The Art of Procrastination

Things I Did This Weekend When I Was Supposed To Be Writing My Book

• Tweeted.
• Went to three and a half hours of ballet and tap classes.
• Tumbld.
• Watched Merlin.
• Read my friend Savannah's creative/design blog, MaieDae.
• Facebooked.  
• Pre-ordered the entire China Glaze Capitol Colours collection.
• Tried to paint my nails.
• Facebook-stalked people I haven't seen since high school.
• Let my cat chew on my arm.
• Whined.
• Considered driving to Dunkin Donuts for coffee.
• Showered.
• Was too lazy to drive to Dunkin Donuts for coffee.

And yet somehow I managed to get it finished anyway. Winter's Majesty now has a complete first draft, although it's absolutely terrible-- so bad that I'm considering calling it a pre-first-draft. But all the important stuff is down on paper, and I can let this project breathe for awhile, and let myself breathe for awhile, and work on a different project.

Current Rejection Count: 3

Defeating the Query Monster

First of all-- I missed last week's entry, and I know it, and I felt bad about it, so I'm going to attempt to do two entries this week to make up for it. And this one is a day late, but let's be real here-- I warned you guys in the beginning that consistency was not my strong suit.

So. I had a very bad day today. Would you like to know what I did to make it better?

I sent out queries. Five queries, actually! And it made my day much, much better. I don't know if it was the bright, optimistic, anything-can-happen feeling that sending out queries gives me, or if I just needed to do something where I was in control, but either way-- it worked.

Now I just get to sit and wait (im)patiently for someone to respond!

In other news, I am a firm believer in setting goals. One thing that I know about myself is that if I state my goals publicly somewhere so that other people can see them, I am far more likely to hold myself accountable to them. So here we go:

MY GOALS FOR THIS WEEKEND

• Finish Book 3 of my Camlain quartet, also known as Winter's Majesty.
• Okay, let's be real here-- that's my only real goal for this weekend.

This is the first weekend in a few weeks that I haven't had a dance rehearsal or something similar, so instead of spending all my time driving around I am instead going to sit down and write the last seven chapters of this book. I want to move on to another project, but before I do that I need a complete draft of this book so that I can send it off to my personal-editor-slash-demanding-best-friend and take a giant step away from this world for a while. Wish me luck!

What goals are you all setting for yourself this week?

Rejection: 1, Hannah: 0

I've had this window open for about four hours now, trying to decide what to write about. I considered blogging about rejection, because I got my first rejection of my query letter today, but-- I'm not upset. And since I'm not upset, I don't really have much to say about it.

Actually, I'm not sure that I have much to say about anything this week. It's one of those periods in life where everything feels the same. I hate ruts. Every other one I've gone through, though, has passed, so I'm sure that this one will too-- I just have to find that thing that will get me out of it.

Any suggestions? Hope everyone's week got off to a good start!

Query Letter Shenanigans

I've posted before about how this query letter is probably the most difficult thing that I have ever written. (In fact, I believe I've posted about it more than once, which when you consider the total number of entries I have on this blog is actually a fairly high frequency.) But I'm making progress.

I think that, much like a novel, a query letter is something that is never actually done. Sure, a novel can be published, and technically then it can be called 'done'. In the same vein, once a query letter does its job and attracts the attention of an agent, that particular version can be called 'done'. But as a writer, I am always going to find something else that I want to change or tweak or rephrase. It's just who I am-- my creations are little tiny pieces of my soul that I'm tearing out of myself, and whether the creation in question is a novel, a short story, a poem, or a query letter, it's difficult to know when to let go and just send it out there into the universe.

I've had the help of my best friend's mother (a published author herself, Miranda Neville-- and if you like historical romance, you should definitely check out her books, because they're fantastic, especially her characters) on revising and editing this query, and she has been absolutely priceless and wonderful and irreplaceable, and the minute someone takes a bite from this query letter I am going to send her flowers, because this has been such a great learning experience for me.

I have to say, if I could give one piece of advice to someone writing a query letter, it would be to have someone else read it before you do anything with it. If that someone else has experience with the industry, so much the better, but no matter who it is (unless it is your pet monkey-- not sure I would advise that) a fresh pair of eyes looking at a piece of writing can do so much. Another person is always going to see something that you won't see, because you've been immersed in whatever the piece of writing is to the point that the old 'forest for the trees' adage becomes terribly true.

