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Posts Tagged ‘ROW80’

I haven’t done a lot this week. As most of you know, I’ve been ill. I was feeling better, then for two days, I had a horrible stomach ache. Not really crampy, but achy. I wonder if my antibiotics messed up my stomach? I have one more day on those and then I’m done.

I did add a couple of things to my gnome story, including inserting a whole scene, albeit a short one. I still need to expand on the final fight scene between the witches. I tried to do that the other day, but nothing was coming. I’m terrible at writing fight scenes (I’m a lover, not a figher, LOL), so I struggle with them. After that, I’m going to print it out for the final proofing, then send to some beta readers.

My goals for this week are 1) As I said, proofing the gnome story (I’m desperately in need of a title), 2) combining the three Libby Fox novellas into one ebook (again, I need a title), and 3) getting my other novella collection, Loving the Dead and the Undead, formatted for print. I’m also beta reading for one person and editing for another one right now.

I may not get to all the blogs I want to get to this evening. So I’ll probably do that tomorrow evening. I have to get my taxes ready to send to the accountant. Last Sunday, since I was at home sick instead of going to church, I thought I would try to visit all the blogs on the Linky Tool list. At the time, there were about 35 people listed. I got to them all except one Blogspot blog that wouldn’t let me comment no matter what I tried. It took me 3 1/2 hours to comment on them all! I realized that I just can’t visit everyone every time. I just wish I could. 😦

Oh, one more thing. Is anyone having problems with Google Chrome? I kept getting a message that I couldn’t go to a website and I thought it was my internet. But my husband was getting online, so I tried Internet Explorer and it worked fine. Chrome is my preferred browser, and I don’t know why it’s not working. 😦

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I’m Soooo Sick :(

This is going to be short and sweet. For the past few days, I’ve been really sick, coughing until my throat and chest feel raw, sneezing, etc. I went home early from work yesterday. I’m here today, but I’ll probably go home early again. I probably should go to the doctor, but where I go is first come, first served, and I don’t feel like waiting. Nor do I want to pick up yet another bug from all the sick people there. So I’m hoping I can shake this thing without a prescription. I rarely get sick like this. 😦

Anyway, that’s why I haven’t been around the blogs. I just don’t think my brain can think up any good comments right now. So, there’s been no writing either. Just going home and lying down.

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The two topics in the title kind of go together because Birthdaypalooza was a big help for ROW80.

I spent many hours with two fabulous authors on Friday and Saturday. Susan and Kait take their writing very seriously and are very professional in their approach. Not to mention they are two of the most fun people to hang out with. We stayed up until 2 Friday night and we didn’t even realize it was that late. That’s how much fun we had just talking. And almost all our conversations revolved around writing, even the zombie/hot Irish guys stuff. (See Kait’s post.) I think all three of us got new ideas and got fired up again about writing. I can’t tell you how much I LEARNED from this trip. And I’m thinking that just maybe Kait and Susan have converted me to a plotter. I’ve been a pantser all along, but I realized that if I wrote an outline, it didn’t have to be written in blood. I can still change stuff! I can CHANGE STUFF. Anyway, this was a fun and inspiring weekend. I already miss Susan and Kait. 😦

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A little writing progress. I sat down last night and added some things to my story so the ending would make more sense. I explained something that was just mentioned in passing about one of the characters. I added the simple stuff right into my manuscript, but the more complicated stuff I wrote in a separate word document. I’m not sure exactly where I want to place in in the manuscript, so it was easier to do it this way until I figure it out. I also need to expand on the final “witch fight” scene. I rushed it a little just to get it done, but I know it needs more. Anya agrees. 🙂

I’m still trying to decide if I want to buy Scrivener. I guess I should download the free trial and see.

I’m really looking forward to this weekend with Susan Bischoff and Kait Nolan. Much fun will be had.

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Okay, I’ve been acting like a big baby over this. And it’s so totally out of my character, I can’t figure out what’s wrong with me. I’m a very easy going person who lets most things kind of roll off my back, and I rarely let things get me down. I’ve had some hard days at work, so that might have added to my angst, but it’s no excuse for feeling the way I have been.

You see, I didn’t check in yesterday for ROW80 because I was hurt and discouraged. Why? Because my last post was about a Valentine’s giveaway (it runs through Saturday) for three free books, my Libby Fox series…and NO ONE requested the books. NO ONE. I had two authors drop by and say hi, but they didn’t ask for the books either. I do appreciate their comments, though. And I do realize that a lot of the people who follow my blog already have my books. I found that out when I did my birthday giveaway. But I would have thought at least one or two people would ask for the books. I noticed that there were a couple of other people giving away books and weren’t having much luck either, so maybe I’m not alone. But when I see a free book giveaway, especially when all you have to do is comment, I usually jump on that. I’m actually SELLING the books, so I guess I shouldn’t be hurt over no one wanting them for free, but it just hit me the wrong way, I guess.

Anyway, it was silly for me to get so upset over this. Really silly. And I’m sorry for that. I don’t know why I felt like I needed to even post about this; I guess I just needed the outlet. And it’s MY blog, after all. LOL. So I hope to get back on track and do a ROW80 post on Sunday. I’ll surely be back to my old happy, optimistic self by then. I guess we all have bad times every once in awhile. I was due one. 🙂

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I expected to have the first draft of my WIP finished last night. I really did. But life got in the way. I did more housework than usual because I’ve been feeling bad about not doing much. Especially since this was one of my goals. Then my husband wanted to watch some things we had on the DVR since it’s piling up. Also, my mom needed me to take her somewhere and bring her back because she doesn’t see well enough to drive at night in unfamiliar places. Oh, and then my husband announced that he had rented a movie we needed to watch last night. Scorpion King 3. It wasn’t worth it. So I didn’t get that first draft finished. It’s almost there. It has turned out a little differently than I originally intended. It was going to be more of a slasher horror story with an element of supernatural. It’s ending up being a supernatural story with an element of slasher. If that makes sense. I’m pretty sure it still needs to be labeled as horror, though. Maybe supernatural horror as a sub-genre. I’ll talk that over with the beta readers.

