Tag: Projects

bookmark_borderProgress

Posted on by PaulaO

Simple Sarah is now over 70K words! I want it to get to no less than 100K before I say “The End”.

It is progressing nicely. Editing will be easy-ish I think. This is a book I have written and rewritten so many times a’ready, ya know?

Thing is, at 70K, I am not very far into the book, story wise. There’s still a lot to go. I am now rethinking of where the stopping point will be. Since it is Book One, I am wanting to end it nicely but at a spot where folks will want to figure out what will happen next.

I know the graph on the side says “Trilogy” but I am thinking it will be only two books. The middle one was to be Lea’s story in the form of storytelling as they travel along. But it’s a bad idea. Instead, it may wind up being just two books with Lea’s story standing on its own. I will have to advise readers of the chronological order vs order it should be read.

Details! The devil is in ’em. And I hate it.

During editing, I will be working on the synopsis. I hate synopsiseseses, too. If I had to do a synopsis now, it would be far too long and not say much but say everything. And I have to do it right because synopsises tend to be what is put on the back of the book to entice the reader to fork over nearly $17.

bookmark_borderHard at Work

Posted on by PaulaO

Honest, I am. Simple Sarah, the novel I’ve been working on (and finished twice) is over 43,000 words. I am still on track to get it done by the end of March, editing in April, and submitted in May. That is my goal. I want to finish it with no less than 90K but hopefully over 100K.

I like this version the best. I think it has finally come together. I’ve gotten rid of a lot of the side-threads and just concentrated on the MC, Sarah. This also feels so much more like a Fantasy rather than a Romance which was my goal.

Once Simple Sarah is submitted, I will pound out another Butch Girl book. Either Harri’s or Nikki’s story. They are so intertwined, I am tempted to do just one book. But I don’t think that would be fair to the reader. Harri’s book has to take place in the summer. No choice there. Nikki’s can take place at any time.

(thinking, so there will be smoke….)

Perhaps do Harri’s and end it in the Fall then do Nikki’s immediately after. It would mean, however, that Harri’s book would have to be read first. There’s a Great Something that links them together that is solved in Harri’s book. So to read Nikki’s first….I dunno. Hell, gotta finish Sarah’s story before I even get to theirs!

So, if you have been following along, that means I have a goal to finish and submit three books this year. Sarah’s will be submitted in May. One or the other of the BG books will be submitted in July/August and the other November. By then, the editing process (that is assuming Regal Crest will buy it) for Sarah should start shortly after that.

bookmark_borderWriting Words

Posted on by PaulaO

It’s not easy most of the time, ya know. There’s sentence structure (sentence diagramming used to be so fun in high school! not so much now); there’s grammar (dangling participle sounds kinda kinky, don’t it?); there’s plot (that elusive thing that carries the book from Chapter One to The End); and then there’s such oddities as character, setting, climax (speaking of kink…) and genre.

But despite all that (and more) I really really love being an author. I want to write. I want to take that dreamworld I’ve invented in my head and make it real enough in words on paper that you, someone not in my head (thank god!) can see it too.

I’m working on too many things again. One day I feel like working on Simple Sarah (the piece I’ve been working on for FIVE years) or Sleep (formerly called Exodus, my ’09 NaNoWriMo project) or, as I discovered today, I feel like working on a Butch Girl novel (of which there are 3 in progress) (yes, three). Then there is Wayback. I want to revive it for my niece while she is young enough to enjoy it. And then there’s the short stories I really ought to find a publication for.

It feels good to be writing again. It is like meeting an old friend and chatting about all the stupid stuff we did in college.

bookmark_borderBlogging

Posted on by PaulaO

I was just scanning down the front page, looking at the sidebar to see if everything was still valid and all that stuff. I get to the archive listing and realized something.

I’ve been blogging for SIX years. Yes, six years. I first started in December 2003. I wanted to be a writer and had discovered this place called Forward Motion. There I found like-minded folk and was having fun. I started hearing people talking about this ‘blog’ stuff. LiveJournal was rather new I think so it was a hot topic.

I knew html and already had a website so I started a ‘blog’ there. Later, I moved it to the current format, WordPress because html tables are not easy to make accessible. My first blogging efforts was a true ‘blog’: it was an online diary, a web log.

I can’t remember exactly why I started doing one. Probably because everyone else had one. On the one hand, I wanted to be like everyone else. On the other hand, I disliked not knowing exactly who would “own” my words if I used LiveJournal or Blogger. I did eventually create accounts with both but all they do is tell you to come here.

Six years. Wow. Back then, I was working on Wayback, a wonderful cool huge novel with about a million (okay, 14) main characters. I still love that book. In January 2004, I started working on what is now The Trilogy That Will Never Survive Editing (aka Simple Sarah). In November 2004, I did my first NaNoWriMo, writing a book with a long title: Butch Girls Can Fix Anything. Sound familiar?

bookmark_borderNaNoWriMo 09

Posted on by PaulaO

For those of you completely in the dark ages, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month. It takes place each November and, while it is called “national” it is very international. For the month of November, participants try to write 50,000 words in a single manuscript. This comes out to, roughly, 1667 words per day. It has to be a novel that you have not written before (so no editing re-writes) and it cannot be a book of short stories. It has to be one single brand spankin’ new novel.

This is how Butch Girls Can Fix Anything was born. I wrote the original draft in November ’04. It was my first NaNo, too. I have participated, and finished, in every one since except for last year. Failed miserably. I don’t think I got a thousand words.

So I am going to try it again. No, I am going to do it again. I will finish. I will.

Bouncing ideas around. For some reason, they have biblical names. Genesis, Exodus, and Pentecost. Genesis will probably be renamed Generations or The Genesis Generation or The Generation of Genesis. All Science Fiction although Pentecost may lean more into the Fantasy genre.

Genesis/Generation – those left behind to clean up Earth after everyone else has left. Genetically (virally?) modified to live longer (forever?) so the work can be done.

    Genesis – n: a coming into being
    Generation:

    1. All the people living at the same time or of approximately the same age
    2. Group of genetically related organisms constituting a single step in the line of descent
    3. A stage of technological development or innovation (“the third generation of computers”)

Exodus – those who left Earth; left a hostile (pissed off) Earth

    A journey by a large group to escape from a hostile environment

Pentecost – Earth speaks

    (Judaism) Jewish holy day celebrated on the sixth of Sivan to celebrate Moses receiving the Ten Commandments

All are related to the perpetually researched SF I’ve had in the works for years: Centric. I thought I could finally get it down on paper last year but failed. It is a wonderful story with cool directions – as long as it stays in my head. Every effort to make it real fails. Self-fulfilling prophecy?

bookmark_borderI’m A Writer, Honest

Posted on by PaulaO

I know, irritating as heck to some of you that I don’t talk about writing (or, specifically, my writing). Instead, I go on rants and rambles about mentally off-rocker women having 14 babies, the Feds messing with everything including our television reception, and all sorts of stuff in-between.

So, here is a post about writing, or, specifically, my writing.

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There. Happy now?

Okay, seriously now. I am writing again. I am working on Nikki and Ellen’s story. I piddle with it a little each day, reacquainting myself with them and the Lesbian Collective of High Pond. I started reading Lee Lynch’s Morton River Valley today and that helps get my creative brain to begin its end of hibernation. I don’t have a goal set for myself. Just a little at a time, taking it easy and trying to get it all working again.

R and D want me to work on the “Simple Sarah” novel(s) instead. But I feel that if I can get another Butch Girl book out, then I will have oiled the gears enough that I can get to the more serious, more fun stuff.