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Showing posts from February, 2005

What I'm writing in YEAR OF THE DOG

I just finished writing Year of the Dog ! It had a massive plot hole that I had to fix which turned out to be more work than I expected. Here’s a snippet: “Hey, Auntie Nell.” He wrapped his arms around her, bussing her on the cheek and breathing in pikake flowers and shortbread cookies. And suddenly he was nine years old again, and her solid presence had made his chaotic world stable once more. “What are you doing here?” He usually took her to dinner on Wednesday nights, but today was Tuesday. The edges of her smile faltered a little before brightening right back up again. “What, I can’t visit my nephew?” She angled around him to enter his home. “Is this your new house? Looks lovely.” Which was a blatant lie, because the fixer-upper was barely livable, much less acceptable to a neat-freak like his aunt. She also left four matching pink and purple floral suitcases on the stoop behind her. Only then did Ashwin notice the cab driver standing slightly to the side of the walkway. “Can ...
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My friends love me

Captain’s Log, Stardate 02.28.2005 Heather made a good point: Camy wrote: I worry that my friends like the story because they love me. It’s true, my friends would not hesitate to let me know if they thought my stuff was crap. They wouldn’t be my friends if they didn’t. My fear is that if something is borderline decent, they’d be more disposed to like it. They wouldn’t be dishonest, they’d be biased. Which is rather nice to know my friends are loyal, but my fear is that their love blinds them to faults in my writing. Or at least makes their vision fuzzy. Proposal writing is going slow. It’s so hard to come up with GMC for books I haven’t plotted out yet. I think I’ve finally got it. I still need to do the query letter and Market Comparison. My biggest problem is that it’s limited to 20 pages (which includes the query letter), but I just checked and my first chapter is 21 pages. Aargh! Diet: I was pretty good today, although I pigged out all weekend...
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Proposal insecurities

Captain’s Log, Stardate 02.27.2005 Still working on the proposal, but getting help from my wonderful online writer friends on the first chapter and the synopsis. The hardest part has been doing the 2-paragraph plot summaries for the other two books in the series. I have to think up basic plotlines and motivations and all that important stuff. I went to John Olson’s writing critique group in San Leandro on Friday night and met some really nice people. I brought my synopsis to get critiqued. But after reading it, people were just kind of silent for a minute. That scared me. They eventually made good points on the synopsis, but I got the feeling they didn’t care for the storyline very much. The other pieces read that night were fantasy, literary fiction, historical fiction, and John’s latest suspense. My piece is Alias-kick-butt-action-adventure-sort-of-romance. My husband said that the age group I’m writing for might be too young for the people who were there, or ...
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Proposal

Captain’s Log, Supplemental Another thing I got from John Olson’s talk is that I should write the proposal for a ms as soon as possible. I don’t need to have a completed proposal before I start writing, but just thinking about the marketing information and readership helps a writer focus the story and make it more sellable. So, although I haven’t finished the manuscript yet, I’ll start on the proposal now. I’m doing a bit of market comparison but it’s hard to find books similar to mine. I’ll have to look harder on Amazon.
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Redwood Chapel Christian Writers Conference

Captain’s Log, Stardate 02.20.2005 My husband’s new job: My husband’s old coworker now works at a company in Cupertino , and she called him about a job opening there. He went through interviews and got a job in his old coworker's manufacturing division. He starts work on Monday, February 28th. We’re both relieved because it’s a more stable job than a start-up company, and he’ll have better hours (hopefully) and better pay. Christian Writers Conference: I attended a Christian Writers Conference in Castro Valley ( East Bay ) hosted by Redwood Chapel Community Church . It was great. Sally Stuart was the keynote speaker, talking about Christian markets. Not just about magazine and book publishers, but also the trends and ethics in the marketplace. I was a bit disappointed because she didn’t have enough time to finish her second speaking session about trends in the marketplace. She had covered so much good stuff, but when they signaled the end of her t...
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Book In Three Weeks

Captain’s Log, Stardate 02.10.05 Okay, well, Book In Two Weeks is turning into Book In Three Weeks. This has been a good exercise to show me how UNDISCIPLINED I am. I have all this time in front of the computer and have a hard time keeping my butt in the chair. This shouldn’t be so hard. I LOVE writing. I do. So why won’t I do it when I’m supposed to??? I also have problems turning off the internal editor. I think it’s off, but then after a few hours and only one chapter done, well that’s a clue the editor is still running. Maybe it’s like my computer when it goes on standby: it seems like it’s off, but if you accidentally knock on the desk, jiggle the mouse or hit the keyboard, it fires up again. I just hope it’s only three weeks and doesn’t spill over into four. I have to get this ms done NOW. I can’t waste a whole month when I could have been working on my Chicklit novella due April 1st or my Hawaii Chicklit series. I’ve actually been kicking around idea...
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