The End of Revisions (AKA Done Part Deus)
That squealing sound you hear? That’s me, done with my revisions.
*pause for the accompanying clapping, whooping, and catcalling*
Thank you everyone. I couldn’t be happier. Well, I might have been happier if it turned out to be a little longer. I’m just shy of 90K, which was my target, but it was a good push. I’m not very wordy, a source of difficulty for the literarily inclined.
Now, I know I did a list of things I was going to do after I finished my first draft, so, well, I’m going to revisit that theme.
Things I’m going to do now that I’ve finished revisions (until someone tells me some part of it needs adjustment and I scurry back to it with the accompanying feelings of self-doubt and growing hatred towards this stupid MS) *pause while I catch a breath*
1) Avoid Microsoft Word – That’s right folks. For the next week at least, perhaps two, and maybe even until the calendars flip to 2009, I would like to avoid Microsoft Word for major things. Adjusting query letters, fine. Cutting and pasting at the request of agents/publishers, fine. But as a whole, I want to spend less time giving myself computer eye strain and more time with my family. I also figure any plotting/idea making, can be done in my journal wherever I am and requires limited face time with my laptop.
2) Reading – I haven’t read a historical in nearly a year, save for JQ’s two books. I think now that I’m done with mine (for the most part) I might be able to catch up on those.
3) Querying – yes yes, I’m not planning to go on a writing hiatus. Query wide, query far.
4) Housework – I have to scrub my carpets. I’ve been putting it off.
5) Entertaining – I love this time of the year and I love having people at my house. It’s festive, it’s fun. I love baking, I love visiting. I intend to splurge on all of the above.
6) Reintroducing myself to my husband – I’m not certain he recognizes me anymore. My first indication: he seemed to be searching my shirt yesterday for a nametag, trying to gage whether I was on the premises legally. It’s a sad state of affairs.
7) Play with trains/cars/etc – That’s the stuff my kid is digging now. I live to please him. He got these new cars for his birthday that you shake and the things go for like 20 feet. Amazing the things they come up with. Perhaps we’ll even watch us some Little Einsteins.
8. Seeing Twilight at least once. (Ok, I’m not as obsessed as our dearest Sin but I do want to see it).
9) Oh, and I have to send my entry into the Golden Heart.
So, how about you? What do you do in your down time? Any fabulous bake goods you just must share? Read anything I just have to pick up? Ever pondered why children’s toys make such god awful annoying music? Who does the marketing on that crap?
Books by the Crew
51 comments:
Ah, downtime. I just queried an agent, sent out a submission to Samhain, entered the Gotcha! Contest, the Happily Ever After Contest, and am polishing for the Golden Heart... So, yeah, downtime sounds so good.
Once the Golden Heart is sent away, I'm going into my garden. December is about repairing the fence so I can introduce a new dog into the family come January. Walk everyday to make my cardiologist happy. And because I want to live long and prosper. Take up bicycling on the beach at low tide...
And work on simply writing for joy, no more contests for a while!
And big congrats, Marnee! I raise me rum mug to ye!
Congratulations on completing your revisions, Marnee, and Happy Reclaiming My Life Day/Week/Month!
Historicals you have to read? Well, certainly EJ's When the Duke Returns. It's lovely! Then there's Elizabeth Hoyt's To Seduce a Sinner and Julie Ann Long's Like No Other Lover--both not-to-be-missed reads. A year, you say? You haven't read Lisa Kleypas's Seduce Me at Sunrise or Laura Lee Guhrke's Secret Desires of a Gentleman or the anthology It Happened One Night? What great reading you have ahead of you!
And about those irritating toys . . . Just be sure they have an off button. I once buried grand #2's beloved elephant in the trash because that toy lacked an off button. It was a choice between the elephant and my sanity. I chose sanity, but I may have been too late. :)
There is no downtime. I finished the last book August 3 and dove right into this one the same day...which is at 83,470...which means almost done! Yay! The last 6500 words will probably take me until New Year's Eve to finish though, LOL. Instead of writing this weekend I have to clean the pit so the crowd can come to my house for turkey.
