The Finish Line in Sight

This whole poetry book project is quickly coming to an end. It's to the point that I can see the finish line ahead. But if you've ever ran a race, you know that this is the time that you push harder, yet you feel like you're standing still and the finish line will never cross under your feet.

There is still work to do. Every Friday for the past month I've marked my calendar with the words "put up for pre-order" and every week so far it just hasn't been ready. That's what this weekend is for.

If I want to stick to my original 2019 schedule by having one writing, one editing, and one promoting per month, I need to get on the ball about finishing up the last of the editing. This weekend will be dedicated to this, and I hope to have everything put into place by Monday, not getting distracted like I have been. I mean everything seemed to stop my progress, including flipping the calendar above my desk this morning and seeing this photo that is just so gosh darn cute I can't stand it.

After the weekend, I'll touch base again--done or not, there will be another update and some more fun exclusives. I can't wait to share!

#NaNoWriMo 2015: DAY 16

It's one of those blah days. I wrote stuff. I didn't like how it turned out. I wish I could go back and edit the you-know-what out of it. I've also managed to stay just under the expected word count, which is a little disappointing.

But tomorrow is another day. And I'm sure that I'll find more writing time. It's supposed to be rainy and cold, so I have no excuse not to be at my desk all day.

Onto The Next Project

Yesterday I spend some time looking at half written manuscripts and first drafts. Guess what? There was something in the pile that didn't make me reconsider my whole career as a writer. The gem I'm talking about was last year's NaNoWriMo project--the only NaNoWriMo session I have completed so far (not counting the camps or the dearly departed Script Frenzy, of course).

Before I could change my mind, I put the project on the top of my revision list. It's getting the full I-love-you-I-hate-you-I-wish-you-would-die editing and revision process, and hopefully you'll be able to read it soon. I would love to tell you what the title is, but that's one of my major hurdles on this project. There's no title. There's already half of a cover design, but still no title. Yes, if you stalk my NaNoWriMo profile page there was a tentative title, but it sucks. Big time. However, if you are itching to get your hands on something, I can slip you a short synopsis. Ready?

Lindley Neil knows nothing but her small town. When her job as a photographer's assistant takes her Los Angeles and New York, Lindley is having the time of her life. She also meets a handsome man in each city who are both falling for her. Love is in the air, but which one will she choose?

Yes, clearly the synopsis needs revamped too, but I'm working on it.

It's really nice to have clearly defined goals. I'm glad I have one to concentrate on. 

Heading Back to Camp

I love that NanoWriMo holds camp twice a year--that means I get to fully immerse myself in one of my ideas for yet another month. This time, my cabin mates are all from or have been published in Luna Station Quarterly. In July I will be working on something that I have yet to attempt. I still can't really pinpoint what genre it would be. It's about a fictional island in the Pacific. Although our current world exists in this world, they know little of it.

That's very vague, I know. But until I get working on it, I'm not sure I can reveal much more.

I've also got to get back on the revision bandwagon. I really want to get last November's project to the submission phase, whether that's another self-published title or (hopefully) published through a great indie publisher that seems to fit with what I'm working on. July will be a busy month writing away.And I'm going to love it. ;-)

Fire Up the Back Burner

...because I've got something to simmer. I set out to finish two first draft manuscripts this month, and I'm halfway there. The novel that I started for NaNoWriMo last November (Verses and Vows) is now a complete first draft! It's a very rough first draft, but there's a distinct beginning, middle and end to work with. And since any good writer will tell you that you need a little space between writing and revising, that's exactly what I plan to do.

The other first draft (In Another Life) is still right in the middle of all the action. If I want to get both of these novels published before the end of the year, I really have to get this first draft finished by spring. This second novel is actually the one I want to put out first, simply because it is the novel I chose to have cover art done for when I won a contest last year. This novel process has actually been going completely backwards--I have the cover and a lot of the promotional work planned out, but I'm still lacking the actual novel. 

If I want to get anymore done, I better get back to it. ;-)





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P.S.: If you are curious about any of my current or upcoming work, you don't have to wait for the next blog post. Go ahead and follow me on Facebook, Twitter or Google+. I'm also on LinkedIn if that's more your thing.

