Post Tagged with: "editing"

The neglectful blogger

The neglectful blogger

Oh, have I been awful about this blog lately. Really, there is no excuse. Well, there is kind of.

In September I was informed by boss (who lives in Florida) that something happened with the company and he was getting rid of everyone, and I’d be “on contract” until he could afford to hire me back. His “heads up” was one whole pay period. Not helpful. So I’ve literally not been buying books, which is ridiculously, but true. My GoodReads to-read list is piling up like WHOA and I can’t even afford freaking $10 for an ebook.

“Go to a library,” you say. I KNOW that, but the library closest to me SUCKS and to “go” anywhere in L.A. is such a hassel. That, and there are waiting lists MILES long for the good book — even their ebook list, which I’ve been on FOREVA.

So the past months have been me scraping by with my job at the barn. I ALMOST got the Sickest. Job. In. The. World. but they “froze” hiring. I DO have another awesome job opportunity, but it won’t start until January and it won’t be full pay right away.

In writing news, I’m back to editing. Again. This will be the last round, I SWEAR. What happened to NaNoWriMo you ask? Well, I was sick for two weeks and if I wasn’t wanting to die at work I was curled up in my bed in complete darkness. Then I was away at a horse show and you tell me if you could write sharing a room with four people after working 12 hour days. No? Didn’t think so.

In reading news, I was asked by UK based Silverwood Books to be on their book review team, which is AWESOME. Silverwood is an alternative to self-publishing and everyone really needs to check out their website. I can promise you I will be buying (and reading) Boundless the DAY it comes out even if I need to borrow the money from my Dad.  My first review for Silverwood (it’s a PIRATE book!) comes out at the end of February!

All right, its 2:30am and I need to work in a few hours.

-A

December 8, 2012 0 comments
And it begins

And it begins

I sent my first three queries out tonight. I realized editing and reediting and re-reediting isn’t going to get me anywhere. I’ll always want to change a word or a sentence.  If by heaven’s chance this book gets published, I’m sure it’ll be on the shelf and I’d still want things in it changed.

I signed up on querytracker.net.  I’ve researched for days. I’ve made lists. Then tonight, after a few days of not-so-good news in other parts of my life, I knew I had to DO something. Something more than changing Sending out the very first e-mail…my hand just hovered over that send button.  Because this is when it really starts.  My friends and family and peers can give me as much feedback as they can, but they aren’t the ones who need to sell this. To attach it to their career. I give literary agents a ridiculous amount of credit.  I couldn’t imagine doing what they do.

Now instead of saying, “So, I wrote this book,”  it’s now, “So, I’m trying to publish this book.”

September 27, 2012 0 comments
The Pitch

The Pitch

I haven’t been reading and reviewing, mainly because I’ve been writing. I thought I was happy with my manuscript but I went to go another “once over” and just found myself changing sentences and changing a name of a character. The one thing I have solid is the last part of my query letter. My pitch. And I’ve finally decided to share it.

Sterling throws out the halos and white wings and revisits one of the oldest rivalries in existence. Only this time, when the demons rise and the angels fall from grace, the only one left to lead the side of Good, is the girl who had all but abandoned it.

September 10, 2012 0 comments
On Leave

On Leave

So after talking it over on the NB forums, I’ve decided to let The Book sit for a while.  I had gotten to the point where I really couldn’t stand to look at it anymore and I had no drive to do anything with it.  I’m not sure exactly when I’ll finish editing it; I don’t want to put a time frame on my mentality.  Instead I’m going to go back to The-First-Attempt-Book and start over. Completely.  I had over 80,000 words in the draft I had been working on, but it just wasn’t very good.  It’s not really the plot I’m worried about, or making it worthy of being a published novel.  It’s all about the characters I created and abandoned.  I want to finish their story.  I need to finish their story. It concerns me when they pop in my head.  When I see someone who looks just how I pictured them, or hear something that reminds me of their story.  So for now, that’s what I’m going to be doing.  As for The Book — I’m not worried.  It’ll get done when it gets done.

July 24, 2012 0 comments Read More
Ta-da!

Ta-da!

The old lay out was really just…irking me.  Every time I’d go on the site I’d frown, and that’s just not cool.  I had been searching far and wide for free themes, but none had really been what I wanted…until tonight.  This is a free theme by WPZOOM who have a bunch of other stellar free themes as well as some awesome premium ones.  I didn’t do much.  Just a bit with fonts and used @font-face  for the first time (I know, where have I been, right?) to upload Sansumi onto the site (FontSquirrel rocks my socks — you all need to go check them out!).  I like it.  Well, for now at least.  Chronically Indecisive is my very long middle name.

On The Book front, the first round of editing is finished, but of course it can’t be all rainbows.  I realized after the fact that I went about it the wrong way.  I used Adobe Acrobat Pro to edit the PDF I exported so I could always go back and reference the original text was versus the edits without needing to pull up two versions side-by-side.  Sounded like a great idea, but now that I’m done with the PDF, I need to physically go in and edit the Scrivener file. I’m pretty much doing a second edit while inserting the edits for the first one.  It’s tedious, but I guess you can never edit too many times.

I’ve been putting off re-writing my query for as long as possible, but I desperately need to get that going.  I was hoping to hear back from Kat before tackling it, but I may just add her two cents in at a later date.

Until next time.

July 9, 2012 0 comments