Deadlines? WTF?

Nobody pays me to write, at least not yet. I have no agent, no publisher, no master, so to speak, when it comes to my writing (other than me, anyway). So how the heck did I stumble across all these looming deadlines?

The Burrow

My writing family has a website where we do features of Drabbles—we do it monthly, but about half the time we do it as an actual 'production'. These productions include images and drabbles (a drabbles is a story told in exactly 100 words). For February we have a love theme (of course) and TODAY is the day our images are due.

I am not nearly so responsible as to claim I am part of the production team—I haven't had tons of time to be the project manager and I don't have the skill set for coding or image manipulation, so (and I am SO thankful) Jason and Natasha end up with the big jobs each time, and Chary managed the Advent Calendar (Natasha is managing the February feature). But I DO commit to participating every time—I will write 5 Drabbles for February, so needed 4 images (plus the group one we all do)...

I am bad though... I knew this was coming, and I'd even looked a little, but I want to do one on the 23rd about my dad (that would have been his 65th birthday, but he died at 31)... so THIS MORNING I finally took the pictures I'd found up to my office to scan so I could submit my images... flying by the seat of my pantslessness, as I seem to do with everything these days.

I still have my drabbles to write, but heck, I've got a couple days for that!

ONDWAY

I have committed to this insanity, for better or worse, but have gone into a strange mode on my WiP (trying to pull together the three novels so they are consistent, which requires reading and notetaking) that leaves me little frivolous writing time... So here I am, on the day I need to post an update, with no update written... oh, it will be done, but again... winging it here...


Blogging

Not sure when I decided daily was necessary, but I did... so there you have it, blogging about no time to blog.

And the BIG MUTHER

I've decided to Amazon... still no word from those dangling queries, but I figure it's all good. That means I need to get my 300 word pitch JUST RIGHT, and do a proof of my Chapter 1 (which conveniently has 4000 words, more or less, so is perfect for the 3000-5000 word window for our 'opening' we are supposed to fit. And I need to format a version of the book a little differently (they don't want your name in the header, is really the biggie...


So somehow, in spite of my current amateur status, I find myself swamped... Ah well... just keep swimming, just keep swimming...

Back to the Grindstone

It's so hard after almost two weeks of sleeping in to go back to the 'day job'. I thought though, it would do me good to reflect a little on what got accomplished and what there still is to do, day job notwithstanding.


CONSPIRACY

I failed miserably at accessing my friend with Romanian expertise... I just wasn't far enough on my 3rd book of my trilogy to know what I needed to know, if you know what I mean. I am making progress on it though. As it stands I am in the middle of Chapter 7 and writing backstory. LEGACY was about a group of kids who are living with the repercussions of their parents' lives. Book two is a progression of that (kids trying to SOLVE those problems), and book 3 finally comes back to the parents, so it seems logical to give the 'how we got in this mess in the first place' story. Mid-book it will meet the action at the end of 2 and then wind to the conclusion. I think it works because of the PoV change—the two characters whose PoV I am using have been important, but largely absent thus far.

Being on chapter 7 puts me a chapter ahead of my December plan, so that is okay with me... it's just the fact checking I'd intended to do, as my expert is an educator who had a break—next one will be a couple months.  That is editing timeframe though, so it should work out.

Typing has completely not happened. I've focused on editing CONFLUENCE instead.


CONFLUENCE

I have done all but the very last two chapters of a cleaning. I have confirmed it will come in under 140K words, which is FABULOUS, and I've sent my new first three chapters to my writer's group—feedback from one person so far (Thank you, Natasha!)—she misses the detail because she's fond of it, but this reads cleaner and is probably closer to what they will want. Hopefully I will be DONE tomorrow night.

Querying on the other hand... NOTHING yet. I will supplement my list today and hopefully they will start trickling out tomorrow.

DENIABILITY

(looky!  Joris made me some more covers!)
This is the working title of my NaNoWriMo novel and the one I have mysteriously taken up as the 'let's get this puppy out of my pile' project. I've written about 20 new pages this week, filling in most of the holes as I come to them. I've got (I think) only one more gap, but it is fairly substantial. I've got about 40 pages (of 200) to get through and I suspect maybe 20 more pages to add in that space, but I REALLY believe that will be off my desk this week (erm... or moved to the editing pile) and I will be done with my 4th book and can get back to the trilogy. (see, part of this plan is that 5 is my lucky number and I really want CONSPIRACY to be my  5th book *cough*) 

*looks for superstitious nut*

I should probably make sure I get the querying done before getting to CONSPIRACY, as querying kills the 'from scratch' mojo (as opposed to the 'write something along this line' that I am doing for DENIABILITY. Besides that, I have more invested in the trilogy. I've always known the NaNo project would need heavy editing eventually, where this trilogy is 1) 3 books so I have more invested--in fact it is really one 900 page story, it just broke nicely in 3, and 2) somewhat inspired, or so it feels to me.


So there.

As I head back to the 'office' and trying to wrestle a stupid stats program onto my computer so I can get to the project that kept evading me before break, my writing house isn't all that disorderly. I am soon to be down two projects, which will make me VERY happy.

Should also get back to reading other blogs better… That is the kind of thing I do five minutes at a time, so easy from work. The home computer editing process doesn’t have those same time gaps… (funny, that…)

On a Sillier Note: If you haven't noticed, I started a Blog Opera over break. It has two installments and might take a couple more before it is really in full swing, but it is fun. The original inspiration was the thought of Dangerous Liaisons, transplanted into a tiny town where everybody knows everybody else's business. It sort of blossomed from there and I'd love it if you want to give it a peek. Here is the first episode.