Hopefully your week went better than mine. Broke my tooth last Friday and lived with the accompanying pain until Tuesday, when the dentist extracted the offending tooth. Of course, writing wasn't really an option, as pain is not a good conductor to imagination or romance.
On top of that, I received a rejection that same day from an editor I'd queried a couple of months ago. Writer's are such strange people ... I didn't read the email (even though it could have, right there on my phone) until I got home. In my flawed logic, as long as I didn't read the email, I wasn't rejected.
When I finally recovered from my Vicodin-induced haze, her polite rejection said, "I think you have a really intriguing premise, but it just didn’t quite resonate with me. This is only one editor’s subjective opinion, of course.
I wish you the best of luck with your manuscript."
What the h*$$ does that mean? I'd love to sit down with the editor to get the unvarnished truth of what she saw, or didn't see in my manuscript. Because something is missing, and I'm stumped as to what it could be. The problem is, editors are afraid to tell writers the truth, for fear of retribution or an angry reaction.
So, without a way to get an answer, the best thing I can do is go on. Back to writing at least an hour every day. Listen to workshop tapes and polish my craft.
My goal is to top 30K words on my manuscript. What's your goal this next week?
Showing posts with label goals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label goals. Show all posts
Friday, June 25, 2010
Monday, May 31, 2010
Three Day Weekend ... Bust
Whenever I think about a long weekend, all I can think is all the writing I'll get done. I envision writing from the time the sun comes up, until I force myself to finally go to bed in the wee hours of the night, producing large amounts of brilliant works that will set the world on fire and garner me fame and fortune.
BUT, I have a family. The kids are grown, but still very much involved in our lives (or is it vice-versa?? LOL!). The hubby actually wants to spend time together, go figure. So in reality, my weekends often revolve around family, as it should be. I have been able to carve out an hour each weekend day, even though I'd given myself permission to have one day off.
This past weekend, though, I completely fell off my 'write at least 675 words or an hour a day' bandwagon and didn't write anything but emails on Saturday. I do have an excuse, if you're interested ... pain. My body has decided that my female parts are not welcome anymore and they are desperate to get rid of them. Finally I resorted to Vicodin, which made me feel like I was in a boat, even when I was walking. Evil stuff, that.
So, Sunday rolls around. I get up at the butt-crack of dawn, because the body says so and will not let me sleep anymore. I stumble out to the kitchen to coffee up and zombie walk to my office and turn on the computer. Nobody is awake and wants to play, even in cyber-land. I've often told myself that I can't write at home, too distracting. (There's that "can't" word again! D*amn it!) With nothing else to do, literally, I decide to put in my earphones and see if I can dash off a couple of words on my WIP or at least figure out what my characters next move will be.
Probably took longer than an hour, I really wasn't paying attention, but exceeded my goal for Sunday, writing 902 words. Today I wrote 762, so at the beginning of the week, I'm ahead by 314 words, if you're counting. Whoohoo!!
BUT, I have a family. The kids are grown, but still very much involved in our lives (or is it vice-versa?? LOL!). The hubby actually wants to spend time together, go figure. So in reality, my weekends often revolve around family, as it should be. I have been able to carve out an hour each weekend day, even though I'd given myself permission to have one day off.
This past weekend, though, I completely fell off my 'write at least 675 words or an hour a day' bandwagon and didn't write anything but emails on Saturday. I do have an excuse, if you're interested ... pain. My body has decided that my female parts are not welcome anymore and they are desperate to get rid of them. Finally I resorted to Vicodin, which made me feel like I was in a boat, even when I was walking. Evil stuff, that.
So, Sunday rolls around. I get up at the butt-crack of dawn, because the body says so and will not let me sleep anymore. I stumble out to the kitchen to coffee up and zombie walk to my office and turn on the computer. Nobody is awake and wants to play, even in cyber-land. I've often told myself that I can't write at home, too distracting. (There's that "can't" word again! D*amn it!) With nothing else to do, literally, I decide to put in my earphones and see if I can dash off a couple of words on my WIP or at least figure out what my characters next move will be.
