Carolyn's Blog

Sunday, May 29, 2005

Got some stuff done today. Reordered The Rake a bit. Much improved. I'm not feeling quite so hopeless about it. Made cinnamon rolls (from scratch, kneading bread and all) and the dog ate half the batch. That's the kind of day it's been. I suppose I could look on the bright side and say that's 4000 calories saved.

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Saturday, May 28, 2005

Yesterday I rearranged all my chapters for The Rake and found that one had gotten in there twice and another not at all. So, I'll start reading and hope that I will have some inspiration as to the new tack. I've managed to get my site feed working for the blog. I hate instructions that are written for people who've already performed the task before. But, I blundered through it and was at last able to see my site feed at Bloglines. Now I'm going to do some newsletter stuff so that subscribers get first crack at some stuff. Then, I'll maybe do some writing.

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Thursday, May 26, 2005

Today has been a very irritating day. But not writing-wise. Writing-wise I feel like I'm diddling around not getting anything done on the stuff I need to get done. Come to think of it, that is irritating, so I take back what I said. I hate it when projects are in the "This sucks" phase. It's very unmotivating because I keep hoping I'll read it one day and it will magically not suck. That never happens. Sigh. But I am just about at the tipping point, where I can't stand to just wait for it to not suck on its own. I need a deadline, that's the problem. Deadlines are stress inducing, but I suspect that deadlines keep me writing instead of stressing and hoping the problem will magically disappear. Anyway, the good news is that I have a story/plot for the next paranormal. So, I am going to come up with some stress inducing deadline so that all three projects get done. There. All better. Right?

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Saturday, May 21, 2005

Things going OK, I guess. Tired. Fell asleep for a while. Did more procrastinating than work. And even when I was procrastinating, I was procrastinating. I meant to fix the RSS feed for the blog, but instead I did a bunch of other stuff. The website should now all validate to html strict, but it would probably have been more useful to fix the RSS. My issue of 2600 came, and that was pretty interesting, good for several hours of thought provoking reading. Sigh.

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Friday, May 13, 2005

What a day. Not a lick of real work done. My local RWA chapter meeting is tomorrow morning and right after that I have a book signing 60 miles away in SR, so I'll be driving all day and then Sunday, all over again because my son has two soccer games, both 50 miles from here and 30 miles from each other. Which reminds me his uniform needs to get into the wash. But, I got an updated jpg for my cover yesterday, so today I got a big copy made to display at the signing. Which will be cool.

In other news, I got my "ARC" printed off and into the mail to Sue Grimshaw. I have two more printed out, one for the RWA chapter meeting booksellers who wanted one, and another for the Borders Express where I'm doing the signing (note to self, get directions....) I cannot tell you how painful it was to write the letter to Sue. What I wanted to say was, "Here, read this. Sincerely, Carolyn Jewel " I kept thinking, like she's going to remember me, except maybe to think, oh, yeah, that writer I liked but who isn't writing fast enough, what's her name. I am so hideously bad at self-promotion.

Seems like there's more stuff, which I will probably remember too late. Tired, big surprise. But I want to get SOME work done today.

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Wednesday, May 11, 2005

So, Kate Seaver is leaving Dorchester to go to Berkely as a Senior Editor. This is wonderful for her and not so wonderful for me. She's a great editor and she'll do well in her position. Sniff. Feeling sorry for self.

Moving on to other news, I have a preliminary cover for A Darker Crimson. It's fabulous. I love it! I have a page with a larger image of the cover, but if you're on dial up you might want to look at the other page.

I am continuing to gut The Rake. I've drastically reordered the chapters and yesterday while sitting in the back of the car at my son's soccer practice, came to a chapter that I just thought, oh, ick. How do I fix this? Today I came to the conclusion that I fix it by deleting it. Then, I think I'm left with only the really awesome ones and then, I will get a handle on the heroine and make The Rake what it should be, and more to the point, what I want it to be.

I've been bumping around some fairly radical ideas about how and what I want to write. Historicals? Yes, but not as I've done them, I think. Paranormal? Absolutely. We'll see. But I think it's time I step up to what the writer in me wants to do with the characters and, as Claudia Donovan would say, just freaking do it. Now why would that take me 5 books to figure out? And that, of course, supposes that I have figured it out.

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Sunday, May 08, 2005

So, I have done a truly stellar job of procrastinating today. Mother's day breakfast and lunch, put primer on the wall in the bathroom where the new sink is going, checked my website logs (referrer spammers are scum!!) Checked out who's linking to me. I'm doing Sleath a bit and completely and utterly reworking The Rake and parts of that are depressing. I cut 40,000 words yesterday. At the moment I do not have a handle on my heroine, she needs to change for brave new Rake, and I don't know exactly how, just yet. So, The Rake sucks right now, but I think won't in the future, pretty soon.

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Tuesday, May 03, 2005

It took me a couple of days to come down from the frantic work on A Darker Crimson. I'm making some headway in my TBR pile. I've read 3-4 books (two in one day!!) and another in progress. We've had some people in from out of town and I got to visit with them without thinking/worrying that I ought to be working. I've also had a pretty in-depth discussion with my agent about my writing. I have three projects for sure I want to do, but I'm not really working hard on them yet. Mulling a little. I have some hard thinking to do about whether the writing I'm doing now takes advantage of my strengths. Anyway, I'm going to mull a bit more, read more, relax a wee bit and work on my Sleath paper. And then I will start working on proposals.

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