2008 Journal



Don't miss Laurie's past journal entries. Here are the archives: 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002	2008 Journal I'll keep you posted here on all my writing adventures... December 31, 2008: Happy New Year, everyone! No matter where you are, or what you're doing, I wish you a fun and exciting New Year's Eve, and a new year full of health and prosperity. My husband and I have developed a habit of having a huge Open House on New Year's Day, hosting up to 70 guests in our home, so usually on New Year's Eve I'm busy preparing food for the next day. But this year, his back is giving him trouble so we cancelled the party. Instead, we're having one of my son's friends spend the night and at the stroke of midnight we'll do the countdown, put on our party hats and blow our horns and then I'll most likely go to bed! New Years Eve is so different now that we're ... more chronologically challenged! Ha ha. Anyway, as I normally do on my last post of the year, I'll close out the annual journal by reflecting on the year of writing in general, then comment on each of my goals I set at the beginning of the year. Next time I journal, it'll be on a fresh 2009 journal page. It's been a fantastic year, no doubt. I just read through the year's entries and re-lived the excitement of making two sales this year, seeing a book released and receiving positive reviews, and making a successful pitch to an editor at one of the biggest romance publishers in the business. I have to remember all those victories because it's so easy to wallow in the disappointments of the year: 7 months with no word from that submission; a devastating critique on a finished manuscript that literally knocked me out of writing anything for 4 months. But you know what? Those things come with the business. And no one will look out for you in this business except you. If I allow those things to destroy me, I'll miss out on the absolutely fantastic things that have happened this year. You take the good with the bad, but you really should savor the good, and figure out what the heck you can learn from the bad, and move on. I'm happy to say that after 4 months of depressed non-activity brought on by that brutal critique, I've relied on the compassion and encouragement of my writer friends, and I've emerged out the other side. I'm writing again, on a new book I'm really excited about. And I've finally put enough distance between myself and the rawness of that critique, that I've gone back to that manuscript and rolled my sleeves up on it, and gotten back into the work of making it better. To me, that's a real victory. Whether or not the book eventually sells, I survived and I didn't give up. Rah, me. OKAY! Enough of that. I'm going to comment on each of my 2008 writing goals now: 1. Finish writing Inner Diva by April 15, 2008. Yes! I completed Inner Diva. Of course, I've now gone back to it and am making some revisions to the hero's conflict and motivation, and the heroine's personality to make the book stronger. But for the sake of this goal, I did complete "a" version of the book by 4/15. 2. Pitch Inner Diva to a Harlequin/Silhouette editor at the Chicago Spring Fling conference in April. Yes! I pitched the manuscript to a Harlequin/Silhouette editor and got an invitation to submit it to the lead editor of the Special Edition line. I did that in May, however, I haven't heard Word One from her in seven months, despite an email follow-up. I'm going to address this in my new goals for 2009. *3. Revise Keeper By Surprise. Take out the elements that make it unattractive to the category market, and submit it to Harlequin.* No! I didn't do this. I still might. I keep thinking that if/when I sell to Harlequin, they want you to have additional books written on a regular basis. So I could revise this already-written, but too long, manuscript for them as my second book. It's still a plan, although I haven't sold my first manuscript yet. So ... possibly another goal to address for next year. 4. Start one new manuscript. Yes! I started a new manuscript in November and I'm three chapters into it. Once I'm done revising Inner Diva, I'll put my full attention to working on this manuscript (as yet, untitled). 5. Make a sale. Yes! In fact, I made two! 2008 has been a banner year for me in regards to sales -- I've never made two sales in one year before now. 6. Have fun! Get the joy back! Choose happiness! Yes! I tentatively admit that I did have fun, lots of it! I got the joy back, at least for 8/12 of the year. The first half of the year I had tons of joy and fun. I let the turkeys get me down from July through most of November until I got myself back on track. Lesson learned: keep going. Believe in yourself and adjust to the bad things, and trudge ahead. If you're an aspiring writer, I encourage you to reflect on your year and on what keeps you moving forward. Send me a note if you want. We really need to stick together in this business. <<Smile.