Probably took longer than an hour, I really wasn't paying attention, but exceeded my goal for Sunday, writing 902 words. Today I wrote 762, so at the beginning of the week, I'm ahead by 314 words, if you're counting. Whoohoo!!
Friday, May 28, 2010
A Painful Journey to Discovery - Part Deux
(continued from previous blog) For someone who has always had the next book just begging to be written, I was all but hyperventilating with panic. Then a good friend of mine (thanks APD!) said to just describe the bar. Not really write a scene or anything, just write it down in detail. That did it. As soon as I imagined what the bar looked like, the first scene popped fully-formed into my head.
Since that day a month ago, April 28th to be exact, I’ve written at least one hour every day. My original goal was 625 words (2.5 pages) a day 6 days a week, and felt that was pretty ambiguous considering I thought I wrote about 1 page per hour. That would give me approximately a chapter a week, so 90,000k book in about 4 months. The first few days, sitting at my favorite writing spot, I wrote blind, not knowing much about my characters. And wrote. And wrote. Exceeding my original goal almost every day that first week. Any research needed is done at night, when I type the pages into the laptop. The story grew organically and it became clear that I don’t need to know where I’m going.
To challenge myself, the original goal was bumped up to 675wds/day, 6 days/week for a weekly goal of 4,050 wds. I’ve keep my head down, writing that 1 hour a day, for a month today. If I need to catch up, I have that 7th day to write. I didn’t recalculate the 90k/4mo projection, giving myself a little wiggle room, in case something happens to knock me off my path. Life happens. I don’t berate myself for not making my daily goal, because it’s not the end of the world.
So far, I’ve exceeded the weekly goal, by several thousand words – remember that OCD – because I’ve written *something* every day, even on my “day off”. I feel like a writer. I act like a writer – see my website at www.darlaluke.com – AND I’m writing.
So my advice to writers: Know Your Process. If you don’t know it, try different ways of writing until you feel comfortable and can WRITE. Don’t put yourself in a box by saying ‘I can’t ____’. Susan Lute kept telling me that she’s a contemporary romance writer (she’s published in it, that must be what she is!) and she can’t write paranormal, even though she loves reading them. Until she sat down one day and did a writing exercise by putting two of her favorite characters into a different setting. A paranormal setting, it turned out. And an Apocalyptic paranormal romance was born.
I'm at 18,000+ words and counting. Are you writing … every day? What’s your goal?
Since that day a month ago, April 28th to be exact, I’ve written at least one hour every day. My original goal was 625 words (2.5 pages) a day 6 days a week, and felt that was pretty ambiguous considering I thought I wrote about 1 page per hour. That would give me approximately a chapter a week, so 90,000k book in about 4 months. The first few days, sitting at my favorite writing spot, I wrote blind, not knowing much about my characters. And wrote. And wrote. Exceeding my original goal almost every day that first week. Any research needed is done at night, when I type the pages into the laptop. The story grew organically and it became clear that I don’t need to know where I’m going.
To challenge myself, the original goal was bumped up to 675wds/day, 6 days/week for a weekly goal of 4,050 wds. I’ve keep my head down, writing that 1 hour a day, for a month today. If I need to catch up, I have that 7th day to write. I didn’t recalculate the 90k/4mo projection, giving myself a little wiggle room, in case something happens to knock me off my path. Life happens. I don’t berate myself for not making my daily goal, because it’s not the end of the world.
So far, I’ve exceeded the weekly goal, by several thousand words – remember that OCD – because I’ve written *something* every day, even on my “day off”. I feel like a writer. I act like a writer – see my website at www.darlaluke.com – AND I’m writing.
So my advice to writers: Know Your Process. If you don’t know it, try different ways of writing until you feel comfortable and can WRITE. Don’t put yourself in a box by saying ‘I can’t ____’. Susan Lute kept telling me that she’s a contemporary romance writer (she’s published in it, that must be what she is!) and she can’t write paranormal, even though she loves reading them. Until she sat down one day and did a writing exercise by putting two of her favorite characters into a different setting. A paranormal setting, it turned out. And an Apocalyptic paranormal romance was born.
I'm at 18,000+ words and counting. Are you writing … every day? What’s your goal?
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