15 posts tagged “life stuff”

Both in life and with my writing.  Life right now is a bunch of annoying, but necessary doctor appointments.  Taking care of a recurring female related problem and finally getting back on my heart medication.  Just can't love being winded all the time.  Kids are out of school, though youngest will be going to summer school in June.  Husband is working.  Things aren't better than they were before, but they aren't worse, so this is good.

I'm on ch. 23 of Assassin's Choice and almost 34k in on Phoenix Rising.  Plus I picked up my Novel Plot Building book again and just started chapter 4.  I'm actually sailing through A.C. at the moment.  I'm still behind but managing a chapter a week (both v4 and v5 revisions), sometimes going into a second chapter.  It looks like I'll finish 2 months after my self-imposed deadline, than I'll need to make the v6 revisions I have planned.  Most of those shouldn't be too hard though—the big ones involve some character/race changes, but even they aren't that big.  I expect the book to go out to beta readers by the end of the year.  I'll take a break and early next year start thinking about the query letter, outline, and synopsis.  NOT looking forward to that, actually.  :P

The night owl schedule is definitely a big part of the productivity.  When I do finally get out of bed, I'm usually quite ready to get to work rather than needing time to wake up and figure out my day.  At night, I use my most creative part of my cycle to make progress in my revisions, which seems to be really helpful in keeping me going despite being at the most difficult part of the novel.

I've given up on shorts for the time being, maybe permanently.  Shorts are a hard length for me, the market hunting frustrating and exhausting, and the pay not worth the time put into the process.  Granted, I don't write to make a living...yet, but, at the same time, I'm not writing to put more money into trying to get published than I get out of it.  I have a few credits, some of them in some pretty decent zines.  For now, I'm content on that front and just want to focus on the books, which I'm more comfortable with anyway.  It may be awhile before I get published again, but I'm okay with that.

I've actually had an amazing amount of personal stuff get in the way of my usual activities, some of it health related, some of it family related, and a whole lot of it disruptive.  Things appear to be settling now, for the most part, and I've made a few changes to make my days easier for me.  Not sure they will get me on this blog more than usual, but they are already helping with the writing aspect of things.  Now we just need the weather to be cooperative...which is not likely to happen consistently any time soon.  We need the water, don't get me wrong, so the rain is welcome.  The tornadoes and lightning, however, really aren't as necessary as they seem to think they are.  ;)

Of course, the biggest concern has been my health.  I had to go back on my iron to combat anemia, and finally gave in and went to the doctor when the last 2 weeks proved to be far more difficult than they should have been.  He's put me on medication as a stop gap measure (which is already working) and is having testing done to see what we can do to keep the issue under control in the future.  A lot of this has to do with my weight, and a lot of it has to do with my age.  I was taking tiny steps towards a healthier me when the newest wrinkle showed up.  With the temporary measures already having a dramatic affect for the better, I'm already trying to get back into some of the habits that were helping me before.  I may hold off on exercise for a bit, though, just to allow things to stabilize before I go adding something back into the mix.

One of the biggest changes I've made is to my schedule.  I'm not sure why, but months after leaving my substitute teaching job, I was still on the working girl schedule: up early, awake all day, to bed around midnight.  For most people, this works...except maybe the midnight thing.  For ME, this is a nightmare.  I hate mornings (I like to say I'm allergic to them) and have always done better with a night time schedule--meaning to bed at 3 AM (or later) and up at 10 or 11 AM.  I don't even start to feel creative energy until 1 AM or later, so being in bed at midnight robs me of my most creative time.  After talking with the husband about this, it was agreed that I should try to go back to my own schedule, with a small change: I still have to get up to get the kids off to school.  I just go back to bed once they are on their buses and sleep until 11 or noon.  The old work schedule rears its ugly head still, so the shift over is proving a bit more difficult than I thought it would be, but, as I said earlier, the positive results are already being seen.  I've been working A LOT faster on A.C. than I was before starting to switch over.  Nothing beats working within your own creative cycle.

