Edits are in!

I got the first round of edits for Cassidy's War on Monday. I was worried that I'd have to push my other projects aside to work on them, but figured if I can edit 20 pages per day, I'll meet my deadline with a couple of days to spare.

I did most of the work on this book pre-contract when I did two full editor requested revisions, so I'm hoping most of the work is already done. I'm hoping to complete the first 100 pages by Friday.

So, I should have time to complete the first draft on a short contemporary story that's nearly done, as well as plot out a new Civil War set novella.

Having solid deadlines somehow makes me feel more productive and efficient.

Not only did I complete the first 40 pages of edits, but I researched and wrote a Civil War blog for Slip Into Something Victorian that will be up on Friday and wrote another 500 words on my short story.

It might be because, now I have a deadline for the edits, I'm getting right to work instead of fooling around online or checking emails.

Finished first draft!

The first draft of my time travel novella is finished...so, I'm putting it aside until at least June.

Now, my problem is deciding which project to work on next. I have a partially written short story, another one I want to go over one last time...and I've started plotting out a new novella that will be set during the Civil War.

I think the hardest part of writing, for me, is finishing a project, then deciding what to work on next. Finishing a project seems like letting go, even if it's only a first draft that I'll be revising later. And with so many projects in the works to choose from, picking one to get back to is the hardest task of all.

Had a slow down over the past week, but plan to get back on track

Had an unexpected job to take care of over the past week, but now that's finished and I want to get back to producing words for my time travel novella. Have about three chapters left to write and am officially at a word count of 28,426. My projected word count was 30,000, so I'm pretty much where I want to be.

Hopefully, I can get this draft finished without any more interruptions. I plan to print the entire draft out and put it aside for at least a month or two before starting revisions.

For now, I've decided to stick with the title of 'Thoroughly Modern Amanda'.

Back to work on my time travel novella

I just polished up a new short story and sent it off on Monday. Now, I've got three submissions out at once. Yay! Haven't had that many out for a long while.

Now, I'm back to the time travel novella I had to stop work on a while back to finish up my novel. I had to go back and finish up the plot outline, but now it's done. Today I moved around the opening scenes and  wrote an additional 1131 words. I want to keep moving forward until I finish the first draft.

This novella is an offshoot of my Civil War time travel romance, Erin's Rebel. But the novella takes place 20 years after the war. The hero and heroine of Erin's Rebel are the parents of the novella's heroine, the hero is from our time.

It's fun to work on a piece taken from an existing story. My latest novel is too. Characters and situations already exist from the original story, so it's sort of like moving forward through time and seeing the characters grow.

Ack! Thought I was farther along with that novella

In going over my partially completed time travel novella, I found that although I'd written the first three scenes, I'd only plotted out the first eight scenes. So, before I resume writing, I have to go back and plot out the second half of the story.

I'd thought I'd finished that, so was a little disappointed, but I'll finish plotting, then get back to writing the first draft.

That's what happens when I leave a project midway through.

Finished another story!

I just completed the first draft of a short story today. I printed it out and put it in a folder to edit and polish up later. I'll probably give it another look-over next week.

Tomorrow, I'm going to reaquaint myself with my time travel novella. I'm still not sure what I want to title this one yet. It's based on my Civil War time travel romance, Erin's Rebel, but takes place after the war.

I was writing the first draft but stopped to get the revisions done for Cassidy's War. I'll look over what I did so far and try to get back into the swing of the story.

Feeling unproductive today

I planned to finish the end of my first draft this week, but it's just not happening. For one thing, I'm signed up for a workshop on Character Torture and already had two lessons and a homework assignment to complete. And I did such a bad job with the homework, I had to do it over and still didn't get it right.

It's a real learning experience that shows me that draft I'm trying to complete is going to take a lot of work when I get to the revision stage. I don't know if that's why I'm freezing up on the project or I'm just getting tired of working on one thing day after day.

If I can't get back into it tomorrow, I might switch to one of the short stories I've started on and see if I can do something with that to get my enthusiasm for writing back.

Of course, if I could just get that homework assignment right, I might not be so scared to go on with the draft. It's a first draft after all. It's allowed to suck. LOL.

Getting closer to 'the end'

After taking a day off, I'm back to adding to the word count of the first draft of my science fiction romance, A Pirate's Honor. In the past two days, I've added over 2500 words to the draft.

If I can fight off my procrastination that seems to descend when I'm close to the end of a project, I'm hoping to finish up sometime next week.

