The critiquer I sent my manuscript to should have it now & is supposed to work on it today...eek! Makes me a bit nervous, though I'll be glad to get the feedback. Getting it all printed out & ready to send was a bit of a nightmare, & of course I found 16 more minor changes I need to make even after I printed it, but went ahead & sent it off as it was. I am mainly looking for a "big picture" critique of it, anyway. In the meantime, I'm polishing my synopsis some more, worked a little more on the chapter book I'm now iffy about, & have been trying to write a new poem, with only moderate success. I haven't submitted anything in a couple of weeks, & have no plans to do so soon. I don't have any submission goals this year as I did last year--this time it's mainly completion goals!

I'm getting curious about who looks at this site. My site counter says I've had 17 hits this week, which isn't terribly many, but I know I was only 2 or 3 of them so I still wonder who they were... (I suspect one may have been a friend from years ago for whom I have no current contact info, so Jim, if you're reading this, e-mail me!) Some weeks there have been more like 100 hits, but in those weeks I had shared the address of the site somewhere online that I hadn't previously shared it.

What a weekend--I got about 8 hours sleep on Friday & Saturday combined. Saturday night I stayed up until 5 am! What kept me harried all weekend, and even into today, was making "minor edits" to my novel. Still not done, either--I'm now done with everything but the first chapter (for this pass), but I've got maybe 30 more outstanding issues to resolve in that one. I'm trying to hurry to get it out for critique, but am nervous to get the critique as I'm sure the critiquer will suggest major revisions. And if this has been a minor revision, I'd hate to see a major one!

Is it a good sign that I dreamed I sold a book? (Maybe not, since the other time I dreamed that, the manuscript was rejected not long after the dream!) I worry I'll never really sell a book because much of what I write is "quirky," or at least has quirky touches, & I know that turns some people off. I can't see changing that, though, because it's what I like, & avoiding it altogether would kill half the fun of writing. I've got to believe there are some other people out there with tastes similar to mine!

I've been doing what I thought would be minor line edits on my YA novel, but they've really grown! I still have hours left to do just on that, and I was horrified to find a major continuity error, where I left out an entire day. (When the protagonist got home from Sunday lunch, it was Monday night...and given the pacing up to that point, I can't just skip ahead that far with no explanation.) I wrote some transitional stuff that seems to work, but it still needs some cleaning up. When I get the whole thing ready--hopefully this weekend--I'll find someplace to print it all out on a laser printer, then I'm sending it out for critique. I worry I'll be spending big bucks to find out it's worthless, but at this point I'm too close to it to even have a clue what's working and what's not. I figure that, especially as a first-time novelist, I could really benefit from the input of an experienced critiquer.

Good news yesterday--I got my February issue of ByLine and learned that my short story "Ending Some of It" was a finalist in their annual Literary Awards. I'm not sure how many people entered, but I was at least in the top 9. Another short story, "For Better or For Worse," got an honorable mention in their New-Talent Short Story Contest. Those 2 validations of my writing definitely helped to make up for the rejection letter I received the same day.

At last week's SCBWI retreat, we were encouraged to enter the San Gabriel Writers' League Contest, as it's run by a local organization & they added a Writing for Children category this year. I planned to enter in the children's category, & also wanted to enter an adult manuscript but wasn't sure whether to enter a personal essay or a short story. My husband thought the essay was stronger, so I sent that, but when I found out about 10 minutes later that the short story was a finalist in ByLine's big contest, I rushed to enter that one, too! Considering the entry fees, I'd now have to win at least 2nd place in something just to break even....

In other news, I managed to get my YA novel synopsis down to one page, and finally submitted my humor article (mentioned 1/13) to ByLine. I also submitted a picture book manuscript to an editor. I sent the book submission in a business-sized envelope instead of the large kind I usually use, thinking that since the manuscript is so short (2 pages), it might seem less daunting than yet another big manila envelope, & therefore might get opened more quickly. Now other writers are telling me they think manuscripts should always be mailed in large envelopes. Oh well...we'll see what happens. Meanwhile, Happy Groundhog Day Eve!

I was up until 3:00 this morning finally breaking my YA novel into chapters--remind me to write novels in chapters from now on! It flowed out faster without them, but now may lack a good structure or obvious places to break the chapters. I've already changed the chapter breaks around more today. And I'm really not sure what a good number of chapters is, or how long they should be. At the moment I have 39 chapters of approximately 1,000 to 2,000 words apiece (most between 1,200 and 1,800 words). I'm also trying to write a concise synopsis of it for the SCBWI grant competition. I haven't managed to get it onto one page, but it only goes one paragraph onto the second page, so that may not be too bad.

