Back to Work

This weekend was devoted to having as much fun as possible. Sunday was a drag (the Giants were slapped by the Seattle Seahawks), but Saturday was indeed a fun day: Celtic Fest! Lots of Irish music and food and beer...well, some of the food and beer were not Irish, but who cares? There were also CDs, clothing, candles, and various sundry available for sale, and I couldn't resist picking up a few things.

There's not much to say as regards the written word--about 1,700 words the past two days! I'm really hitting my Nifty 350 without too much trouble. A lot of what I wrote is probably dreck, but I'm forging ahead; I can clear out the junk once I'm in revision mode (although I did do a tiny bit of revision on the first part of Chapter 2).

I got on with it after those few revisions, though, and I'm close to the end of of the chapter. The ending will involve the guy who saved Jackie from bleeding to death in the first chapter--Diego Montoya (just a working name at this point).

I also introduced another character, Gary, who is one of the gay guys on Jackie's floor. He's helped her through a lot of rough spots, plus he's cooked some nice lunches and dinners for her; Gary's lover, McLean (who hasn't been introduced yet), can't cook unless it can be thrown in the microwave.

Jackie isn't very domestic, either.

I'm hoping to complete Chapter 2 either tomorrow or the day after. Chapter 3 will continue with Diego (obviously). Plus I'll have to rewrite some of the index cards--although I'll keep the discarded ones, because one never knows if they might come in handy...

On the Writing of Queries

I'm not at the dreaded querying stage as yet, but it'll come soon enough. Ack! Trying to put across what happens to the characters in your novel in one page is not easy. But if other people have managed it, then so will I!

I've got plenty of links to check out when the time comes, but here are a couple I plan to check out more than once or twice:

Miss Snark - Synopsis versus plot outlines in queries

The Snarkalicious One presents an extremely simple way to do a query. Basically, it's:

• The hero is:
• He faces this problem in the first 50 pages:

And so on. The blog entry isn't too long, but it gets to the gist of what agents are looking for in a query.

Here's another one. It's a pitch generator:

Kathy Carmichael's Pitch Generator

You just type in the blanks (Title, Character Name, etc.), and then it generates a sample pitch (query). It might not be to your liking, but at least it might get you thinking in the right way.

Give 'em a whirl.

Don't give up--keep writing!