500 Words Challenge

Daily Writing Check-in: January 14, 2016

/ Kristi / 3 Comments

Words/Time:  45 minutes working on another submission for “Pithea.”  I finally buckled down and started on my first query letter. It is nearly done; there’s just one small line that I can’t quite decide how to word. I think (fingers crossed) that after this, submitting to more places will be easier, because I will have created the different documents that I can alter as I need. Except the CV. I’m still unsure what to do about that, so if it comes up…I may spend another 3 days researching.

The Triangle releases tomorrow(!), which I’m a lot more nervous about than I thought I would be. The proof copy of the paperback came today too, almost a week sooner than projected. So things are moving really well on that front.

Daily Writing Check-in: January 12, 2016

/ Kristi / 2 Comments

Words/Time:  1.5 hours working on a synopsis for “Pithea.” I reworked the synopsis that I sent to the first publisher I submitted to. I found ways to trim some unimportant information and add in more of the meat of the story. Hopefully this new version of the synopsis will usable for multiple submissions before I decide to rewrite it again.

The writing group that I’m part of, which started as NaNoWriMo write-ins and then became a weekly group, met tonight. We’ve decided to make ourselves more official and created a name for our group. Then a Facebook group, so we can better communicate and draw more people in. Though we didn’t get much writing done in the time we met, we have ideas for how to make our weekly meetings more helpful and productive, by adding some structure to it. So that was a lot of fun, to be part of the beginning of something like that.

Daily Writing Check-in: January 11, 2016

/ Kristi / 2 Comments

Words/Time:  1.5 hours working on the cover letter for “Pithea.” That involved a lot of research again, but I think I’m finally on the right track. Hopefully all of this time I’m spending researching now will result in relative ease of writing this and future cover or query letters.

Of course, this isn’t the type of work I had in mind for my 500-word daily challenge, but I have limited time to work on anything writing-related, so I do what I can. And I forgot my plan to do a little writing practice at the outset of each evening’s writing time, but it’s a new plan, so some forgetfulness makes sense.

Daily Writing Check-in: January 9, 2016

/ Kristi / 3 Comments

Words/Time:  Untold amounts of time researching how to go about writing a query letter and cover letter (and what the difference between them is). And even more time later setting up “The Triangle” as an ebook. I’m waiting for the proof copy to arrive to proceed with the physical book publishing. The ebook will be released in advance of the physical book, and I’ll post more on that tomorrow.

Truth be told, I’ve been putting off this business of writing the query/cover letter(s) to submit to more than the two places I’ve done so far (neither of which required either of those). I’ve found such differing ideas of what to put into both of those letters that I’m worried when I actually sit down to do it, I’ll just freeze up, or end up with a jumbled mess. So it’s easier to just not do it yet. But I’m also waiting until I have more time, and the last few days, I’ve felt more compressed in my writing time.

Now that I’m in a waiting process for the publishing of “The Triangle,” which is what I’ve busied myself with while avoiding the further publishing pursuits of “Pithea,” it’s time to really focus on what I’ve been putting off. I just need to remember to approach it like I’ve approached every part of this process, from world building, to drafting, to revising, even to writing the synopsis only a few days ago–focus on one small step at a time, rather than the whole picture (which, let’s face it, is daunting).

Daily Writing Check-in: January 8, 2016

/ Kristi / 3 Comments

Words/Time:  297 words writing a character introduction, which I’ll be posting on my story blog later tonight. And 13 minutes updating some of the other posts there, to reflect revisions made since the time I posted all of the background information on that blog.

Also, I didn’t count it, but I spent some time today (and a lot before today) making the cover for my soon-to-be-published novelette, “The Triangle.” Below is the front. (Synopsis can be found here.)

1

Daily Writing Check-in: January 7, 2016

/ Kristi / 5 Comments

Words/Time:  483 words. Some of it was unrelated writing practice, and some of it was writing the following synopsis:

The Triangle
Tyler Bradley has a good life. He’s been married for seventeen years, has two daughters, makes a comfortable living, goes to church on Sunday, and really has no complaints. But one small, innocuous change reveals a tiny crack in his happy life. That crack widens and widens until one day Tyler looks around and can’t understand how he got where he is. And worse yet, the crack threatens to devour his entire family.

Hoping to repair the damage, Tyler begins to study the Bible he’s heard so much about, but never bothered delving into. During his searching, he meets someone who captures his attention, and then his heart. She manages to brighten his life, while also muddling his mind. While this new relationship deepens, his home life only gets worse; how will Tyler recapture the good life he once thought he had?

Daily Writing Check-in: January 6, 2016

/ Kristi / 3 Comments

Words/Time:  50 minutes revising “The Triangle.” I finished the draft and worked on the formatting a bit. Now I’m turning my attention to getting the synopsis and sample chapters of “Pithea” sent off to a few publishers to start with. After doing some more research, I started to question the way I’d written the synopsis. However, I don’t see that there would be an easy way to change it, so I’m just going with what I have for now. I don’t want to start stressing myself over whether it’s right or not this early in the process. I have plenty of time for that.

Daily Writing Check-in: January 5, 2016

/ Kristi / 2 Comments

Words/Time:  2 hours working on “The Triangle,” a story I wrote 4 years ago. It’s a 15,000 word story that is too long to be considered a short story, but too short to be a novella. It’s a novelette, which is apparently a bit of a dead zone when it comes  publishing. Rather than just sitting on it, since it’s a complete story, and one that I really like, I’m planning to self-publish it.

It’s been a while since I last read through it, and I’ve learned a lot from revising “Pithea,” so I’m going through it one time before formatting it for publishing. I got about halfway through it today. Because “The Triangle” is not related to “Pithea” at all, and it’s not novel-length, I’m having a hard time thinking about it as a serious project to share on here. But I’m going to write up a quick synopsis to post soon.

Daily Writing Check-in: January 4, 2016

/ Kristi / 2 Comments

Words/Time: 45 minutes working on the brief synopsis of “Pithea” that I’ll be sending to a publishing company soon. All of the people I sent it to have responded in some way, a few of them with some minor notes of things to change. I’ve polished up the synopsis, will sit on it for a day or two without looking at it (if I can help it) and then give it one more look later this week. After that, I think it’ll be time to release “Pithea” out into the world (or at least the first few chapters).

I’ve been working on crafting a decent one-sentence synopsis too, with the help of my husband, who was bugged by a lot of the wording I’d used in my first attempt. I suppose it’s normal to feel like one sentence can’t possibly encompass everything the story holds (especially when you’re looking at a 100k-word novel, and especially when a lot of what makes the story different and interesting is some sort of fantastical element that can’t possibly be boiled down). But this is what we came up with today, and we like it:
Two teenagers discover friends and enemies, triumph and tragedy, as they forge their own paths in a world alive with Power and Madness.