July is editing month

Our 50ks in 30 days challenge ended on Monday, and it feels strange no longer to be writing under pressure. A staggering 1,749,046 were written during the challenge and I'm proud to be on of the motivators of the challenge (along with my partners in whip-cracking and mirth, Sandie Hudson and Rhian Cahill). It is great to see others achieve and push their writing boundaries.

I have emailed our gorgeous winners certificates out (so now everyone who made 50ks is officially certified) and ordered the badges so we can wear them at the RWAus conference in Melbourne in August, and display our tenancity, our creativity and our insanity.

My head is now all over the place as July is editing month for me. I'm working with two different critique partners so I'm switching between working on Diary of the Future and I'm with the Band. My first 3 chapters of I'm with the Band have insertions and deletions scribbled all over them, and I'm about to add these to the computer, to keep myself on Writer Island for another week. And in between thinking about the characters of each of these stories, the guys from Hold the Anchovies keep making guest appearances in my head insisting that I finish that story. Because although I'm at 80k, I haven't reached the end yet. As the story starts with a pizza-fortune telling, I would also like to end it that way to bring it full circle and to show Lisa's emotional growth, but I'm not quite sure that Lisa has grown as much as she needs to as yet. And in hope, I have updated the status bar in the right hand colum with a projected word count of 85,000 but they may expand according to the character's moods.

Except for the cold weather and getting home in the dark after work, I really like July. It's the month I cash in my enforced savings plan by getting my tax refund and then make the annual pilgrimage to the Byron Bay Writers Festival with my writing buddies. Just a couple more weeks of the day job and editing and writing...and then I'll be lapping up the festival atmosphere. Can't wait....

Dead technology

Well after decluttering my office, and the laptop, I'm afraid to say that neither appears like the photos anymore.

Three days after the decluttering when I thought the laptop was humming along nicely, it proved me wrong by dying completely. All I would get at startup was a grey screen. So the laptop is back at the shop (hopefully whatever's wrong will be covered by the extended warranty) and I've hooked the old monster computer up to the internet, and seriously thinking of buying an LCD screen for it, because the monster takes up the whole desk.



Dorkus the cat is not impressed. He can't take up his usual position on the desk (as above) and has retreated to the desk behind me.

In moving the monster computer back out here, I've got printers on the floor and stuff all around. Hopefully, it will look better again by this afternoon.

I'm sure that Mercury is not retrograde at the moment, but I've been hearing of a lot of computers going kaput. A technical mutiny perhaps?

I can't believe its the last day of September already. I'm hurtling towards my 40th birthday and another Nanowrimo is just around the corner. Seriously, where has this year gone? It'll be 2008 before we know it.

I plan to do Nanowrimo again - I like the impetus and the momentum that being part of the Nanowrimo community gives me and my writing. I have a very vague idea about a young woman and an obsession with classified ads. That's all I have so far. In the meantime, I received my feedback from the Chick Lit competition and have been absorbing all that Jenny Crusie had to say at the RWA Conference, so I'm rewriting and reshuffling and polishing Diary of the Future for submission. Also using that story to participate in Candy Haven's Revision Hell workshop. So October will be over in a flash for me as well, because I'll be busy with work and rewriting.

When Inspiration wakes you....

It's 1 pm on Sunday afternoon and I'm still in my pyjamas. Pretty slack, hey?

But let me explain. I've been working hard. My creative juices were fired up, so I jumped on the laptop to seize the thought while it was still in my brain.

I've been staying up late reading my friend's soon-to-be-published fantasy novel trilogy. I'm up to chapter five of tiny tiny print, single spaced double sided but I'm involved in the story and I want to read all (gulp) 450,000 words.

Anyway, her success has got me inspired once again and although I slept late this morning (blame the couple of 12 hour days I worked this week), my subconscious was mulling over my young adult manuscript Diary of the Future and I woke up with a fully-composed query letter in my mind. It's now on the hard drive. It's a bit left of field but I think that's okay.

Now all I have to do is compress my five page double-spaced synosis into one single-spaced page and give those first three chapters another polishing. And I'm ready! Finally, eight years of constant writing, and I'm finally getting brave enough to submit....