I gave my 14 month old granddaughter an Elmo chair for her birthday. When you come near it, it starts to giggle. The first thing my daughter did was find the off switch. :)
The sounds of kids toys is to test the limit of our sanity.
lol, Maggie! I would have found the off switch too!
Remember the historical I told you to read too! Meredith Duran's The Duke of Shadows. :)
Ah... the golden heart... my entry went in the mail yesterday :)
I'm in the thick of another book right now... so no downtime... though I need to find some to do research.
YAY, Marn for finishing edits.
Yay Marn!!! Enjoy the downtime. Enjoy your family. Enjoy the holidays!!
Tiff - I won't forget the book. And I do need to get my GH entry off soon. Maybe I'll work on that this weekend....
Jk - Thanks! Enjoy your holidays too!!
2nd - A new doggie! How much fun! Alas, our family will undoubtedly remain dogless. At least until I manage to get past toilet training any 2 legged children. I can only manage one phase of potty training at a time.
Janga - thank you for the lovely recommends. I have missed every single one of those books. It was impossible to read historicals and still feel good about myself. LOL! So, I'll dig into this after the holidays! Thanks!
Maggie - Go you with the newest book! :) I do wonder how long my hiatus will really last. I have intentions of just waiting until I fall in love with my next idea so we'll see how long that takes. :) I am getting ready for turkey day too. I get the whole fam here too.
Good for you Marnee!
Enjoy the family, and reading again.
I must look into the shaking cars. Chad might be too old for them, but I have a nephew who is really into cars and trucks. I love boy's toys...and boy toys. *g*
I highly recommend reading Seduce me at Sunrise by Lisa Kleypas. It's the second book in the Hathaway series. If you haven't read the first book it's called Mine Until Midnight. Seduce Me at Sunrise is some of her best work. Her writing talent amazes me.
Lis - Hi!! :) My kiddo loves loves the shaking car. They make some annoying sounds, but when I weigh the annoying noise quotient against the entertainment value they win out in the end. Lil Pirate will keep himself busy for long minutes. And that's a lot for a two year old.
Way to go Marnee! Awesome list. Sounds like you've got plenty to keep you busy til the new year! Enjoy it all - especially the getting to know the hubby again. That could be very fun.
I second all of Janga's recs and I'd throw in the first installment of Lorraine Heath's new series, In Bed with the Devil. Book #2 (Between the Devil and Desire) comes out at the end of December and I really enjoyed IBWTD. I'm not sure if you're an Anne Gracie fan but the two in her latest series are awesome as well...The Stolen Princess and His Captive Lady.
As for the kiddies toys, we always removed the batteries shortly after they received them. My kids must think we always bought crap cause the noisemakers on them never seemed to last! The hiding it never worked for me I always got busted - "What's my tape player doing on the top shelf in your closet, Mommy? I thought you said you couldn't find it?"
Congratulations, Marn!!! You always make the rest of us look good! :)
Down time. I watch Harry Potter movies...or POTC. (Actually I use POTC as a writing background noise. I watch Harry Potter for the entertainment value.) I'm glad it's nearly Christmas again: I love reading the HP books at Christmas time, since that features pretty well in the books. (I think of them as "Christmas books.")
Noise makers. I don't know, but I used to threaten to buy the noisiest damned toys for my nieces at Christmas. Just because. OH, I bought my niece Andrea a Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer that sang the theme song(very adorable), but she played it all the time. Marsha hated me. *LOL*
I make chocolate pudding cookies but since my cooking is usually really bad people are skeptical about touching them. I swear they are really good. But addictive, so I don't make them but once a year. LOL
WOO!!! YAY!! And it's really great too so you have everything to be excited and proud about babe.
I don't know what downtime is. I think I've read Seduce Me at Sunrise in the past couple of months. Before that was Breaking Dawn. If I don't read, I can write. If I want to write, I need to give up something like sleep.
And in 13 hours I will be seeing Twilight! *squealing*
Sorry, running very late today. Luckily, I got to squeal about this last night. :)
SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!
