Awards!

So I'm very late on blogging about these. Several weeks ago, my wonderful and lovely friend Veronica Bartles nominated me for the One Lovely Blog award.

Then a little over two weeks after that, my wonderful and lovely friend Delia Moran nominated me for the Versatile Blogger award.

So I'm lovely and versatile! Yay! And since both awards instructed me to reveal 7 interesting things about myself, I've decided to kind of cheat by combining them. Because I don't know that I can think of 14 interesting things on such short notice. Granted, short here means several weeks, but whatever. Here goes! Here are 7 completely random facts about me.

1. I love to bake. Especially pies. Naturally, I enjoy eating them myself. But even more than that, I enjoy giving them to other people. This is maybe a tad narcissistic of me, because my favorite part of baking is when other people tell me that it's the best pie they've ever eaten. Or that I should quit my job and open a bakery. This was especially exciting for me when I baked a mixed berry pie for Christmas with my father's extended family two years ago. Nothing from my childhood led them to believe I would have any skill at baking, and they were shocked when they tasted it. When they showed up the next year, every single one of them asked if I brought a pie.  :)

2. I have a very high tolerance for pain. My mother has informed me that I used to get these massive double ear infections when I was a young child, and I wouldn't say a word about them. Then all of a sudden the pain would get so bad that I would burst into tears or, on occasion, faint. Apparently, the doctor used to give her looks, thinking she was a terrible mother. (Sorry mom!) I've also been told that when I broke my arm (I was six), my mom noticed me frowning about five hours later and asked what was wrong. My response was, "My arm kinda hurts." And she took that to mean, "My arm is majorly broken. We need to go to the emergency room immediately." She was correct.  

3. I don't like the vast majority of modern music. If you look at the CDs (yes, I still have CDs...I don't even like modern ways of listening to music!) in my car, I would venture to guess that 85% of them are Broadway/musical movie soundtracks, 10% of them are Disney, 4% of them are music from the 60s, 70s, 80s, or 90s, and that final 1% is music from this millennium.

4. I spent a large part of my childhood on a farm. This farm, to be specific. My grandparents lived there (my grandfather is a farmer) until I was 6 or so, and then built a beautiful home on the property behind it. Those two farms are my favorite places in the world. And it's because of my time there that no one in my father's family believed I could bake. I was always outside, climbing trees, wading through creeks, and just basically getting into trouble. (By that I mean disappearing for hours and making everyone worry, or getting things like poison ivy, Lyme disease, or rocky mountain spotted fever.) My sister was always the one who helped my grandmother in the kitchen/house. 

5. For my 9th birthday, I desperately wanted a Felicity American Girl Doll. Instead, I ended up with one of those dolls who you get to look like you. Only I guess they didn't have curly hair as an option back then, because mine had straight hair. And I was upset about it for about 15 years. I don't mean to say that I literally thought about this doll for 15 years. But more like whenever I thought about American Girl Dolls (because I saw a store or a catalog, etc.), my resentment simmered. So then, 15 years later, I asked my mom to give me Felicity for Christmas. So yes, as a 24 year old, I asked my mommy to buy me a doll. And I've never regretted it.

6. One of my favorite activities is geocaching. If you don't know what this is, the tagline is that I use multi-billion dollar government satellites to find tupperware in the woods. Basically, it's like a treasure hunt. People hide things all over the world (there's also a cache on the International Space Station!), and post the coordinates online here. The "treasure" isn't usually anything special. Little plastic toys and the like. And sometimes, the cache is so small that no treasure will fit. I've found caches the size of a pencil eraser.

7. Since this is the last one, I'm going to give the most random fact I can think of. I have a great and resounding fear of static cling. Seriously. I carry around a dryer sheet in a ziplock bag everywhere I go. Then if my shirt gets all clingy with static, I wipe the dryer sheet around the inside of the shirt for a few seconds, and all is well in the world. My husband once had to look in my purse for something and saw my dryer sheet, and decided then and there that I was crazy. But I use it often enough that it's worth it to me. Though maybe taking it with me when I climbed a Mayan ruin was overkill.  ;)

Bucket List

Okay, so I know my last post was a long time ago. Like, almost a month ago. Oops.

But I really did have good reason to be away! I went on a cruise, everyone! An incredibly awesome cruise to the Western Caribbean. My darling husband and I chose this cruise specifically because it stopped in Cozumel, Mexico, and an available excursion there was to visit the Coba Mayan ruins. It's a frickin 4,000+ year old Mayan pyramid, guys. And I didn't just get to see it. I got to climb it.

