Not All Who Wander Are Lost

We're officially off! I received the full edited manuscript on Christmas Eve. An early present, as it were. Not as many red marks as I'd feared, so I can relax a little bit, but there's still plenty of work to do. I must say though, that I owe my editor a debt of gratitude. She's making me a much better writer. I've found myself taking all the advice she's been giving me and applying it to my work in progress. I definitely don't want an editor to work this hard on the next one. Wow, that felt a little egotistical to me. The next one. I'm not even half way through the process on the first one and I'm already talking about a "next one." It felt good, though. I have my marching orders now. I read through the edits. I'm not completely certain about getting rid of one character's back story completely. First of all, I really like him. Secondly, I think that it really adds something to the story. So, I'm going to try and slip some o...

Right about now I feel that excitement on the air. A lot of it happens to come from the fact that I have a three year old who is fully getting into the whole Christmas thing. She is so excited. I am loving this Christmas season this year. We went to see Santa. She was all talk until we got up to the big guy. Then she was all big eyes and head shakes. Later on, I asked her what her problem was? She looking up at me, rolled her eyes, and said, "Mommy, I be shy." So, we wrote him a letter. She's also insisting that Christmas is her "Christmas birthday." She's a little confused. She's grasped the fact that it's baby Jesus' birthday, but that she gets presents. She decided that we have to make cupcakes to sing "Happy Birthday" to baby Jesus on Saturday. There is another hint of anticipation on the air that has nothing to do with jolly Old Saint Nicholas. My editor is running a couple of days behind on Ribbons' edits. She wanted to ge...

It's early in the morning here at work. The kids haven't begun to arrive and I have a pile of papers on my desk begging to be graded, but I just can't seem to settle in and get to work. I'm restless. Part of it, I'm sure, is the list of things I need to get done running through my head, but that's  normal and easy enough to ignore. Another portion is that break begins on next week Tuesday and I'm ancy for that to start. I'm most anxious, though to hear back from my editor. It's been a couple of weeks since I sent back the first edits and told her to hit me hard with the next set because I'd be on break and I'm getting a student teacher for second semester. I'll need something to keep me out of her hair. (I think I might also be nervous about that--it's like handing over my own children.) So, I keep haunting my inbox waiting for the attachment. I'm scared. Don't know why, but I am. I think it's because part of me is sti...

It's odd, if you think about it. How many other people can claim to have so many voices in their heads and still be considered perfectly sane? All of us who write have that problem, if you can call it that. We have all these characters, some of whom are for stories that haven't even shown themselves to us, clamoring for attention. Add our normal lives and is it any wonder we seem a little distracted? I've been feeling like a have a few more personalities lately. During the school year I always feel a little like Sybil. Teachers are the Swiss army knives of the working world, you know. In the course of a single day I've been a teacher, a referee, a mom, a fixer of broken binders, a finder of lost articles, a nurse bandaging boo boos, a money lender, a cheerleader, judge, jury and executioner. Alright, I made up the last three, but when you've got a sullen fourteen year old who knows he's been busted glaring at the square of carpet in front of his feet, you feel...

One of the best feelings in the world is when a kid runs into my classroom waving a book in his or her hand, shouting,  "You've got to read this!" I've gotten some of the best book recommendations from my students. In fact, during the school year I pretty much read what they're reading. One of my kids this year gave me an assignment. I was supposed to read " The Percy Jackson " series by Christmas so we could talk about it. I finished them by Halloween. Great reads! And with The Lost Olympian , I'm as bummed as the kids are that I have to wait until next Fall to find out what happens next. Another series the kids turned me on to was "The Hunger Games" trilogy. I have since passed them on to five of my colleagues and the middle school library can't keep them on the shelves. I remember finally reading "The Twilight" series to see why my girls were going goony. I also reveled in the "Cirque" books with my boys and am ...

This will be a short one. My iPod isn't so comfortable to write on and my day job has firewalls that are probably the envy of the White House. Just realizing how difficult it is to juggle so many different responsibilities--day job, family, volunteer responsibilities, and now the holidays. Added to that, my work in progress is dragging. It's either going to be a great young adult book or the biggest piece of dreck. I can't decide right now. It's needing to be pulled out of me a word at a time. I'm starting to wonder if it's time to set it aside for right now and work on something else. Just let it simmer on the back burner as it were. Something to think about.

So, my editor is really efficient. I wasn't expecting to get the first three chapters back from her until the weekend. I got the edits this morning. Wow! The teacher in me is appalled at the red marks. Of course, I've been teaching 8th grade for the last 14 years so some of the banality of their prose is certain to have rubbed off. I am also learning about the romance genre during this process. I usually write fantasy. There are a couple of things that you can get away with in a fantasy that you can't get away with in romance. And vice versa as well. I didn't realize that chapters in romance novels were so short and I do admit, I have a problem with point of view. I get a little too caught up in the way something sounds--I don't realize that my heroine can't see her own eyes. Soooo . . . I am learning the error of my ways. I've looked over the crits once and then let them settle. Time to get back to work, I think. I still have papers to grade an a post g...

Well, this will be a very interesting experience. Especially since my email account was hacked earlier this morning, making me spend an entire day figuratively running around the internet trying to change everything I remembered that used that email. Yikes! What a mess! This is supposed to be about my writing experiences, so I suppose I should give a little bit of background on me. I've actually been writing novels since I was in 7th grade. Wrote my first trilogy in 7th and 8th grade. Those books will never see the light of day, but they were a worthwhile experience. The first book I attempted to get published was Bonds of Blood, Bonds of Steel , a fantasy Commonwealth Publications, Inc. in Canada took me for a little ride, then folded. It left me with a few scars, an experience, and no money. However, they did return the rights to me in a class action suit. After I was burned by Commonwealth, (check them on out SFWA Writer Beware for more info) I took a couple of years off an...