>> December 28, 2008: I got a new review on Preacher Man! It's very, very positive from Joyfully Reviewed. Here's the whole review. Some of the highlights for me are the way the reviewer described my hero, Josh: "...he won my heart the first moment he pulled up on his motorcycle," and my heroine, Regan: "...More than once I wanted to hug her." Another major highlight over the last few weeks was my inadvertent discovery that Amazon.com was offering Preacher Man in its paperback version, WEEKS prior to the official release date of Jan 9! A woman I work with ordered it and it arrived in a matter of days. I quickly sent out this newsletter to my mailing list in case people wanted to purchase it as Christmas gifts! I was thrilled, even though that meant some of my readers got to hold the book in their hands before I got my author copies!! Ha ha. Here's the Amazon link to order the book. I'll be back one more time to close out this annual journal with my thoughts for the year, and my goals for next year, as I customarily do. Meanwhile, I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and I wish you a fun and exciting New Year's! December 9, 2008: Wow, the year is escaping quickly like water down a drain. Someone said to me today that there were 2 weeks and 2 days left until Christmas! And I panicked. Because I have done ... NOTHING ... to prepare for Christmas. Not a single gift bought. No cards sent. No decorations out. And my heart went into one of those panic races. So, tonight, I got my Christmas card list made out, and my holiday letter written. The cards are ready and waiting to be mailed. By 12/25 I'll be ready. It happens every year, despite the inevitable late start. <<Insert deep breaths here...>> In exciting news, I've started writing a new book! In fact I'm about 10,000 words into it -- the middle of the third chapter. I won't reveal much about it right now, but after about four months of dormant time (ie., no new writing) between books, I'm happy to be writing again. We're making strides on the editing of Casey V. The next time I see it it will be in final page proof form, and I'll just read it through one last time searching for errors. Along the way, I've gotten an education on requesting permission to use song lyrics in the book, since there's a well-known song that plays a rather important part in the plot towards the end. I'll just leave it at that for those of you who will read the book later. The good news is, I received permission to use the song lyrics, so I won't have to scrap them and re-write that section. And in very, *very* exciting news that happened just yesterday: I got an email from my favorite author of all time, Pat Conroy! In searching on the web one day I stumbled upon a page on his publisher's website where you can send an email to their authors. I sent a long and very heartfelt note to him, telling him how much his books mean to me. To my total shock and absolute delight, he wrote back to me the very next day! With a very sweet and encouraging note, and with his trademark humor as well. I'm floating on clouds! November 16, 2008: I must've been psychic! I wrote my last journal entry on October 25, saying I'd done a Google search, looking for Preacher Man reviews, and didn't find any. Guess what: Between the Lines review site posted their review on Oct 26! My first review of Preacher Man. It was overall positive, with a few critiques, as well. They rated it "Entertaining and Engaging," so that's worth a "woo-hoo!" from the author. Here it is, in its entirety. October 25, 2008: Another quick little blog to tell you this: Wild Rose provides a great service of sending each of their books out to a wide host of online review sites to be reviewed. Since Preacher Man is now available in electronic version, and I hadn't seen any reviews yet (keeping fingers crossed and hoping for a positive one!!) I Googled "Preacher Man, Laurie Larsen" to see if I'd missed any. Well, I hadn't. But! I did come up with this guest blog appearance that I did on October 8th, that I completely forgot about until this week! I'm so sorry I didn't know my appearance was earlier in the month because I would've let you all know and you could've gone to the site. But, better late than never. Enjoy: it's the SisterWriters blog. October 20, 2008: I guess the big news is that the e-book version of Preacher Man is released at The Wild Rose Press, ready for purchase! If you like e-books and are interested in reading an inspiring, fun romance, I hope you'll give it a try. I've updated the order information on my Preacher Man page. In other news, I finished my fourth round of edits of Casey V, and I'm hoping that this will be it. Because I cut so much OUT in the first