Accomplishments

In terms of accomplishing goals this month, I got off to a rough start. So the last two weeks I've been trying to redeem myself by writing and reading and querying as much as possible. I finished Flicker last night. Final word count-96,000! And probably with edits it'll end up close to 100K. It's the longest book I've ever written. And while I'm proud of it, I'm dreading the LONG LONG editing process ahead of me. Thankfully because I changed the ending, I think it can stay in 1st person. But it'll still need a lot of revising before it's ready for agents. Goal for querying it is January 1, 2011. That gives me four months. I think I can do it.

I also wrote two short stories, mainly because I want to have lots of pieces to chose from when selecting stories for grad school applications. I think they're decent stories. The plots aren't overly complicated or twisted, mainly they're stories about life and relationships. I think if I submit one piece that's focused on plot and one on character it'll show diversity to schools.

I've been sending queries out for Seaweeds every day for almost a week. Five rejections so far. I expected that to happen. But I'm gonna keep on querying. If anything, I'd appreciate feedback. I got agents in the past to read entire books and provide me advice and it was well worth the rejection to know what I need to work on. My mom finished reading Seaweeds last night. She doesn't think it's my best work and says it's bizarre and weird but funny. Good. I'm glad it's funny. I didn't intend for it to be a serious serious novel. I wanted to write an escape book for people who are tired of seriousness and need to take a dip in the ocean.

My other book, To Catch a Rainbow Butterfly, which I still believe to be my best work, was queried and rejected back in May. I'm going through the agents I sent it to, revising my query, and gonna query it again.

I have another novel that I started writing back in college that has a lot of potential but man, oh man, does my writing suck! So I'm thinking I'll rewrite it.

So all in all. Despite achieving a lot these last few weeks, I still have a bucket load of work to do. And full-time work starts again on Thursday, so I'm spending these next two days of freedom working on everything I just blogged about. I love this blog. If I forget what I'm supposed to be doing, I just come back here and read what I wrote.

To everyone and their writing endeavors, good luck and may your fingers be swift and your brains be imaginative and your hearts be full!