The coolest thing I've ever seen.

 

Here I am partway up.

I made it to the top!!! Woohoo!!!!!!

Still at the top, with the hubby. And yes, I wore my 2012 NaNoWriMo Winner t-shirt. Because it's my favorite shirt, so I wore to the coolest place I've ever been.

So yeah. That's what I've been up to. And I would've posted this shortly after returning, but I woke up sick the morning we left the ship. The flu. Blech. I missed almost another whole week of work, after taking a week of vacation. Not very fun. But totally worth it. I'd be willing to get the flu a dozen times if that's what it took to get me to that pyramid. We're talking bucket list stuff here, guys. Cross that one right off.

Editing, Editing, and More Editing

Yeah, I'm in that stage of the whole writing process. I've read through my book (as a whole) several times. I've made every change I can think of at this stage of the game. I fixed typos, took care of inconsistencies, etc. The little things.

Now it's with my critique partners, two of whom have already finished reading. Their feedback so far has me all manner of excited. And all manner of ready for the next big round of revisions. Because I'm pretty good at taking care of the little things by myself, though I'm always willing to accept any help or suggestions on that front. Big picture stuff, on the other hand? Well, if I thought my pace was lagging or a character didn't have enough depth, etc., I wouldn't have written things the way I had. I think it's one of those things where I'm just too close to the project (it is, after all, my baby) to see it clearly. And I've already gotten a lot of big picture feedback from one CP that was incredibly helpful.

At this point, I'm holding off on revisions until I hear from the other two. I want to go through all of the notes and comments that I get, make a game plan, and then kick the crap out of my revisions. That's the way I like to work. 

So what am I doing in the meantime? Well, I (kind of) started plotting a new book. I say kind of because I only have two pages of notes, but I think this one will be fun to write. I need to do quite a lot of plotting, world building, and character development before I get to that point, though. I'm also still working on the little things. For example, one thing I'm notoriously bad with is using crutch words. Using them without any clue that I'm doing it. In fact, I had no idea whatsoever until I made a word cloud of Diamond Tears.

Mercutio and Robin make sense, because they are two of the three main characters. (The third is Emma, who is on there, but very small, as she is the 1st person narrator. So it makes sense that her name wouldn't come up outside of occasional dialogue.) But just? Just is one of the two most common words in the book? And then back? Really? After I made this word cloud, one of my CPs read the book and pointed out that just was a crutch word, used to distraction.

So when I sat down to write Luminary, it was with this knowledge in mind. I would use just sparingly. All would be well. Imagine my surprise when I made a word cloud of the first twelve chapters, and just was the largest word. Seriously guys. I have no idea I'm doing it. So I made sure I was extra careful through the rest of the draft. Here's the word cloud I made after I finished that first draft:

Just doesn't look too bad, does it? (Look a little over halfway up, on the far left.) But it was still way too big. And look at back! The biggest word on there! I went into my Word doc and made good use of Find to, as my CP Delia said, search and destroy. Here's where the draft is right now:

I know you can't tell because some of those words are pretty small, but just isn't even on there! Hurray! Back is still pretty big, but it's getting smaller. Maybe another few rounds of editing will get it down to one of the tiniest words. Or off the word cloud altogether. At least I know what I have to do. 

If you're a writer, do you have any helpful tools like this to help with your editing? Do you do a lot of self editing, or do you rely on others (critique partners, freelance editors, etc.)? I'd love to hear about your process!

**Someone on Twitter asked me how I make these word clouds, so I figured I should share. I use Wordle.**

Good Things to Come

Guys, I'm really looking forward to 2013. I just have this feeling. It's going to be an epic year. Maybe not in the way I'm hoping, but epic nonetheless. 

Speaking of epic years, 2012 wasn't so bad, either. A lot of firsts and big events for me. Maybe these won't seem so big to the rest of you, but for me, they were huge. And I think things will only get better from here. 

So here are the highlights of my 2012 and, at the end, I'll let you know what I'm most looking forward to in the coming year.

January

~I almost died in a skiing accident. (Actually, I was more or less unharmed, but I tried my first black diamond, and it didn't go very well. Seriously. The people on the lift going over that slope were pulling out their cell phones to call 911 because they actually thought I was dead (or at least very unconscious). Extra fun since this was on my birthday.) I realize this has very little to do with anything, but for me, it was pretty notable.  :P

February

~I finished writing/editing Diamond Tears after 1 year, 3 months, and 9 days (my fastest novel-writing time ever at that point). 

