Writing goals

I get the most work done when I set goals. And since it's a fresh week, approaching a fresh month, I've set this goal: A thousand words a day for the month of May. How about you? Do you set writing goals?

Starting on Chapter Two

My son is six. A couple weeks ago, he decided to write a novel. He sat down with paper and pencil and wrote and wrote and wrote. For days. He’s not done yet, but he has a great start.

Here’s the thing. The first page of his story begins on Chapter Two. I asked him why. He said he wanted to start with something happening so he skipped Chapter One and would come back to it later.

Hmm. I think his Chapter Two is his Chapter One. The kid's instincts are right.

 
Do you think your novel starts in the right place?

Root beer story

So the fam goes out to dinner to celebrate a bunch of stuff and the waitress almost makes me cry. It all starts when Boy orders a root beer. He tastes it and makes a face. A yucky face. One that is not usually seen after a hit of root beer. So I take a drink and make a similar face. Definitely something wrong.

The waitress comes back to the table and I tell her (nicely) of the predicament. She’s all, “I know, right? Our root beer tastes horrible. Too sugary.” I shake my head. “No. That’s the problem. It’s not sugary at all.” She smiles and walks off. I stare at the people at my family like, “Am I in the Twilight Zone?”

Husband takes a drink of the root beer. He says, “Yeah. It does taste different. I kind of like it.”

I shake my head. “No you don’t it. It’s disgusting. Don’t try to tell me that’s how it’s supposed to taste. Something is WRONG with it.”

The kids implore me to let it go. I’m not usually like this and I wonder what’s gotten into me. The waitress comes back and we order Boy a lemonade. I keep my mouth shut.

Waitress does not remove root beer from table. But when she comes back later with the food, I can see that we’ll need every available inch of table space. So I won’t be tempted to mention the root beer taste, I whisper to Husband to ask the waitress to remove the cup. He does and my mouth pops open. “It really tastes bad. Somebody should check it out.”

She nods like she’s trying to appease me. Looks at me like I’m crazy. Says, “I know. We put like 20 pounds of sugar in it.” I shake my head. “No. There’s NO sugar in it.” She gives me that smile again and walks off.

I would put my head on the table to cry, but there’s no room. Even with the root beer gone. The kids ask me why I’m bothered so much. And it hits me. I put up my pointer finger. “Kids could be here drinking root beer for the FIRST TIME. What if they taste it and then they never order root beer again? They’ll be 20 and a friend will offer them one and they’ll say, ‘No, thanks,’ because they think root beer tastes HORRIBLE.”

Husband points his chin toward a table down the way. Two little kids are sitting there with bad root beer. “I see what you’re saying,” Husband says.

And that makes me feel a lot better. Even though thinking of that waitress still makes me want to cry.

Twitter-slash-agent finder

So for all you folks wondering whether Twitter is worth the time, I say, "Yes!" First of all, it's fun. I for one like following Victoria Beckham (vb to her friends), because she is so funny. Though, honestly, I don't think she means to be funny. Secondly, Twitter is informative. I follow America's Test Kitchen and they post some awesome recipe links. I once replied to a recipe post saying that the recipe would never succeed at my high altitude and someone from the Test Kitchen emailed me with high altitude directions. Yeah. Cool. And thirdly (can't remember if I'm on thirdly...checking...yes) I found my agent on Twitter! I follow agent Barbara Poelle and she was all like, Come help me welcome a new agent to the Irene Goodman Agency (or something like that...it was probably funnier) and I replied something like, Yeah, but how do I find out what she reps? And Barbara replied back something like, The information was at the bottom of the tweet {dummy} and I replied something like, Oops. Then I looked at the info and queried Rachel and a great client-agent relationship was born. So go get on Twitter. And look for me there. I'll be the one wearing chocolate frosting on my face, thanks to America's Test Kitchen.

Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook

I've seen SOOO much info about Maass's Writing the Breakout Novel, but rarely hear about the workbook. Why not?! I think every writer should own it and then (here's the part that was hard for me) use it. It's such a book builder. And what I'm really thrilled about is this time, for the first time, I'm using the workbook from Day 1 of writing my newest work. I hope you all are having a great day writing, reading or whatever!

I've got two ideas for YA novels. One is heavier on the thriller side, the other is heavier on romance/coming of age. Can't decide. Can't decide. Any thoughts? And what do you think will be the next big thing in YA--more vampires? science fiction? realistic? graphic novels?

So what the heck happened to me?!

Many of you know I independently epublished my two middle grade novels. They actually sold pretty well and the entire experience taught me so much. But then, well, I wrote my YA. When I first started writing LIV ON THE EDGE, I felt like I was writing it for myself. It felt very personal and I wasn't thinking about selling the story at all. Then I turned in pages of it for my MFA critique sessions and got some great feedback. When revisions were done, I thought, What the heck. I'll send it some agents. I got great response from agents, too. Rachel Ekstrom is brand new to agenting. I queried her, because I saw her name on Barbara Poelle's blog and B.P. Cracks Me Up. I queried Rachel on a Monday with a few pages. On the following Sunday she asked for the rest of the manuscript. I sent it to her immediately. The next day she called and offered me representation. We really clicked. She gets exactly what I'm trying to accomplish with LIV. And I'm excited for her to submit to editors soooooon!

Hello! I'm back!

So after a long break from blogging (during which I packed 11 million lunches, drove in a million car pools, read 5,000 books, wrote 20,000 words, deleted 18,000 words and wrote another 10,000 words), I've returned to blogging. And, yay, I got an agent for my YA! I'll tell you more about that soon...for now, I just want to say, I'm baaaaack!