Major Progress

I needed to recover from last week, especially last Friday (spending almost all afternoon resending PDFs is not my idea of fun or satisfying work!).

However, I did manage to get in quite a bit of writing last Friday before my eyes bugged out from those PDFs. Not only did I finish Chapter 10, but I finished Chapter 11, too! About 5,000 words. Yay me! ;-)

So I'm now at the point where James Scott Bell in his fab book, Write Great Fiction: Plot and Structure, says is the 1st doorway. It's the part where you're going from the beginning to the middle of the story, where your Main Character is thrust into the main conflict in "a way that keeps him there". [Plot and Structure, pp. 28-29] I've set it up so she has no choice but to keep going...because if she doesn't, she's probably going to harm a lot of people and pets...

Not that she enjoys being hooked in the way she has (that is, if she doesn't go forward, the head Elder is going to do something nasty to her). She's going to take it out on Diego in Chapter 12, because she feels he could've stopped the Elder somehow, or could've at least told Jackie what the hell to expect.

Diego will beg to differ, pointing out certain things to Jackie. I think I'm going to start the next chapter with that argument, heh heh.

An Editor's Point of View on Slush

I've been most interested in blogging about my story that I've forgotten I wanted to talk about other "writerly" things. I thought I'd bring in this thread from Making Light, a blog put out by Teresa Nielsen-Hayden. She is (or was) an editor at Tor, and the thread I link to, Slushkiller, gives you, the writer, an idea of what you're up against when you land in the slush pile.

Interesting stuff, as you're getting it from the other side of the equation. Just remember this link, especially if you insist on putting your baby on pink paper with orange lettering and never bothered to learn basic English grammar (since you think that's beneath you).

Did I tell you the one about my sister-in-law receiving a manuscript (when she worked for one of the Warner Books imprints) in a pizza box? Yeah, with all the pizza-type wording on it.

Do you really think that one got through to anyone who could acquire manuscripts? Sure, and I look like Rick Pitino. ;-)

Anyway...don't give up, keep writing!