I think that I am going to give this letter one more round of edits, and then take my own advice and just let it go. Send it out there. Because I'm ready to send this book out into the world-- this piece of my soul that I've been tearing down and rebuilding for four and a half years. There's only so much you can do before editing and revising stops being a way to make your novel better and starts being a way to procrastinate putting yourself out there, and I've reached that point.

It's time for me to stop being afraid of this and take a chance.

In Which Consistency Is Not My Strong Suit

New year, new rules.

I've been challenged by a friend to do one post per week. I can do that, right?

Okay-- I didn't do very well with my attempt to blog my way through Camp NaNoWriMo, but I have good reasons for that! One being that Autumn of Discord was so depressing that I got dragged down into a pit of angst and despair whilst trying to finish it (which I did), and the other being that-- well, I finished it! I guess in the end a completed book is better than a blog post.

Which brings me to my next bit of news! During NaNoWriMo in November, I tackled book #3 of my Camlain quartet, Winter's Majesty. I reached my 50k goal before finishing the book, which currently has seven chapters remaining, so my current goal is to get that off my plate and then decide which project to work on next. What do you guys think-- finish last year's NaNo project, which is half complete, or rewrite my Sleeping Beauty reappropriation?

Something else exciting for 2012 is that I am finally going to start querying agents. This new venture should also help give me something to blog about every week, because I'm sure I'm going to get some rejections-- who doesn't? However, I'm hoping that at least someone wants it. Otherwise I'll cry.

Okay, let's be real. Those of you who know me know I'll cry no matter what happens.

But at least I know I'll cry and keep going, no matter what direction it happens to be in. Go big or go home, right? I think that's going to be my motto for 2012.

Camp NaNoWriMo - Day 12, or: That Time I Finished One Battle Scene Only To Immediately Be Launched Into Another

Night before last, I was so focused on getting through my first battle scene (which I did!) that I neglected to do one very important thing:

I did not look at my outline to see what I would be writing next.

Thanks to this fun little mishap, when I sat down to write last night, I realized that as soon as I finished my current chapter, I would be launched into two entire chapters worth of battle scenes or battle-related scenes. Although the majority of these scenes are from an emotional standpoint of one of my main characters, I can already tell you that these are going to have to be rewritten-- likely more than once. But I have to have a starting point, right?

Tonight I return to the battle, and I really would like to be able to power through to the end, because once I do I'm really into the plotty part of the book. Let the fun begin.

Camp NaNoWriMo - Day 9, or: That Time I Had An Unproductive Weekend & Was Too Ashamed to Blog

Wednesday and Thursday were fairly productive writing days. Friday and Saturday were not. Sunday and Monday were slightly more so. I am beginning to get back on track, but I definitely have issues with focusing-- any advice? (Apart from getting off the internet.)

We'll see if I can't make the playlist and the headphones work for me a little better this afternoon.

Today's post is brought to you by the letter "B", for "battle scenes".

They are the bane of my existence. The very idea of the battle scene terrifies me, and I know that is the main reason I've not been as productive as I should have been the past couple of days (apart from, of course, being easily distracted and just plain lazy). I suppose it's just that everything I know about battles from the era that my novel is set in (sort of a mashup of Medieval and Renaissance type eras, with tweaks of my own making because I can) comes from novels that I've read and some side research that I've done.

In the first book of this series, I managed to avoid having to write any actual battle because the theme of Book 1 was intrigue (actually, the theme of the entire quartet is intrigue, but I digress). Book 2's theme is, without question, war, and avoiding battle scenes would not only be a cop-out but also wouldn't make sense in the slightest, nor be at all fair to my story. So I can't avoid these scenes-- in particular, there are two scenes that I like to call BIG BAD BATTLES (mostly because the capital letters make me smile), but there are also a couple of smaller skirmishes that happen "on camera", so to speak.

The skirmishes, oddly, are what terrify me the most. With the BIG BAD BATTLES, the main events/outcomes involve lots of emotional reaction and so I am counting on the character's viewpoints of the battle to carry me through. With the skirmishes, the point of the first one (the one I am avoiding) is for the characters to be able to learn the fighting style of their enemies.

I suppose that's my problem. I don't know the fighting style of their enemies.

Perhaps I should work on that little worldbuilding detail and then try to write the scene. It may just make my life that much simpler.