Manuscript Monday is a series of blog posts which chronicle the life of my manuscript. It follows the journey I take to turn my week old baby story idea into a fully grown, polished novel. Take the journey with me. 🙂
My 20 week-old manuscript:
Hey everyone! Happy Monday. I hope your weekend was full of awesome, or at least full of a break from the week day monotony. 🙂
I have to say week #20 was good for my WIP. I managed to add a few thousand words to my draft. Yay! Not bad considering I also did some revisions on my completed manuscript too. It’s tough for me to completely immerse myself in my WIP. This darn “other” manuscript keeps getting in the way! I so wish I was done with it and was querying it to agents. There’s kind of a freeing feeling when that happens. It’s sort of like, “Well, this manuscript is as good as I can make it and now it’s out of my hands until I hear back from enough agents.” Do you know what I mean? At that point I can completely focus on my next story. And as you know, I sort of rushed things a bit this time. That’s why this new manuscript is so hard to draft. But it’s all good. I wanted to document my progress on it, and so there it is. A few thousand more words this week. I’ll take it!
I had some success writing out of my comfort zone this weekend too—as far as location goes. Some of you may remember I mentioned in an earlier post that I don’t do so well writing in cute coffee shops. I want to write in cute coffee shops but I’m so distracted by my surroundings, and thinking about how awesome it is that I have free time to write in a cute coffee shop that I don’t actually get much writing done. Phew. Did you get all that?
But Friday night I had a date with my revisions at Starbucks. Yes, just me, my Caramel Apple Spice, and my manuscript. I figured that if I can’t draft very well out of my own home, maybe I can revise that way. Besides, I had an hour and a half to kill. My daughter’s friends were taking her out to dinner for her birthday. And much to my daughter’s dismay, I would not let her drive—even though she now has her senior license and can legally drive any time with any number of teen passengers. Call me crazy but three girls, in the dark, on snowy roads (even if the roads weren’t that snowy) is more than I am ready to allow just yet. And so I became the driver.
And it was a success! I was focused. Not at all distracted. And I got so much done! It was peaceful, and quiet, and my head was totally into my story for almost exactly 90 minutes–while in a cute coffee shop no less! I feel like that’s an accomplishment right there. I guess maybe a change of scenery is good for our writer brains sometimes!
So in week #20, I managed to draft a few thousand words of my WIP, and revise about 100 pages of my completed manuscript. I feel good about my progress finally!
On another note, Our January Critique Corner is almost here! I hope you’ll submit and tell your friends to submit also. I can’t wait to read all the great submissions. And don’t forget, my amazing critique partner, Melyssa, is going to be offering feedback too. Yay, Mel! It’s a great chance to hear how you can improve your work.
And on another note… The release date of WAITING FOR UNICORNS, by my other critique partner extraordinaire and debut author, Beth Hautala is approaching fast! January 22, 2015 to be exact! I am so excited to see her book in bookstores, and can only image how she must feel. So treat yourself this month. Buy Beth’s book. It’s the perfect story for winter and I promise you will love it so much. Even if you don’t read middle grade. It really has something for everyone. For my original post and review, click here.
I guess that’s it for today, my friends. If I sound a little spazzy, it’s only because so many exciting things are happening right now. Words have a way of energizing me—even in the icy cold of winter!
So have a fabulous week and don’t forget to get your 500 words in. I am so looking forward to reading them!
swirl and spark 