Phlox

2 pounds, 13 3/4 ounces

That’s how much my Golden Heart entry weighs. It’s 36 pages of 6-page synopsis and 210 pages of the first 42 pages of my MS.

How do I know how much it weighs? Easy — I put it on my trusty kitchen scale. (I knew there had to be a use for it besides weighing food!)

I have decided it’s time to let my entry go. I can’t read through it one more time without going absolutely bonkers. Besides, If I hang onto it much longer, I’ll be paying extra for express shipping — and since the Boyfriend is fronting me the money to pay for the mailing, he’d appreciate it if I didn’t have to do that.

I felt an enormous sense of accomplishment after printing out those six copies. I called one of my NARWA friends and told her that it was done. She’s still working on her entry (in a different category).

As an aside, my Brother laser printer works great. I bought it a couple of years ago, fairly cheap. At the time, I had an iMac still running on OS9, and it was one of the few printers that was OS9 compatible. I’m glad, because my pages look beautiful — much better than they would on an inkjet printer.

I plan to head to the Post Office either Thursday or Friday, depending on when the Boyfriend gets me that money. My next NARWA meeting is Saturday, and I have the weekend off.

Now, instead of devoting it to finishing the GH entry, I can concentrate on upping my NaNo word count. I managed to break 14.5K today, but that’s still low compared to everyone else.

Down but not out

Today I thought I was ready to print my full MS for the GH entry. Unfortunately, it was the first time I’d noticed that all my pages were 1.5-spaced instead of double-spaced.

That’s ALL the pages — in the full MS and what I thought was getting close to a perfect GH entry.

When I put my 45 pages into double-spaced format, they suddenly grew to 57 pages — and that’s much too long. (With a six-page synopsis, I can only have 49 pages in my entry — and I can’t cut down the synopsis any more.)

Of course, I now have to find a new hook to end my entry on. I think it’s on the new Page 47, but I’m not sure. I don’t like it nearly as much as the old hook, but I don’t want to end on Page 49, because that’s even less of a hook … and I can’t end it much before Page 47 without cutting out a crucial scene.

This is a problem I can overcome. And I’m glad I noticed now instead of AFTER I sent it off. That would be a crappy way to get disqualified!

On the NaNo front, I wrote about a thousand more words today. That gives me 64 more pages than I had last month. Not too shabby!

Limping along

That’s what my blog is doing … I haven’t been giving it as much attention as I should, I guess.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been giving the NaNo the attention it needs, either. After a great write-in with friends Wednesday morning (at which the MS topped 10,400 words), I was woefully lazy on Thursday and Friday. This morning, I managed to write another couple hundred words …

The good news is I realized this morning (as I lamented my lack of progress over the last few days) that I have 55 more pages of Blind Date Bride than I did before I started the NaNo on Nov. 1.

So I might not be where I should be word-count wise, but I’m much better off than I’d be had I not signed up for NaNo.

As for the GH entry, I spent some time last night making the edits from my last read-through. It looks like I’m going to be shipping off 500+ pages, though (6 copies of the 45-page entry, 6 copies of a 6-page synopsis and a 216-page full MS).

Wow! That’s a lot of pages. Wonder how much that’ll cost me?

Still plugging away

No, I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth … even if it might seem like I did. I’ve been busy, busy, busy trying to balance my writing life with the day job and my attempt to hit my goal weight (which I’m still 15 pounds away from, darn it).

I still wonder if I might have bitten off more than I can chew this month, but I’m trying my darnedest.

A quick update:

• The NaNo MS is up to nearly 10,500 words (and that’s 10,500 more words than I had at the beginning of November!).

• I’ve printed out another paper copy of the GH entry (pages and synopsis) to read through tonight. I plan to make any final changes and hit the post office tomorrow. It’s payday, and I need to pay for the mailing while I have the money to do it!

That’s what I’ve been up to. How about you?

8,755

That’s the total number of words I’ve written since Nov. 1. I was very proud of that total — more than 1,000 a day — until I realized that I’m still WAY behind. My NaNo buddies already have upwards of 20,000. Hmm … Guess I’m still ahead of where I was last week at this time.

And I’m averaging more than 1,000 words a day. That in itself is pretty impressive considering I’ve been out of the writing habit. If nothing else, doing the NaNo should get me back in the habit.

I do have a question, though. Why can it take several hours to craft what amounts to a 5-minute thrill for my characters? I’ve been writing about the day Damien meets Kari’s family all week long! How does that happen?