three rounds of edits, the book was now too short to go to print. So I was faced with the decision of having an e-book only, or adding about 12 quality pages. Of course, I want the print book so I added a chapter. Fortunately, way back when I'd first finished Casey V, I began a sequel, and actually wrote about 50 pages before I decided that I wouldn't finish it. But now that I was looking for additional material, I went back to the sequel, and was able to extract a chapter that I'd previously written for Book 2, and fit it into the first book. Which just goes to show you, that nothing written is ever wasted. It can always serve a purpose! By the way, my son's baseball team won third in State! GO PYTHONS!! September 27, 2008: Baseball is in full swing as my son's junior high team ended their regular season, won their regional and sectional championships and are now headed to the Illinois State tournament! They've all worked really hard and are thrilled to be progressing so well. Unfortunately, the Joliet Public Library Regional Author Fair that I've had on the schedule for months -- is a casualty of their continued wins. As much as I've been looking forward to going to Joliet for a huge multi-author booksigning this Saturday, I really don't want to miss my son's debut playing at the state level. I mean, how many times does a kid get to go to State? I'm not going to miss it. I'm now in my FOURTH round of edits on my Young Adult novel, The Chronicles of Casey V. I've never been through four rounds of edits in any of my previous published books. I'm just hopeful that with all the changes, we've made it a stronger book, more clean and easy to read. August 30, 2008: The end of summer. I can't really deny it -- the kids are back to school, the calendar will flip over to September soon, and the days are even getting cool. I was sitting beside the pool at my brother's house last night and some of us put jackets on, believe it or not. Oh well. It's a natural cycle. Summer ends every year. Fall begins. But I'm such a summer lover that I always have trouble letting it go. Great news!!! The Wild Rose Press moved my paperback release date for Preacher Man BACK three months! The electronic book release date remains at October, 2008, but the paperback release date has moved from April to JANUARY, 2009! I'm so excited. I really wish they could have backed it up one more month to December to take advantage of those Christmas sales, but ... oh well. Happy Labor Day, everyone! August 12, 2008: Don't you LOVE the Olympics? I'm an absolute Olympic junkie, and I am so enjoying the 2008 Beijing Olympics! There have been so many Olympic moments already -- the men's swim relay where the American men beat the French by 8 one hundredths of a second -- after the French men boasted, "The Americans? We'll smash them. That's what we came here for." And the Men's Gymnastics team winning the bronze medal last night -- it was worth staying up till midnight, and yawning all day today for! That team's superstars -- the Hamm brothers, including Paul, an Olympic champion already, both dropped out due to injury, sending two alternates in their places. Although those guys were very talented gymnasts, none of them had ever gone to the Olympics, and I don't think many of them had ever competed at an international level. And they BEAT every men's gymnastics team out there, except for China and Japan! As they cheered and hugged and beat each other on their backs, I was cheering along with them, with tears in my eyes. Although I'm not an athlete, I so love and GET the Olympics. Maybe because there are so many great stories there! Signing off to go watch so more... August 4, 2008: This summer is just squealing by! School starts in just a few weeks, so that is officially the end of summer, regardless of what the calendar says. I'll have one more Book Bonanza multi-book giveaway before I go back to giving away one book at a time! The RWA National Conference is over and soon we'll start seeing a ton of blogs all over the web talking about what a fabulous time everyone had. Here's a link to the Golden Heart/RITA Award winners. I'm sure with Suzanne Brockmann emceeing the ceremony, it was a rockin' time! I've thrown my hat in the ring to run for RWA Board of Directors!! Stay tuned about what happens next, and if you're a card-carrying RWA member, I hope you'll consider voting for me! I'm happy to report that I've done some important pre-work on my next book. I've written a backstory for both my hero and heroine, then I put together a Goal Motivation and Conflict (GMC) chart for each of them. And I outlined the first chapter. I can't wait to start writing. July 4, 2008: Happy Independence Day to all Americans! As I sit here by my open window in central Illinois, it's an absolutely gorgeous day, and I hope it's the same for you, wherever