Dude, Where's My Muse?

There are currently three partials winging their way east. Two destined for NYC and one to PA. Fingers crossed they will be delivered. Had another new girl at the post office who informed me to go the cheapest and they'll get there in 14 business days. Uhmmm no...try again...went through the next two ideas one for $10 and $20 apiece then finally she realized they could go small packet air for $7.50. So took that one seeing as if they go missing, I get my money back. :o)

Then went shopping. Grabbed some early Xmas presents for dad and finally after 12 years found a pair of winter boots. Love them :o) They're Sorels, they're white and very cute. I wore them for the last bit of the Isles - Rangers game. Have to watch the rest tomorrow since I taped it, my fave player scored the first goal and took a freakishly bad hit in overtime. Least the ranger player got a penalty for the dirty hit.

Other than that, got pretty much everything I wanted to done today. Partials printed off, proofed and mailed. Grabbed boots on sale and watched some of the hockey game.

Now I get to look forward to the 3 hour Raw Homecoming on Monday!! Woohoo

Till the puck drops. The excitement...the anticipation...the time to dig out the ol' jersey.


Now that I've let that bit of woohoo out of my system, I can concentrate on my nerves. I'm mailing out the partials tomorrow, needed time to think up a decent cover letter (I hate them, I really really hate them), figure out my bio (its a line and a half!) and then reread the partial. I found Jas fought back a yawn, rolled over and then yup, finally yawned. Hmmm...guess I really was proofing at 4 am the day I printed that out lol

But labels are printed for the partials, I did my envelopes for the SASEs, a different font for each agent so I can sorta guess by that who's the quicker reader...and now I'm debating postage.
See, Canada Post has this nice little habit of oh actually not delivering things. Like a partial I sent in November...which never made it there. Yup. I still need to find out if there's a way to get the $$ on that one. Because according to the nice agent I emailed 9 months later, there's no record of Her Protector ever having arrived in NYC.

So what to do? Send it letter and hope and pray for a small miracle the ones I mail arrive in the big city...or shell out mucho money ($15 and up) for that small pack of 56 pages to arrive with tracking in a special cardboard envelope. Course if they aren't there in 5 business days, I get to call and get that back (should I tell you how many times I've had to call on that little bit?) I think my name's got a star beside it in their computer.

But I digress...the actual prep work on partials is almost sometimes worse than writing the thing itself.

And then, I get the joys of prepping one for Mod-Ex hopefully next month. :o)

Dancing With The Stars - The Dance Off = or as I call it, O'Hurley whines and moans till we call him champ. *eye rolls* As my mom said yesterday, they better have a dance off with the next one or its fixed. And please, him saying no one deserved a 30 out of 30. Well then I guess neither do you buddy. Phhft! :o)

NHL Centre Ice - why advertise and show the exhibition games in the listings if your not turning the darn channels on until October 5th. *shakes head* But thanks to NHL Network I at least get to see the Islanders play twice before the season starts. No one needs to spend half an hour on the phone and call two different numbers to find that out...

I might be able to send a partial to KY sooner than anyone expected (including me) though at this point, I don't know its going to be winning bid. I'm looking at Trouble and though its Ava and Vin, I could change the characters and the locale (Malibu maybe?) and try it there. Though then that little word conflict is going to show up again.

Need to work on a bio paragraph for one of the agent partials and a para on my career. Debating what to say there...aside from one day wanting to be published and make a little $$...I don't want to say I want to be the next Nora but I don't want to sound underachiever either.

Enough rambles from me

TGIF

Or so it feels like it.

Going through my list of agents, updating addresses and emails to get ready to send out stuff. Gotta admit there's a little nervous excitement going on right now! *g*

And to top of that this is the middle of a good week, last night I got to watch hockey. As in real NHL, hockey, live as it was being played. The New York Islanders *g* vs the New York Rangers. Ah the excitement, the rush, real NHL Players on my tv again. It was almost a miracle I got to see the game, since it wasn't advertised and we called the satellite company to find out if that channel was going to be turned on before the game. Turns out that channel didn't matter, one of our others was picking it up.

Now, if only they'd update the team pictures on the nyi page!

Do to the wonders of google, I'm going to put this question on here in case someone googles and knows the answer.

a) how to harvest seeds or seed pods from Martha Washington Geraniums.

b) how to harvest seeds from a dahlia

I know I promised these a long time ago, but I couldn't find the roll of film but finally found it and took them in today. This was them about 3 weeks ago, I'm going to take some more this week and get them developed sooner. The lavateras have gone bloom crazy in bright hot pink (yay!) so I should get lots of seeds off those and the cosmos that took over are slow to bloom, so be busy fertilizing them tomorrow.

Anyways, here's my green thumb at work:

And here's our sunflowers that come up themselves every year now. Some are over 7 feet tall

Lavatera (unopened), red flax, and some other flower I don't remember lol

Godetia, Cosmos 2 (these ones are more normal) livingston daisies and alysum

Cosmos that took over lol

Livingston daisies, night scented stock, dwarf morning glories

No.

The rejection letter on Something To Talk About came this afternoon. Which explains why there wasn't an email back I guess.

It was a personal rejection, not a form (which woulda scarred me after 20 weeks). They thanked me for my patience (and so do my fingernails) and basically said I have an enjoyable, fluent and polished style and created interesting characters with some good scenes of interaction between them. However, Brit and Jas aren't for them.

Oh yeah and they feel my style shows promise and would encourage me to submit a fresh partial keeping the above (and more detailed notes) in mind.