The editing job has also gone through some changes.  Our acquisitions editor resigned for personal reasons that had nothing to do with her love for us.  She just didn't feel it was the right fit for her.  As a result, my position as senior editor is now merged with acquisitions, and I've had to do some shuffling around with my responsibilities to get everything to fit.  Fortunately, it's still quiet for us.  It may not stay that way once we have our August launch and release.  I'm looking forward to it, but we also still have a lot to do to get 3 of our 4 books ready on time (the 4th may or may not be ready, and we're okay with that).

In other news, my essay "When Tears Fall" has been reprinted in Voices of Autism, an autism anthology.  I am VERY excited about this antho.  It's already received at least one wonderful review:

The fifth entry in the Voices anthology project from the Healing Project, this work includes over 40 different stories and vignettes written by parents, teachers, and people with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) that showcase how families and caregivers measure perseverance, understanding, and success. Many of the selections stand out, including an author’s account of her autistic son, a seventh grader’s perspective on her two siblings with autism, a memoir by an adult with autism who relied on a tire advertisement to get through tough times, and an account of the challenges of dating an adult with Asperger’s. The book’s real strengths are the adult-penned passages, which will give readers a better sense of what autism truly is. Taken individually, the stories show glimpses of the impact that autism has on individuals and those they love. Taken collectively, they paint a rich landscape that many will find familiar. Highly recommended for public libraries and academic libraries with disability collections.

-- ­Corey Seeman, Kresge Business Administration Library, Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor

I hope you will consider picking up a copy.  Autism is probably one of the least understood but most prevalent disabilities in the world today.  1 out of 166 people are diagnosed with autism, and it affects everyone in the autistic's life.  Probably the most frightening part of the disability is that those who have it look normal.  It's not like so many disabilities where you can tell there's something different just by the person's appearance.  When you combine this with the lack of knowledge about it, the result can be devastating for the family.  I've been a target of the blame game, of being told I should get another opinion because it's probably not autism, of having to fight for everything that my son is supposed to get by law.  The only thing that will help is education.  The essays and stories in this book come from our personal experiences as family members of autistics and from those with autism.  Nothing could inform better.

Between personal stress at home, work, weather, and a few other things, not much work has been done on my own writing recently (note previous entry).  However, I have finally reached the current halfway mark in Assassin's Choice in terms of chapter numbers.  I may be past that in actual word count because there's a huge chunk towards the end of the book that may get cut.  Phoenix Rising also got a nice, healthy word count addition this week--I now have a Friday buddy that I meet with to work on "alternate" projects.  Hopefully meeting with her every week will help keep me on track with it.

In publication news, two of my short stories are now available on AnthologyBuilder.com: "In the Blood" and "Intended".  One of them even received positive comments from the site editor.  I need to update the site to reflect that, I suppose.  ;)

There's little else to post about really.  I'm ruminating a new Meta and considering writing a new article on critiquing (yea, like we all ne4ed another one--but this one comes from something I realized about the crits I receive and how I react to them).  I'm still working on a short, and, yes, it's very odd for me to plod my way through a first draft of a short like this.  I just finished a S. L. Veihl book and have one other novel and an omnibus lined up for me to read.  For work, one manuscript has been returned to the author for round 2 edits, and the second manuscript is about done with round 1.

I did start trying out a new hard copy method for tracking my submissions.  It's going to take a bit to get all the old stuff in the columnar book...and I may end up having to do it all over again because I'm not so sure I like it.  I like the idea of a book and the information I'm trying to keep (in general), but the book is a bit...big.  I'm thinking of making my own template then having it copied and bound at Staples.  We'll see.

And...that's about it.  Told you it's been quiet.

I've just been sick.  Really, REALLY sick.  It's definitely been a week to forget--everyone in the house caught it, including the husband who kept trying to act like he had nothing.  It kicked his butt too.  As for me, I slept.  A LOT.  A good 3 days of sleep.  And didn't eat much.  And didn't write at all.  Or work, for that matter.

I'm pretty much behind on everything at the moment.  I'm even 30k behind in my word count goal for the year.  All I can do now is hope the rest of the year gets better from here, really.  Most of this week will focus on catching up with work and taking care of things on that end.  I'm still getting pretty tired after being up for a few hours, though, so catching up may not be the operative word yet.  I don't want to push myself too hard and end up relapsing with this stuff--it was bad enough the first time around.  I have goals for the week, it's just slow and steady is going to be the mantra.  If I don't make the goals, so be it.