you are. Enjoy your relaxation, picnic-ing, partying and fireworks! And God Bless America, always. I have a hodge-podge of things to share today, the first of which are pictures from my Author Talk in St. Joseph, Illinois a few weeks ago. I had a small but very interested and welcoming group of readers and writers. I talked about the journey to publication of my two new books -- what happens from the time it's contracted, on. Here are some pictures to enjoy from that event: The romance writing world is gearing up for the RWA National Conference at the end of this month, this year being held in San Francisco, CA. Although I'm not going, I can't help getting caught up in all the excitement of the conference: meeting new friends and catching up with old, visiting with industry professionals like agents and editors, and of course, the prestigious RITA and Golden Heart ceremony. The RITA is to romance writing what the Oscar is to movie actors. The Golden Heart is kind of the runner-up to the RITA for excellence in unpublished romance fiction. Well, I found this cute video on YouTube that will help explain just how exciting and important the RITA is. Being a new author of The Wild Rose Press, I was very excited to see that my new publisher was mentioned in a Publisher's Weekly article. Check it out here. June 13, 2008: Friday the 13th! That date is so hyped up to make you shiver in trepidation, that we just can't help it: thanks to Jason and the hockey mask, we all expect the worst on this day. Fortunately, NOTHING bad has happened to me today. (I hope I didn't just jinx myself. Ha ha) I guess the biggest news in my writing world is that I'm on sabbatical! I've been putting the pedal to the medal this year, between selling two manuscripts, doing all the pre-production work for both, making edits suggested by my editors, reading galleys, finishing a new manuscript, pitching it, and submitting it. I'm beat! But in a good way. So, as I often do this time of year when my son's baseball season is just crazy-wild, I'm taking some time off writing. And instead, doing a LOT of reading! (Which explains my Summer Big Book Giveaway Bonanza!) Meanwhile, I'm letting my muse relax and regenerate, and I'm mulling around the two ideas I have for new books, trying to decide which one I'll begin in August when my sabbatical is over. This Monday I'm traveling to St. Joseph, Illinois, where I'll do an author talk at the library there. I visited that library a few years ago and I was thrilled when they invited me back. Although my new books aren't out yet, I'm going to talk about the road to publication for both the books, show my new covers, and read excerpts from both books. Hope everyone's enjoying their summer! May 22, 2008: Here's something really cool! I attended a chat with Wild Rose Press authors and staff, and I met (online) Kimberlee Mendoza, the artist who did both my fabulous new covers. When I thanked her, and told her which books were mine, she said, "The Chronicles cover is my favorite cover I've ever done!!!" It's been a busy month! Since my last post, I went through all my suggested edits from my editor for Casey V. She is a very thorough editor and made a lot of good suggestions. A few of her suggestions resulted in writing new scenes or beefing up existing ones, and I agree that they made the book stronger and flow better! Next, I did one last galley proof of Preacher Man. PM is now officially proofed and ready for Production! That means I'll be given a release date soon -- actually two of them, one for electronic release and one for print release. I can't WAIT to find out when the book will be available for purchase. I HOPE HOPE HOPE it's in time for Christmas! Then I moved on to writing my synopsis for Inner Diva. After I pitched to Victoria Curran last month at Spring Fling and got the invitation to submit to Gail Chasan, I realized that although the manuscript is complete, I didn't have a synopsis. I worked on that, as well as a cover letter, and had my critique partner-extraordinaire do her magic with it, and sent it out this week. In addition, I sent the three chapters of Inner Diva out to Grand Central Publishing for my critique by an editor there -- my prize I won at the Spring Fling Silent Auction. WOW -- I've really had a flurry of writing activity, not just this month, but this whole year. Therefore, I'm going to take some time off. At least till the end of baseball season (early July). The month of June I'm going to do a lot of reading, refresh my muse and start dreaming about my next book that I'll start in July or August. April 27, 2008: I'm back from the Chicago Spring Fling conference and I had a great time. It's always so GOOD to be with other writers and to be exposed to professionals in the industry, and this conference is particularly good among regional RWA conferences