My writers' retreat was both stressful and addictive! I found myself frazzled a lot and unsure of myself--and got nothing written at all--but I loved the creative atmosphere and the social aspects, hanging out with other writers all weekend, and would love to go back now! I still haven't quite come down from it. My critique session was a bit odd, since the editor didn't like the premise of my story enough to do a thorough critique of it, but at the same time she treated me like a real writer and seemed to think I had skill at writing. The resulting feeling was something like the dissonant "vertigo zoom" camera shots they sometimes use in movies, where the camera moves further back while the lens zooms in. She was particularly enthusiastic about my ability to write in rhyme--interesting to me since children's writers are always cautioned against writing in rhyme. I was not sure what to think afterwards, but once I got over my surprise about her analysis of my chapter book, I relaxed and had a great time!

I don't think it was the most relevant thing I could have been doing, but I spent the last couple of days doing line editing on my completed novel draft, and cleaning up some things in the manuscript. I'm going to try to print a complete copy today, so I'll have one with me at my retreat, just in case I want to show it to anyone. Not that it is really ready for anyone else's eyes! I'm trying to read a lot about revision and novel structure, and am ordering several books to read on those topics. I'm completely confused about the whole thing. I was hoping to enter the novel in SCBWI's work-in-progress grant competition next month, but I'd have to provide approximately the first 2,500 words of the manuscript, and they happen to be the ones I am least happy with! They do give a good sense of the narrator's voice, through which the whole novel is filtered, but the novel doesn't currently start with an actual scene, but more of an introductory monologue, and I'm not sure if that's okay. Most of the books say it's not, but YA is kind of a different breed. I don't just want to write a new opening quickly for the grant competition--I want to make sure I'm picking the right opening. But I'm not sure I'll be ready to do that even within a month! (Strange because the whole novel took less time to write than that.)

I also entered five manuscripts in ByLine's Children's Story or Picture Book Contest today. If I won third place, I'd only break even! But it's not about the money...I just want to see if my stuff is any good, and if so, which stuff is best. I entered 3 picture book manuscripts and 2 magazine stories. I may also enter a local (San Gabriel Writers' League) contest next week, but with $10 entry fees for each manuscript, I'm not sure what to enter, or even what genre to enter in (just children's, or children's and adults', or what). I wouldn't want to enter more than a couple of things, for that price.

I am so not ready for my writers' retreat tomorrow. Not packed, not sure what I'm taking, feeling under the weather at the moment (with 2 sick kids to take care of...), and needing to print out a bunch of my writing! With a printer that's often on the fritz. I'm not sure what to take, writing-wise, but there are supposed to be several critique circles & round table discussions. I was up until 3 am (!) this morning doing the line edit on my novel, and fear I'll be up until all hours tonight as well. I hope not. I'm trying to brace myself for the possibility that the editor critiquing my stuff will hate it, or at least be iffy about it. I'm getting way too optimistic, and want to squash that now before I get the rug pulled out from under me! I'd much rather find myself pleasantly surprised than deflated.

My main writing goal of the week is to polish up a humor article I drafted a month or two ago and send it off. I'm not making much headway, though. It's mostly okay as is, but I'm having trouble with parts of it, and no matter how much I stare at it, I don't come up with any better ideas! I'm not sure how to get past that. I want to get this mailed out & not have it hanging over my head any longer, but of course I don't want to send it out without making it good enough to actually sell! My secondary goal is to work more on my chapter book/mid-grade. It's going to be a busy week even if you take writing out of the equation. And I can't believe my "baby" turns 2 tomorrow! I'd be even more wistful about him growing up if he and his 4-year-old brother hadn't colored all over the wall, door, TV, and a toy today!

When I participated in National Novel Writing Month last November, I kept nearly daily updates in an online journal, which helped keep me thinking about the writing, and sort of kept me accountable. I also found that writing out the problems helped me to think through and solve them. So excuse me if I blather on about some of my current writing projects in this journal.... I figure some people might be interested to get a glimpse into the process, anyway.

