Manuscript Monday #21

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. 🙂

Hey guys! Happy Martin Luther King Day. For those of you with kids, I hope you enjoy the extra day with them or…survive the challenge of having them home an extra day this week! Today, I’ve turned my house into boot camp. Midterms are next week, so for my two teens I’ve planned a mix of study sessions, exercise sessions, eating sessions, and resting sessions. Seriously! I’m using a timer and everything. 🙂

The living room will be a quiet zone for studying. I’ll even do my work in there too. We have a fitness room in the basement, so my kids can exercise when they need a break. We may take a walk or run outside too. Call me crazy but the kids actually love this. I am there to quiz them when they need me, but to be honest they prefer to quiz each other. I can’t tell if that’s just because they’re so competitive and want to beat each other, they like the break, or they just don’t trust me with Pre-Calc problems and German vocabulary!

In case you’re wondering, Prince Charming (who works from home when he’s not traveling) happens to be in Florida on a business trip this week. How unfair is that?? So while he enjoys the sunshine, I will become a drill sergeant. Boy is he missing all the fun!

Hopefully I’ll get some writing work done too as I have a lot going on this week. I have a huge freelance project that I contracted last week. Yay! It’s going to take up a lot of time over the next few months. (More on that later!) I have revisions to complete on my “completed” manuscript. I’m getting closer every day with that one (thanks to Mel, my amazing CP). I also have my WIP I’d like to work on at some point if I can. And that brings me to week 21. Not much tangible work this past week, I’m afraid. But that’s okay. That’s the life of a writer, I guess, right? Not all weeks will be as productive as we’d like.

And then there’s our January Critique Round here on the blog…

So here’s the thing. I am so excited to host this round. It’s been quite a while since we had one. And we have Mel offering feedback too. How cool is that?? But, we have once small problem. No one has submitted their work yet. As in, not one person. 😦 😦 Now I know the deadline for writers to send their 500 words is later this week, and so the submissions may still be coming. I hope! I guess I’d like to know if we still have interest in holding it. I had several people indicate they were subbing, but that was over a month ago. Many of you out there may just not feel ready after the craziness of the holiday season. I surely can relate!

So how about this…if you are ready to submit, please shoot me an email or tweet to let me know, or just send your submission. Or if you’d like to participate, but just aren’t ready, let me know that too. I will consider moving the date if that’s what works for all of you! The point of the critique round is to help, and I’m up for helping in any way that works. I’ve talked to Mel about this too and she’s willing to help out whenever we need her! I am constantly amazed at the generosity of this writing community! 🙂 Thank you, Mel!

And that’s it for today. I’m off to boot camp. Eat. Work. Run. Eat, Work. Write. Eat. Repeat. Quiz in between. Tell random jokes to keep my kids entertained. Just kidding on the last one but I might break into random dancing if I feel like it. 🙂

Have a fabulous week, my writing friends. I hope it brings you all that you hope it will!