that I've been to. It was in the beautiful Deerfield Hyatt and the keynote speakers were Debbie Macomber, Eloisa James and Christie Ridgway. There were a variety of editors from major romance publishing houses, and agents who represent romance and are actively seeking clients. Because this is my second time to this particular conference, I got reacquainted with friends that I had met last time, as well as past national conferences, and since everyone is always so friendly in the romance community, I met tons of new friends too. A few things I'm particularly happy to have accomplished during this conference: I pitched Inner Diva to Victoria Curran of Harlequin, and she said the story sounds "promising." She invited me to send it to Gail Chasan, the senior editor of the Special Edition line, and tell her that she recommended I do so! During a silent auction I won the high bid on a partial manuscript critique by Michelle Bidelspach, an editor at Grand Central (previously Warner Books) Publishing. It'll be great to get her feedback on Inner Diva, and the money all goes to Literacy Chicago. Met a few of my fellow Wild Rose Press authors. Enjoyed all the Keynote speakers' addresses, but especially the incredible and highly motivational Debbie Macomber. That woman is a wonder. Got invited to participate in a library author day in October. Met up again with my conference buddy, Leesa Whitson, whom I only ever see at conferences! Had a great time with my buddy Jenna Petersen/Jess Michaels since we rode in the car together roundtrip and hooked up during the conference for various meals, etc. My conference buddy Leesa Jenna Petersen/Jess Michaels Allie Pleiter and Jesse at the booksigning When I got home and checked my email, I saw that my first round edits on Casey V had come in. I have 30 days to ponder what the editor recommended, do some corrections, and add a new scene or two, and then she recommended that I have a critique partner read through it again. April 20, 2008: Just a quick update right now, because I'm on my way out of town for a baseball doubleheader. Yes, my son's 70-game baseball season has begun, so most of my free time will be taken up with that. BUT big news in my writing world: the cover of Casey V is done! And I love it. It's a great teen-cover for a teen-book and I'm really happy with it. Here it is. Since my last post, I've had a flurry of activity. I proofed the galleys of Preacher Man -- the pages as they'll look when they're in final book form. I read through the whole thing, looking for errors (I found 11) and I decided to change the excerpt on the first page. Then, I got the pre-production work to do for Casey V -- the author's bio, the dedication, the excerpt, and the very detailed questionnaire that the artist uses to design the cover. AND I did my final draft revisions on my new book, Inner Diva, in order to get it all polished and shined in time for my pitch appointment next weekend with Harlequin editor, Victoria Curran. So it's been a BUSY couple weeks. In addition, I had my Vrooman Mansion book event a few nights ago, which went GREAT. I'll post pictures to my Photo Album soon. Better run! Update: Here are the Vrooman Mansion event photos! April 1, 2008: Someone pinch me. This year keeps getting better and better. And no, it is NOT an April Fool's joke! Two really exciting things have happened recently: My book cover for Preacher Man is done, and it's beautiful! Click here for a look. I love the Chicago skyline and the lake. And the motorcycle plays such an important role in Regan and Josh's first date. I really like what cover artist Kimberly Mendoza did with the cover. And even more exciting, I got ANOTHER contract last night from The Wild Rose Press. They loved Casey V and want to publish it! For the first time in my career, I'll have two books in production at the same time, which means of course, eventually, I'll have two books to promote at the same time! To two different demographic groups. One's an inspirational (adult) romance, and the other is a Young Adult. But I can do it and I'll make sure I enjoy every minute of it. In other news -- today I got the final page proofs for Preacher Man. I need to read through it one more time and catch any last minute errors and typos. I have a 4/10 deadline so I better do it quick. I'm supposed to be doing a last read-through/final revisions on my Inner Diva manuscript because I'm pitching it to a Harlequin/Silhouette editor (Victoria Curran) on April 26 at the Chicago Spring Fling conference. But I haven't done much more than print it out. I better get busy on it. I'm excited about a neat booksigning event I have coming up. Take a look at this cool flyer about it, and if you're in the area, I hope you stop by. I said to my mother the other day, "I'm so glad I stuck with my writing through the last two years, which were really rough." It's so true. 2008 has been unbelievable. Take a look at what I'd just written in my first journal entry of this year: "... 