NaNoWriMo 2015

I have failed, yet again, at keeping this updated. It seems every December comes around and I plan to keep this updated and on top of things. Each time I fail. This time I'm not going to promise to keep this updated. But I am going to try my very best to. Sometimes I try to think of things I can post to keep everything updated and on topic, but then I never get around to actually doing it until I have news.

I do have news and a few updates. One involves something I actually didn't fail this year. That would be NaNoWriMo! After all the years of attempting NaNo and letting life get in the way and getting stressed at being behind on my word count schedule and quitting, I stuck with it and WON! I originally wasn't going to do NaNo this year because I am still deep within edits for BRING ME TO LIFE. But a new friend in my NaNo FB group talked me into it and I decided to put BMTL to the side for now and start a new book. I started on the 5th of December, five days into NaNo, and I am so happy that I did! Not only because I won, writing 50, 000 words in one month, but because I finally started and finished my second completed rough draft!

After finishing BMTL, I started a New Adult Paranormal Romance. I got pretty far and I love the story. But work got in the way and I stopped working on it. I do hope to pick it up again at some point, but since finishing BMTL I wasn't able to finish a book I started. Until now. :)

My NaNo project was super fun to write and something different than what I normally write. It's an Adult Romance. Usually I write Young Adult or New Adult, but this story came to me and I had to try my hand at it. It's also different because usually I always have some form of magical or paranormal element in my books, but this is just straight up romance in the world we live in with none of that added in. I've tried many times to write a book with no magical or paranormal elements in it and every time I end up adding something. So this was sort of a challenge for me, but also super fun to write and every night I couldn't wait to get started and work on it.

I finished 50K before NaNoWriMo ended, but didn't complete the rough draft until December 2nd at nearly 55K words. Currently I've been calling it SECOND CHANCE, but that will obviously change at a later date. I always try to give my projects a name so I don't just refer to it by it's genre or my character's names, but I suck at titles, haha.

I'll be adding more as soon as I can on BMTL and also SC. BMTL is still currently in the 2nd draft stages. I've currently set it aside to work on editing SC since I know I can probably get through it faster and work on querying it, then I'll hopefully pick edits back up for it and also start working on SC's 2nd book. My goal is to have the 2nd draft done by April in time for Camp NaNoWriMo in April.

If anyone ever has any questions, feel free to ask! :) Also, how many of you participated in NaNoWriMo?

Updates & December Goals

I know, I know. I disappeared again! But I had good reasons; moving, work, everyday life, oh, and having a baby! On November 9th at 9:17 PM our second son, Elijah, was born weighing 7lbs, 2 oz. He was a month and four days early from his due date. Even though he wasn't supposed to be here until around December 11th, he is perfectly healthy and a definite joy. :)

So since I've been home  I've had more time to work on getting things organized and on track again with editing. Really trying to crack down and kick these edits in the butt. I haven't been working on writing, but I will as soon as I'm done working on this round of edits. Trying to focus on getting BMTL as clean as I can so I can query soon.

I've also been in search of a new long-term critique partner. So that's been taking up some of my time too.

I'm thinking of starting to post goals on here to be held accountable. I have this thing where I work great on something for a little bit and then somehow screw it all up and go into a funk of not working on anything for months at a time. I'm tired of doing that and just want to get on track and keep working with serious intentions of getting published. When I am able to find an agent to be represented by, I'm not going to be able to do this. I'll have deadlines that I will need to meet and be serious about. So I need to get my butt in line and work as though I'm already represented and with deadlines.

I've also been trying to be more active in two writing forums I'm in, one is Agent Query Connect which I absolutely love and is a great help, and also Absolute Write. AQ Connect is filled with people serious about getting published and some are already published or represented. You can get help with Queries, synopsis, basic writing questions, publishing questions, and just everything you need in order to land an agent and getting published. An amazing place to get feedback on everything. And Absolute Write is filled with talented writers from all genres and types, not just novels. It's a little more laid back. Both are great places that I highly recommend.

