As of the first of March I will have an article online at a writer's site. Also I've already written the March 2005 front page for my site and it will have a new photo of me, taken just a few days ago.
I'm also excited because on March 1 I'm introducing my new message board here - it is dedicated to daily writing practice. I'll also start a monthly list of writing prompts.
Oh my goodness. How can I wait another day?
I was doing the writing practice thing on my new message board yesterday and wrote a great short story for adults... about a college girl. I'm excited about that too.
Here's something exciting to tell you... I wrote an article for a very respectable online ezine for writers, and it will be published at their site on March 1. The article is about themes in children's fiction.
I revised a short story for children tonight. I wrote the original version in 1984, then revised it in 1997. When I revised it tonight I cut it from over 1200 words to 885. I renamed it from Angel's Lesson (too preachy sounding) to Miha, the name of the kitten in the story. No, its not one of those talking animal stories. Anyhow I'm excited about having this ready to be critiqued. Now I need to decide which group to submit it to. I'd like to see this as a picture book but will submit it to magazines if I don't get a book publisher to take it.
A new national book award, The Quills, will honor writers in 15 different categories starting in October 2005. Doesn't that make you want to see your novel in print even more than before?
Onward...
I edited the first section of A Curious Woman last night and submitted it for critique. So far, no crits! lol ...I'd better keep my sense of humor handy. It was my 2003 NaNoWriMo novel and I think it will be of interest to homeschoolers and to people who love or live in my local area... and maybe people who have been involved in the lumber industry.
When I posted this for critique last night I decided to make up a blurb to tell what the novel is about. This is what I came up with:
The homeschooling O'Callahan family enjoyed living in Happy Camp, a remote village in the middle of the Klamath National Forest. Walker O'Callahan worked at the mill and his wife, Illyse, stayed home to educate the four children. It was a comfortable life for them until their livelihood was threatened by legal actions taken by environmentalists against the logging industry.
This is fiction about actual events that happened in the small town where I live during the early 1990's. The people and their personal lives are all fictional... but some events and places are real.
There are 108 sections at this time so if I edit two each week it will take just over a year to finish this first read through and edit. By then I should have a better idea of where I want to make changes and what needs to be done to make it one of my best novels ever.
I plan to write/revise it in such a way that it should be enjoyed by parents and teenagers (or even younger advanced readers). I'd love to know some homeschooling families are reading it together.
After being a homeschooler for nearly ten years I know there's a market for homeschool-friendly fiction.
