What Am I Doing?

In case I’ve been unclear as to my game plan for HIRAETH, I’m letting it sit for at least two weeks, and my goal is to have it finished and ready for querying by the end of January. That could change. My beta readers could find some huge, glaring flaws, which wouldn’t be the end of the world. But January 31st is my current plan.

Which begs the question: Liz, what are you doing right now?

Well, I’m glad you asked.

Actually, I have a fair amount of writing I hope to get done before January fifteenth, which is weird, because when I finished my draft several days ago, I pictured myself sitting around with not a whole lot to do, slowly becoming more and more neurotic.

Let’s start with my most exciting goal. I would like to finish an 8-11,000 word rough draft/outline hybrid for my new creepy space story, which I will reference again very soon. I’ll set it aside while I’m finishing HIRAETH, so I would like to have it at that natural point where I would be taking a break from it anyway. In theory, 8-11,000 words is a very manageable goal for me, and anyway, I don’t want to drag out this part of the process. Mainly, I just want to have something solid to occupy my brain space so I don’t go crazy while I’m querying.

Additionally, there are several blog posts I want to draft and several more I want to edit. I have two others besides this one that I would like to post over the next couple days, if I can get my act together, because they make better sequential sense that way. You’ll understand.

I also am overdue sending an email to a friend, and when I say we write long emails to each other, I mean that my next email will, in all likelihood, be four to five thousand words.

On top of that, and most importantly, I am editing the query letter for HIRAETH as well as the synopsis. The synopsis is not as hard. The query letter, on the other hand, is a nightmare. I mainly want to get an agent just so that I never have to write another query letter again. I feel like that’s a fair reason. *nods sagely*

All that to say, I don’t think there’s any danger of me being bored over the next two weeks.

This might end up being too much writing for such a short amount of time, which is fine. But if I keep myself busy, I won’t be so tempted to pick up HIRAETH prematurely. Also, yesterday, I sat down and calculated how many hours per week I actually spend writing, and it’s around 21. All told, 42 hours feels like it should be sufficient to get everything done.

Having said all that, right now all I want to do is reread HIRAETH, so this might not be so easy after all.

In other news, my birthday is tomorrow, and since I have the day off, my idea of a good time is spending the morning writing before meeting up with my sister and her boyfriend to watch a movie in theaters. Because I’m a New Years baby, everyone else will be celebrating my birthday as well. I’m pretty sure that’s how this works.


Happy New Year, coffee beans!

Farewell, 2015

Note: If you haven’t had a chance to read my guest post on Opal’s lovely blog, here’s the link.

 

Source

 

It’s difficult to write a year review post, because honestly, everything’s pretty much a blur for me. People ask me how 2015 has been, and all I can think is, I wrote a lot, I read a lot, I aged, end of story. Yeah, I processed things, and I’d like to believe my mind grew. I’d like to think I improved at the activities I love. Maybe I got worse.

As always, I added more books to my personal library and more experiences to my mental records. I moved to a different state and started a new life. Fortunately, I made a lot of friends in the blogosphere, and my blog grew, but I still get nervous about posting. I’m pretty sure I will always get nervous about posting. And I will always have that tendency to question the quality of my writing.

This year I’ve started to learn more about caring for other people, about opening up, about talking. I've learned that sometimes people actually want to read what I have to say, although that still seems like a crazy notion.

In a strange and wonderful plot twist, I write full time now. No, I am not published yet—I still haven’t seen a penny for any of my words. But my sister is providing for all my needs because she says that’s her investment in my writing career, that I can pay her back when I’m a crazy rich New York Times Bestselling author. Emphasis on the when. She has more true confidence in my abilities than I do.

In other news, New Year’s Day is my birthday. I confess, I always feel weird about having birthdays. Are they optional? It’s not that I dislike the reminder that I am getting older, and it’s not that I’m worried I’m too young. I just don’t like age labels. I’ve never felt like I belonged to my age, and the number tag feels dishonest. Maybe there is a difference between the number of years lived and the actual age of a person. Birthdays jar me because they remind me I am nowhere near as old as I think. They remind me that I haven’t yet lived even a third of the average American life expectancy. Is it possible to grow old twice? I feel old. Not spectacularly mature, just remarkably ancient. I don’t remember what it’s like to feel young.

 

I had goals for this year. Some I met, and others I didn’t. Life’s like that. But this was not a bad year, and I am happy to have lived it, even though it was far too short. Years are short. I enter one, I blink, and it’s gone. Another one comes in its place, only to hurry off into the sunset. Eventually, I’ll wake up bewildered, wondering when I turned eighty and how on earth that number snuck up on me. You wait and see. It just might happen to you as well.

I have goals for 2016. Big goals. Goals that will keep me busier than ever. But busyness is satisfying because I don’t feel the weight of time so much when my mind is active. I want to share more of myself with you, posts like this one and this one and this one. I want to read more and write more and think more. I want to get published (but I bet you already knew that). Most importantly, in whatever small way I can, I want to make 2016 a brighter year for all of you because you made 2015 bright for me.

Happy New Year!

Well, that’s it, little coffee beans. What are your goals for 2016? Feel free to guess how old I’m turning. Also, if you have any suggestions on how you think I could make this blog more interesting in the coming year, please let me know. I love hearing back from all of you.