I spent most of last week fighting sinus crud and generally being sick.  By Wednesday, I gave up, crawled in bed, and pretty much stayed there.  By Friday, I was feeling better, but I decided to keep taking it easy--I've been fighting a lot of ickiness since I stopped subbing.  My kids haven't been sick, so I'm not sure where it's coming from.  Rather than rush back to work and risk another relapse, I just stayed in bed.

I did manage to get alden.nu back online and in working order, though.  That took all of the weekend, but its done.

Now my plan is to focus on getting A.C. back on track.  Have other stuff in the works as well, but A.C. is the priority.

We had a wonderful holiday, but I'm glad it's over.  My oldest daughter and her family came down on Christmas Eve and spent a few days with is, middle daughter was over for the day with her boyfriend (who left right after we ate), and the kids father was out for about a week or so.  The gift pile was just scary, even taking into account there were a lot of people doing the giving and a couple of extra people receiving.  Not much writing done in December at all--just too busy.  The kids went back to school on January 3, and I've spent most of this last week trying to catch up on a few things.  But now it's time to get back into the groove...or to find a groove to get back into.  ;)

My first priority is A.C., which I want done and out to beta readers by November.  It's a late date, but I have the current v4/v5 combined revision I'm doing to finish, then some major changes for one of the characters to make in a v6 revision.  I'm keeping a to do list for v6 as I work through v4/v5.  Most of it is nit picky things, but I'm changing the race of a character (dropping the previous race completely out of the Alden world) and that will require some larger changes.  I suspect beta readers will find places where I missed things.  ;)

I'm also working on Phoenix Rising.  The notes draft is going pretty well, but is minus notes and I suspect has some redundancy.  I'll finish it, print it, make notations of what needs to be fixed, and revise the notes draft before moving on to the building draft.  I need to work on world building for it (and A.C. as well).  I've also got Stolen Priest out for me to look at, but it's a pretty low priority for me right now.

Nine shorts are in various stages of being worked on: "A Single Parent In A Married Relationship" (essay), "Blood Whispers" (Vampire), "The Reckoning" (SF), "Gift of Writing" (Supernatural), "Magda" (??), "Iris" (SF), "Rebuilding After Rejection" (Article; being updated), "Promises" (Vampire), and "Fairy Dragon" (brand new Fantasy).  Most of these are in various stages of being revised, although "Fairy Dragon" is so new the rough isn't finished.  Several are a couple of years old, which is my problem with shorts--they aren't a priority for me.  They'll eventually get done; I'm just not one to impose deadlines on them since they tend to get pushed aside more frequently for other things.

The only other project to worry about is fixing Alden.nu.  I tried to give it a start this morning, but there's a problem with the MT install, so I have to wait until the fella who handles the server gets back online to fix it for me.  Alden.nu will take awhile to get back together anyway--most of the areas that have problems have to be restored page by page.  That's a lot of pages to have to get back online.

Goals for 2008:
» 450,000 words
» Finish A.C. and get it out to whole book readers
» Finish Phoenix rough draft and revisions to v3
» at least 1 professional publication (no, I never learn)
» finish "Letters", "Single Parent", and "Blood Whispers"
» write 6 new shorts
» read 1 book a month

The only thing I'm worried about on that list is the 6 new shorts, but the rest should be quite manageable. :)

As has been most this past year, it's been a busy few months, but some major changes are going to allow me to change my focus in the future.  It's all good, but requires me to come up with a routine for my day that works.  I'm very excited about it all though.  :)

The best news right now is that I'm no longer subbing.  A lot of reasons went into it, including a boss change for my husband, which also means a schedule change.  The new boss expects people to be in to work at 7 A.M.  and they generally don't leave until 3 or 3:30 p.m.  Our son's bus picks him up at 9 and drops him off at 4, and my husband's new schedule prevents him from being home for the boy at either time.  At the same time, the latest I can be in a classroom as a sub is about 8:30.  My husband's job makes more money, so I resigned my subbing position.  And happily so.  The one thing subbing showed me is that I'm not nearly as suited to being a teacher as I once was.  If I had started when I was younger, it might be different now; but a lot has changed about me since my days in college, and my patience with snarky kids appears to be one of the changes.