*sigh*

Not likely to take them up on that little encouragement any time soon. :o/

Just emailed...or rather filled in the contact us form at the richmond website. Panic set in after I hit send, wondering if I'd highlighted the right department on the pull down menu. Fingers crossed I did. If not, the subject: enquiry: manuscript status should hopefully get it going in the right direction.

Decided to email right at the 20 week mark (UK time) and see what they say. Waiting a day or two probably wouldn't make much difference in my mind.

Cue the nervous butterflies! :o)

Food for thought...

On my usual blog tour today, I stumbled across at entry at Nadia's blog:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/agentobscura/

dated September 11th. I think this just sorta gave me the wake up I needed. Back in the days of my 'other' writing, it was so easy to step into the scene...and just go with it. But now it feels like I've pulled back some, that I'm I don't know trying to be more 'grown up' and have this distance between me and the characters. So I'm going to try it the way they talk about it there and see if maybe I can't break that wall down and get a better draft going.

Just hit the halfway point on Trouble. Will commence printing tonight or tomorrow and try to find my opening and layer it out. Its pretty rough in most parts, and probably's gonna need another round of revisions before I start breaking it into chapters but at least I've got 30K behind me :o)

Before I started writing the shorter manuscripts, I never really realized just how hard they are!! Too fit an entire story in such a small space is good and daunting at the best of times. Making me nervous though to go back and tackle the 100 k ones again someday soon. *insert anxious look here*

In the fun news of the week, turns out my best friend suddenly decided to move East without telling me. Good thing I hadn't mailed her birthday present yet. Anyways, turns out she's gonna be darn close to my favorite NHL team's training camp next week. Hope she goes! *and gives me a full report, but that goes without saying lol!*

I'm debating whether to print out the half draft of Trouble and edit and add that way or wait till I hit closer to the 58-60k and print then.

But my biggest hurdle of all is the opening. Most of the time I'm good with them, know where it needs to start. But this one is a headache inducing mess. STTA pretty well had the opening set up given with the truth or dare question...but this one isn't giving me much clue at all. I need to set the two characters up a little before I jump in but I can't figure out how or what's the best scene to show it.

My one cp suggested using a scene I had later on as the opening but I had that in mind for after the meet and now I just don't know what the heck I'm doing anymore lol In fact, I'm so confuzzled I started working again on Winning Bid.

Anyone have any hints for crafting a new beginning?

I can't think of a snappy title for the blog today.

I hit 19 weeks today and next week barring any envelopes/packages arriving in the next 4 days that'll make 20. Now I checked the UK thread and they say after no word at 20 you can contact them. So how long after 20 do I wait to make contact? I'm not sure. I don't want to look overeager, but I am curious about what's going on with Brit and Jas.

Writing's going slow. My best bud took a look at the rough draft of Trouble and gave me a few points. Apparently my conflict is still weak (I knew that much) so have to sit down and interview Vin and Ava separately and see what they say I'm missing. And apparently I forgot Vin's eye color. I knew I did, I was writing at night in the binder and couldn't remember what he looked like in STTA so I gave him Nick's blue eyes which was wrong. He's hazel eyed in STTA so get to go in and correct that. Thinking about printing off what I've got so far and trying to edit and add that way this week. That'll at least let me work outside for awhile!

Enjoying the workshop I signed up for last week. Its my first 'official' one, though I did take the ones in the virtual conference earlier this year. But this is one I desperately need right now. My production rate has dropped off considerably the last few years. 5 years ago I was writing mega stories, 3 at a time and keeping them going. And now, I barely trudge through the two I have going (so I didn't have the stress I have now at the time either) I guess some of it might be my 'group' has changed. I had some amazingly talented writers around me who kept me going, cps without knowing it really. Over the last few years they've both stopped writing but I know without the two of them my writing wouldn't be where it is now. So that's why if/when a couple of those books see the light, they're in the dedications :o)

First major signs fall is on the way here: a) September 1st and the trees were already both losing leaves and turning yellow. Yuck. To quote Legion of Doom "What a ruussssssssshhhhhhhhhhh" and b) my pansies are already going to seed. And so are some of my snapdragons.

Not good. I no likey fall! I think its too much trauma coming back from all those years of hell (aka school).

I can't believe its September already. Where did the summer go? Yikes. I wanted to spend more time out in the sun and write in the backyard. Neither of those happened. Guess I should hope September has better and warmer weather than August and I can at least grab a few hours sitting at the patio table with my gel pens (hopefully wasp/hornet and wind free!) and get some writing/editing done.

According to my horoscope at astrologyzone.com *I love that site!!* "its supposed to be an amazing month for us Capricorns on so many levels. Opportunities to expand my career and social life may leave me breathless and excited." :o) I'm SOOOOOOO hoping. And apparently my love life is supposed to pick up after 2 years of heartbreak. Well yeah, that part seems true (not the picking up but the 2 years deal). So we'll see.

Quick reminder, please please please go by contest junkies and take a look at her protector.

http://www.contestjunkies.com/artman/publish/cat_index_33.php

I'm a little antsy over this one, its been a headache from start to finish but its nice to get some fresh opinions on it (9 drafts and counting...)

Managed last night to sign up for Suzanne's workshop. And felt like such a dork when I couldn't figure out paypal on the site. I registered but couldn't find the pay here thing. Apparently I should have scrolled down first. But finally figured it out and I'm in. Can't wait to see how I can improve productivity since mine's dropping to nil pretty darn quickly.

Nuff from me, off to attempt to arrange Vin and Ava's story. Decided I do NOT like the opening whatsoever, so my 26K word count is going to take a drastic hit this weekend.