Getting Serious(er)

With two and half novel first drafts completed, I decided it just might be time to be more serious about this writing thing. I don't think it's going away. Not going to outgrow it or grow bored with it. No cures in sight.

So, I joined Publisher's Marketplace today. I've belonged before on their free lunch, but it doesn't provide the detail to really do the research on what's selling, for how much and by whom. You can even click on Top Dealmaker's and see who is getting the best deals by genre. Even by "Debut". How cool is that? One Mr. Lazar is rated #13 on that list for number of deals made for debut authors. He's also had several 6 figure advances recently. Loving him more and more. [But staying realistic in my expectations.]

Another part of the getting seriouser is knuckling down and doing the frikkin' rewrites. Goals for this month remain the same, because I also know I can't drop the momentum on TNN. But my January is going to be all about the rewrites. [You've heard it before, but NaNo changed something. I did something I thought I couldn't do. It's kinda magical.] I will look at how many chapters I have in MMG and Vesta, then break it down into a certain number of chapters a day. If there are too many to realistically get through both in one month, I'll settle for MMG in January and Vesta in February.

Dreaming is great. Dreaming is what's motivated me this far. Dreaming is where a lot of the ideas come from. But doing the damn work is what pays off.

Time to get to work.

December Goals

After November, it feels like I would be justified in saying no to goals for the month. But I really don't want to do that. I have a bit of momentum going, although I know that December tends to be a tough month to accomplish much in, I'm still going to keep working.

So, here they are:

--Write another 10,000 words of TNN. This is one fifth of what I did last month, and I have 6 handwritten pages already so not too worried about hitting it.
--Rewrite 2 chapters of MMG. One of the distractions that happens during NaNo (and any other time I'm writing) is that ideas for what's wrong with some other project come fast and furious. Again this one is not pushing it at all.
--Finish 4 books I've already started. I'm about halfway through Dexter In The Dark and Night. I'm about a third of the way through The Worst Hard Time and The Secret Life Of Bees.
--Do the CWC critique--of course. This is going to be fun because it's the whole manuscript of FJR with new ending.

I'm also going to try to design a NaNoReMo program for January. That stands for National Novel Revising Month. Jenny wants to do the NaNo writing in January and asked me to join her, but I have 2 1/2 novels to rewrite so they can start being submitted. Might be a tricky thing to quantify and break down, but I'll give it a shot.

Anyway, that'll be December. Along with shopping and wrapping and eating and partying and all that good stuff.