Into the Second Phase

Life has slowed down a bit here. Actually, it's more like a standstill. There's the huge dump of snow that we got yesterday, but there's also a lack of work. I actually haven't had a single job 2014, though not for lack of trying. That's what I get for raising my standards. If I don't work for chump change, I apparently don't get to work.

For now, I'm still smiling. But by the end of the week, I may be in pre-launch for panic mode. Even though I'm snowed in, I'm probably staying afloat emotionally simply because I have big dreams. The dreams themselves won't get me anywhere, but if I find the right next step to take, the world's mine. Right??

But I'm not down and out completely yet. I still have my current writing project. I tried to drum up some mystery around it with last week's Instagram post, but I'm ready to reveal what it all means. These seemingly random numbers correspond to haiku. Lots of haiku. In fact, last's year's goal was to write one haiku each day for the year. I managed to write about 345 before my time was up. Out of all those, I narrowed it down to 100 to put into a manuscript.

These 100 (I deleted one so it may only be 99 now) are going to be published as a collection. I plan to self publish through Kindle Direct Publishing because I have never heard of a single publisher that buys haiku-only manuscripts. But if you exist, come talk to me. ;-) KDP also gives me a lot of publishing flexibility without any cost. Soon, it will be available through Amazon as an ebook. And remember, 'soon' is a relative term.

At this point, all of the poems are edited. I just need to complete the formatting, draw (or have someone else draw) a few of them to break up the monotony and then figure out what I want to do with the cover art. I'm a little nervous because I've tried to publish a poetry collection before, and cover art/artwork is where I got stuck last time. We'll see what I can do.

Show Your Work

I used to hear it all the time in math class: "Show your work." It didn't matter if I could look at the equation and tell you the answer without so much as a scribble. I still had to show on paper how I got to that conclusion. Now, I was pretty good in math at school, but I still hated it. This could have been a factor in my choice of career... that is until I started hearing "show your work" all over again.

Bidding on projects for editing jobs is becoming a little more difficult these days. Everyone wants examples. With writing, that's easy. I show them a few articles I have published and they determined whether I'm the right fit for the job. With editing, I cannot figure out how to properly show my skills without throwing a previous client to the wind. I can't show a before and after edit from a previous client because most clients only want their best work out there. I don't think that's a fair estimate of my work anyway, since many clients have specific editing preferences that may not fall into the category of standard editing.

Editing skills tests are available through a few of the sites where I regularly search for work, however they cost money and if I have a proven track record of clients who were happy with my editing work, I don't think the cost is worth it.

The last option is a sample edit, but I have put a stop to that after I had been a pawn in schemes for clients not to pay anyone by giving a handful of freelancers "sample" chapters to edit, which is really the project itself. They cancel the project, citing that they are choosing to go another route, then they get all their work done without paying any of us.

Any freelancers out there have a different idea? How do you get editing jobs without samples? If you have samples, what do you use for samples?

The worst thing a writer can do

I have committed just about the worst thing a writer can do -- I stopped writing. With the excitement of my new editing job, I have seriously neglected almost all writing. What's wrong with me?! I know that the editing job seems easier and provides nearly the same amount of pay, but a writer should never stop writing. Why? For me, it has caused a total lack of motivation. I want to get 6 articles written by Wednesday. Two weeks ago that would have been simple. But now? I'm totally lost for ideas and concepts on how to approach the writing process. I've got to get back into gear, especially since NANOWRIMO is quickly approaching. Yikes!

It's all right

I haven't stopped writing, but with my new job, I'm able to at least take a step back from it. My new job is more along the lines of an editing position (finally!) so I've significantly cut back the amount of articles I write per day. This also means that since I'm making basically the same amount of money and spending less time working, I can finally get back to fiction and poetry. I wanted the Personas manuscript to be finished at the end of last month, and that definitely did not happen.

The only thing going wrong right now is... well... nothing! It's very rare in my life for everything to go right at the same time, so I'm cautiously enjoying it all.

I sincerely hope everyone else is getting through the week with relatively few bumps along the way. Just a little while longer and we can all breathe in a sigh of relief for the weekend!

