Rose State Writing Short Course

I have so much to say on here! I can't believe I haven't updated in so long. Well, so you are aware, the title of Deception is no longer attached to my current project. I'm going back to calling it "Lili's Story" at least for the purposes of this blog. Any of you who are friends with my on my writing Facebook page know the true new title.

I spent last weekend in Midwest City at the Rose State College Writing Short Course. It was my first time at a Writer's Conference and can I just say...

Wow.

I have never felt so inspired in my life. I didn't send anything in ahead of time for any of the contests, which they passed out awards for on Friday, but I did turn in my First Page for an anonymous panel to read aloud and judge. Out of over one hundred entries, they picked my first page of Lili's Story for Third Place. 

This happened less than an hour after my very first one-on-one pitch session with an agent. After getting to know the agents a bit, I knew I had made the right decision in the one I chose to pitch to. She was excited about Lili's Story and asked me query her right away when it was ready. I couldn't believe it.

Overall, the weekend was a massive success. I was given a one month deadline to query the agent in question with a finished manuscript so my life during the month of October will be one thing and one thing only:

Writing.

To give you guys another little update, as of the finished outline today, Lili's Story will have twenty chapters. Fourteen and a half of these chapters have been written at a total of 40,000+ words.

That... is a little staggering to me. Still. And I figured up that number in the wee hours of the morning yesterday. Whoa.

I've got to get writing. Adios, Bloggers!

Amazing Day

Yesterday I was supposed to spend the day with a close friend but at the last minute the plans were cancelled. Given that I had gone to a concert Friday night and didn't get any writing done, a part of me was almost excited to spend the day in front of my computer. It turned out to be the most productive day I've had so far.

Just over 4,400 words written yesterday before I went to bed at 2am! It felt amazing. I finished chapter 2 and nearly all of chapter 3, leaving myself very little to finish it off today. This evening I decided to spend some time editing. After changing from third person to first person midway through chapter 2, I left myself a lot of work to do editing chapter 1 to switch it over. But it's done now and I've been working slowly on chapter 2. It's changed over to first person now but it's still got issues. I was looking too far ahead, excited for my two main characters to meet for the first time, and so there are a few gaps in chapter 2 I'm having to patch. It's led me to a new realization...

Writing is fun. It's work, but it's fun work. Editing, not so much. It's just work.

And with that, I'm off to spend the rest of my night in the messy world of editing.