Friday, June 25, 2010

Progress

A most happy Friday to you, my friend!

I'm nearing the end of my self-enforced hiatus from the book, and I'm looking forward to jumping back in. I'm picking it up on Monday, July 5th after giving myself a complete month off from the project. At first I thought a month wouldn't be enough - hahaha, I was SICK of it after I finished - but now I'm really looking forward to diving back in to the manuscript.

This'll be my first revision of my first manuscript, so it's all new to me. Another adventure, another step in the process to getting published. I'm still writing in the time off, although I'm not pressuring myself to produce very much. I've finished the short story I was working on, and have started a new piece. This one is a flash fiction for the convention in August.

Yep, there's a horror erotica flash fiction contest at KillerCon this year and I've already started working on my piece. You have to read your piece aloud in three minutes or less, so I want to get some practice in before I head out that way. It's a fun little challenge... erotic gore... but I'm definitely up to the task.

The short story came out well, I'm letting it sit for a few days (and taking it to my writing partner) before I come back to it. Now I want to finish this flash and move on to polishing some older stuff I have. It's time to start submitting short pieces again. I still have two out in circulation but they've been out there forever. It's time to beef up my portfolio and send out some more pages.

Hope you all have amazing, if not productive, weekends.

11 comments:

RHYTHM AND RHYME said...

It's gppd to have a break from routine now and again, I hope you return to your book refreshed and rearing to go.

Yvonne.

Jessica Bell said...

So great you're having a break. You're lucky that you have short pieces accepted for publcation to beef up your portfolio. I've sent out so many and received so many rejections. No fair ;o)

So great to hear you're emotionally on top of things!

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

You'll enjoy attacking your novel again. I know when I work on something for too long, I start to hate it.

L. Diane Wolfe said...

As much as I love the editing phase, I could've never put my books down for any length of time.

Hart Johnson said...

Glad you're looking forward to getting back to your manuscript! Do you have a "PLAN"? Jan, and Crazy Jane is mid-process on reviewing and her plan seems to be a really good one--one of the things she did was start by writing the synopsis and revising THAT so that there was a working plan to her revisions before she got too bogged down in the words of it (which is really easy to do--I can get sucked under the Adverbectomy and forget all about the necessary plot revisions)

And erotic horror actually sounds sort of cool--I am REALLY picky about erotica (probably because I'me NOT into romance) but in horror or fantasy I can sort of dig it.

Dawn Ius said...

A month. I'm impressed with your will power :-) I've decided to register for KillerCon. Unlikely I'll do the erotic horror thing, but I'll cheer for you...

Arlee Bird said...

It'll probably have helped to have taken the break as now you might be able to get a little more objectivity. Good luck with the process.

Hope you'll check out my post today of favorite Dark and Horror movies. Let me know what you think.

Lee
Tossing It Out

B. Miller said...

Thanks for your comments, everybody!! I hope you all have a fantastic weekend.

Hart, I DO have a plan - My goal is 20 pages a day, to be finished with the polished first draft by the middle of August. Then it's out to the first readers and a copy taken to KillerCon!

Dawn - I'd love to meet up with you at the con! That would be awesome!

Anonymous said...

I'm glad to hear your break refreshed you. And that flash fiction contest sound like a lot of fun! Can't wait to hear how it goes for you!

Raquel Byrnes said...

I recently took two weeks off after finishing a novel and you're right...absence makes the heart forget what a pain in the patootie writing can be.

I missed it terribly and was so happy to be back in the trenches. Good for you!

ggray said...

I think Killer Con is a whole lot more bang for your money! I checked out some of the folks who went last year and there's a good cross section of horror writers. You won't feel out of place, but instead more connected to your peers. As much as SCWW is close, I wondered how much it would benefit as it focuses so much on literary and mainstream writing - not our cup o tea!