~I started querying Diamond Tears! I only sent 17 queries for my previous book (Hidden Stars), and I was determined to put more effort in this time. The first few months of querying were the most fun I'd had in a long time. Also, I didn't really sleep the whole time. 

~I started this blog! Fun!

~I came up with the idea for Luminary. It took months before I had a firm enough grasp of what I wanted to do that I could actually start writing it, but the very beginnings of the idea started here.  

March

~I GOT MY FIRST AGENT REQUEST! Not just for Diamond Tears. I'm talking ever. I think other writers would agree that while all requests are heart stopping and amazing, there's nothing quite like your first.  ;)

~I decided that I had to get over my prejudices toward (i.e. hatred of) Twitter. This is one of the better decisions I made this year. 

April

~I sent queries and entered contests. Honestly, I'm not sure there's much more I did this month (other than go to work). 

May

~I got my first CP! This was terribly exciting for me. Especially after she sent back a crit of some of my stuff, and I realized that she's amazing. 

~I took a shot at writing a YA Contemporary, Dr. Pepper Kisses and Vodka Smiles. I got frustrated with this project almost immediately. 

~Then I got my second CP! We'd been talking to each other on Twitter for months and I thought she was awesome, so when she posted a Help Wanted ad on her blog, I very quickly replied.

June

~I tried to participate in Camp NaNoWriMo. I epically failed. Around the time I gave up, I also gave up on Dr. Pepper Kisses altogether. Turns out I'm not meant to write contemporary stuff, whether the people who I let read my first couple of chapters agree or not. Writing for me is supposed to be an amazingly fun and exciting and fulfilling thing. Not an overwhelmingly frustrating thing. Also, I like magic. 

~I discovered Doctor Who! I realize this is probably about as notable to you as the skiing incident, but for me, this was huge. Such greatness this was. I will love the Tenth Doctor forever. And ever. And ever. *contented sigh*

July

~I finally sorted out enough of the details about Luminary, and got a good enough handle on the voice, that I could start writing. Sort of. I wrote about a page and a half (much of which I later deleted), and didn't touch it again for weeks and weeks.

August

~I celebrated my one year wedding anniversary!

~As for writing? Er...

September

~Umm...

October

~I got over my summer funk and stopped wasting away.

~Luminary finally got going for real. I couldn't seem to stop writing. 

~On Halloween, some Twitter friends and my husband railroaded me into signing up for NaNoWriMo. I ended this month with great feelings of trepidation considering how poorly Camp NaNo went in June.

November

~NaNo! It was a whirlwind month of awesome, guys. 50,000 words in 25 days. Hells to the yes. 

~I started my new work schedule of only 4 days a week, making Fridays my dedicated writing (editing/plotting/etc.) day each week. Fridays are pretty much my favorite day now.

December

~I finished Luminary. Not counting that page and a half in July, I wrote the whole thing in 2 months and 26 days. I felt amazing. I felt like a real writer. I haven't gotten over that initial high yet. 

~I wore my NaNoWriMo Winner t-shirt to my family's big Christmas get-together in Maryland. Because I'm proud. And a couple of them actually noticed and asked what it meant. And when I told them, they were proud of me. That's better than any present.

~I got some amazing early critiques of Luminary and did my first two rounds of edits. Excited, I sent the whole book off to my CPs. 

So that's my year in a nutshell. I found the writer community on Twitter (including my CPs!), started my blog, finished one book and wrote another, and got my first round of agent requests. Not too shabby, huh? So how about next year? I've listed my goals below. Will I meet them? I have absolutely no clue. But I know I'm sure as hell going to try.    

2013

~Use CP critiques to edit Luminary until it shines. 

~Query the living hell out of Luminary (and enter contests as appropriate). 

~Find the very most perfect agent ever, who is as in love with Luminary as I am.

~Get a book deal. (Bonus: have it be a three book deal with enough of an advance that I can become a full time writer. Wouldn't that be nice? But I'd be happy with any book deal and any size advance. The end game for me is getting my book out there. Anything else is icing on the cake.)  

~In the middle of all that, write another book. (Or two? Who knows.)  

How about you? How was your 2012? Did you meet any big goals or pass any personal milestones? What are you most looking forward to in 2013? What are your big plans?
 
Did you actually make it through this whole, incredibly long post and read all the way to this part?    

