Still Plugging Along...

Life does tend to get in the way of writing a bit - something about a day job - but hey, I'm still plugging along. It's my week to post prompts to the CHPercolators group on Yahoo, so I'm at least giving others grist for the mill! I've only managed one more piece out of my 2006 FebNaNo novel since I last blogged, but plan to get some more typed up today. Less than 30 pages to go on this part of the editting process! Ok, back to the grind...

Progress!

Well, I am making progress on editting the novel I wrote back in February 2006 during the NaNoPubYe's FebNaNo that year. I'm in the process of breaking it into sections, of which I have 64 to date, and still have 30 pages of the first draft to get through. Then I will go through section by section and edit, refining sentences, coming up with missing pieces (like village names), and seeing if the section still fits with the story or not. Oh, yeah, and I need to bring the story to closure as well. Went down a path to get to that point, but got tangled in the weeds somewhere.

And I promised to review a novel - "The Take~Us", website: http://www.emeraldbookcompany.com/authors/takacs/ - by a fellow NCPA member, John Raymond Takacs. The premise - a gentleman inventing a car that does not use gas and then driving that car across the country - caught my attention. John says it's a thriller with a bit of romance, which made it sound intriguing as well. Don't worry, John, I promise to have it read and a rough draft of the review done by the next NCPA meeting!

First Submission of 2009

Well, I did it - I submitted a story to The First Line, a quarterly publication out of Plano TX. Check them out at http://www.thefirstline.com/. The premise is to use the given sentence as the first line of a short story (300 to 3,000 words). The first line of this story is: Herman Sligo was a bit actor who played Uncle Emil in three episodes of the popular television series The Five Sisters. For those of you who have read my story Theft By Character (and thank you if you have), the current submission runs in a similar vein If you want to know more, well...you'll just have to wait for publication, one way or other other! The deadline for submissions for the Spring 2009 issue of this quarterly is 1 Feb 09, and those who submit will be notified of their status two-three weeks after that date - according to the submission rules posted on their website.

Writing Goals for 2009

Writing Goals – 2009, 1^st Qtr

January

- 10 hours per week!

- Rewrite Harken the Change

o BE RUTHLESS!!

February

- 10 hours per week!

- Work on Soultalker

- Write short stories using TFL, Writing Journal and CHPerc tag lines

March

- 10 hours per week!

- Rewrite Harken the Change (again)

o Be Ruthless

o Get tight, very tight!

- Check goal progress for last three months