Huzzah! for you Marn!!! We're so proud of you. You definitely deserve some down time. As the Captain said, you do make us look good. Or, you make the rest of us look bad. I'm not sure which. LOL!
I'm sure it's no shock that I have no recipes to share and that I've never entertained for the holidays. BUT, I am considering cooking up a small spread this year. If you see black smoke rising from the mid-atlantic region, you'll know it's coming from my place. ;)
Congratulations Marnee! And good luck with the Golden Heart.
Down Time? Down Time? I’m not really sure what that term means. Unless your talking about the Time I spend Down stairs in the office, messin’ around on the computer?
And I think that those Evil Toys are designed by diabolical Generation X-ers , I call them Generation Xboxers , who have an ax to grind. Yah. I can see them now in the test labs… “Dude. You gotta make their ears Bleed. Torture them. I’m tellin’ you. Global Warming. Reality TV. Floods. Famine. Overpopulation. What kind of Person would bring Another Person into this world? We gotta stop them… The universe is depending on Us. (Xer pauses foe Dramatic effect… plus he had to pull up his baggie pants) Dude we gotta Make that kiddy toy music sound Really Obnoxious. We gotta make it So Bad those parents wanna poke out their ear drums… so bad they’ll never wanna have another kid, so bad they wanna have their tubes cut… so bad they’ll wanna…
Rip off their balls!
Dude you’re disgusting.
I know. That’s why I got hired.
Oh mannnn, those wanna-be-parents are …
Busted! But Dude, like won’t we lose our market share?
Naaa, If IT annoys their parents then yah Know The kids will love it.
And so it is… another Humongous Diabolically Successful marketing plan is born. The sad thing is my story probably isn’t to far from the truth.
Irish - that's awesome. "Mommy... why are you hiding my toys?" LOL!! I haven't read Anne Gracie yet, but I've heard really good things.
I can definitely give her a shot.
Hellion - So.... you're that relative that buys the obnoxious toys. I have a couple of those. Your time will come, that's all I have to say. Retaliation can be severe. :) And I'll probably be reading HP again this Christmas too. Sigh....
Congratulations, Marnee.
Have fun being reaquainted with the hubby.
Sin - thank you again for reading. :) I am so glad you liked it. And I want this recipe for chocolate pudding cookies. that sounds pretty stinking awesome.
Julie - LMAO! If we knew exactly how close to the truth your scenerio is, we probably would want to gouge our eyes out (or our eardrums, either one). LOL!!!
IG - that's my favorite part of the list above.... probably his too... lol!
Ter - Thank you thank you! I'm so excited to be done. I know it won't be long before one of you finish up something new too and then I'll be cheering along for you all. :)
And I love holiday cooking. Lemme know if you need suggestions. I make a really awesome apple pie....
Hm, there is no recipe for the pudding cookies. I'm one of those people who can't follow directions. I make chocolate chip cookies from scratch and then you add 2 tablespoons of cocoa and a box of the cook kind of pudding (if you are just making a regular batch of cookies).
You want to add some milk to the mixture to give the pudding a bit of fluffiness. Instead of chocolate chips I use Andies candies or M&M's. I cook them for about 11 minutes at 350. They need to still be a bit doughy when you take them out.
I make awesome peach crisp, Marn! I just learned it too. I love it. I could eat it every day of the week but my waistband is reflecting that in the worst way. LOL
What makes your apple good? I can't get my apples the right way in pie.
I can't believe Sin even pants when she cooks. LOL!
I didn't even think of making a pie. Though those were my favorite things to help my grandmother with because she'd let me eat the extra dough from the crust. Hmmmm....it's no wonder I was always a chubby child. LOL!
So, how long would this pie baking ordeal take? Could I do it a couple of days early and it still be good?
Isn't this a call for rum? Marn, needs to relax. She needs to bask. She needs Calgon.
Congratulations, Marnee!!!!!!! Big super squeeeee.
