Revise, Revise, Revise

A good blogging friend has given me great feeedback on Garlic. Some of it I really did know and didn't want to look at. *sigh*

So it's revisions time again. Not a major one like changing from 3rd person to 1st. But still - killing off a minor character and choosing one major theme to stick to and emphasize.

Still debating on which theme.

First order of business:
Time to go kill Scott. Poor kid. But that means I get to pull in stuff from the chapters I deleted when I fixed the geographic bouncing around. Never permanently delete such things. You might need them later. (Not adding back geographic bouncing - I just need a piece of this action.)

Second order of business:
Come up with one paragraph on Tommy's journey to help solidify his major theme.

February Contests

I entered Miss Snark's First Victim's February Secret Agent contest.

It's my alter ego this time - dark, edgy YA.

My entry.


Then there's this one: "Dear Lucky Agent" Contest. This one needs a tag line, so I have some tinkering to do.

Hm. On second thought, this one has a lot of rules that I'm not so comfortable with. Check the comments before you enter.

Here's Another One

In for a penny...

Agent Mary Kole (Andrea Brown Literary Agency) is holding a Novel Beginnings contest on the kidlit blog.

There are some interesting rules to enter. Good time to practice your paying attention to submission guidelines skill.

January Contest Entries

Miss Snark's First Victim's Secret Agent Contest

Clarity of Night Short Fiction Contest

Interestingly entries 10 and 11. Would've been too weird if they wound up being the same number.

Hope to have updates on both of these soon.


Update #1: I am in the list of Notable Mentions in the Secret Agent contest and get to submit my query and first three chapters.

Update #2: Got some great feedback from Jason over at Clarity of Night. This entry had a bit of a problem with pacing - choose what information in the opening paragraph is important.
I wound up cutting one sentence from this piece as a result.

NaJaWhaWE

Doesn't quite have the same ring, but I'm trying to do in one weekend what I wanted to do in the month of November - revise Garlic - completely.

Over halfway through. Only 92 more pages to go - today. Last night I hit the chapter that I forgot needed to be written. I had gutted several chapters and left notes for the information that had to be included. Got that done and I'm moving on.

Weekend, thy name is BIC.


Update: 11:11am and 43 pages done. This is looking doable.

Update to the Update: 2:30pm - DONE!

Blogcation

I'm in the middle of an internet vacation. Taking time to write, to relax, to reorder my priorities. Unplugging has been an interesting experience.

NaNoWhaMo

I did NaNoWriMo once. It was a wonderful learning experience that I thought I'd never want to repeat. I'm amazed that it's becoming a temptation once again.

That being said, I'm not at a point where I can take the month off from revising in order to write a new set of 50K words. So I have decided to set my own NaNo type goals for this month.

Garlic - revise 2 chapters per day for a total of 60 this month with the hope that the other 2 will get done somewhere in there as a bonus.

Of Mice And Little Girls - write a new chapter per day. 30 new chapters which might only be about 4K words since the first 10 chapters are only 2K words. This is my new experimental poetry/prose project.

I'm already behind. I was behind until the last week of the month back in 2005, so I'm not ready to throw in the towel.

Maybe next year, I'll try writing 50K words in a month, only I'd like to make that goal be 50K good words in an editable novel.