Writing News
This week I got my results back from the YARWA Rosemary Contest. I didn’t final, but I didn’t do too bad either. So I went over all the judge’s comments and made some changes to the manuscript that I’d entered. Each contest makes you a better writer, so this is good. But it is still very hard to have your faults pointed out, even though it is for your greater good.
I also worked on the big revision of my Mexico YA manuscript. I am past the 75% mark in the story and slowly moving forward. Will I be able to switch bad guys and make it convincing? What will the story read like now that I have cut over 11,000 words right out of the middle, including another chapter this week? Only time will tell. But this chopping gives the story a chance at life, a chance that it didn’t have before.
I also saw that my publisher is starting a new series with chosen locations and story prompts. I saw one of the books that they want and totally fell in love with the idea. I made a file for that series and then made a file for the story I had in mind and then went to town writing out the premise and thinking up fun plot twists based on some real camping experiences that I survived in the very place where Pelican wants this story set. My hope is to finish the big chunky revision of the Mexico story soon, plot out this new story at the end of this month, and then spend July writing a fast rough draft of a new comedic romance.
What? You thought that I was going to write a sweet serious romance, or a deep and thoughtful literary glimpse of love, or the next great American novel? Sorry to disappoint you, but against my will all of my ideas just sort of morph in a weird and silly direction. Ah well, we all have to laugh, even when contemplating the meaning of the universe. Apparently, while other writers are being super awesome, my place in the body of Christ is to make sure that your smiling muscles don’t get out of shape and that your laugh doesn’t get rusty. I shall embrace it! It’s so funny how the stories start out sweet and thoughtful or even dark and tense…and then I can’t help myself and end up plopping a 150 lb dog into an ancient cathedral or gifting the heroine with a frozen cat. Slowly, I am starting to accept my literary deficiencies and realize that there are strengths there as well. Let the romance writing begin…I think I’m going to trouble my heroine with a Sasquatch sighting and an escaped pig!
Love the Sasquatch sighting. Goodness, we kids grew up constantly hearing about The Fouke Monster of Boggy Creek. My grandmother’s family lived on Boggy Creek. At my grandmother’s funeral, when I spoke, I had to tease just a tad bit about all the stories because she always said it was a gorilla that must have gotten loose. The pastor told me later that some of those folks really take it seriously … movie was made there and everything. Yikes. I didn’t know! 🙂
That is so cool! You need to write a middle grade story about the monster of Boggy Creek. Oh, in this little town called Plain, close to where we live some people actually did see a creature in the woods…and it turned out to be an escaped Hippo! How weird is that?