this:

Treat writing like it’s your day job and it will become your day job.

It sounds like such a simple concept … yet I’ve been guilty of writing only when “I feel like it” or when I’m inspired.

What I need to do is get in the habit of writing every day, whether I feel like it or not.

Hmm. Now that I think about it, discipline is a big problem in other areas of my life, too. I’m trying to lose weight, but I don’t always stick to my Weight Watchers plan — I do it when I feel like it. (That’s probably why I’m having trouble taking off the last few, eh?) …  All too often, I feel like eating something I shouldn’t, like gooey, cheesy Italian or Mexican food.

But that’s another blog! 😀

Now, let’s get back to the subject at hand: writing. For the next week, I’m going to try something different. Every day, I’m going to spend at least an hour writing — preferably before I do anything else. (That includes hopping online, one of my biggest distractions. Darn that Bejeweled on Facebook! I pull up the screen to play one game and end up playing for an hour …)

I’m also going to finally finish my query letter for “Operation Snag Mike Brad” and start looking for the agent of my dreams. I got some great feedback from out chapter president and will be using it to polish up my query.

It’s time for me to make writing my day job.

I’ll be logging in nightly to report how many minutes I spent writing, so please keep checking in to keep me honest.