Monthly Archives: January 2014

A Switch Out of Holiday Music!

Posted on by
Reply

So what music is everyone listening to on these fine January days?

Over the holidays, I was listening to a lot of sentimental holiday stuff (Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, Michael Buble, et. al), but now the holidays are over and I feel like I should move on.

In Januaries past, I’d listen to my kids’ music, where I always got introduced to some fun stuff by Ricky: Mumford and Sons, The Lumineers, The Tallest Man on Earth, etc. In fact, just typing those names right now makes me sort of miss some of those. … I just had to go find a video of my fave TMOE song. Here’s a video of one that I especially fell in love with. Although seriously, it took me forever to figure out what he was saying. …

Happy Friday!

Finished Book 2!

Posted on by
2

My messy desk after Book 2 was done!

Well, overall, after 8 months, 2 drafts, 99,000 words, 320 gallons of iced tea, a new computer, and some crazy holiday weekends, I think I can say “I DID IT” about my Jan 1 deadline to complete Book 2!

On Jan 1, I was at 99,960 words (perfect word count for me), and had written an ending!

However, the ending is … well … “soft” (not very dramatic). The black moment is seriously lame, and there are a couple of loose ends that didn’t get exactly tied up.
Sooooooo …. I still have some work to do!
But I gave myself this whole month to edit for that very purpose, which will be just perfect. (It’s due to Berkley on Feb. 1.)
My next steps are:
  • Cut 2,000 from the first half.
  • Write another 2,000 in the second half to bolster the black moment and make it more dramatic.
  • Then do the fun “editing on the word level” stuff, like deleting words I use too often, changing up sentence rhythms where I got lazy, deleting all of my adverbs, tightening up dialogue, that kind of thing. That’s really my favorite part of editing.
Whew!
Overall, I’m really happy about this story, though. I love these characters — Lia and Evan. The story has some fun whale-watching tales, a sweet “Cinderella” theme overlaid on top, and some serious sizzle. I can’t wait to share it with everyone!

 

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...