Sometimes on the forums in AQ Connect we list our goals for that current month, a few serious ones I had on mine for the month of December was:

1. Figure out where I left off in editing - This I've already done, so it's scratched off my list!
2. Get everything organized and on track.
3. Create an editing schedule with some deadlines.
4. Finish edits for chapter #3-#8.  - So far chapter 3 and 4 are done.
5. Get back to working on my blog! - Working on this now, obviously. :P I want to try and post something at least once a week. Maybe I'll work on posting my progress each week for now to help keep me on track.

Hope everyone is doing great! Happy writing & editing!

Camp NaNoWriMo July 2014: Day Two

Today got off to a rough start with writing. I didn't start writing until the afternoon and even then I only wrote for about twenty minutes before having to move on to other things. But then after my son went to sleep, I was able to start writing and I thought I'd never get on track when I finally put in a good word count and finished my first chapter! Progress! :)

Can't wait to get further in and to the "fun" parts. Romance, of course. ;) Oh, and all the other drama and excitement that will happen.

Here are my stats for today! :) Hope everyone had a great day, and for those of you participating in Camp NaNo, hope you made your word count goal today and surpassed it with flying colors. Keep up the great work! Don't give up! :)

Daily Goal: 646 words
Total Words: 1, 099
How many words over today? I went over my word count goal of 646 by 453 words. :) 

Week One Goal: 3, 876
How many more words until weekly goal is met? Only 929! That's exciting! Two days in and I'm already nearly to my first weeks goal, though it is a bit short due to this week only containing 6 days of July. But still! :P 
How many more words until monthly goal is met? 17, 053! Lower, and lower. 

Total words together: 2, 947! :) 

Camp NaNoWriMo July 2014: Day One

I know most of you have heard of, and maybe even participated in, National Novel Writing Month, a.k.a. NaNoWriMo. Or even further shortened to NaNo. For those of you who live under a rock, NaNoWriMo is where seemingly insane writer's gather around and race the clock to finish a 50, 000 word novel in one month. Yes, you heard correctly; 50,000 words written in one month. It only comes around once a year though; in November.

But something awesome happened a few years ago and the amazing creators of NaNoWriMo started Camp NaNoWriMo, which takes place in different months within the year before November. The last one was in April, and now it's here once again in July!

It's the same concept, but a little more laid back than November's NaNoWriMo. During Camp NaNoWriMo you may choose your own word count goal as long as it's within the word count goal guidelines and then just. . . write! Write to your hearts content towards your goal and come July 31st, if you've met your goal, you win! *throws confetti*

My goal for July's Camp NaNo is: 20,000 words. 

That is only at least 646 words a day, every day, until the end of July to meet my goal. :)

Since I'm participating, I'll try to update every day for a recap of my word stats. Here are my status for Day One of Camp NaNoWriMo July 2014.

Daily Goal: 646 words
Total Words: 1, 848
How many words over today? I went over my word count goal of 646 by 1, 202. Not bad for the first day. :) Hope I can keep it up!  

Week One Goal: 3, 876
How many more words until weekly goal is met? 2, 028 more words until I meet this weeks word count goal.

How many more words until monthly goal is met? 18, 152 more words until my goal of 20, 000 for this month is met.

If you're participating in Camp NaNo, please share your word count goals and how you did on the first day! :)

Updates

Hello everyone! I haven't posted updates in so long, so long in fact that I had to create a whole new blog and copy everything over because Google wouldn't let me login to my account! I couldn't even recover it!

But oh well, what's done is done and I'm slightly starting fresh with a blog. I need to start posting more! I will definitely start trying to post more and update more on my projects and also Bring Me To Life, which I'm still in the middle of editing, by the way.

I've set new deadlines for myself for my current projects, hopefully I'll stick to them. I really want Bring Me To Life complete and edited as much as possible so I can begin the fantastic--and slightly scary, okay, A LOT scary--path of Querying an Agent and hopefully getting one and continuing down the yellow brick road to Publication.

I may post my new deadlines on the blog so I can have other witnesses, the very few who may see them at this point, see them and make them more real.