This does not mean I'm not working, though.  I've resigned my editor position with one small press to accept the Senior Editing position for Lilley Press, a new, Canadian, small press.  I read slush (guidelines, guys, guidelines!  Yeesh!), hire editors, assign accepted manuscripts to editors, and do some editing myself.  Our first publications should come out in ebook format early in 2008.  First hard copies, depending on how well the ebooks do, should come out in 2009.  That's the hope anyway.  I'm very excited about it, but the slush alone is going to keep me very busy.

I'm about 8 chapters behind in my A.C. revisions, but they are getting done and reactions from people who have seen the new v5 have been good.  A new Alden novel, Phoenix Rising, is in the notes draft stage.  I need to work on world building for both as well.  As usual, my shorts are getting the least attention, but I'm okay with that.  Some of my newer stuff is on the dark end of things--rather pessimistic in their view of humanity.  It's an interesting change in my writing, but one i hope isn't permanent.  ;)

As for other projects, Alden.nu is still a mess, but on my list to tackle early in the year.  Most of my other web related work is on target.  The house things I've been trying to tackle will take time since they need some financial investment and we don't have enough for that right now.  I am working on healthier living--a journey you can read in my new journal  It's About Time.  I'm mostly working on the routine and adding exercise into my day.  I'm not really working on food changes, but I am watching my food and will eventually make changes that are healthier.  Become unhealthy is easy; turning it around is a step-by-step thing that takes time.

The plan is to write in Journeys at least once a week now.  My old writing journal is unlikely to become active again since to pull it together means re-posting 100s of entries.  I'll probably leave what's done as it is, but I can't easily create new entries for it.  It was probably about time, though.  My LJ has become home to most of my word count and other writer related posts, and Journeys is home to writing and whatever is left.  Sometimes, you just have to accept the changes and move on.

I started subbing again (got to make the rent somehow!), but only part time--meaning only 2 or 3 days a week.  So far I haven't had to turn anyone down for have my 2 (preferred) or 3 (if one of my fave teachers begs really hard) booked, but I'm sure that will change once the weather finally goes from sweltering to "Is it cold enough to snow yet?  No?  Could have fooled me!"  This should start sometime in November, maybe earlier.  I'm also going to try to limit the number of schools this year.  I may have to make the rent, but I also need to keep what's left of my sanity.

This means I'm now trying to compress 2 full time jobs into 5 days.  Not fun, but better than it was.  Even the editing thing doesn't take up all the time needed for a long term position.  My family actually gets to see me in the evenings.  But it's still a busy time, and my own work is suffering a little because of it.

And I'm suffering a big case of avoidance on at least 2 things since they both need scenes added.  I know.  Bad, bad, bad author.  I'm working on it.  Sorta.

Also coming up this week: Dragon*Con.  Yes, I plan to be there, as broke as we are.  Mostly on the Writing Track, but there's a little Goth and a little Anime, among others, thrown in for good measure.  this will also be the hub's first time at the Con, so I need to spend time with him keeping him from getting lost, spending money, you know...the usual things.

Now add on top of all this that my oldest is here with the grandbaby, and, yea, things are just a  bit on the busy side.  I am thinking about what I need to be doing, but it's usually too hot and humid (as the hottest part of the day tends to hit in the early evening then stay for awhile) to dig up any motivation for it.  Hopefully it'll start cooling soon and the writing won;t be so hard to get to even after working during the day.

It's been quite a month, with computer meltdowns and other issues cropping up, plus working on an editing project, so time hasn't been what I had hoped.  Fortunately, I managed to save all my writing in the computer mess, though I did lose quite a few other things.  Not as much as I feared, but something important always manages to get lost or mucked up.  In this case, I can't find the codes I need for a bit of software (non-writing related) and can't seem to get a response from the company at all.  I even tried to repurchase.  I'll wait until tomorrow to attempt to contact the company one more time.  If that doesn't work, I'll need to hunt up some replacement software that still works on Win 98 and contact the place that I purchased the software through to see if I can get my money back.  Most my other stuff is saved, but, for some unknown reason, my comp won't access the CDs.  I suspect my CD burner is toast.