The Next Big Thing

You guys, this is huge. Someone actually tagged me in one of those fancy pants blog hop, Q&A things. And not just any someone. It was my totally fantabulous CP Delia Moran (check out her blog or follow her on Twitter (if Twitter is your thing), because she rocks). It's like I've made it at last! Or, you know, something like that. Either way, yay! I just finished the first draft of Luminary last night (insert insane amount of screaming and my happy dance here), so let's get started. 

What is the working title of your book?

 Luminary.

Where did the idea come from for your book?

Back in the spring, I was lamenting to my husband that I had no idea what to write about. So he took me to Barnes & Noble and told me to walk around, to see if anything gave my imagination a jump start. At the time, I remember thinking this was a very dumb idea and a complete waste of my time. But I went, because either way I got to hang out in Barnes & Noble. And you know what? It actually worked. There was a big Hunger Games display, and I started flipping through some sort of companion book to the movie. When I got to a picture of the people in the Capitol, all with their crazy clothes/hair/makeup, I decided I wanted to do something with color. And, since I write fantasy, something with magic. Next logical step was to combine the two.   

What genre does your book fall under?

Young Adult Fantasy.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

I have absolutely no idea. I only pictured someone else as I was writing one character in this book. And it wasn't even a real person. It was Darien/Tuxedo Mask in Sailor Moon. So this is what I picture when I think of Remi (except, you know, real), who is one of two potential love interests:

What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

Knowing the king executes anyone who can see the colors of magic, seventeen-year-old Caya Filar is content with a life lived in grayscale. If only the stone in her engagement ring had stayed gray. 

Okay, I cheated. That's two sentences. But you've seen the lengths of my blog posts. And if you had any idea how often I started them with something like, "This will just be a short post," and then had to go delete that when I was finished, you'd be proud of me for putting it so succinctly. 

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I've done an awful lot of research into the whole self-published vs. agency thing, and I've decided that self-pubbing is not for me. I have a great deal of respect for the people who are able to take that path and achieve success, because I don't think I have what it takes to market myself in that way. I've also read a number of self-published books that I quite enjoyed, so I'm glad those people decided to do that. But I have my heart set on getting an agent/following a more traditional publishing path. I hope to start querying Luminary at some point early next year (maybe February?).

How long did it take for you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

Well, I wrote the first page and a half in about 20 minutes back in mid-July, and then didn't look at this project again for a couple of months. So excluding those 20 minutes, it took me 2 months and 26 days from the time I started seriously drafting to the time I finished the draft (last night). To put that in perspective, the fastest I'd ever written a book before was 1 year, 3 months, and 9 days. I shaved over a year off my personal best, guys. And I couldn't be happier with the result. 

What other books would you compare this to within your genre?

I need to put some more thought into comp titles before I can answer this question. 

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Isn't this kind of the same question as the second one (Where did the idea come from for your book?)? Because that was the inspiration.

What else about your book might pique a reader's interest?  

The thing I really think is going to interest people is the magic system I've created. Just to reiterate, color is magic, and anyone who can't use magic sees in grayscale. Since we talked about actors for a movie version, just imagine how visually cool that would be as a movie. Starting out in black and white, all Wizard of Oz, and then colors slowly start appearing. Until everything is color. And then when my characters use magic, they essentially pull the color away from the object in which it's gathered (magical energy likes to gather/pool). And if you use up all the magic in an object, it goes back to gray. It has to build up its magical stores again. I hope it's not narcissistic of me to say I think that's really freaking cool. 

Other than that? I write character-driven books. I always have. To me, caring about the characters is by far the most important part. (I went on about that at length here.) I absolutely love my main character, Caya. I think she's fabulous and smart, and I hope others will agree. Also, I'm in love with both Remi (think Tuxedo Mask) and Brye. I won't tell you which one, but I will tell you that falling for one of them was a mistake. He was just kind of supposed to be there. But I accidentally made him wonderful. I believe I've created several other characters (ranging from utterly lovable to the "I really want to punch that guy in the face" types) that will jump off the page. Above all else, I hope that my book will make people feel. What they feel is up to them. As long as they're feeling it.  

Okay, so now I'm supposed to tag someone else to do this. I would like to tag Veronica Bartles, who wrote a YA contemporary that I absolutely couldn't put down, and is hard at work on another one I absolutely can't wait to read. Veronica, I'm pretty sure you haven't done this already, but let me know if you have and I'll rescind the tag.  ;)

SipSwap

So have you guys noticed that little #SipSwap button on the left? For those of you who have no idea what that means, let me explain. The very awesome Jessica Love and Kelsey Macke decided that writers survive on caffeine. And what do you need to drink your coffee or tea? Mugs. Lots of cute mugs. So when I signed up for SipSwap, I was randomly assigned to someone (another writer), who would choose a mug for me based off what she knew about me (from Twitter, my blog, etc.). Likewise, someone else would be assigned to me and I would do the same. Sounds fun, right?

