A blog...alrighty then. I have...a...blog. So, now what the heck to I do with it? Well I guess I could start by saying hello and how you (whoever you are reading this) doing, and hope things are good with you and yours. Now that all that's out of the way, I will tell you the reason I suffered through the set up process of creating this dang thing. Which by the way, hey Google, if your listening, your set up process sucks. Any who, so I don't know if you heard or not but I wrote two novels this year. Yay me! Yeah, it was a very interesting experience and it went down sort of like this:
January 2010
I had been playing around with a story idea for a few years, but with small kids and work, moving to the frozen tundra of Minnesota, and then moving back to the south, there was never enough hours in the day or night to really put it on paper (or computer). I would daydream about my characters but couldn't seem to find a spare minute to bring them to life.Then, right after Christmas 2009, I got hit with the worst case of insomnia you can imagine. The entire month of January through March, I was averaging six hours of sleep a week. No, that ain't a typo, six hours for the entire week. I did learn something very valuable in that time though. There is absolutely NOTHING on television that will get you through the long, lonely nights like I was dealing with. Never mind watching that many infomercial will turn your brains to quivering goo. Plus, if you go without sleep for an extended period of time, reality and hallucinations will start to blur around the edges so much that you can't tell what's real and what isn't. Well, as you can guess by now, my issue of never having enough time to write was cured. I had hours upon quiet, kid-free hours to indulge my make-believe worlds and fantasy people. It was truly amazing to see the scenes spill out and become so real night after night. I had a blast!! Somehow, having something to do made going with out sleep okay.
July 2010
Bada Bing Bada Boom, six months and five hundred pages later I had my first completed rough draft. I was on cloud nine! The experience of breathing life into all my characters and places was invigorating. Unfortunately, no one warned me ahead of time how craptastic the editing process is. Just for the record, I'm so not for editing. Boring, boring, boring and did I tell you how BORING it is? Yeah, it's infuriatingly boring and irritating. My OCD goes into over drive big time when I start finding typos. Thank goodness for my family and friends who agreed to cold-read for me. By the end of July, my eyes were crossing and I just couldn't look at the words anymore. So at the end of the summer, Book One (as it will be known until the title is firmly decided upon by the powers that be) was hustled off to the wonderful proof-er and I was finally free to write again and give my full attention to the continuation! I had only been able to play around with it up to that point. Yeeee! I was giddy the first night I sat down to write on Book Two. The second go around was so smooth I couldn't believe it. My characters had found a groove and we all slid into it like we'd been greased. The story flowed and ebbed with a beauty and grace I couldn't believe. Then, six chapters in, I hit a wall. It was a serious chapter, necessary, but serious non the less. Frankly, it crushed me and I couldn't figure out why. Three weeks went by and I couldn't write at all. I was grieving my story, my characters pain and trying to work through it. I know that sounds weird, but the people in this story are so real to me, it's hard to pull myself completely out of their world sometimes. Heck, I didn't even really know I was going through the grief process until I looked up one day and finally got it. To pull myself out of the funk, I just started writing random things. Some went with the story some didn't. Some were so good they eventually became chapters. A month after it's first onset, I was better and writing full-on again.
August 2010
Good old August, well let us just say this about August. We named it Black August around the this house and I'll let your imagination run free with that. It was an awful time for us, lots of pain and misery for me personally, but I'm better now and on the road to recovery from the nasty little kidney stone and all it's left over aggravation. Oh and by the way, anyone who says a stint doesn't hurt never had one and should never say that where I can hear it.
September 2010
Recovered enough to drive to Laurel, I had a very wonderful and productive meeting with the proof-er. Son#1 had all A's and B's on his progress report too so I ecstatic about that. In addition, I was overjoyed with her findings and anxious to get to work on the tiny bit of corrections Book One needed. Of course, there was a bit of a re-write to work through on the first two chapters but it went better than I expected. Book Two was nearing completion and I began sending out the first wave of email queries. Boy, if you don't think that will make a girl queasy, it does, trust me.
October 2010
My birthday rolled around on the second, the big 3-6 this year. It wasn't so bad really. I was more irritated with 3-5 seems like. Thirty-six just went right on by and I watched it go without feeling the least bit down. Book One was finally ready for snail-mail submissions and Book Two was being sewn up nice and neat. I've gotten crap-canned by a few agents so far and licked my wounds. No big-e, it's to be expected in this business and I'm at peace with that. There are plenty more outstanding's to look forward to. My new short-story series is going out as well so I'm anxious to hear back from those. They have set deadlines so it's easier to await those than the agent submissions that are just floating somewhere. My kid did me proud to round out October by dressing as a bearded dwarf from the Hobbit for Halloween after he finished reading it. All in all, a great month.
November 2010
Not meaning to out-right steal a line from VH1, but where are we now? Well, Book One is ready for someone to love it like I do and I hope they do very soon. Book Two is around a chapter and a half from a complete rough draft. It all depends on how a leading chapter goes if there will need to be another one added. I'm having a blast writing every day, it's a dizzying flow of creativity and I love it. I'm looking forward to what the end of the year holds for me and mine. I'm hoping to hit the hundred books read mark by the end of December this year since I'm at 94 novels read just for fun (not counting mine) at this point.