A.C. is up to ch5 in revisions.  I showed the earlier chapters to an editor friend of mine and she gave me the thumbs up.  So, the revisions are on track even if they're a bit on the slow side.  They should speed up a little once I get past ch10, which is the last chapter with anything to salvage from my previous attempt at v4 and v5 revisions.  My only concern is making sure the chapters after ch10 have the same tone and polish.  There will be a 6th revision to make some very specific changes and to check for technical errors, then it will go out to beta readers.  Once it's off to them, I'll look at Quest for Ehlarayn and rework it from either the outline or the narrative draft up.

Phoenix Rising is in the outline stage.  I've sorted out 2 of the plot lines, beginning to end.  The people in my writing group who are actually paying attention like the story so far.  I've also reposted Stolen Priest to the group.  The only thing really getting ignored is my short stories.  I have a few new pieces that I need to work on, and a couple of older ones I really should revise, but I seem to go through these phases where I'm so focused on the novel work that anything else is just too much of an interference.

It really is rather surprising how much I have managed to finish all things considered.  I had to reformat, our phone line was torched by lightning, I've been down at least one or two days a week with migraines, storms have kept me off-line for several days, the husband was in an accident -- he's fine but the car is not.  And that's just the major stuff.  Hopefully things will settle down now.  I have more editing projects coming up, and I'm slowly working out a schedule that allows me time for my own writing.  In a month, it will be easier since the kids will be in school (though the daughter and granddaughter will be here).  Not sure when the weather will stop kicking me off-line as well, but hopefully that won;t be too much after the kids are out of the house.

A.C. is still in revisions, but it's all posted with my crit group and I'm pulling chapters and getting it done.  I'm trying to keep a fairly steady pace, not always easy even when I'm really focused on it -- which I have been.  During May, I ended up subbing for most of the month, and that really derailed me (work always does).  Then my second daughter moved back in, bringing chaos with her  -- less than when she lived here before, but it was still quite a disruption.  And now the kids are out and I'm trying to find something other than teaching as a job.  A steady pace now days is when I manage to work on revisions 2 days in a row.

I've started Phoenix Rising, the first in a series of 5 related books with different main characters.  In fact, they're also at different times in Kree (the nation in which they take place) history.  So they kind of stand alone, but they do chronicle the rise and fall of one major house in Kree.  The Thalionrhoes become a part of the first council when the last Life Guardian of Alden dies.  They resist the pressure from the human members to change the consistency of the council.  Later, they create an underground railroad of sorts, this one helping the lyanthry, declared traitors by the council, flee to Serayn.  Finally, the council turns on them completely and attacks their manor, razing the land, killing any surviving members they can find.

That's the whole series.  Yes, I've had it in my head for some time (like most my Alden novels).  Phoenix 1 is the rise of the family to power.  The main character is chosen by the last Life Guardian herself to become a council member.  And it is she who is by the Guardian's side when she prophecies and dies.  This is the main story, and now i have to build the rest -- the conflict from those who would rather the Guardian choose 3 people to take the places the Guardians once held, the conflict with the MC's own house and the spirit guardian that watches over them.  Unlike A.C., I don't have this one all thought out yet, so it's going to take me some time to pull just the plotting form together.

I'm considering looking at books 2 and 3 in the Heroes trilogy again too.  Neither were long enough rough drafts, so I need to go back a step or two with them and see what I need to do to build them up.  I'm thinking I may have to start back at the outline or plotting form and see if I need to develop anything more than I did, then rebuild.

Even if these 3 books never get published, they are certainly teaching me a lot!  I'm hoping A.C. will be ready for whole book readers by the end of the year, and ready for me to query agents by next summer, maybe earlier.  I keep letting myself get hung up on things that I don't really need to be hung up on.  I really have to stop doing that.