My weekly, Friday update....
Another week in September is gone, and now we're left with 3 weeks before the end of this quarter.
I'm in a weird place where I feel like a timeclock has appeared, ticking down the seconds, and one part of my brain is spinning its wheels trying to get my goals met while the other part of my brain is chillin' and sipping a mojito. It's a weird place to be in, and reading a lot of other people's posts on social media tells me lots of folks are in the same place.
Things have slowed down this week, which was a relief. I still have a full workload in my day job, and I'm still teaching one night a week. The teaching piece means I have grading and lecture prep to work on too. I also just came back from a trip to Paso Robles, which is a great wine region in California. We visited several wineries, many of whom were new to us. It was a nice trip without the kids to celebrate our wedding anniversary. Unfortunately, I was TERRIBLE about taking pictures, so I don't have anything to really share, which is a total bummer.
Last we left off, I had appointments scheduled with my Betas for feedback sessions. Those haven't happened yet, so I'm still waiting for that piece. So, that just leaves my goal for this week, which was to find an editor.
Goal: Find an Editor
Result: So, I did do some research on editors I think I want to work with, but I didn't select the one I'm sold on. I think what's keeping me from picking an editor is not knowing what feedback I'm going to get from Betas or how much work I'm going to have to do to the manuscript as a result of that feedback. Several editors are booking into November and December, which was disheartening to see because I was hoping to book someone for October. A booking that far out pushes the publication deadline out by 1-2 months too.
So, even though I did the research, I decided I might need to cool my heels a bit on this goal until I'm actually ready to deliver a manuscript.
Bonus Goal: Plotting Book 2
Result: I didn't want to just sit around and not do anything this week, so I jumped into
book 2! I shared last week that I wrote 5k words, which felt amazing, but then I hit a roadblock. Despite having a rough outline of how I wanted this story to go, I realized the plot wasn't detailed enough for me to jump in and really hit the gas on writing. So, I went back to the drawing board and dug into plotting. At this point, I've detailed my MC's inner journey for this book, and have a slightly more detailed ACT ONE ready to go.
The Plan: Looking into the next week, things look fairly slammed. I'm going on another trip next Thursday (Havasu here we come!) and will be gone for the rest of the weekend. So, that leaves me with 3-4 days to actually get some work done.
I have my first Feedback Session with one of my Betas on Monday night, so that may determine a little more of what the rest of the week will look like. But for now, I think my goal for this week will be to finish ironing out the plot for Book 2.
With that said, we are slowly coming to close in this Adventures in Editing series. Since the editing phase for Book 1 is almost over, things are going to be slowing down and wrapping up. I'll keep this series going until the editing phase is complete for Book 1, but updates might be short and crisp with little news.
However, NaNoWriMo is around the corner! So stay tuned for my NaNoWriMo Diaries series.
That's all for today! Have a great week and don't forget to keep turning the page!
Comments