2004 and 2005 were great, fantastic, happy years. Infectious in their productivity and excitement. 2006 and 2007, not so much. In fact, I'll go so far to say that my most recent year, SUCKED. Really. I need to change that (as if I have anything to say about it). I'm serious. I don't know how many more writing years I can go through like 2006 and 2007. I want more like 2004 and 2005." This is a TOUGH business. I'm going to relish my years like this one! March 9, 2008: A couple great things happened since the last time I journaled: I finished my first draft of Inner Diva! That means I need to give it its own Book page on this website! I'll do that soon. I've let it "simmer" for two weeks, so this week I'll start going back through and polishing, and fixing scenes that need help. My editor for Preacher Man finished her first edits of the manuscript and had the most absolutely wonderful things to say about it: "I have only suggested a few changes throughout the novel. Mostly everything was perfect! Regan was the ideal heroine you couldn't help but love for her humanness and vulnerability. Josh -- my goodness -- he is every woman's dream come true!! I read the entire novel in one sitting -- couldn't put it down!! 5 stars, etc." Needless to say I've been on cloud nine since I got her note. February 18, 2008: My good luck continues ... at my RWA Chapter meeting on the 6th I won the drawing for a Barnes and Noble gift certificate! I also brought pages I'd written in, a fight scene from my WIP (work in progress) and it got, uh, critiqued. Heavily. Well, I did warn them that I'd never written a fight scene before (at least not that I can remember) and it was rough. They must've agreed. They did offer some ideas that I think I can work with to improve the scene. And the rest -- forget it. It's the writer's prerogative to throw out any suggestions that don't work for her. And can I just take this opportunity to say, that when critiquing other writers' work, it's best to remember what your mom used to tell you, "Treat others as you'd like to be treated." Because eventually it'll be YOU who's up there putting yourself on the line... Anyway, I've also done some work for my new publisher, The Wild Rose Press. Last week, I worked on the back cover blurb for Preacher Man, the author's bio for the publisher's website, and a marketing plan. In fact, they've already created me a new author's webpage, so check it out: I really like it! And my outfit matches the page. Ha ha. I haven't done much (ie., ANY) writing in the last two weeks, so tonight I'm turning over a new leaf. My goal is to finish the first draft of Inner Diva by March 5 so I can revise and polish it in time for my pitch to the Harlequin editor at the Chicago Spring Fling conference the end of April. And I'm on schedule, despite the two week reprieve. I only have one chapter left and I'm DONE. What a glorious feeling. February 4, 2008: Best news possible! I'm thrilled to announce that I received a contract offer from The Wild Rose Press to publish Preacher Man in their White Rose (Inspirational Romance) line!! My editor has been extremely complimentary of the manuscript. In fact, here are some of the wonderful things she said about "my baby:" it's absolutely delightful she LOVED the manuscript it's the most well-written manuscript she's read in awhile. Every author's dream is to find the editor who loves her book, and will champion it as much as she does. I feel confident that I found just the right editor for Preacher Man! For those keeping track, I still have a full manuscript of Casey V being reviewed by Wild Rose. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for two contracts at once! Stay tuned... January 27, 2008: Two great things happened this week: 1) I worked like crazy on the revisions for Casey V that the Wild Rose Press Young Adult editor suggested. At first I was nervous about cutting anything out. I mean, I love the Casey V voice, and it has gotten several great compliments from test readers and contest judges! On the other hand, it wasn't selling, so maybe this was part of the reason why. So I started chopping. And then I got addicted to it! Any word that was redundant or fluffy or could be said in a shorter way without losing meaning, GONE! I cut so much that when I was done, I realized I'd cut 35 pages!!! My last step was to print it all out again and read through it like a reader with fresh eyes, looking for places where it was choppy or didn't flow. After cutting 35 pages, it only had two problem areas, which I then fixed. I sent it off to the editor yesterday. I'm thinking I made the manuscript stronger. I hope she agrees! 