Spring 2013

A lot of my blogs lately have been about writing. Thanks for putting up with it, I know a lot of you guys are probably bored by that kind of thing.

Here's some other stuff we've been up to lately:

Easter.

I turned 28. There aren't any pictures of this. I'm pretty sure I spent most of the day taking an awesome nap. Ever since becoming a mom, I prefer a laid-back kind of celebration.

Joci turned three. She wanted a Brave party, so I made her a Merida dress, got some "tartan" fabric from JoAnn's so her friends could be from the four clans in the movie, made bows and arrows from dowel rods and PVC pipe, and made "wisp" cake pops. I'm all Pinterested out. Good think Kairi is only turning one in June and won't care if her party consists of a boxed cake mix and a can of frosting.

There was also some blue face paint. It was pretty fun.

The Brave party was the day before Joci's birthday. On the actual day, we had some family over and ate Joci's birthday dinner (she picked spaghetti) and had some cupcakes.

So that's what we've been up to lately. Will's back at work full time, which is, as always, an adjustment. I have two writing conferences, one this coming Saturday and one from May 9th-11th. I'm looking forward to both of them and I hope I can learn what I need to help me push my stories over the edge into 'good enough!'

Time to start the second draft

So I was in the shower this morning and all of the sudden, I knew.

It's time to start the second draft.

Mostly I'm posting this blog as a marker so I can see how long it takes me to do this. Unlike the first round, I'm not going to power through. I want to take my time and make it solid, so I'm interested to see how long it takes.

Here's my plan:

1. Read it and take notes without changing anything on the actual document, write down ideas for alternate scenes or ways a scene could happen.

2. Compile all of my notes and comments to myself as well as everything I've gotten from other people and organize them by chapter so I know exactly what needs to happen in each one.

3. Rewrite (possibly starting with the end, since it suffered from my being majorly burned out last time and I don't want that to happen again).

So that will be the second draft. I'm nervous, because doing this will bring me a solid step closer to needing to query agents and send this thing out into the world. I mean, that's the whole point, right? If I never submit it, I'll never have to hear a harsh professional opinion on my abilities as a writer, but I'll also never be published. Time to get over myself!