Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Break's over - time to work

Since getting Pathfinder's Way off to the editor and finishing the first draft of my new unnamed book, I decided to give myself a mini break from the writing. It was supposed to be two weeks where I relaxed, caught up with friends, read a couple of books and basically did all the things I haven't been doing while planted in front of a laptop for the last few months.

Turns out, I kind of suck at relaxing. In the last two weeks, I've cleaned my house top to bottom, caught up on all the laundry and had a massive cooking day where I made three different types of recipes that netted me about 20 individual meals I could store in the freezer for lunches. Because that wasn't active enough, I also ended up painting my bedroom and bathroom. I'm happy with them, but my time wasn't spent relaxing as I'd imagined. Sometimes when I am really busy for awhile, I get stuck in busy mode and can find it hard to relax.

Today, I started in on the second draft of my current project. So far, it doesn't seem as difficult an edit as the last one, and I'm hopeful the process goes a bit smoother than previous ones.

Sunday, January 10, 2016

Welcome To The New Year

I can't believe it, but 2016 is here and has been for ten days.Where did the last year go? Somehow it sped past and was gone before I realized it. To be fair, last year was incredibly busy on both the personal and writing front.  I had a lot to be grateful for last year. The biggest accomplishment on the writing side is that I finished not one, but two books (I finished the second book's first draft on Christmas Day).

Right now I'm in the process of putting final touches to the first before sending to a copy editor. I forgot how much extra work is involved when readying a book for publishing. After sending to the editor, I'll need to make any changes they suggest, then either design a cover or reach out to a graphic designer to do that part for me.

The part I hate the most, though, is drafting the blurb for the book. It's one of those jobs I would love to farm out to someone because I'm never quite satisfied with what I create. What it is about coming up with two to three paragraphs that creates such frustration, I don't know. Especially when I just got finished writing a full length novel. It's the part I dread the most. At this point I've rewritten this blurb at least four times. I'm still not happy with it :-|.

Sigh, time to stop whining and take another crack at it. Hopefully, I'll finish that part today.