2) On Wednesday, the same publisher, Wild Rose Press, sent me an email, this time from the Inspirational line editor. She thought my partial submission of Preacher Man (50 pages) was "engaging and promising!" And she asked for a full manuscript, which I sent right away. So I have two manuscripts sitting on the desks of two different editors, both of whom had very positive things to say about the partials! It's a good position to be in! I'm keeping my fingers crossed. January 13, 2008: Wow, my 2008 is off and running and I have some exciting things to report. First of all, a wonderful local magazine called TC Style featured me in their January issue this week. It comes out in both print and online. Here's the online version. I really enjoyed the article and the picture was good too! It's generated a lot of talk and "I saw your article!" around work and other places, so that's nice. In other exciting news, I have an editor somewhat interested in Casey V. I had submitted a query to The Wild Rose Press in December for both Preacher Man and Casey V. Both editors wrote back very promptly asking for partial submissions. After I sent them, the Young Adult editor wrote back with some very positive comments about the manuscript. "I enjoyed THE CHRONICLES OF CASEY V. The first person viewpoint is fresh and interesting, and Casey has a unique voice. You definitely have the teen voice down and have developed a likeable main character. It's a fun read, with lots of humor, & the story has teen-appeal." So, she's very enthused about it! She also provided me with some very good ideas on how to streamline the manuscript and cut out some fluff that detracts from the flow of the story. So that's what I'm working on now. If I can cut from the manuscript, without cutting from the story, she'd like to see the complete manuscript. So that's my challenge! I'm thrilled that she spent so much time giving me pointers, and I hope it results in a much stronger book! January 6, 2008: I wrote eleven pages this morning!! That's a really good way to get started on a new year of writing. In fact, if I count all the pages I've written this week, it totals 21 -- which is actually the monthly goal I set on Wednesday at my RWA chapter meeting. So I'm off and running. I'm towards the end of Inner Diva, closing in on the "Black Moment" and climax scene, and then the Happily Ever After (that all romances have) so I'm really aching to get this one under wraps and move on. I wanted to elaborate on something I mentioned briefly in yesterday's entry -- I'm going to partner with another writer to critique each others' work, help motivate each other, and hopefully, celebrate in each others' successes this year. This writer, whose name also happens to be Laurie, has declared it "The Year of the Lauries!" She has published one erotic novella with Whiskey Creek Press under the name Leah Collins, and is now represented by a big-time agent for her action-adventure books, which she has two done, and is working on a third. She's an excellent writer, and I know she's got some great things ahead of her. And for some reason, she's a fan of my writing! She had some excellent insights into what to change about Inner Diva to make it better, and I really trust her critiques. :) So who knows, maybe we'll both have a sale to celebrate soon. January 5, 2008: I haven't written that new year enough times yet to be accustomed to the fact that it is, actually, 2008! Wild. Well, happy new year, everyone. It's hard to believe that in starting my 2008 online writing journal, I've been doing this for six years -- this, meaning chronicling my writing adventures online via this website. For kicks, I went back and read through some of my previous years' entries in archive, and I saw that 2004 and 2005 were great, fantastic, happy years. Infectious in their productivity and excitement. 2006 and 2007, not so much. In fact, I'll go so far to say that my most recent year, SUCKED. Really. I need to change that (as if I have anything to say about it). I'm serious. I don't know how many more writing years I can go through like 2006 and 2007. I want more like 2004 and 2005. So, the first thing is, I'm going to start writing regularly again, something that had sort of slipped away in '07. And I'm going to partner with another writer -- take the "there's safety in numbers" approach to continuing my publishing journey. And I'm going to get the joy back. Somehow. So, here's my new goals for 2008: 1. Finish writing Inner Diva by April 15, 2008. 2. Pitch Inner Diva to a Harlequin/Silhouette editor at the Chicago Spring Fling conference in April. *3. Revise Keeper By Surprise. Take out the elements that make it unattractive to the category market, and submit it to Harlequin.* 4. Start one new manuscript. 5. Make a sale. 6. Have fun! Get the joy back! Choose happiness!
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