I Hate It When They're Right

So, I've been chugging along on my MMG rewrites, pretty happy with the results. Until I realized that I'm 85 pages in and Kitty's only had one brief contact with the man who will change her life. Now I believe it's important to show her life before the change. But 85 pages? How can I shorten it? Ah, cut one of the holiday gatherings and move any important info to the other one. Great idea.

The problem is that that was one of the comments made by several of my readers from the first time through. Thanksgiving and Christmas with the family was too repetitive, and I should cut one or the other. I balked (as I have been known to do on one or two occasions). They were both important. She was with different relatives at each one. It gave me a chance to introduce two different hauntings.

But they were right, dammit. I can just rejigger the hauntings.

This is all by way of saying that I'm extremely thankful for my writing friends. Now I just need to listen to them from the get-go. Although I do think the normal reaction is to question what they're saying. And that's not necessarily a bad thing as long as I make myself justify why I disagree. If the answer doesn't serve the story, it's not a valid reason.

Reading Goals

I gave my writing goals a week ago. Guess it's time to think about my reading goals for the year. Not that I think we necessarily need goals. Reading for fun is, well, fun and worthwhile for that simple fact. But I do like a challenge and find that I usually come away from one having not only learned something but having had some fun, too.

So, in addition to the ones I pick up just because, I would like to tackle the following this year:

--Read more non-fiction. I tend to only read non-fiction when I'm researching a book. While that's groovy, I'd like to read a little more on current events, history, biography, whatever that has nothing to do with what I'm planning to write. If it creeps in later, so be it.
--Read a couple craft books--writing, that is. There were a few years, back in the beginning of this writer's journey, when I read one craft book after another. Then they all start to bleed into each other. It's probably been a couple years since I read one. Time to pick up a couple old favorites and delve into a few I haven't read before.
--Read some classics. This will include The Divine Comedy, The Iliad and The Odyssey. I've had them on my shelf for years, but haven't gotten around to them. It's time.

Not awfully specific, but enough to give me a rough guideline. Kinda like my writing outlines.

Change

Well, Jenny changed hers and, let's face it, we all seem to copy off, I mean inspire each other around here. So I've changed to orange, because orange is supposed to represent and provoke creativity. I'm copying in order to be original.

Or something like that.

So many things make sense in my head, but then not when they're released into the world.

Odds and Ends

There was recent thread on an email loop I belong to. It went along the lines of "Our writing group needs to be able to meet online. But a lot of our membership isn't very comfortable with computers. So suggest a solution that is easy for computer illiterate types."

Excuse me? How many problems in logic can you see in those 3 lines? You have computer illiterates who want to meet online? And these are writers who aren't comfortable with technology?

I'm sorry, but in this day and age a writer must be comfortable with computers, the Interweb and all that goes with it. Fact of life. Tool of the trade. You don't have to know how to put a computer together or even how to program one, but you'd better be savvy with some kind of word processing software, email and search engines. Most agencies are moving to email queries and submissions only. How are you going to get your work out there if you can't navigate the Interweb?

And whatever happened to the past tense of so many irregular verbs? Words like "swam" and "sank" and "stank" and the like? All I see now are phrases like "The boiled cabbage stunk" and "I sunk the basketball." No, you didn't. You sank the basketball. You may have sunk many basketballs in your lifetime, but this particular one you sank.

Okay, I guess it was just odd and end. Thought I'd have more to vent about, but apparently not right now.

Carry on.

The Year Ahead

As we saw in the previous post, I was a big old slacker failure in 2008. (I'm giggling as I type so obviously I don't feel all that badly about it, which is probably a really bad thing.) So what should I expect from myself in 2009 that would be an improvement? Well, almost anything would be an improvement, wouldn't it? Okay, done beating myself up now.

Here's what I would really like to get done in 2009 with a bit more specificity:

--Finish revision of MMG in January (or be prepared to throw it in a drawer).
--Revise Vesta by end of April.
--Finish draft of TNN by end of February.
--Revise TNN by end of summer.
--Write rough draft of some other novel that I haven't thought up yet by end of year.
--Query Dan and other agents in March (only if MMG is submittable, otherwise wait for Vesta).
--Write flash fiction piece for anthology by mid-January.

Anyone else ready to commit to what they want to accomplish next year?

Year in Review

I just went back and looked at my goals for this year. They were not particularly ambitious. Yet I failed to meet a large percentage of them. Disappointing to say the least. Here they are, with the results, such as they were:

--Finish revision of MMG. (Um, no.)
--Query Daniel and lots of other agents. (No)
--Finish draft of Vesta. (Check)
--Work on short stories and submit. (Not a single one.)
--Possibly start TNN or another new novel. (Check)
**Win NaNoWriMo (Check!)

Holy jeez, that's just sad.

**Addendum: Ali pointed out that I won NaNoWriMo this year and didn't list it. I didn't because it wasn't one of my stated goals. The results are listed (finish draft of Vesta and start TNN). But it was a bit deal so I've added it to the bottom.

Quick Update

The new PPW Prez sent out an email yesterday (that I read this morning) about the economy and how it's impacting non-profits (like PPW) and how they rely on volunteers, and how they need more volunteers. Sort of a "many hands make light work" sort of message. All of that is true. And I found myself thinking, "I could maybe do that one little thing there that shouldn't take much time." Then I heard several voices yelling at me and felt several virtual dope-slaps.

So I took my name off the volunteer loop.