First off all, have one:Â
Source |
First off all, have one:Â
Source |
Amazingly, I’m still in one piece, despite a busy Christmas season. And it’s not over yet.
You see, my December looks like this:
Mom’s Birthday: 22nd
Christmas Eve (opening gifts): 24th
Christmas Day (Church and lunch): 25th
Uncle’s birthday: 26th
My Birthday: 28th (Money transfers welcome. ;-P)
New Year’s eve: 31st.
So as you can see, I’m not really getting time to sit still to blog without appearing to be anti-social.
Still, I’ve written a synopsis and revised my query again and again. I’m thinking I should send it to Query Shark before contacting agents, but that’s a story for IWSG.
In the mean time, I’m reading my friend Michael Offutt’s novel, Slipstream, at the moment, although the above-mentioned makes for some slow going. Ooh! Speaking of which, Oculus, the sequel to Slipstream is out, in case you’ve been living under a rock or missed all the posts about it this month. Go check these books out, if you haven’t yet. Mike’s one of my best CPs and he definitely knows the craft.
Alrighty then! I better get going again before my family sends out a search party.
See you again soon!
Who else have some important birthdays coming up between now and New Year’s eve? Anyone else still have family visiting?
Hey all! Today I’m sharing a short chat I had with Shah on the release of her new book: Finding Esta. Before I hop to that, I just want to let you know that there’s a copy to be given away.
Well… I finished summarizing Doorways, so I guess that the only thing that’s needed is to sit down and do a synopsis.Â
Thanks so much for the comments to yesterday’s post. I decided to stop whining and look at the query again.
Mistake I’d made this time: I put too much importance on it. You see… I’m not excluding any publishing method at this stage. The only reason why I’m querying now is so that I can say I tried it. If it fails, I’m not going to worry about it too much.
It just means I wasn’t meant to go the traditional route. I’ll take another.
In the mean time, I looked at my most recently drafted query. It sucked.
So I decided to take a completely new approach to the query and I think it’s pretty dang good. Just waiting for the dust to settle, then I’ll be editing it again.
In the mean time, I started the monumental task of summarizing Doorways so that I can write the synopsis. I have 70 chapters. So far, I’ve finished 13.
That’s not the only monumental task I have in front of me. It’s not even the most urgent I have to finish my grandmother’s painting. You know… the one that’s supposed to be her Christmas gift.
I’m filled with jitters about it. It’s all good and well to do one for myself, but this is for my Grandmother’s Christmas present, so I really don’t want to mess it up. But I only have 6 days and so much detail work to do that I’m terrified.
Sigh. Sorry if today’s post is mixed up. I have a few too many things vying for my attention today.
Anyone else as messed up as me this time of the year? What do you need to get done and soon?
I’m meeeeeltiiing!
Yeah… really. I wanted to do this post hours ago, but it was so hot that my only option was to stay in the pool until I resembled a raisin.
And then I remained in the water for an hour longer.
Which means, of course, that nothing I want to do is getting done. But while I’m there, I’m swimming and doing some resistance stuff, so at least I’m getting a bit fitter.
Other than that, I’m basically resisting the siren’s call that is the Doorways sequel. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with writing it per se… but it’s a problem when I still haven’t worked on the query or the synopsis like I’m supposed to.
That’s a problem.
Thing is. I don’t really know what to do with the query. Even an agent said that I should have people look it over, but all I get when I do that is more contradiction. How am I supposed to learn what I’m doing wrong when all I’m getting is some people saying add more and others saying take more away?
It just really annoys me. Then there’s this situation where some agents insist that my sub-genre is unsellable, but when asked directly, agents say that there’s no such thing.
…
So yeah… me wondering if it’s even WORTH the effort isn’t helping me get a new query done.
It’s all just one big procrastination exercise right now.
Anyone else getting frustrated with queries?
I mean, I don’t mind getting no’s. But getting no’s when I don’t know what’s turning the agents off really is starting to annoy me.
Thanks so much for the encouragement and hugs I received on Friday.
I kind of spilled my heart on this subject today on TCoML, so I won’t be writing much of a post here, except to say that the reason for my really shitty day and what I realized about it is in that post, if you want to go check it out.
Before you head over, though, I want to say thank you to everyone who expressed a willingess to help make next year awesome on this blog. I will definitely be putting out more details towards the start of the blogging season next year, since a lot of people who might love to take part will be away spending time with their families. But let me say, that if we get it right, this will be awesome for everyone who reads MFB.
See you tomorrow!
Need I say more?
As you may know by now, I’m busy going around and catching up on months’ worth of return visits that I never got to do.
I can honestly say I’m loving this. It’s just amazing to read what’s going on with friends new and old.
In addition, it also got me thinking again about what I can do for next year to make things even better. I have a couple of original and not so original ideas kicking about, so as soon as I have them cemented in my head, I’ll be sharing them in the new year.
One thing I will say, though, is that Guest Post Friday is at an end. BUT! I will be hosting regular guest posts and interviews. I’ll just be doing things a liiiiittle differently to before.
Next year, I want to make the writing bloggosphere an even more awesome place, but I can’t do it alone. Who’s willing to help me? No help can be too big or too small and I’ll NEVER let your help go unnoticed.
Hey there!
I’ll be cheating today and getting some blog visits in. After all, I’m about 6 months behind.
See you around!
Misha