I only queried one agent so far. No, she wasn't on my top 5, or even my top 10. No where near the top 20. Why? Well, I wanted to see if she'd answer. Or better yet to see if I had some kind of stamp on my head that says, ignore me, or something stupid like that. Anyway, got a form rejection from her. Which is cool, since if she requested I wouldn't have sent anyway, at least I don't think I would have. Now, I just need to send my query out to a few more and see if they are all rejections too. If that is the case, then I'll tweak the query.
Good luck. Of course, if Deb likes what she sees...
Renee
Oh, the noisy toys? I don't want to go there. When our kids were little, sil and I would compete to see who could buy the most obnoxious, noisiest toys for each others kids. Then one year, when my oldest was too old for noisy toys, she bought her beads. That was like ten years ago and I'm still finding the suckers all over the place.
Renee
I forgot to mention the toy thing. I've been somewhat lucky in that area. But I always seek out the off switch and know how to take out the batteries. Thankfully, I think little girl toys are less likely to be as noisy as the boy stuff. Another reason I'm so thankful to have a girl. LOL!
Oh, Renee, I hate anything like that. Did you ever have to deal with that Polly Pocket stuff? They purposely made the clothes and accessories for those things as small as possible. Hello! Are they stupid?! I refused to allow those in my house.
Yeah, Polly Pockets were the worse. Let me tell you, one year the youngest had everything made by Polly. lol
Renee
Why am I not surprised that Sin has no recipe for cookies? Anarchy Now Chocolate Pudding Cookies, they should be called.
I love peach crisp, Sin.... Mmm.... And Apple Crisp too.... Oh, and I get my apples good by loading them up with brown sugar. Yummmm.....
Ter - it's prepackaged pie crusts all the way for me. I can't do all that rolling and shaping. No patience. And if the packaged ones are good enough for Paula Dean, they're good enough for me. LOL!! I make my pies the night before, they seem fine to me.
Renee - "Calgon take me away!" LOL!! I have not really queried anyone yet. One agent so far and I've got to get the full out to her (hence the mad editing yesterday). LOL!! And a girl from Berkley already has a partial as well. We'll see. One never does know until they sign on the dotted line, I think.
And I admit that in the toy department, the girl toys are more annoying than the boys. The dolls that coo menacingly and the billions of little accessories for everything?! Seriously. I think it's to prep parents for all the crap that comes with girls in teen years.
Cats...cat toys. Yes, quite, fluffy... Just one little bell on my little darling. So I can find her if she gets lost around the clutter that is my house.
Diabolical Christmas noise makers...like in Michaels Crafts. With all those noisy little miniature village doodads. I noticed they are placing them f-a-a-a-a-r-r-r-r from the registers now. Too many clerks went insane?
Oh geez, the singing christmas things... The ones in Hallmark are particularly annoying. Though maybe it's just that DS got one from someone last year and I SWEAR the kid pressed the little paw of the reindeer or whatever a gillion times. If heard the damn song once more I was going to throw it out the window.
The only cookie recipe I used to love making was monster cookies. However, since I can no longer eat anything that contains flour, I guess I'll have to make tons of fudge.
Marn - I'll agree that there are more accessories to the girl toys (hence the large container of Barbie clothes that float around my house). BUT, the girl toys are quieter and less obnoxious in my experience. Or I've possibly blocked out the bad memories. There's no telling really.
I love my Hallmark singing things (those little penguins whose butts wiggle are adorable!) but at times I have to switch them off because kiddo hits them too many times in a row.
Yes, but imagine working in the store...hearing them sound off constantly. I'm surprised we haven't read about a Rite Aid clerk run amock with an axe since they started carrying those things!
My Dad enjoyed his singing trout, but in the garage, high up on the wall, where the grandkids couldn't trigger it constantly.
(I did put a motion controled Halloween rock out on the deck to freak out the squirrels...that was fun!)
But even I had to turn off my two foot tall Jack Sparrow figure with it's witty repartee... OMG, did I just admit to having one of those?
Congrats, Marn!
You forgot something on your list—upload more chapters to your crit group!
