I am in shock! At how long it’s been since I posted. I mean, I know that I don’t post all that often, but I have been busy in my writing career so it’s kind of wrong that I haven’t been sharing.
Let’s see if I can give a real high-level look at what I’ve been up to since November 2017. So I received my developmental edit from Kimberly Kincaid, and it was truly excellent. Unfortunately, I also came to the revelation of how much MORE work Book 1 of my trilogy was going to take. So I decided to take a bit of a hiatus through the spring, to read books from the romance genre, to read craft books, to recharge my soul and writing spirit.
Somewhere along the way, one of my stalwart writing buddies at Wednesday Night Writes: DC Edition suggested that I work on Book 2 of the trilogy, because it’d been so long since I’d written, and truly you learn more from writing, writing and writing and maybe that would help me with fixing all that ails Book 1.
So as I was signed up to attend the RWA National Conference in July in Denver, I decided I’d attend that, take as many classes in the craft track as I could, and then use that as fuel to help me attack Book 2. It was my first Nationals, and it was awesome. I learned a great deal and connected with so many great people.
Then through the fall, winter and into early 2019, I’ve been researching, building character profiles, experimenting with Scrivener for the first time ever (LOVE!), plotting and outlining Book 2, and somewhere in March started officially working regularly on drafting Book 2. With that, I entered my goals into a great website recommended by my WNW DC edition friends, called Pacemaker Press. For book 2, I’m hoping to draft the whole thing, at around 60,000 words, by July 16, over a four-month period. I was able to plot out when I do most of my writing, Wednesdays and weekends, and see what it’ll take me to get there. It’s manageable and really helping me stay on track. I mean, of course, I’m lagging right now, but I’ll catch up. I’m a bit of a sprinter when it comes to writing. You can see where I’m at now in the module at the end of this post.
Ultimately, my goal is to have my first draft done ahead of RWA Nationals this July in NYC so I can do some pitching to agents and editors there.
And finally, at the suggestion of the same WNW: DC pal as who got me writing Book 2, I quickly revised Book 1 in time to enter in the Golden Heart for the final year of the contest. I didn’t final and haven’t received my results back yet–but hey, it was worth a shot right? And at least I fixed up some of the first 50 or so pages. It wasn’t as bad as I thought. But for now, it will have to wait, because I intend to write Book 3 as well before I come back to it.
I’ve since come up with an overarching plot to carry through the whole trilogy, which will create a stronger thread to pull the reader through all three books, so I need to change some key elements in Book 1 that I wouldn’t have known I needed to, had I not started to work on Book 2.
Lastly, I signed up for two May craft classes to help foil me in my pursuit of hitting my word count goals. I mean, help me, it will help right? But I am truly excited. They are “Write Better Faster” taught by Becca Syme and “How to Build a World… Or a Universe” taught by Beth Daniels. I’ll try to post more to talk about my experience with those!