Milestones & Updates

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Hello, world! It seems like writers spend a lot of time soul-searching in Angst-ville (myself included) so I wanted to share some good news!

1) ARTICLES!

I got some articles published! Fellow writer Mark Squirek is a columnist for the online newsletter Scoop. He asked me to do a pair of articles for his column, “Cover Story,” which discusses the cover art of various comic books. I got to pick any two covers I wanted and write about them! I chose Space Family Robinson #23: “Menace from Uranus!” from 1967 and The Chronicles of Arcea #1: “The Athame” by Vyrhelle. Many thanks to Mark for asking me to write for Scoop and to Mr. J.C. Vaughn, editor at Gemstone Publishing, for taking a chance on a new writer. Also, my deepest gratitude to my friend Karen; editing all of those art papers paid off! Working with Scoop has been a lot of fun, and I hope I’ll be able to continue writing for them.

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New Days, New Design

Welcome to 2014! I have a couple of announcements for my first post of the New Year:

First, I decided to redesign my website. I liked the old one, but it felt a little too…bland. I wanted something a little more dynamic, but still professional, and I’ve always loved black…so here we are! It makes me want to dance and shout, “LOOK AT ALL THE PRETTY!” *ahem* Anyway, I hope you enjoy the new layout. I’ve also changed the page called “The Mariner Sequence” to “Novels” so I can list other projects that I’m working on. All the old links to that page have been updated. If any links are broken, let me know and I’ll fix them ASAP.

Second, from now on I will be posting a new entry every other Monday. I’ve been posting on Tuesdays for two years and that schedule just doesn’t work for me anymore. Since I’m already committed to posting a new chapter of fan fiction every other Monday, I thought I would just make Mondays my day to upload new material. As always, links to new entries will be posted on Twitter. (This post is just an announcement; a proper entry will be posted next Monday.)

Third, I’ve added a section to the About the Author page showcasing some pictures of my little feline helpers. I really am a crazy cat lady, and sometimes my baby boys can be so adorable trying to help me write. Who doesn’t love pictures of cats being cute?

Last, I’ve created a separate blog called the LeNoWriCha Logs. (Click here for a rundown of LeNoWriCha.) Each day I will post an update on my Logs, detailing how much I wrote, what daily level I achieved, a summary of what I wrote about, any editing I may have done, and any other special projects or writing-relating events that seem pertinent. A link to the LeNoWriCha Logs is now posted at the top of “My Sites” if you are interested.

Thank you once again for joining me this year!

How to Track Your Editing Progress

Last time, I shared David Greenshell’s invention of LeNoWriCha (the Legendary Novel Writing Challenge) as an alternative to or supplement for NaNoWriMo, to give more motivation to write via a more customized reward system and positive feedback loop. So far, it’s been working really well. I tend to stay more in the Easy and Normal range with a few more Incomplete days than I would like…but I also get a few Heroic and Legendary days in there, so that makes me happy. I’m still plugging away on my Dark Crystal Project, and am reaching the end of my first draft.

Which means very soon I’ll begin editing and revising. Which opens a whole new kettle of fish.

I now have LeNoWriCha to track my daily writing progress and give me rewards. But what about editing? How do you track that?

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The Legendary Novel Writing Challenge!

Whew! I somehow managed to survive Camp NaNoWriMo for July 2013. It took a lot of burning the midnight oil and frantic cramp-inducing typing on my part these last few days, but I made it! (Day 28 I spent all day, from 8:00am until 11:30pm writing. I got 8,876 words done in a single day! 20 pages! Heilige scheisse!) Just goes to show that the habits of college haven’t worn off yet; I still put everything off until the last minute.

This Camp NaNo was really stressful and I was way behind my word count for about 2 weeks. Trying to catch up once I feel behind was probably the biggest stressor, and even though NaNoWriMo always stresses that you get major kudos for trying, I still don’t like falling short of a goal I set for myself. My writing group can attest to my depression and complaining throughout the month.

However, a good thing did come from all the stress. Well, two good things, actually.

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