I do have a workshop starting on the 19th, but I hope to navigate around that and finish this project up. I'm just so close!

Wish me luck.

Summer Book Challenge report

Although I wasn't able to complete the first draft of my summer book challenge book, a science fiction romance called A Pirate's Honor, I'm pleased to announce that I'm 68,936 words along.

All I have left to write is the black moment and ending. I should have no trouble completing this by the end of this month.

So, that said, my goal for September is to finish and write 'the end' to this draft.

I'm looking forward to putting this manuscript aside for a bit, so I can work on a few short stories and novellas for a change.

Writing Goals

August is over and Labor Day less than a week away. It looks like I won't be completing the first draft of A Pirate's Honor, my summer book project.

But I've written nearly 66,000 words so far and am coming up on the black moment scene. I should be able to complete the draft this month. Then I can put it away to cool and work on some short projects. I already have two short stories and a novella in various stages of development and am looking forward to a break from novel length. Maybe I can finish up a few and get them submitted before I'm ready to even start the revision on the full.

I'm looking forward to working on different genres and lengths this month and October as well. It should be a fun break.

Still plugging away...

I started writing the first draft of my science fiction romance, I'm calling A Pirate's Honor, on June 1st. And while it's been hectic this summer, I managed to complete 59,286 words as of yesterday. My word count goal is about 80,000 words. A little more than 20,000 to go.

I've mostly been writing on weekdays and not every day, depends on what other tasks and complications arise, but that's a lot of words for a couple of months work. Of course, once I've finished the draft, I'll have to put it aside for a few months and work on something else. But I do look forward to writing 'the end'.

And to accomplish that feat, I've place my butt in my desk chair every afternoon for days on end. I bring up the file, read the last couple of pages I wrote the day before, confer with my plot sheet and write.

It's been working out so far. I've had no blocks or stoppages, except to work through plot points in the murky middle of the story I haven't yet worked out, but it seems to be going smoothly so far. One scene feeds into another. I hope to have the draft completed before the end of September.

For writers out there, how do you keep going when working on the first draft of a novel?

Writing on my own time

Now that my latest manuscript's been rejected, I decided to devote all my writing time to the first draft of my science fiction romance. My plan is to write at least 1000 words each weekday and try, if I can to stretch it to 1500. I also have to continue to plot out the middle of this story. The beginning and ending are plotted out, but there's a lot of middle I'm still not sure of.

But I like working at my own pace for a change. And since it's summer, once I get my word count done and do at least a little bit of plotting, I can spend a little time before starting dinner to pleasure read.

My current read is Linnea Sinclair's Finders Keepers. I'm about 80% through and really hate to have to put this one down. So, if dinner gets held up...oh, well.

But it's really nice to have some downtime each day for a change. The past few weeks have been deadline hell!

No New Contract

My latest historical was rejected again. Not sure whether to be sad, mad or relieved. After so many revisions, I was on the verge of hating this story.

Sometimes you just have to step back from a story for a while, or let it go altogether.

For now, I have the rest of the summer to complete the first draft of my science fiction romance and then I can put it aside and work on some short stories. I think I need a change from novels for a spell.

Been totally neglecting the blog...

... but it is summer, we've just celebrated a major American holiday and I've been swamped with non-writing related work. Have to make money, after all.

But I'm all caught up and thought I'd post about my latest project. I'm working through the first draft of a science fiction romance, I'm tentatively calling, A Pirate's Honor. The first title for this work was Moons of Cynara, but I realized I was heading in the wrong direction and had to put it aside, then come back to the manuscript with a new vision.

I'm about 25,000 words into the draft, but still have a way to go. I hope I can complete or nearly complete the draft by Labor Day. We'll see.

Things have been non-existent on the writing scene for the past few weeks for me, due to lack of time, but now I'm free...at least for now...to get back into this new project.

Of course, the life of a freelance writer is full of distractions. Hopefully, I can stay on course, unless I get a new contract. That would be a welcome distraction.

Revisioning

With so many new releases out in a short space of time, I've been spending a great deal of my writing time on book promotion.

But I need to take some time to actually work on writing, otherwise, I'll have nothing new to promote in the future.

I did recently submit a short story to a magazine, but now have to wait to see if they're interested. I also wrote two full-length manuscripts that I have to revise.