I'm really fixated on getting through all my revisions before I start querying. (No pressure though ;) .) I'm probably cursing myself to face 100+ flat rejections, but I'm afraid of being unprepared, LOL.
Meanwhile, my problem is that I keep falling in love with new book ideas. My current book (the priest-spy one I told you about, Marn) is at about half done (mid point in the time line and the word count), and I'm waiting for my co author to catch up on her side in the timeline. She's about two weeks behind me on the timeline, so I'm twiddling my thumbs here, feeling like I'm going nowhere, when really, the very next scene I have is set to be a major one.
Left to languish are the sequel and threequel to my last book, which are fully plotted (and I've even plodded through four chapters between the two of them—as much as I loved the ideas, the writing was harder than anticipated). And I'm slowly working on the plot for a sequel to this book, too.
Sigh. There simply aren't enough hours in the day, computers, hands, brains and eyes to get all my ideas out ;) . Not a terrible problem to have, though.
Congrats again!
I can't believe you admitted that either. Captain should be there shortly to collect that. LOL!
Yeah, I couldn't do the retail thing where people fire those off all day. I have enough gray hair already.
Congratulations, Marn!!! You are fabulous! Don't you just feel amazing right now? Well, you deserve it. I'm definitely going to drink a full bottle of rum in your honor-not because I WANT to, mind you...just for you...:)
I can't wait to read this book. It's just such a fun idea. And good luck with the Golden Heart! You are so going to final. You know it and I know it and everyone on the ship knows it!!
PS: I finished my novel last night(I wrote a whole novel in 19 days! Isn't that crazy?) and according to NaNo's word counter it was 89,907 words. So we're at the same place in that regard. No worries there!:)
Collect what? I have no idea what you're referring to... Did I mention I think someone has broken into my safe and stolen all my computer passwords...? They could be posting all sorts of scurious things...lies! All lies!
(Cradling Jack figurine, furiously searching for a good hiding place...)
Ter - perhaps I would have been more likely to give the singing toy a better chance if my DS hadn't been pushing the things hand every other second. Really, I am tolerant but that's just ridiculous.
Jordan - darling, darling CP. My book wouldn't be what it is without you. :) I will be better now. (see above, I have some time....) Uploading, catching up, getting you ready for querying. That's our next step. :) Thank you thank you for everything. How is the priest spy book going?
2nd - *cough cough* a singing trout? wow....
Kelly girl! Thank you thank you! You are adorably sweet. If you'd like to read it, no problem. Drop me an email (I don't know if the one I have for you is still good) and I'll send along. I would love to read yours too, whenever you're ready. It sounds like Nano was a huge success. Go you!!
I don't have your e-mail anymore, Marn! And, yes, my e-mail has changed. I'll myspace you my new one.:)
Marn--Tripping along! I feel so sorry for my poor characters.
I think it's time to bring on more pain. :D
I have major radar where Captain Jack is concerned. It's like I'm zoned in without even trying...so you can hide him, but I'll still find him. *grins*
Marn, I'm cracking up about the Anarchy Now Pudding Cookies. *LOL* I'm imagining the RWR Cookbook as we speak.
Captain's Rum-Soaked Rum Cake
Bo'sun's Brownies Out of a Box
Sin's Anarchy Now Pudding Cookies
Marnee's "Martha Still Isn't Talking to Me Because They're Better Than Hers" Sex Cookies
Lisa's Ranger Cookies, of course....
Sorry I had to get that out. I'm about to go take a nap. Adios my wenches and I'll see you tomorrow!
Twilight!
Way to go Kelly on your completion!
Thanks, Sin and Marnee! I *heart* everyone on this ship!
SIn - are you going tonight?
Thanks Kel! I'll send along. :)
Jordan, ahh.... bringing on the pain. It's the key, sensei, you know it to be true.
Hellion - lol! Rum cake.... yum....
Yes. I have midnight tickets. There was a line outside the theater at 1pm. I don't think the temp went over 30 degrees today. People are insane. We're getting ready to go to dinner and then we'll get to the theater about 2 hours early. I've got my Alice Cullen shirt on and I'm ready to rock and roll!
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