Guys... Guess What?

Happy Monday everyone... I hope you all had a wonderful weekend!

Yes, today is the big reveal that I promised last Friday, although if you've spotted my sidebar, it may not be that much of a surprise... but here goes ;)

I've finished the first draft of my first novel!

Yes... two years of blood, sweat and tears, but I finally wrote the last 15k on Monday, January 3rd, 2011, after waking up in a panic after my bout with the flu during the holidays.

It's clocked in at 95,977 words, 367 pages double spaced.

Um... yeah... it's a little longer that I had originally anticipated (80k), and needs some major editing and lots of rewriting, but figuratively speaking, it's finished.

In early December, I thought I was only 4k away, but the novel needed a lot more than that to wrap it up.

And now it's sitting and marinating while I do some research. Yup, we've got a lot of stuff to talk about this week, I hope you'll join me on Wednesday and Friday.

How about you guys? Any news... writing or otherwise?

"Food" for Thought, and New Goals!

Happy Friday Everyone!

I hope I find some time to write this weekend, but there is a huge food festival taking place downtown and I plan to be there! Sigh. I love anything with food and festivals--put them together and I'm in heaven.

So I mentioned goal setting earlier this week, and I think I am finally ready to commit (scary, I know). I hope I'm not biting off more than I can chew, especially considering that we're in the last month of summer and every weekend from here on out is pretty much solidly booked with things to do/catch up on.

I want to finish this novel by the end of August/early September, and start querying by the November timeframe--but before the holidays because I read that it's a bad time to reach out to agents.

Do you think it's too much in too little time? It will be sort of like a pseudo NaNoWriMo, (in August) especially seeing as how I need to get from 13k to 80k *shifty eyes*.

I just want to finish--even if it takes me longer to do revisions later and I end up needing more time to polish and don't end up querying this year, I think it will be okay, because at least I'll have something to work with, right? Right!

How about you guys? Do any of you have specific deadlines? Are you reaching the querying stage? And of course, do any of your weekend plans involve food? ;) If not, what you up to?

I'm late--I'm late!...Oh wait... I'm not???

In Tuesday's post, I alluded to "having all the time in the world" to write when I was younger. And looking back now, I really did. At least it seemed that way. And yes, the fact of the matter is I don't have so much now.

So I am going to play devil's advocate here, because I strongly believe in both sides of the coin.

Yes, you have all the time in the world to create, to write, to get back to it, to do it, and it's true that you should never rush your art. Because writing doesn't necessarily work that way. You need to feel inspired and motivated, and while much of the time, you can get into that particular zone just by simply writing, writing anything, if you try to force it, you might mess it up. But that doesn't mean you should be sitting around waiting for inspiration or your muse to strike.

Because on the other hand, if you're not doing something--anything--you won't finish. And you have to finish, regardless of when--if not for anything else, at least for yourself. And you will finish, you just need to believe in yourself that much. In the end, only you can push you to do what you have to do.

Life may not get easier, in fact, it might become more complicated (as I've realized), and we're always going to be searching for time to do things.

This isn't a race or a competition, just make certain you have no regrets and you're happy with where you are. There's always time to get there, but you have to keep moving forward and towards your goal.

Do you ever have these moments? Do you ever feel like you're running out of time or that you won't finish what you've started?

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend :)

p.s. Happy 4th of July to all you American bloggers out there :)

Help! This Book Is On A One Way Track To Nowhere!

So in my spare time--while I have NOT been writing--I've been reading. And I have come across some amazing blogs with very, very useful information.

I feel like I've woken up from a really deep coma or something. I have been on this one mind track for so long, and I've only been thinking about the negatives. For example, no one is going to want to read my book, it's been done too many times, my characters seem too much like others, my story seems to be going nowhere, I'm never going to finish it, etc. Just to name a few. Now I'm realizing that I probably haven't been giving my manuscript a chance to breathe and grow because I've stuck it in this unconstructive box with my brain.

I just wanted to point out a couple of the sites that provided significant contributions to my wake up call:

Aprilynne Pike, author of YA novel Wings, made reference to the new/fresh concept on her blog. You can read it here.

I know this is something that I have been struggling with (along with my many other issues) for quite some time. It's an age old question. "What if my idea isn't fresh/new enough?"

Chances are--your idea probably won't be fresh or all that new. It may have been done many times before. And as Aprilynne pointed out, that's okay. It's really what you do with that idea, and how you resell it that makes it appealing to an audience. Go ahead and write what you want to write, just give it your own unique spin.

The second major issue I've been muddling through is that I've restarted my manuscript four times. I mentioned before that I made it up to 200 pages on my second draft right before I decided that it didn't make any sense at all and I needed to begin again. I've been trying to write it since I started in February 2009! And at this rate, what conclusion did I come to? Exactly - I must be a horrible writer because I can't seem to finish the thing.

To that effect, YA Author Elana Johnson made a very inspiring post here to remind all of us that this too is okay! You may restart your book a gazillion times and feel like everything you write is completely dreadful. It's not true and it does not make you a bad writer. We have to remember that. Perseverance goes by many different names and there is no time limit on what you can achieve.

So... the moral of today's story?

You should never give up on doing what you love just because you feel that it's going nowhere. Everything goes somewhere, and eventually we will all get there.

I'm looking at the writing process in a whole new light, and suddenly I'm very excited again! :)

Check out these blogs - you will not be disappointed.