I'm anxious and a little apprehensive about what the future holds for my writing. At the same time, I'm silly with the joy of it. So keep a look out friends and neighbors, the best news is yet to come!
Till then,
KD
January 2010
I had been playing around with a story idea for a few years, but with small kids and work, moving to the frozen tundra of Minnesota, and then moving back to the south, there was never enough hours in the day or night to really put it on paper (or computer). I would daydream about my characters but couldn't seem to find a spare minute to bring them to life.Then, right after Christmas 2009, I got hit with the worst case of insomnia you can imagine. The entire month of January through March, I was averaging six hours of sleep a week. No, that ain't a typo, six hours for the entire week. I did learn something very valuable in that time though. There is absolutely NOTHING on television that will get you through the long, lonely nights like I was dealing with. Never mind watching that many infomercial will turn your brains to quivering goo. Plus, if you go without sleep for an extended period of time, reality and hallucinations will start to blur around the edges so much that you can't tell what's real and what isn't. Well, as you can guess by now, my issue of never having enough time to write was cured. I had hours upon quiet, kid-free hours to indulge my make-believe worlds and fantasy people. It was truly amazing to see the scenes spill out and become so real night after night. I had a blast!! Somehow, having something to do made going with out sleep okay.
July 2010
Bada Bing Bada Boom, six months and five hundred pages later I had my first completed rough draft. I was on cloud nine! The experience of breathing life into all my characters and places was invigorating. Unfortunately, no one warned me ahead of time how craptastic the editing process is. Just for the record, I'm so not for editing. Boring, boring, boring and did I tell you how BORING it is? Yeah, it's infuriatingly boring and irritating. My OCD goes into over drive big time when I start finding typos. Thank goodness for my family and friends who agreed to cold-read for me. By the end of July, my eyes were crossing and I just couldn't look at the words anymore. So at the end of the summer, Book One (as it will be known until the title is firmly decided upon by the powers that be) was hustled off to the wonderful proof-er and I was finally free to write again and give my full attention to the continuation! I had only been able to play around with it up to that point. Yeeee! I was giddy the first night I sat down to write on Book Two. The second go around was so smooth I couldn't believe it. My characters had found a groove and we all slid into it like we'd been greased. The story flowed and ebbed with a beauty and grace I couldn't believe. Then, six chapters in, I hit a wall. It was a serious chapter, necessary, but serious non the less. Frankly, it crushed me and I couldn't figure out why. Three weeks went by and I couldn't write at all. I was grieving my story, my characters pain and trying to work through it. I know that sounds weird, but the people in this story are so real to me, it's hard to pull myself completely out of their world sometimes. Heck, I didn't even really know I was going through the grief process until I looked up one day and finally got it. To pull myself out of the funk, I just started writing random things. Some went with the story some didn't. Some were so good they eventually became chapters. A month after it's first onset, I was better and writing full-on again.
August 2010
Good old August, well let us just say this about August. We named it Black August around the this house and I'll let your imagination run free with that. It was an awful time for us, lots of pain and misery for me personally, but I'm better now and on the road to recovery from the nasty little kidney stone and all it's left over aggravation. Oh and by the way, anyone who says a stint doesn't hurt never had one and should never say that where I can hear it.
September 2010
Recovered enough to drive to Laurel, I had a very wonderful and productive meeting with the proof-er. Son#1 had all A's and B's on his progress report too so I ecstatic about that. In addition, I was overjoyed with her findings and anxious to get to work on the tiny bit of corrections Book One needed. Of course, there was a bit of a re-write to work through on the first two chapters but it went better than I expected. Book Two was nearing completion and I began sending out the first wave of email queries. Boy, if you don't think that will make a girl queasy, it does, trust me.
October 2010
My birthday rolled around on the second, the big 3-6 this year. It wasn't so bad really. I was more irritated with 3-5 seems like. Thirty-six just went right on by and I watched it go without feeling the least bit down. Book One was finally ready for snail-mail submissions and Book Two was being sewn up nice and neat. I've gotten crap-canned by a few agents so far and licked my wounds. No big-e, it's to be expected in this business and I'm at peace with that. There are plenty more outstanding's to look forward to. My new short-story series is going out as well so I'm anxious to hear back from those. They have set deadlines so it's easier to await those than the agent submissions that are just floating somewhere. My kid did me proud to round out October by dressing as a bearded dwarf from the Hobbit for Halloween after he finished reading it. All in all, a great month.
November 2010
Not meaning to out-right steal a line from VH1, but where are we now? Well, Book One is ready for someone to love it like I do and I hope they do very soon. Book Two is around a chapter and a half from a complete rough draft. It all depends on how a leading chapter goes if there will need to be another one added. I'm having a blast writing every day, it's a dizzying flow of creativity and I love it. I'm looking forward to what the end of the year holds for me and mine. I'm hoping to hit the hundred books read mark by the end of December this year since I'm at 94 novels read just for fun (not counting mine) at this point.
I'm anxious and a little apprehensive about what the future holds for my writing. At the same time, I'm silly with the joy of it. So keep a look out friends and neighbors, the best news is yet to come!
Till then,
KD
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