Breathing...

Sorry for no post last week. As my Twitter followers know, I was on the extended-family summer-trip-thing (aka visiting the Carolinas). It is now July 31, and I am happy to report that I made the submission deadline... with a couple hours to spare. *dies* I really need a more sanity-inducing summer schedule one of these years.

In forty-five minutes (from the point of me writing this), it will be August, which means it is the month of editing madness. Multiple projects need to be edited, which is awesome in that it means I have multiple projects going but bad in that it means I am not writing... sort of.

You see, I can't do another adult story right now because too many "similar" characters will cause my brain to implode, setting off a chain reaction that will result in a giant black hole taking the place of earth (and by default killing everyone).

I can, however, do something totally different. That means the wacky middle grade idea The Boy and I have been toying with is started. It's slow-going since he wants to take part in every stage of the writing, but it is being written. For those of you who don't know, I've written YA and really enjoy it. Middle Grade... is a foreign thing for me. It's a voice I'm not really confident with, but thankfully I have a middle-grader to help me on my way. It may never get finished. It may never be sent anywhere, but Operation: Wishes is the only thing I plan on writing in August. Just for giggles, I may keep you posted on how it's going.

Coming August 28!!!

In addition to editing-madness and Middle-Grade-madness, I also have OMG-NEW-RELEASE-(Kiss of Death, in case you didn't know)-madness this month. ("We're all a little mad around here.") I'm in the process of firming up dates for a blog tour--my first--and hopefully will have a calendar up next week. If you're a book blogger and you want to be included, let me know (selestedelaney[at]gmail[dot]com)!

For now though, I'm still just trying to keep my head above water. The kids have camp next week (YAY!) so hopefully that means copious amounts of work-time for me.

Drowning in Deadlines

Thus far, this summer has been one of writing madness. New contracts. New projects. Edits on other projects. Did I mention I have a release next month? (I do. The first Blood Kissed novel, Kiss of Death, is out August 28. Feel free to add it to your Goodreads shelf because, you know, that would make me smile.)

What that means is I've had to be really diligent about deadlines. Which is really good for teaching me discipline, but really bad for my sanity. I'm finding that I'm hitting book-burnout really quickly this summer. Whether it's because I'm juggling so many very different stories or because I'm constantly in go-mode, I'm not sure.

But, it's one of the key reasons I've been a bit scarce on-line. I would have continued to assume no one had noticed, but since I've had a few people seek me out asking if I was alive and everything was okay... I'm stating for the record that I'm good. I'm not dead or dying or even dealing with sickness-of-doom. Asthma and allergies have been a little twitchy. Depression is hovering, waiting for a sign of weakness to grab hold of, as it always does. But really, I'm just tired. I love having my kids home, but it totally alters my ability to get shit done.

And vacations do that too. Every time I leave the house for more than a few hours, I get twitchy because I know all-the-things-will-cease-progressing. But so far, I've managed to bounce back from those periods of panicky quiet. It just means I'm more busy, less chatty when I get home.
So, right now I have a July 31 deadline I'm striving to finish & polish something for. And I have edits coming. And more edits. Then I get August for edits, more edits and the Kiss of Death release (I'm working on a blog tour now).

So, I'm not dead, just buried so I can work in relative peace. (At least if you discount the screaming... mine and the kids'.) I promise that once things even out in the fall, I'll be back, but as I keep reminding myself--busy is good. So, I'm good. And it looks like 2013 won't be nearly as dry for releases from me as 2012 was. (I am also working on planning better LOL).

Just Keep Swimming

Every once in a while, I get really excited about a project and impose a timeline on myself that is... less than realistic. (Okay, I do it all the time). This time though, I figured I was on a roll. I finished my 50k for NaNoWriMo on November 23--a week early! So, it seemed perfectly logical that if I continued writing at that speed, I could have the first draft done sometime between Dec. 5-10.

It was a no brainer. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming...