It's almost over

It feels surreal that the project I've been working on for the better part of a year is going to end soon. If I'm lucky and stick to my schedule, it will end on Thursday. While that gives me a wonderful three day weekend, it still means I have to scramble to find a new project. While I love to write, this time I think I want an editing project. After all, that will provide me with an excuse to brush up on grammar without making it feel like a study session. I just have to find an editing project that doesn't require me to send in a lot of references. I've only edited one e-book before, and I'm not sure I still have the client's contact info. Oh well. Anyone need anything edited? :)

Even if I do have a lag in work, I can get back to my novel and genealogy. The novel is priority, but I'm having way too much fun looking for old newspaper articles about my ancestors. Too bad I'm only allowed to save a specific number of a specific type of pages that are available. I will have to break down one day and just pay for a subscription. There's too many genealogical gems. I can't pass them up.

And that's how it all comes full circle. I need a new job to pay for my hobbies. I really feel like singing "The Circle of Life" but I will resist!

Back to the good old days

I've started working on My novel 277 Miles again. I just need to edit the last two chapters and then I can finally go into the first revision stage. This one is going to be the hard one, because I have a lot of things to fix, including the random details of the main character's life I slapped in for a better word count without much of an explanation why it matters.

I'm also catching up on a lot of work after the first half of the week was slow. That means another working weekend, unless I can write 13-14 more articles tonight. Not impossible, but it's probably pushing it. For the bare minimum to meet commitments, I should get at least 7 done before the weekend is over. It's very doable if I just commit to it.

And guess what? I finally bought my new laptop. It's a Dell Inspiron 1545. I opted for the free pacific blue color because I think paying an extra $40 for any other color is absolutely insane.I'm also proud of my additional purchase of a laptop sleeve that is made from recycled PET materials. Yay for helping to save the environment!

No more commitments!

It’s official: all of my work commitments are complete as of this moment. I’m proud of myself because I actually worked past any commitments that I had for most of my jobs and I still ended up with it all done two days early.

But this in no way means that I plan to slow down. Nope, now it’s time to come up with some articles on my own to write. I will be keeping up with my travel series as well. But since I’m a little spacey right now, I’ll have to think about some article topics before I get started. That’s usually the hardest part about writing – getting the bright idea.

Just for curiosity’s sake: what’s the hardest part about writing for all of you? Besides getting the idea, I have real trouble being my own editor. I’m an excellent editor if I’m looking at something I didn’t write, but my own work suffers. It’s a strange thing, and something I’m looking to work on, along with my long list of commitments for next month.

Working Saturday

Today has been a working day. I'm trying very hard to get all my commitments out of the way today so I can finally have a whole day to myself tomorrow. I don't really have any specific plans, but the weatherman says rain for Sunday. That means it would be a perfect movie day, and I'm interested in a few listings on TCM tomorrow.

Even though I want to get everything done, I've been slowing down a lot lately. Things that I thought would never be a problem are suddenly creeping up into editing issues. I've said it once and I'll say it again: if it's not approached in the right way, I take editing critiques as personal insults. And I have so many different editors per day that it's really hard when I'm constantly getting feedback that has a person upset when I spelled one or two words wrong. I'm sorry, but if you only pay me a half a cent per word, you probably won't get more than five minutes of editing, otherwise the price isn't worth it. Although, unless it's a direct rewrite, the price still isn't worth it when you include research time.

It frustrates me particularly on one of my jobs. This job gives you a 1-5 ranking for each article you write. I have almost all articles ranking in at 3. Why? I couldn't tell you, exactly. Some were spelling mistakes but others I get no other feedback on. Even if the buyer rates it as excellent, I still only earn a 3 which means lower payments. I know I see it as a waste of time to put a lot of effort into these articles because I cannot earn more than $5 per article. But even when I put a lot of effort into it, I'm still ranked low. So why should I continue to waste time? That job in particular frustrates me because the buyer does not usually provide instructions that are detailed enough. I need a little structure in order to get it right, you know? But of course that doesn't prove true with some of my other work. When they put me into a structure, I follow it and it's still not good enough!

I'm thinking that my teachers and professors coddled me in school, because I don't think I can really make it as a writer. I thought I had something to work with, but all this feedback is telling me otherwise. I guess I can just concede and ignore it, since I still make money. But I don't want whatever skills I do have to slip away because I'm not being challenged. I'm battling with myself, but I have no other choice. I can't go back out into the world. I've spent too long away from it.

What do you think? Am I being stupid? Should I just work for half a cent per word and shut up because at least it's a job?