Friday, August 22, 2008

Friday Frustrations

Currently Reading: Finished Saskia Walker's Reckless, and now I want to read more of her work! Reckless was fantastic; it started off a little slow, but by the 3rd chapter I didn't want to put it down! Very well done:) And to think I almost simply put it on the shelf and forgot about it, because I read the premise and wasn't interested at first. But, needing reading material I could curl up with, I decided to try it. And boy am I glad I did! I'll be contacting her in a while to let her know.

I'm also diving back into One Touch Beyond. I still have 4 more stories in that anthology.


I'm actually in a good mood, despite the title for this entry:) Yesterday was a fantastic day for me, work-wise.

I sent off both stories for submission. I simply decided to quit stressing over the 'perfect' synopsis and just send the thing on its way. If it gets accepted, great! If not, well then I can either expand the one story (I was not quite happy with the cuts I made in it anyway!) or re-submit the other as a 'Quickie'.

I discovered my revamped Forbidden Love (#3 in my Arbor U series) still needed some backstory in the first chapter, and when I went to make more revisions, the disk wouldn't load. No problem; I'd printed out the first chapter, so I simply re-copied the old document onto a fresh disk and re-deleted the first 6 chapters! I know...ouch! But thank god I'd printed it out! I also made corrections as I re-wrote the first three paragraphs; read the original and made more corrections. I'm now happier with it, and will concentrate on revamping its synopsis today.

Have I written anything on any wips? No. I've kind of dropped the ball on that one. But I plan on working on it today. But thanks to Kelly lighting a fire under my butt, that submission would still be in procrastination mode, as well as Forbidden Love. And I've still got six days to make up for it.

And that brings me to my frustration point.

I was supposed to leave for Morgan County this afternoon, but after having a pissed-off husband hanging up on BOTH K and myself, we have made the decision to stay home this weekend. Apparently, the spousal unit failed to listen to us the past 2 weekends when he talked about doing the family campout and I talked about seeing my friends and promoting at the fish fry. When he arrives home today and looks surprised to see us, I will state that in 2 weeks, I AM attending the festival in Monrovia, and he'd better not complain! This is the second time this year he's done this to me, and frankly, I'm getting tired of it. Last May/June/ and even parts of July all I heard every time I'd bring up the State Fair was, "You might not be able to go..." but the week of the fair, when I decided to only go up on Sunday, his attitude was, "Next year, you ought to sign up for multiple slots..." Excuse me? Will the supportive husband please stay around? I like him sooooo much better!

And yes, there are several people from my old community who also attend the Monrovia Festival. Let's just hope it doesn't rain! And that's another reason why I'm hesitant about going north: There's a threat of rain. Water and Paperback books don't exactly mix. And neither does the prospect of standing in wet grass. Yes, I have a canopy, but that's not going to mean total protection.

But in the meantime, I've got the weekend to make up my 3 pages per day goal. And as I'm already 6 pages behind, and no plans for the weekend (other than Laundry Goddess duties!), I should be able to get moving on at least ONE of the seven unfinished wips!

Olympic Update: Speaking of rain, I watched the gold medal game in Beach Volleyball! Woo hoo! Walsh and May-Treanor did it again! Win number 108! And on the news this morning, they talked about wanting to start families. We'll see what happens in 2012, if any toddlers are watching their mommies kick butt on the sand:)

I also watched the Women's Platform Diving. I felt so sorry for both US women! Haley looked as if she would do well, but dropped a dive or two in the semi-finals and didn't qualify. Laura looked as if she would rank high, but in the finals, two of her dives had her ending her career in 12th place. She's retiring this year; it would have been nice to see her go out with a bang. And what about the Canadian! OMG! She out-dived the Chinese girl in the 5th round, but the other rallied to regain her top spot. China ended with gold and bronze; Emilie ended with the silver. But what an exciting round! And after I went to bed, my oldest came in all excited; said that the US finished 1-2-3 in one of the track events. The only two I saw this morning had BOTH US teams dropping the batons in the relay. How heartbreaking!

So now I'm caught up. Since I'm not traveling, I'll be able to watch tonight and this weekend:)

5 comments:

Phoenix said...

See now most writers will tell you to avoid backstory in the first chapter. Is there a way to sprinkle it through out the book in conversation? It will stop your story dead in the water if you take them out of the book to explain something when they just started reading it.

Yay to the submissions!!!

Molly Daniels said...

I put it in rather delicately:) A line here, another there. Not great globs of it.

Carol Preflatish said...

Husbands, will they ever learn that wives rule the house. Mine only took my writing seriously when he found out an agent wanted to see my first three chapters. Then, he started bragging to all his friends. Too bad the agent didn't want the book.

Carol

Sandra Cox said...

Congrats on getting the stories sent out. I agree with not worrying it into perfection. They are going to like it or not. Get it or not.

Husbands are very irritating creatures and come with selective hearing, mine comes with the addition of poor hearing so when he's not paying attention--hard to believe I know--he really doesn't catch what I'm saying.

Saskia Walker said...

Hi Molly, I'm so glad you enjoyed Reckless! I'm always interested in feedback and learning where I can improve, and I appreciate the time you took to comment. Thank you!
Have a great week.