Right now I'm writing what I intended to be a chapter book for young readers--the type that usually only have one fairly simple plot, instead of complex sub-plots. But I'm to a point in the book where the main thing that needs to happen is that the character needs to hide a secret habit, and get more and more paranoid that people will find out, etc. But I just realized that I have nothing for her to be doing during all that deepening of her problem! It seems like anything I write for her to do--going to school, hanging out with friends, or whatever--will give me a platform for her paranoia but will not further the plot in and of itself. Now I'm wondering if I should come up with a sub-plot to keep her busy on the surface while her main problem grows stronger. Or maybe it's a pacing issue...maybe I don't need to show everything but can just skip over it with text like, "The next two weeks were the worst of my life. Every day I was sure that someone would find out...." Anyway, I'm sure I can come up with something (actually, I already have a showdown scene at the end that I could start planting the seeds for now), but it's certainly not as easy as just sticking to my synopsis, which only discusses the problem and not the details of how it plays out. I was also hoping to get through an entire draft of this before my writing retreat in 2 weeks, but the book seems to be growing on me (I thought it might be 60 pages, but now I'm thinking maybe 90+) & I would be surpised if I can do it! Especially with my younger son's 2nd birthday this week and a few celebrations to keep us busy this week. On the other hand, I'm pretty happy with it overall, which is more than I can say for some of the things I've written!

Happy 2003, everyone! I have finally gotten back into my writing after the holidays. I have been preparing a few contest entries over the past few days, and also making some edits to an article I was working on in December and trying to cut down an old short story that was too long, but today I finally started doing some more original writing.

I wrote just over 2,000 more words today (so far) on my chapter book or mid-grade novel in progress (it's morphing a bit so I'm not quite sure what it is yet, or how long it will be). I hadn't written on it in a month, so it's a little difficult to get back into the same flow. Also, the last thing I wrote regarding it in December was a 2-page synopsis laying out the major plot events of the book. Although I was thrilled to come up with some of the plot developments I did at the time, I now find it rather daunting to see all that remains to be written. At about 30 double-spaced pages in, I feel like I'm about halfway through the story, but when I look over the synopsis, it seems more like I'm about 1/3 through it. Of course, I can veer off from the synopsis, but I do think my basic ideas were good, and I also know that in any case, there's a lot more to write. But I don't know quite how I'm going to get there from here, and it looks like a long, hard road!

So I ended the year with a bang! In today's mail, on the last day of the year, I got an acceptance and a check from On the Line magazine for my children's story, "All's Fair at Science Fairs." It was my first-ever acceptance for fiction, so it's a nice validation of my desire to write fiction, and particularly fiction for children. I had actually prayed on the way to the mailbox that there would be an acceptance in there, and when I saw my SASE in the mailbox, I assumed it was a rejection instead. Nope! I literally jumped for joy when I saw that it was an acceptance!

We were supposed to celebrate New Year's with some friends, but many of us were sick (myself, my husband, and our friends), so we stayed home. But I got a New Year's tablecloth, plates, hats, noisemakers, decorations, & serpentine, and we had sherbet punch and cookies, then counted down to the new year with the kids a bit early...about 9:30 pm. But Ryan is still up, so we may let him watch the ball drop in New York on TV in a few minutes.

YES! My impulsive submission last week paid off! A small quarterly publication called Peeks & Valleys is buying my poem The Diet, which I actually wrote the first version of 21 or 22 years ago, when I was 13 years old! This version was almost completely rewritten, but some of the lines are the same, and I have not found any appropriate markets for it in the past (not many markets for light verse). The editor actually said if she'd gotten it a week earlier, she would have included it in the January issue, but since that issue is already out now, it may have to wait until they have space in the October 2003 issue. Fine with me! I'm just amazed to have gotten 5 acceptances this year, including one for something I only submitted around Christmas!

OK, make that 33 submissions. I heard about a small market that might take light verse, and impulsively sent off an old poem I had never been able to find a market for (not that it was rejected a lot--I think I only found one or two places to ever submit it). It's easy to be impulsive with e-mail submissions... I know it's silly to submit something the Saturday night before Christmas, but I thought I might as well strike while the iron was hot, even if they don't get around to looking at it until the new year.

Speaking of which, I can't believe it's going to be 2003 soon! I'm excited. I don't know why, but I just like the sound of that number.

Wow, my article "Goofy About Writing" is in the new ByLine magazine I got today (Jan. 2003 issue), only 3.5 weeks after I got the acceptance letter and check! Amazing! What a nice way to end the year.

I just realized that I've gotten 4 writing acceptances this year, which has doubled the number of acceptances I've gotten since my first one 8 years ago! That is, I got 4 acceptances over 8 years' time (1994-2001) and then 4 in one year, 2002. Of course, I've submitted much more this year than I ever did before--in all, I sent off 15 contest entries this year, and 16 submissions to editors, for a total of 32 submissions representing 18 different manuscripts. In any case, it's nice to see myself making progress!