Except, there's one thing people don't tell you about NaNo (and especially about what happens if you finish the day before Thanksgiving). As an author, 1667 words a day is not a lot. On a good day, I can do that in an hour. On an average day, it takes 1 1/2-2 hours, but you get the point. As long as I'm rolling, that is totally attainable. But, anyone who has done NaNo a few times can tell you--the world doesn't always cooperate with your schedule. That means you try to get ahead, because you don't know when you're going to get sick, have sick kids, have guests, have another project that people are paying you for so it has to take precedence...

So I was cruising along at at average of about 2250 words a day through the 23rd. Again, not an extreme amount--a couple hours of solid work a day. But doing it day in and day out takes a toll. Not because it's a large amount but because there's a deadline, and you're in a race, and whatever else causes you to panic. So when you "win," all this weight falls off your shoulders and you can breathe.

And you let yourself have a day off (and in this case, it was Thanksgiving...hello...). But when you're dealing with a holiday weekend, and/or a manuscript that is something you aren't used to or is giving you problems, a day off easily turns into two. Or three. Or hell, at that point why not take the whole four-day weekend like everyone else is? You deserve time off for good behavior too!

The thing is for me as a writer, time off makes it harder to get back in the swing. Words don't come easy, if at all. Characters I loved annoy me with their stupid decisions. I start to want to inhabit a different world--any other world. So, my long weekend "off" turned into a week and a half where my writing was off. I think I'm back on my game now, but I've trimmed my expectations back from the 2-2.5k a day to the 1667 of NaNo. Yes, my calendar still has goals in 2k increments, but that's just easier for me to keep track of.

All this means that the manuscript will not be done this week. Maybe next week. Hopefully for sure by Christmas. Definitely by New Years. But yeah... not this week.

Just a Thousand More Words Please

Word counts are the bane of many writers. Your first novel is over 100k? You might want to look at some trimming. Under 70k? Only if you're writing middle grade or younger. There are guidelines all over the internet on what constitutes a good word count for just about any genre of fiction. That's not what this post is about though.

One of the greatest things about digital publishing is beyond the "are you insane, even Tolkien was smart enough to make three books!" word counts, digital publishers are embracing all kinds of lengths. In fact, the first piece I had published was Of Course I Try at barely over 5k. Over the course of the next seven months, I released one around 10k, another between 15 and 20k, another at about 33k, and my YA which clocked in at just about 86k. I loved every one of those projects.

Right now, however, I'm working on a contest entry and realized that I've grown so used to the "any word count is a good word count" mentality that I really had a hard time with the 5-7k word limit. Like...really hard time. The first story I started for the contest is already well over that count and isn't close to being done (BTW, TriggerHappy won for band name for that particular story, tentatively titled GunShy). So, I set it aside and tried again. At first I wondered if I could possibly make this new story stretch to 5k. I just didn't think there was enough there (of course it doesn't help matters that it's a brand new genre for me, so a lot of guessing and O.o was involved in the writing). Then, once I crossed 5k, I had an "oh shit, I only have 2000 words left to play with" moment.

I finished it, and it's within the word count requirements. I'm really not sure if the ending was rushed though. I have less than 200 words to play with to make it the best it can be and that scares the crap out of me.

The funny part in all this is I used to do writing challenges with 1000 or 2000 word total limits all the time. Meeting 5-7k should be a breeze. But it's not. Not if you're out of practice at least. So, I'm sitting here tonight, dreading the feedback I'm going to get from my betas. I want them to be hard on me because I want it to be good...but I don't want it to suck because I don't have it in me to make another attempt at this by the deadline.

Oh yeah...there's a deadline. What the hell was I thinking? Oh, I remember. It was an excuse, just like those old challenges, to try something new and push myself out of my comfort zone. Yeah. I think I left that behind well over 7k words ago.

So what about you? What word counts do you write in and do you find it hard to switch it up? Or do limits make you happy since you know exactly what you have to work with and how close you are to done?