What I'm listening to: "Lost in Paradise" by Evanescence
So here I am, a month later? Almost two.... eeks, it's amazing how time slips away! In all fairness, my personal life has been CRAZY lately. With a sickness in the family, graduating university, and loads of personal stress. However, good things have been happening too. My dinos are growing like weeds. My raptor (son) will be 3 in a month and I am shaking my head, wondering how the heck that happened. It won't be long before he's off to kindergarten and since that boy is seriously smart as a whip, I know he'll do fine. It will be a tearful day when he goes, but at the same time, I am really looking forward to having a normal writing schedule in the future.
I read a really amazing blog post yesterday on how to increase your productivity as a writer. It is by author, Rachel Aaron. It will have you writing crazy fast like a cheetah! It's something I want to employ once I have a bit more free time (ha!).
Actually what I really like about it and want to use right away is the concept of tracking. This author marks down what time she sits down at the computer every single day and what time she finishes her session at. She marks down how many words she accomplishes in that time, even figuring out how many words per hour she writes. From this she has been able to extrapolate when her best writing times are, when she's most productive, and more importantly, why. Is it because she worked away from home/distractions? Because she got to that candy bar scene? The one she'd been waiting to write since the novel was conceived?
It's an interesting read at any rate.
Onto the writing news. So since last time we talked, I finally have a working title for the book. Yay! This was stumping me and up 'til now I was only referring to it by the name of the world. So that's a good thing. I also have a query letter and 2 page synopsis. I do not have the longer more in-depth synopsis worked out because I am not sure just yet how many agents will want that. The tricky thing about synopses is that pretty much everyone (editors, pub houses and agents) have different lengths. I've read everything from, it should be a 1 page quick synopsis, to 2 pages, to 5, to one page for every chapter. So I'm going to just play that one by ear when I get a specific request.
As for the novel itself, the last 100 or so pages are going through copy editing at the moment (I have a wonderful friend who took on that monumental task). She marks up the pages for me and then I go over her comments and make my own additions. It's funny because she'll cut part of a sentence as being a bit too wordy or unnecessary description. I'll read the sentence over and decide it's unnecessary altogether. And thus from this simple process, we have eliminated over 5k words already, which is excellent because a YA novel should really be less than then the 95k beast I started with.
Oh, wow, I just remembered something in writing this that I completely left out in the last 50 pages of the book! There's a minor character who shows up near the end who is not significantly important for the end of the book but becomes so in Book 2. And that character disappears. Not as a plot device. But because I totally forgot about her. *Shakes head*
So as you can see, the revisions are not quite complete yet, which is not an awful thing because I want to make sure I've laid my ground work for the continuation of the series (I'm pretty sure its four books at this point, but that could change). I'll be continuing the edits on Book 1 while I am plotting Book 2.
Plotting Book 2 has been interesting so far but that is a whole different post. Suffice to say that works on Book 1 is drawing to a close even with that last crucial edit that just popped into my head. I give it about a month or two before I am querying with it. The sample pages, query letter and synopsis I have in hand are all looking very polished. Just have to bring the last 100 or so pages of the novel up to snuff and I'm set. Amazing.
At least I'll be busy with working on Book 2 so I don't hold my breath and pass out before I hear anything back on Book 1. I wish I could do something like write Book 2 in a single month. Unfortunately, the realities of being a stay-at-home Mom compete with those crazy author delusions. Between all the domestic-y stuff I need to do throughout the day, I seriously doubt I could buzz through the whole book in one month, but I may yet try.
Well, that is all for now. My dinos are waking, sqwuaking from their cages--er playpens--and require fresh meat (aka cheerios and banana). Have a glorious friday all!
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