Now, I don't actually drink caffeine. I used to. Excessively, in fact. And it's been a long, hard road getting to this point, I can tell you. But caffeine gives me terrible headaches. So I can either a) be in pain all the time, b) take way more Advil than is strictly healthy, or c) just learn to wake up/stay up without it. After years of various combinations of a) and b), I finally transitioned firmly into c). And somehow turned from a night owl to one of those annoying morning people who smiles all the time. Who knew that was possible?

Okay, I've gotten distracted. Whether or not I'll use my new mug to caffeinate myself is not the point. The point is that I LOVE mugs. If you look in the cabinet in my kitchen where glasses/cups/mugs are stored, you will see a small collection of real glasses for my husband and guests, and a shelf and a half of my mugs. I drink everything out of them. So the idea of getting a new one in the mail, perhaps making a new friend in the process? AWESOME. Just as much fun was choosing the mug for the person I was assigned. I actually got one of the organizers, Jessica Love, and she had lots of adorable pictures of her dog on her blog. So I pulled the ones I thought were the cutest and put them on a mug for her (you can read her post about it here).

The person who drew me was Keri Gilles, and the mug she sent me was PERFECT. Like, seriously guys. I love every single thing about it. So without further ado, here it is!

I have absolutely no idea why the picture is sideways. It's not sideways on my phone (where I took it), or on my computer. But oh well. You can still see how wonderful it is. I immediately sent her a tweet when I got it, telling her how much I loved it and asking how she knew? Well, back when I first got my business cards, I posted a picture of them on Twitter. If you take a gander, you will see that they have adorable pictures of owls on them. From this, she guessed (correctly!) that owls are my favorite animal. So now I have the most adorable owl mug imaginable, in bright, happy colors (my favorite!) and covered in flowers! I LOVE IT!!!

I really hope SipSwap becomes an annual thing, because I will definitely participate again if it does.

NaNoWriMo: Final Thoughts

Okay, so last night's post came to you from a state of exhausted euphoria. For one thing, I was up way past my bedtime (I'm an early riser, and so I go to bed pretty early, too). For another, I'd been writing for about 16 straight hours. As much as I love writing (it's an every-fiber-of-my-being kind of love) it's hard work. I have to put all of myself into my writing (how else would it be any good?), and putting all of yourself into anything is exhausting. Especially since I've been doing it all month.

So, with a little more reserve than I used yesterday, I am happy to say that I am officially a NaNoWriMo 2012 winner! I verified the word count late last night, was given a choice of winner badges to add to my blog (it really is beautiful, isn't it?), received a lovely certificate that is already hanging over my desk at work, and was officially labeled a winner on the NaNoWriMo site:

It's a little blurry, but that pink box to the left of my picture says WINNER!

You see how it made a big spike there right at the end? I was on track to finish right on time, but the words pretty much exploded out of my fingertips yesterday. Then, when I was starting to get tired and thinking of calling it a night, I tweeted my word count. And people tweeted back, cheering me on. And I got a little rush of energy and kept right on writing. Then I hit another big word count landmark and tweeted that one. And got more tweets cheering me on. GO GO GO!!! So I went. Their encouragement made me eager to push myself that much harder. To make it happen five whole days ahead of schedule. So it was that I hit my 50,000 word NaNoWriMo goal on day 25. And immediately ordered my winner t-shirt because I want people to know. Granted, I doubt anyone but a fellow writer will even look twice at it, but it'll make me happy every time I put it on.

So here are some arbitrary NaNoWriMo stats. Just because I think stats are fun, so why not?

• Number of days it took to finish: 25
• Most words in a single day: 8,951 (and that's not just most in a NaNo day; that's most ever)
• Least words in a single day: 0
• Number of days I didn't write a single word: 9/25
• Number of days where I wrote at least the target average of 1,667 words: 9/25
• Longest stretch of consecutive days where I didn't write a single word: 4
• Number of novels I read when I should've been writing: 3 (oops)
• Likelihood that my longest stretch of consecutive days was a direct result of reading 3 novels: 100%

Now I just need to finish the book. But since I'm just getting started with the big, climactic part at the end, I think that'll happen sooner rather than later.