Jul 10 2008
Projects in stasis
Seems like I’m not doing a whole lot more than I am lately.
- Gabe’s book (sequel to WL). I have a first draft. Love, love, love Gabe. Love, love, love this story. No point investing more time in it if WL goes nowhere, though.
- “Cover” for mini-novella. No, I haven’t heard anything on that submission (and might not for another month or so), but I found a near-perfect stock photo for a cover, in the event it ends up being a freebie. We spent a couple hours removing the sunshine (sunshine + vampire = epic fail) and changing the gal’s white tank top to leopard print spandex to make the image story-consistent. It will take another couple of hours to add a frame and some texture to prettify it. It occurred to me while I was searching for materials for the next step (Obsidian Dawn, how I love thee) that this could easily turn into eight solid hours of wasted work if the story’s accepted by NB. *sigh* Drop the stylus and back away from the Photoshop…
- SC-1. Stalled at a chapter and a half. No reason not to keep working on this book, other than being committed to finishing The (Much Less) Interactive (Than Initially Intended) Web Story. This one, at least, is next on my to-write list, barring unforeseen developments.
- Romance Cooties. We now have hosting—premature in terms of putting up content, but the price was right and soon to expire. First priority there is artwork (ah, Photoshop, there is no escaping you), and then I’ll get back to stressing about the rest of it.
What’s everybody else working on… or not, as the case may be?
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9/30
11/4
11/4
11/25
July 10th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
I’m editing my first novel. Sitting on my second one for about another week. Pondering reworking my EPIC YA novel that’s been at various stages of “GO” for the last… seven years?
Six years.
July 10th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
Now that you bring up aged epics, I have that anime script that might make good UF… No. Not going there right now. But maybe I’ll pull it out of the drawer and just leave the file sitting around with the rest of them. I won’t actually look at it, I swear…
I get a lot of grief for all the unfinished projects I have lying around, but people just don’t understand (she whined). In the absence of someone with money saying, “I want this by then,” we have to decide what has the most potential at any given time and how much time we’re willing to devote to projects that already have a couple of strikes against them.
For instance, it took maybe a month to put together the first draft of Gabe’s book because I’d been ruminating and jotting notes (and sometimes entire scenes) while working on WL. I could spend the next 6 months polishing it… or I could spend the next 6 months writing something independent of a previous story that I can actually shop around by its lonesome. Much as I love my damaged pyromaniac, it’s just not practical to work on that one right now.
You’d think I’d learn my lesson about writing series, but no. I’m going to have to start killing every secondary character before the “hmm, what if…” machine gets warmed up.
July 10th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
How did I miss this blog in my list of Pixies?? Well, I’m here now. lol.
I’m writing (laaaate every night!) to finish my first urban fantasy (11 chapters to go) so I can get it to Janet Reid before San Fran.
I am so thrilled to have switched genres from RS to UF. Much better fit for my love of all things strange and supernatural. :)
July 11th, 2008 at 4:17 am
CJ, if you can write 11 chapters in 3 weeks and have enough confidence in them to hand them to an agent… I think I’ll have to hate you, just a little bit.
Actually, okay, no, that’s not right. I wrote 7 chapters (albeit short ones) in a week not too long ago and subbed it a week after that, so I can produce, despite current evidence to the contrary. Can’t hate you for being less of a slacker than I am, I suppose!
I think yesterday’s output was 4 lines of dialogue.
It took me years of dabbling in other genres to find the right mix of violence, humor, freakiness, and loooooove before I found something that held my interest longer than 100 pages, so I hear ya on the joy of making the switch.
July 11th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
“the right mix of violence, humor, freakiness, and loooooove ”
Isn’t that the truth. I kept trying different things and everything I wrote ended up with dead bodies all over the place, creepy villains, and insane amounts of sarcasm and I finally said, well, looks like that’s just who I am. Better own it and move forward. :)
If it makes you feel better, I’d been moving at an absolute snail’s pace on this ms (which now makes me hang my head since I SEE what I can produce when properly motivated) until I accidentally garnered an agent request for the whole thing. Now I’ve learned that I can, indeed, write an entire book in two months.
Who knew?
July 12th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
I just finished a week and a half stint in editing hell and am therefore taking what I deem to be a well-deserved break to tackly my TBR pile. But of course, after I mailed the requested full off and was finally free of the redlines, what happens? I get an idea for a totally new story, not in any way related to the WIP I planned to go back to after the revisions. Why can’t the freakin’ muse stick to the freakin’ plan? So, I outlined that yesterday, and I’m trying to figure out what the heck to work on next. I too hate leaving WIPs dangling. I’m always afraid that I’ll just lose where I was going with it. (Oh, and I haven’t learned my lesson about series yet either). *mutual wrist slap*
July 12th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
tackly? *shakes head*
It’s all these smilies, I swear, I can type . . .