Weekly Report

Well, this week has been pretty good in my writing world. I got back into the swing of things despite my little break to go up to Sacramento. I tried to look up some agents who are known for dealing specifically with collections of short stories for the purpose of sending out query letters for my “A Slice of Life Death” and found that there really isn’t anyone like that out there, the collections that generally get published are by authors who have already been established in the writing world, in other words, my chances of my first published book being either one of my short story collections are slim to none. However, that is still good to know, even if it’s not good news.
This week I decided to enter a short story into the Orange County Fair, so I put my short story “Fairy Gardens” through a fine-toothed comb, and I am now satisfied that it is as perfect as it can possible be, and it’s all printed out, all nice and pretty and ready to go. For safeties sake, I’m going to be bringing it to The Coffee House Writer’s Group, and see if they have any helpful suggestions.
I’m still editing away at my novel “Survival” and have boosted up the number of chapters. I haven’t been adding information; I’ve just been splitting up the longer chapters up. The last time I blogged, for those of you out there who are keeping track (yea, I should be so lucky to have people that interested in my writing passion) I last said that I had about forty-one chapters, well, now I have forty-six. This might not sound like much of a change, but I’m happy. For some reason, even though I know nothing about the story has actually changed, just the bigger number makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something. Call me silly. I know I am!

Reporting from the Writing Prison

After a day of Blogger not working on Thursday, which nearly drove me up the wall, I’m back to posting.  

  This week has been very eventful. I went and took my assessment test at my community college of choice and passed both the English and Reading test with flying colors, Math was unfortunately a different story, not that I was shocked, Math has never been my strong suit.

  I have edited and revised “A Slice of Life Death” and am getting ready to do it several more times before I start sending out queries to agents. The whole while I am continuing to edit “Survival”, which is taking longer due to its size, but I’m to chapter thirty-one of forty, so I’m almost there.

  It’s also the last week that I was told to wait for a reply from one agent, if they were interested they would contact me, and since they haven’t I am going to assume their answer was “no”. They were the last agent I was waiting on for my book “Samantha’s Animal Stories”.

  I think that gets you guys all up to date with what I’m doing. Till next week then.

Survival Editing

I’m going through my final editing cycle of “Survival” before I print it out. I’ll hold it in my hands and glow, like a loving parent should its child. Then I’ll put it in a drawer for a month or so, and then when my euphoria has subsided, I’ll destroy my ego with the merciless red pencil of critics.

  I’m about halfway my final computer edit, finishing Chapter Thirty last night. Which reminds me, I should probably print out “A Slice of Life Death” too, but I can’t let myself get distracted, (which happens entirely too easy for me sometimes.)

  Then there’s “Samantha’s Animal Stories” which I have sent out the last few agent queries that I’m going to be sending before I throw in the towel on that endeavor. I gave up on finding an agent for “My Magical World” a while ago. I’m thinking of deleting “Stargazers” - again. I’m hesitant to start writing “Chloe’s Diary” since I really don’t like the characters, though I love the story; and…I got off track didn’t I?

  Well, I’m going back to editing.