Right now it’s 20 degrees here with a wind chill factor of 13. I knew that warm spell we had was a harbinger of colder things to come! Brrrr. It’s going to be cold going to church this morning.

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This post will be a lot more positive than the last one. I FINALLY got past my problems with my WIP! Yay! After much brainstorming Monday night at dinner with my friend and cover artist Anya Kelleye, things started to come together. Sometimes you just have to talk it out with someone. Plus, she had a lot of good ideas to add.

My Christian romance is going well. I wrote 1240 words on it yesterday during lunch. I’m not setting any cumulative goals, but I’m shooting for writing at least 500 words on it when I do get to work on it. I’ve exceeded that each time.

Exercise has been good. I think I posted on Sunday that I went bike riding on Thursday and Friday. Sunday night, I walked about 30 minutes on the treadmill. Yesterday, I walked almost an hour in the park where I bike ride. I would have ridden, but I had a friend who needed to talk. And I’m feeling much better physically and mentally.

How are the rest of you doing? I would love to hear about it.

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I feel like I’ve written myself into a corner. The next time I have a bright idea about writing horror, someone just please slap me. I’m coming to the end of my book, and it’s not going to be long enough. But that’s not the end of the world, it will just be a long novella instead of a short novel. My biggest problem is a showdown between two witches. This book wasn’t even supposed to HAVE witches, but somehow they sprang forth into the story. Now I’m trying to figure out the best way to have a weaker witch win over a stronger witch. My husband says it has to be with trickery. That’s probably true. So then I have to figure out the trick. There are some other timing issues that I need to figure out concerning something else that’s happening in the book, because the two scenes have to come together at some point. This is making my head hurt.

I have good things to finally report about exercise. I went bicycle riding Thursday and Friday. By Friday evening, my body was so sore I could barely move. I expected my legs to be sore, but not my back, shoulders, arms, and hands. I had a little trouble getting out of bed Saturday morning. Unfortunately, it rained Saturday and it’s supposed to rain today. So the next time I get to ride, I’ll probably be sore again. We haven’t had more than a couple of sunny days in a row for months! Okay, okay, I know…I can walk on the treadmill when I can’t ride. And I can lift weights. No excuses. LOL

Anybody else having problems with their WIP or is everything going smoothly?

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Yeah, I know, it’s late in the day, but it’s hard to do my Wednesday updates when I’m here at work. So let’s see what’s going on.

For my current WIP, the garden gnome horror story, I’m still behind on word count. It’s because I’m not writing every day. I’m having a little trouble with it right now. For starters, it’s going in a direction I didn’t really originally intend. I’m going to let one of my beta readers take a look at it early and see if it’s so bizarre that it’s falling apart or if it works. If I go in this direction, I’m going to have to go back and add a few things to make this all make more sense. But I think I can make it work. Also, I originally intended for this to be a novel, not a novella. In horror stories, especially the slasher kind, things move pretty fast. But I think I moved this one a little too fast. I wanted to get at least 50K words out of it so it could really be classified as a novel. Right now, I’ve written about 35K words, and I’ll be lucky if it makes it to 40K. So it’s right on the cusp of being a novel. Most of my novellas have run between 25K and 26K. So I’m not sure what to do with this. I know it needs a little more fleshing out, which will be done in the second edit, but I don’t know if it will be enough. I refuse to pad it just for word count.

Things are going well on the Christian romance I’m writing. I’m not setting a particular word count goal on this one because I never know when I’ll be going out for lunch instead of staying in and writing. I’m sort of shooting for at least 500 words for each lunchtime writing session. So far, the word counts have been 579, 908, and 926. I still don’t know whether to use my real name or another pen name. I wanted to use my real name so the people at church that read Christian romances would know it was me. But now I’m thinking I can use a different pen name and just TELL them it’s me. That way I won’t have to worry about stalkers and such. Because some authors actually get them.

Don’t even ask about my exercise progress….

On watching TV (yeah, I know this isn’t a goal) – I’ve watched lots of episodes of Dark Shadows. I’m LOVING this. It’s so much fun to revisit the show that started my love for vampires (and other paranormal beings) as a kid.

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It’s been kind of a weird week. I took a break from writing (and most everything else) for a week because I really, really needed it. I started back on Tuesday, but I’ve only been writing every other day. On the days I have written, though, I’ve written more than my usual word count. My cumulative goal is 500 words per day. This is how it went: Tuesday-1220, Thursday-1384, Saturday-1312. So since I started back on Tuesday, I’ve written an average of about 783 per day. Not too shabby. Also, I started my Christian romance on Thursday and wrote 579 words that day and 980 on Friday. That story seems to be going well. I’m going to stick to my guns about only writing that one on my lunch hour at work so I can keep it separate from what I’m writing at home.

On the proofing, exercising, and housekeeping front…well, I’ve not done so well. It seems like the devil is out to get me on the exercise. Every time I plan on walking on the treadmill, I get an awful pain in my foot. It’s not always the same foot, either. It’s very strange.

I hope I’ll get around to visiting some of your blogs today and tomorrow. I took a break from that, too, and I really miss it.

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