I might be nuts …

… But I did decide to go ahead and sign up for the NaNoWriMo. I figured that, if nothing else, it’d spur me to finish the last 40,000 words I need to write on “Blind Date Bride” so I can enter it in next year’s GH.

Now it’s Day 3, and I’ve still only written about 2,000 words. That already puts me hopelessly behind.

Even worse, now that I’ve let Kari and Damien out to play, I’m having trouble shutting them up long enough to go back and put the finishing touches on this year’s GH entry featuring Erin and the not-nearly-as-boring anymore Brad. (He’s come a long way in the last few months!)

I got some very good — and much appreciated — feedback on those pages from Anne Marie, one of the GH winners from 09. Needless to say, I’m taking her advice because she knows what she’s doing! 😀

To finish 50,000 words in 30 days, I need to write 1,667 a day. Since I only need about 40,000 words, I don’t have to write quite that much … it works out to 1,333 a day.

At 1,994 after Day 2, I’m not as far behind as I could be. I may even catch up later, when I get off work.

Hope springs eternal! 😀

P.S. If any of my blog readers (of which I’m sure there are a few) are doing the NaNo and want to add me as a buddy, my username is arlenemarie. Novel title: Blind Date Bride.

Shipped off

Hmm. I just realized I made it sound like my Golden Heart entry is in the mail.

Sadly, that’s not the case. I did, however, send in my query, synopsis and first 5 pages of MS to the Ohio Valley RWA Enchanted Words contest, beating their Nov. 1 deadline by two full days!

It was easier than I imagined, because it was an online submission. All I had to do was attach my document to the online entry form and pay through PayPal.

Totally cool. And now, it’s time to get back to work on the old GH entry.

Actually, I’m thinking it’s about ready to go. I’ve been finding myself re-adding words that I took out on my last read-through, and I’m pretty sure that means I’ve fiddled with it enough. 😀

I zapped it off to one of my writer friends who said she’d take a look.

Now it’s on to something else. I’m still contemplating signing up for the NaNoWriMo. I’d better decide soon, since it starts Sunday! I figure if nothing else, it’ll give me a kick in the butt to finish writing the 40,000 words I need to finish “Blind Date Bride.”

I’m half afraid that if I do sign up, I’ll spend more time fiddling around in the online forums than I do writing, though. Any words of wisdom on that subject from you who have done NaNo before?

Getting serious

I saw a link to this contest over the weekend and decided that since it’s pretty much what I’m already working to compile for the Golden Heart, I might as well go for it.

For the Ohio Valley RWA “Enchanted Words” contest, I need my synopsis (check), the first five pages of manuscript (pretty much as done as they’re going to get) and a query letter.

Query letter? Oh no! I know I need one of those to start looking for an agent, but I don’t have one yet.

Wait! That’s not entirely true. Last spring, NARWA had a hands-on query-writing workshop as a follow-up to Brenda Novak’s talk on query letters. I frantically dug through all the half-full spiral-bound notebooks in the house and car until I found it: My query letter.

Remarkably, it was pretty much finished — and not too bad. I spent some time this morning reworking it, and my contest entry is just about good to go.

Still working on the GH entry. A friend of mine self-imposed an Oct. 31 deadline so she can do the NaNoWriMo without the GH hanging over her head … I decided against doing the NaNo this year because I won’t have time — but I want to do it in 2010. (Last I heard, she was formatting her entry. More power to her.)

Almost ready …

Today, I finished tweaking the ending of my first MS, the one I’m entering in the Golden Heart. I deleted some stuff, added in new things and am now pretty happy with it.

I also went through the on-paper edits in my first 48 pages, the pages that are going off to the GH.

Next up? Updating the synopsis a bit to reflect the new ending and another paper copy of both it and the entry.

I’ll be killing a few more trees, but it’s worth it to be that much closer to getting this entry in tiptop shape!

I’m also wondering if I should get a preview of what to expect by entering this contest. I’d need to write a query letter, but I’ll need one of those anyway if I’m going to start looking for an agent.

Using ink …

I’m not going to say “wasting,” even if that’s what it feels like.

That’s right. I printed out the first 48 pages of my MS, which is where I want to end my GH entry, and my still-6-ish-page synopsis yesterday. I figure that sometimes I see things on paper that I don’t see on my computer screen.

Odd how that works: I can read over something a dozen (or more!) times on-screen, and see something I totally missed on a paper copy.

I’ll chalk that one up to “things that make you go hmm” …

Great. Now that song is running through my head. Guess that’s better than Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the USA,” which was running through my head one day last week, driving me absolutely batty.