Making Progress Again...

All I can say is finally! The past month has been horrible for my writing and I'm going to have to work my butt off this month to meet my personal goal of having my rough draft done by the beginning of April. Now that I have something writing-related to put on my query letters, I can't wait to have something to send out. Even though it will still take a long time to polish my novel once I finish it, I'm still excited and looking forward to everything that I'll no doubt learn along the way.

February was rough, but I guess setbacks are to be expected, but they're so not fair. Having the flu pass through our household wasn't cool at all. And who got the worst of it? Me, of course. My husband had maybe two days of it and my son (the only recipient of a flu shot this year) had none. I had it for over a week and it even developed into a sinus infection to boot! It was a long week of huddling under blankets and wanting the world to just go away and let me succumb to the germs, but I somehow survived and I'm back!

In case you missed it, my son wasn't sick at all this past week. Imagine if you will, a stay-at-home Mom, horribly sick and unable to move, watching an over-active two year old boy. Sound like fun? Yeah, I'm not ashamed to say that the Little Einsteins crew were a near constant in our house this past week.

Now that my husband and I are better, you'd think things would be looking up again, right? Wrong! The day that I starting feeling better, the toddler got a cold. Fun, fun, fun... So now he's all snotty and won't let me wipe his poor little red nose. Lucky for my writing, he's mostly wanting to just sit with his toys or lay on the couch. He lets me know when he needs me, but mostly just wants to be left alone to be sick. Poor little guy.

But on the bright side of things, I've been writing again. Yay! I'm hoping to finish the chapter I started this morning sometime this afternoon/evening. It's pretty fun to write. Running into an ex that you've been avoiding, that you still have feelings for, is always interesting, especially when you're the one who ran away from the relationship. I've missed writing about Casey and now that she's speaking to me again, things are going great!

I think the contest win snapped her into perspective. I let her know that if she didn't want to cooperate, I could always write the novel inspired by my short story. People already like Megan and Joseph, why not tell their story first... I woke up this morning and she was all ready to go and suggesting scenes to start on. Is it bad that I'm making threats to imaginary friends who live inside my head?

With what I've written so far this morning, I'm at 90,648 words and thinking that my goal of 100k words is too small. It's hard to say what the final word count will be though as those 90k+ words that were counted aren't all completed scenes. Thanks to my blue text technique, every scene is mapped out, it's just not written in the correct POV. I just need to go back and change those incomplete scenes from "campfire story telling" format to having it told from Casey's POV. Does this mean that "technically my first draft is "done"? The story is all there, I just need to polish it and make it flow with the rest of the text. Hmmm...

Let's see, what else... Oh yeah, my strange, glowing skull dream never returned. It's a shame too, that dream was so vivid and I really wanted to know what was down that next small hallway. Sure, I could play the "what if" game and come up with several answers, but I really hate doing that in this instance. I have no idea where this dream came from and don't even know how to get my head into that frame of mind again. I should really pull out my dream dictionary and look up the hidden meanings of everything that I saw, but that would be another procrastinatory outlet that I don't need right now. I have enough ways to keep myself from writing ithout adding something new to the mix. Google Reader, I'm looking at you...

Oh yeah, still no news from the editor about my short story. Its been about a month now and I'm not sure what to think. What is the typical turn around on hearing back on a short story? Is no news still good news with how the industry is changing or does no news mean no? I know that I've read about literary agents having to forgo sending out rejection letters, instead letting no response after a certain amount of time mean "no", but are editors doing the same? The publishing house that I submitted to doesn't accept unagented work, except for one line and this short story promotion, so its hard to find information on their response time.

My "think positive" assumption is that either a) he likes the story and is doing whatever needs to be done to see if he can use it, or b) he hasn't gotten to it yet. There have been all sorts of changes at this particular publishing house recently and I can only imagine how backed up people are. The short story promotion hasn't been cancelled though, as new stories have continued to be posted every week as promised. I'm doing my best to maintain this positive outlook and to not worry about it. I've let the editor know about the contest win associated with the story and now, again, it's out of my hands. Unless I've suddenly developed the ability to bend people to my will, there's nothing else I can really do- except wait. Just tested things out, and no... I still don't have that ability, darn't!

Well, I think that's about it for my writing-related news. I want to thank everyone who's following my blog now, whether publically or through some reader program. I do a little Snoopy dance every time I see that someone else has started following my little blog here. So thanks!

Until I blog again...
Talk 2ya later...

~Willow