Caught Up

Well boys and girls, after a few visits full of hard work at the library while my younger sister babysat the children, I am officially caught up with my revising.

That's exciting!!!

With all the changes I made, I wrote out an outline so that I knew where I was going with it all. That was a huge help so that I wasn't afraid to tackle all the work that needed to be done. Then I went through, chapter by chapter, adding and deleting and rewriting what was necessary. At first it was just a sentence here and a paragraph there. Then big chunks. Then half chapters. Until finally, I was rewriting complete chapters, one right after another because everything was becoming completely irrelevant to the story that was now forming. So yesterday, after beating out 3 completely new chapters, I skimmed the 3 chapters that were left and realized that there was nothing in them that I wanted to save. So I deleted them. It was scary, but freeing, since for me it's easier to start from scratch than rework what's already there. I find that distracting, and it's harder to get the words to flow.

But, now I'm caught up. From here on out it's all new stuff instead of changing what was already written. It's nice, because I must say the revisions were a little draining. I'm excited to move on to the rest of the story and see where it takes me next! It's just been me and my little book in a bubble, and it's been nice, so I think I'll keep it that way until I'm done. Then I'll get it printed out for Andrea and Aubrey and they can go through it for me and make notes and edits for my next round of revisions. (It's easier for me to look at that stuff on paper, rather than scrolling through on my computer.) If I keep up the pace I have going, I should be done with my first draft by the end of July, but I should definitely be able to keep by goal to finish by the end of August. It's very exciting! I have started several stories, but I always get distracted and never finish, so I'm super excited that this one WILL get finished. It's a big deal!

Anyway, that's where I am right now. About halfway through, and on to all new material until I hit the end of book 1. (I seriously need to think of a nickname for it to use on here.) Wish me luck that I can keep up the good pace and the creative juices keep flowing for me! Until next time, happy writing!!

Hey, something cool!

Hey, it's a new month and that means that I have a new story up over on Once Upon a Distraction!! You should go check it out, because this month really had me stumped and after 6 tries, I think I finally came up with something good! (And it was inspired by a cartoon picture while I was researching hair colors. True story.)

I hope you enjoy it and remember, comments are as good as gold to me because I would love to know what you think! Have a great week!

Fear and Other Randomness

Hello, hello to one and all. So, since my last post when I talked about making a side character a fairly important and villianous character I have now changed a fair amount of my story and it may now be a three book story instead of just two books. *sigh* To be completely honest with you, this didn't really thrill me at first. And I'm still not quite sure how I feel about it. It's a little exciting, because all of these changes are making the story SO much better (you never realize how much work it needs until you start revisions, wow) and it's got great potential. But three books is a lot and pretty daunting when I've yet to finish the first one. And there's still a lot left to figure out so that it all works nicely together and it leaves me feeling very overwhelmed. So after coming up with all of these changes, I kind of ignored my story for about a week because I was too afraid of it to dive in. (Yes. My name is Jenn and sometimes I'm afraid of my WIP.) There's just so much to do and for someone who has always been a huge procrastinator, this is my biggest hurdle. And while all of this was swirling around in my head (I was pretty distracted during this time, let me tell you) I was seriously starting to doubt myself and my ability to do this. I mean, I'm just one more person who wants to be an author. What makes me any different from the millions of other people out there who want the same thing? But after some pep talks from the girls and my darling Sparky, I realized that they believe in me, and that's enough to carry me through until I can believe in myself. And even if I only ever end up writing for myself, I really enjoy it, so I'll keep going no matter what ends up happening.

In other news, my challenge for myself to finish book 1 by the end of the summer is going fairly well so far. A few days ago I finally sat down and wrote a decently detailed outline for it with all the new changes so that I could figure out where everything was going and what did and didn't need to be rewritten. It's a huge relief to have that done, because I finally feel like I have some direction after changing things up. Yesterday I had my younger sister come and hang out with my kids while I escaped to the library and wrote all afternoon. And after 3.5 hours of solid writing, I managed to revise 6 chapters (don't get too impressed, they aren't super long) and finish up a project for Aubrey. It was SO nice. I haven't been able to focus on my writing like that in ages. So she and I are going to try and have her come over once a week so that I have at least one day where I know I can get some serious work done. It's really nice. She's such a doll face for helping out during her summer vacation, but she's one driven girl and I'm just one of the many little jobs she has going on this summer, so I'm doing her a favor as much as she's doing one for me. :) Aubrey and I have also discussed watching each other's kids once a week so we can each get away for some writing time free of kids. So, all in all, I think that as long as I don't get lazy (this is a serious flaw of mine, so cross your fingers for me) then I should be able to finish the official first draft of book 1 by the end of the summer - and maybe outlines for books 2 and 3 so that they won't scare me as much. ;)

And then in random news, I think you should all get on Twitter and follow @maureenjohnson and @kierstenwhite because they are both HILARIOUS. I love reading their tweets because they border on the ridiculous while dipping into the serious every now and again. They never fail to make me giggle at least once a day, and to top it all off, they are very gifted writers and their books are fantastic. Honestly, just get on Twitter for all of the awesome authors on there. It's such an amazing community and this way I can kind of feel like I'm a part of it - or at least like I can watch it. It's a great way to connect with these amazing people and get a feel for their personalities and get updates on what they're working on. But they also connect me to other news that I wouldn't be finding on my own, and it's all just making me feel a little smarter and more connected to the world. So, if you aren't on Twitter, what are you waiting for? And if you are, come find me! We can be Twitter buddies and cyber stalk our favorite authors together. ;)

Well, that's it for this fairly random post. I hope you all are enjoying the summer so far (our weather is still bipolar, but I've had my windows open all week so I'm pretty happy) and that you're enjoying some great books and getting some writing in! I think I'm going to share some of my summer reads every now and again on here, just for fun, so look for those as well. And until next time, happy writing!!