A lot has happened in the past year since I’ve posted, haha! Understatement of the century.
But these are the big things:
- Wednesday Night Writes #wnwdc — Along with some writer friends, I started a writing group that gets together once a week to write the words primarily, or edit, or research, as well as commiserate, share tips, and for general comraderie. We started in May of 2016 and have been going strong for over a year now! Hooray to designated writing time.
- Completed Round 1 Editing — Oh. My. Gosh. I thought I’d never be done. About 3 years after completing the draft of my first manuscript (and having my first daughter) I finally, finally, finally got it to the point where I was willing to let other people read it, thus I…
- Sent my MS out for Beta Reading! — I found some writing friends and readers of the genre willing to review my work and am so grateful to have their initial feedback to know what was strong and weak. Very indepth and actionable feedback.
- Completed Round 2 of Editing — This was much quicker because I was trying to make the deadline for…
- Entering my MS in Contests! — This isn’t the first time I’d submitted, but let’s be real–I submitted the first MS back then when even I hadn’t read it, haha! Crazy. This time it was actually edited… and I received more feedback, from strangers with anonymity. The good news is most of it was pretty consistent. And my main takeaways were reiterated by my…
- First Professional Copy Edit! — I was so blessed to win a full manuscript copy edit at our Washington Romance Writers annual conference last April, and thus once I completed round 2 edits–I finally sent the MS over to the professional editor from whom I won it, Denise McInerney. Her feedback was largely in line with what I was hearing from others, but so awesome to have hers line-by-line throughout my manuscript helping me to see the issues and how to refine them. However, I was about to hit another major roadblock…
- Baby Daughter #2 arrived! On April 23 and 9 days early. I’ll refer to her as “Moon” in these public forums (so not her name) but she is healthy, and sweet and mellow–and big sister “Star” is thrilled but doesn’t understand why she’s not getting bigger faster haha!
- Editing Again — So here’s where I am now. Editing again… working through all the great feedback from the professional copy edit–but it’s just taking some time… and I took a break for the first 8 weeks of Moon’s life. Hopefully I’ll get that wrapped well before my maternity leave ends, so I can get synopses and query letters completed and get this MS off my desk and get on to the NEXT STORY by the time I start back at my day job!!! 🙂