I'm doing the first read-through on a manuscript I wrote in 2002 and 2003. I'm about half-way through and so far love the story. It's very readable. This is a wonderful surprise because for the last eighteen months I've been convinced that what I wrote was trash. As it turns out, I believe it's very salvageable. It just needs a few revisions. Massive revisions. :)
The main problem I have with this manuscript may be length. It is intended to be a young adult book, but is about 60,000 words right now... about 10,000 words too long, and I'll be adding a lot to it before the first revision is done.
Here's some good information posted at kate-blogs ...The Difference Between Middle Grade & Young Adult by Laura Backes, Children's Book Insider - this brings up yet another age classification system that makes more sense to me than the traditional picture book/mg novel/ya novel system. Laura Backes says some publishers have a new classification for younger YA novels, for ages 10-14. That's perfect for two of my MG novels.
I finally got through the last four chapters of Far Out... The Journey To Oblivion. Just like last year when I wrote A Curious Woman Wants To Know I went through the first 100K in just thirty days then took weeks to finish the last couple of chapters.
My next first draft will be written from January through April. The working title for that novel is Perfection and I expect it to be another long one.
I decided to go ahead and change my homeschool site to a literary journal for homeschoolers. I'm putting out a call for submissions. The first issue will go online August 1, 2005. Check it out: Jefferson Homeschooling
My local writers club met yesterday. There's just three of us meeting regularly now. I live in a very small town and though there's other writers here they choose not to come. Anyhow, we met yesterday at 2pm and when I left I looked at the clock in the post office and it said 7pm. I was amazed. What did we writers have to talk about that took about five hours!? We surely did have fun though, and Judy made homemade cookies for us.
Every month the Klamath River Writers Club chooses a word for us to write about. This month's word is "elegant". I like to write my stories (for the writers club) about a prospector named Hiram who lived in this river valley back around 1860-1870. He's very fictional of course, but fun to write about.
So this month's story is named "Hiram and the Elegant Lady". I wrote it this morning, then edited and printed it out. When I go to the club meeting tomorrow I'll read it out loud and hopefully they will have something "elegant" to read to me too.
Late last month I wrote another short story, One Winter, Two Trees, for a contest at The Writing Bridge. There were three entries and I'm happy to say my story got three votes! That wasn't enough to win the contest but I was thrilled that three people thought my story was best. The winning story got five votes, one of which was mine. Wow, if I'd voted for my own story I could have tied with him. LOL
Anyhow it was the first writing contest I've ever entered, though it was small scale. I'm very happy with the result.
Also this month I wrote a silly poem for a contest at Writer's Digest. I wonder what will come of that. Probably nothing.
I finished doing the third revision of The Scribe of Irohila except that I plan to go back and add in a scene or two concerning a sub plot I should have developed a bit earlier in the text... I rediscovered that thread in Chapter 18 and think it needs some earlier foreshadowing. I'm getting critiques for the novel and hope to do the final revision within the next six months.
I have been busy doing critiques at Forward Motion, The Writing Bridge and most recently at Critique Circle. They're all good places to connect with others who want crits. I've also been getting some good feedback on some of my projects.
Today I'm working on my third revision of The Scribe of Irohila. I always like this story when I read through it. I'd like to get done with the revisions one of these days, so I can submit it. Right now it looks like I'll take at least one more pass through after I get critiques.
Tonight I finally finished the first draft of a children's middle grade novel, River Girl. I'm so happy. I planned this novel for more than three years. I'm looking forward to doing the first revision later this month. I ended it with 17 chapters and 32,805 words. River Girl is a historical novel set in the small town I live in, on the banks of the Klamath River in Northern California.
I wrote a bit more this evening before midnight. My final word count for the month is 108,156 on Far Out... The Journey To Oblivion. I still have to work on the last chapter - I haven't written "the end" yet. Then it will go on my revision list. I probably won't get around to doing that for at least another year.