The first one is my first science fiction romance that I'm calling Moons of Cynara. Don't know if that title will stick, but for now, I'm going with it. I recently reread that manuscript and I do have to add at least 7000 words to get it up to my planned minumum word count of 80,000 words. So, I'm trying to see what I can add to flesh out the story. I may also change some of the basic story to enhance the original plot. I actually feel this part of the process is just as creative as writing the first draft.

I'm hoping I can complete this revision in the next couple of months, so I can get started on revising the first draft of my post Civil War romance. I haven't looked at it since I finished the draft in early September.

With two full-lengths to revise, I realize I've got my work cut out for me. For all you writers out there, what is your favorite part of working on a story? Is it the first draft, the revision or the final edit? And what part to you hate the most?

For me, I think the revision stage is my favorite, because I feel like I'm improving and enhancing my basic story.

All Finished!

Well, I did it! I wrote the last few pages of my new first draft today. This was my summer book project and I just came in under the wire. Now, I can put it aside for a little while and take a breather.

I'm pleased that my scene-by-scene outline kept me on track throughout many distractions and made it that much easier to know where my story was going and when it would be finished.

I also finished up with a galley I had to proofread just in a nick of time, so I'm good.

After a few days of relaxation, I'll be ready to finish the first draft of my short contemporary story. And from there, onward and upward.

Why is it so hard to write 'THE END'?

I'm nearing the end of the first draft of my post Civil War romance novel that I'm calling, Cassidy's War. This was my summer book project for this year and I wanted to get the first draft done by Labor Day.

Well, I've already made my projected word count, the Black Moment is over, the resolution for both the outer and romantic conflict are complete. All I have left to write is the HEA (happily ever after) in romance writers' jargon.

So, why am I suddenly slowing up? The finish line is right ahead of me. All I need is a few paragraphs to wrap everything up.

I can't figure this out. Writers complain about getting stuck in the middle or fizzling out right after the opening of a story, but my main sticking point seems to be writing "The End".

Anyone else out there have a similar problem?

Taking a few days away from book promotion

It's been both exciting and hectic having two books come out in one month. I've been trying to do all the promo I can, while not neglecting work on contracted books and new works in progress.

I'm also anxiously awaiting reviews. Each day that goes by without one just makes me worry that I won't get any at all.

So, for the next two days, I'm taking a break from promotion, so I can fully concentrate on my newest projects. My only contracted story is getting ready to go to galley, but I haven't gotten it yet.

I sent off two contest entries for the opening of my science fiction romance and want to get back to revision on that manuscript next month.

My two first draft projects, a full-length historical and short contemporary, I'm writing in tandem. I'd planned to wait until the historical was finished, but the new story just didn't want to wait. Good thing they're two different genres, so I can't possibly get them mixed up. I'd like to complete both by the end of the month, if possible.

I know a lot of writers work on multiple projects at one time, and if they can do it, so can I.

Wish me luck!

One Quarter of the Way...

I'm happy to announce I'm 100 pages into my summer book project. Official word count is 18,688.

I hope to get at least another 10 k completed by the end of this month.

My scene by scene outline has been a big help in allowing me to not get bogged down, because right now, I'm mired in edits for another story, plus promo for Erin's Rebel. It's hard to keep that balance when you've got projects in different stages of development, but I've been keeping at least one hour per day devoted to my summer project and it seems to be working out.

Any of you have any tips on juggling several projects at once?

Started Summer Book Project

June 1st was the day I started writing the first draft of my lastest project. I plan to make this my summer book project. It's been four days and I'm up to 3944 words. This story is already outlined and my plan is to go right through the first draft, without stopping to edit. So, we'll see how I do.

I've already written a blurb for this new story, sort of an inspiration to keep me going.

Here it is: Blurb for Cassidy’s War

The Civil War is over, but Cassidy’s War is just beginning.

Cassidy Stuart has longed to be doctor for as long as she can remember. Growing up watching her physician father attend patients and her time serving as a nurse during the war, have only increased her desire to attend medical school and start a practice of her own. But prejudice against female physicians still abounds. And things grow more complicated by the return of the man who’d left her at the altar five years before, the rakish ex-soldier turned professional gambler, George Masters.

George has been on the run, finally settling in New York to assume the life of a gambler, and trying to forget hellish memories of the death of his best friend, Cassidy’s brother, at Gettysburg, and his time in a Confederate prison camp. But his biggest regret was deserting Cassidy two days before their wedding. She deserved a better man, or so he’d thought at the time. Will he now have a second chance to win place in her heart?

This is a sequel to a book I had published years ago and is now out-of-print. Does it pique your interest?