That is all for now and I promise I will try to be back with more updates and maybe goals here and there and start putting more things up on this new blog and post things about my current projects, etc.

Also, if you know of any great blogs I should follow, including yours if you have one, please let me know! :)

BMTL Update

I know I haven't updated since March 21st, but I've been busy with edits and planning all things story related and it's just been madness! You never really know how much work you have to put into a novel until you actually finish one and the real fun begins! 

My critique partner has helped A LOT and she's introduced me to Susan Dennard's blog and her amazing Writing Advice Page. She has amazing advice on there from writing your book and all the way up to writing synopsis and query letters and agents and critique partners/beta readers! Everything is so detailed and it helps A LOT. Some of it may make me hyperventilate and stress, but it also takes a lot of stress on wondering, "What comes next?"

Her revising steps have really helped a lot. I've never been to this stage with a story before, so it's all new to me. I've followed her steps so far and have kind of created my own twists to some of it. I'm almost up to the point where it's time to get down to business and start working on the second draft. 

And not only that, but I have some other news too. I've always wondered how authors were able to have different books or series going at one time and though I'm still freaked out about that, I think I kind of understand it now.

Normally I'm a one book gal, but since I'm in the revising stages right now for Bring Me To Life, and it's my MAIN focus, I'm also working on outlining BTML book two to get that rolling and on top of that there has been a book idea in my head for months now. Since maybe around December/January and more has come up in that and now it's up to the point where I basically know what happens in all three books for that trilogy. I actually have more things worked out for the first book right now than I did when I first started BTML.

So on the side I've started planning it too. I'll be working on it, but if it starts getting in the way of my editing BMTL and on the planning stages of BMTL's sequel, then I'll have to put the other idea on hold, since, like I said, BMTL is my main focus. 

I may have a synopsis up soon for BMTL, I made myself a deadline--which I can't remember right now, I'll have to check my calendar--for it so I should be on that soon. :) 

I don't really want to say much about my new project yet, though. So maybe in a couple of months I'll be able to mention it. All I can say is so far I think it may become a trilogy, and it's paranormal with some romance, but romance isn't the MAIN focus. 

So stay tuned! And happy writing! :-)

Rough Draft = Done

Yep, you see the title right. The rough draft of BMTL is DONE! I finished it at 11:52 p.m. on March 19th. This is a BIG deal for me, I've never finished a book before. NEVER. I always start them and then get new ideas in the middle of writing them and then POOF, I change over to the other.

But I stuck with this idea. This idea was THE idea. I couldn't have stopped writing it even if I wanted to. I can't wait until I get all the revisions done and the re-write and get it all fixed up and pretty to send it to agents. I want to be able to share this story with everyone. I want everyone to know my characters as well as I do. Care for them as much as I do.

I'm still in shock I finished. I've been working on this non-stop basically for nearly four months. The 28th of March would have been four months. The deadline I gave myself was July 1st! And I beat that by a little over three months.

I've decided to give myself a break from it until Monday. My son's 2nd birthday party is on Sunday and we've been so busy with that and getting things ready for our new bedroom suite to come in! I've been dreaming of a small break, but now that I'm on it, I don't know what the heck to do! 

I had so many things running through my mind. Getting caught up on shows, catching up on some reading (Though that's impossible!), relaxing, going to bed early. But hardly any of that has happened! I can't seem to turn my mind off. I'm twitchy wanting to grab my printed out copy of my manuscript and attacking it with a red pen.

But I'm going to wait until Monday. 

My next step with this book is, like I said, going through it and attacking it with a red pen. I'm going to go through it, make notes. And then I'll go through my wonderful critique partner's notes and add all of them together, and then start working on the outline for the second draft.

Once that is done, it's beta reader time! :) And then I'll keep going through the process of it until it's somewhat ready to be sent off to Agents. Super nervous about that. My heart is starting to beat really fast just THINKING of that. But I just need to remember that I won't get anything done and start working toward my dream until I send it to them. And it only takes ONE yes. :D

Hopefully I'll start getting better at updating this blog! I've been so with it so far. Hopefully I'll update soon!