This month alone, which I thought would pretty much be a month "off" because of the holidays, I've submitted 5 manuscripts to editors and 2 to contests, plus sent off 2 others for a conference critique. I've also gotten 3 rejections & 1 acceptance, & gotten a copy of a magazine with an article by me in it. Last month, I drafted a whole novel, wrote about 12,000 words on two other novels, sent 1 story to a contest & 1 to a magazine, got an honorable mention in a short story contest, got 1 acceptance, & got another magazine with an article by me in it. It's definitely sounding like I'm a writer! So it's very fitting that I got a Snoopy "Literary Ace" ornament for my Christmas tree this year, with the year 2002 on it and Snoopy pounding away at his typewriter.

I got a letter from Welcome Home today about the humor essay I sent them 7.5 months ago (though I still haven't heard about the one from 11 months ago!). It is sort of an acceptance...though they're not very committal about it! It says, "We like it enough to consider it for publication, however at this time we cannot assure you that it will be published." They enclosed a publication agreement and said they'll probably be able to use the article within one year, and will notify me in advance before they print it. It also says they appreciate my patience as I await publication of it, but then again says, "This is not a contract to publish your article (or guaranteeing the publication)." So, we'll see!

I'm getting a little more into the holiday spirit now that I've mailed out most of the gifts I needed to mail ($22 postage for 3 packages!!) and am more than halfway done with my shopping. But I'd still be happy to wait another month before Christmas!

Magazines that accept submissions by e-mail are kind of a mixed blessing. On one hand, it's nice to be able to send something out so quickly & easily, and getting to hear back sooner in most cases. On the other hand, getting rejections within 24 hours can get old! I've submitted 5 manuscripts by e-mail this year. One was accepted, which took 8 weeks, but the other four were all rejected in less than 24 hours...one of them in a mere 19 minutes!

I am so not ready for Christmas this year. Some years, I've been almost done with shopping by December 1. This year, I've barely started or even thought about it. I wish it could be pushed back a couple of weeks! On the other hand, after Christmas is going to be awfully busy, too. I need to set up a web site by January 1, Kyle's 2nd birthday is January 14th, and I'm also vaguely hoping to finish 2 novels by the end of January, when I'm going on a writers' retreat! (It's not crucial, but it'd be nice....)

Another sale! After a disappointing rejection earlier this week and 2 failures to place in a children's poem contest (but a nice honorable mention for a story in a fiction contest), it was great to get an acceptance and check in the mail from ByLine magazine today! It's kind of like getting 2 sales out of 1, because what ByLine bought is an article about my first sale, called "Getting Goofy about Writing," for their First $ale column. Hooray!

I finished the rough draft of my NaNoWriMo novel, Chasing Monday, on November 17th! It's a whopping 58,466 word long. It feels a bit anti-climactic to be done, though "done" might not be the right word since it needs extensive revisions before I'd even consider it a decent draft. I also have plenty else to keep me busy, with a picture book manuscript I'm trying to do final revisions on & send out, my previously scheduled novel-in-progress I need to keep making headway on, and that chapter book (basically a short novel for about ages 7-10) that I mentioned before. But today I feel a bit sick. Kyle is sick now, too...yuck. Ryan had a similar illness earlier in the week, so I hope this will all end soon like Ryan's did.

I got my copies of the Winter issue of Once Upon a Time today, with my humor piece When the Muse Strikes Out in it. Looks like the editor didn't change a word, either, though she did take out a couple of commas and dashes. I know I use too many dashes, anyway!

I also wrote 3,300+ words on my NaNoWriMo novel while the kids were in Mother's Day Out today. Hooray for Mother's Day Out! (Or Mother's Day In, as the case may be....)

Wow. I wrote around 7,000 words yesterday (3,500 of them in the car on my PDA, while on a road trip...) & am up to nearly 29,000 words in my NaNoWriMo novel! I'm stunned that I did that in 9 days! And today I came up with yet a new idea, probably for an early chapter book. I wrote 300-400 words of it in the car on the way to church and then on the way to lunch. Ryan, my 4-year-old, saw me writing (on a small yellow notepad) when we got to the restaurant, and asked if I was writing a book. I said yes, and he wanted me to read it to him. I knew it would fly right over his head, but he was so insistent that I did. And as I predicted, he just looked confused. ;-) It was all about chewing gum, and he barely even knows what that is! But it is interesting that he just assumes I'm writing books! He also writes them himself. He wrote one called Shapes this past week, which he wants us to mail to his best friend.

I just read this quote in someone else's NaNoWriMo sig line...

"You can't build a plot out of jokes. You need tragic relief." —Terry Pratchett

That is great for me to remember for my beet novel, which quite honestly started as a joke and has worked its way into a novel-in-progress that I hope has some real emotions. Meanwhile, my NaNoWriMo novel (13,881 words so far!) probably needs the opposite, and more traditional advice--some sort of humor or joy to break up the angst.