Through dust and heat

Last Tuesday it was 40 degrees all day long, with intermittent downpours of rain mixed with sleet. Yesterday, we had to finally cave in and turn on the air conditioning. (OK, so it had more to do with Joey's allergies slamming him but good than with the actual outside temperature. Still, it got into the 80's yesterday and today.)

The boys had a grandparents' day at school on Friday, and my parents were both able come out and attend it this year. (They're in Illinois, but it's still a 6 hour or so drive.) They arrived Thursday afternoon and left on Saturday morning, so I got to have a nice visit with them and yet still have my coveted writing time each day. Was pretty cool.

Today, I tackled the game room in the basement, which is where the boys have their computers and their plethora of game consoles, along with the attendant tangle of cords and an assortment of bookshelves, file cabinets, and big wicker baskets full of magazines and yet more books. The toy corner is cleaned out, at least, since one of our projects for spring break was shoveling outgrown toys into bag and boxes for Goodwill. (I am mildly embarrassed at the sheer quantity of STUFF we have hauled to Goodwill the last couple of weeks. I'm trying to view it as a reminder of how fortunate we are.) But all the electronics in that one room act as a sort of dust magnet, and it had been a while since I actually pulled out furniture and dusted/swept behind and under it. Ugh. So yeah. That was MY fun for the day.

Got a good halfway through the rewrite of the current project last week. Polished a query and synopsis and mailed those out on Friday. With an estimated turnaround time of 3 months on queries to Steeple Hill, I should have plenty of time to finish the rewrite this week and then let the ms cool a week or two before a final polishing read-through. I'm finding that the rewrite is mostly filling in gaps, as I'd suspected, and that there are entire scenes which give me that little tingle of "Hey, this is pretty good. Did I really write that?" I'm pleased with the ms for the stage that it's in, I have a clear idea what remains to be done to it, and I'm reasonably confident in my ability to finish the work. Then it's just a matter of waiting to see if anything comes of the query.

Speaking of queries, Allison Brennan, who submitted the query for her published novel to Nathan Bransford's Agent for a Day contest, has offered a thought-provoking post over at Murderati today. (She's commented in a couple of other places about other aspects of the contest, too, but I'll let you follow those links from her post.)

Side note: I've removed Murderati from my sidebar because I couldn't get their new blog to show up properly there.* But I read it daily, despite not being a suspense/thriller reader or writer. Cool bunch of writers for whom I have a great deal of respect and from whom I've learned a number of interesting things. Go visit them sometime.

*We all saw that coming, didn't we? As soon as I posted and went to fiddle with my layout, the Murderati link worked. So it IS on my sidebar now. You should still go visit them sometime.

Back in the saddle

Upon returning home, I decided to go ahead and revisit my Q3 WotF story instead of continuing with Crowmaker this week. I originally had Q3 on my calendar for 4-5 days of next week, but I hit the end of Act I of Crowmaker, so it was a good place to break away to something else. Since the first part of this week wasn't highly conducive to pumping out word count, it also seemed like using what remains of this week for a shorter project seemed a better fit. I did get some thinking-level work done on both projects during drive time, so I don't feel as if I've been completely slacking off. I even made a few quick notes in my Q3 Google Doc over the weekend so I wouldn't lose the thoughts. I did additional thinking and brainstorming and note-making last night, although I have yet to put any of it into the Google Doc yet.

But that will be my focus for the remainder of this week. I doubt you'll see any changes on the word count progress meter, since the rough is technically done and fussing with word count is probably not the best use of my time at this stage of the story. I also have yet to figure out how to show the whole second draft/revision stage of writing a story without getting bogged down in just figuring out how to show it. Probably I'll just make some general notes about what I've done and why, and just post the finished segments or maybe just the finished story. Or something. I'll let you know when I know.

In closing, an appropriate little tidbit pointed out to me by Grizz: XKCD - Upcoming Hurricanes.