Pre-dawn is my time. I wake up at 4:30 a.m., french press my coffee, feed the animals, get a tall glass of water, sometimes enjoy a mandarin orange, and then do something productive. In 2018 that productive thing was go to the gym for an hour and run five miles. In 2019, that productive thing … Continue reading Wake up! Time to Query.
The eternally-wise "they" say that you get rejected 99 times before you get a buy in on your novel or submitted piece of work. But even knowing this intellectually, getting a pass on a manuscript still sucks. For me, the first couple were a particular drag. It's like getting dumped after the first date. On … Continue reading Query Rejections
As I am currently unrepresented by an agent and editor-less, I have to establish my own deadlines. Here's why this is a challenge: I started my career in news, which consisted of constant deadlines from like, 50 sources. By the time I left news for good a few years ago, I seriously had not ever … Continue reading Deadlines and Due Dates
I powered through and finished hot mess #1. I like it! I feel good about it! It's a book I would like to read, and would have adored and probably read over and over when I was in middle/high school. But now, in order to get other people to read it and hopefully make money … Continue reading The Thing About Query Letters
The whole point of NaNoWriMo was to finish the second novel. I didn't have to start from scratch, I had a decent head start over 10,000 words, but it was still a push. I had days where I wrote a hell of a lot. I had days where I wrote zero. Today I finished. Because … Continue reading Done with NaNoWriMo
Yesterday was a bad day. Today is shaping up to be a bad day. It's not the persistent, nagging slow burn of depression or grief, it's just several bad days where things just happen that suck. My trainer quit, for example. I had some family drama to deal with. And my beloved manuscript earned its … Continue reading When crappy days derail NaNoWriMo
Last weekend I went to my local writer's conference in Virginia Beach. The Hampton Roads Writers Conference is small, (at least I think it is, I've never actually been to a writer's conference before,) but there was a ton of great ideas, insight, networking, and practice for writers of all types. It was a completely … Continue reading Well, I Submitted
The Merry Manuscript 