Weekly Goals 10-11-14

My goal this week is just to get through it.  Some pretty bad stuff has happened at my day job today, so that's going to have to take the majority of my focus right now.

That said, I'm totally committed to getting the last tweaks to The Sidewalk's Regrets finished and back to my agent by Wednesday or so.

And after that's done, I want to try to get back on track with my new NaNo book.  I figure by Wednesday I'll be about 5 days behind, so I'll need to rack up a few 3K days to catch up.  Shouldn't be too hard, right?

What are your goals for the week?

Celebrate the Small Things 7-11-14

This post is part of VikLit's blog hop, Celebrate the Small Things. Head on over there to join up! 

So, what am I celebrating this week?






I hit 10K in NaNo last night.  Not amazing, but I didn't get started until Sunday night because I worked all of last weekend.  So I'm calling that a win.

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), I got notes from my agent this morning, so I need to drop my NaNo project for a few days to work through the few things that need fixing up in that book.  They're not huge things, so I'm hoping to get through them in a couple of days and then pick up the NaNo book again by Wednesday next week at the latest.  It may be too late to catch up, but I'll give it a shot.

Not much else to celebrate this week though.  It's been a long one, and not a lot of fun.  I won't go into the details because it's all too depressing.

What are you celebrating this week?

Weekly Goals 3-11-14

My goals are simple this week: just write.

Three days into NaNo and I'm sitting on a word count of 5450.  Not great, but considering I didn't actually start my book until after I finished work last night, I'm taking it.  I won't get much done tomorrow, if anything, because I'm working all day and night, so I'm glad I have a little bit of a buffer.

I hope to hit 10K by Friday....

Is anything I'm writing good? Well, that's debatable.  I always find it takes a little while to settle in and find a new character's voice.  I'm there with that now, but I feel like I may have waffled a little in the story to find it.  I've just started Chapter 4, and I haven't hit my first big plot point yet.  I'd be concerned, but for this story to have the emotional impact I want it to, I need all five key players to be introduced before throwing a spanner into the works.  So I figure it's okay not to hit that plot point until Chapter 6 or 7.

And it's a first draft anyway.  A zero draft, really.  Word vomit onto the page.  I'll carve the real story out of the dried up vomit later.

What are your goals for the week?  Are you NaNoing?  How is it going for you?

Celebrate the Small Things 31-10-14

This post is part of VikLit's blog hop, Celebrate the Small Things. Head on over there to join up! 

So, what am I celebrating this week?





NaNo!  I get to start writing tomorrow and I can't wait to start writing my new book.  I really love my MC, and I can feel her best friend and love interest just burning to come to life on the page.  By next week I'll probably be tearing my hair out, but right now, I'm excited about the project. It feels like a long time since I sat down to write something new.

I've had the chance to watch quite a few of the films that will be coming out over the holidays in the past few weeks.  Most of them have been okay, but not spectacular, so when I saw one that totally reignited my belief in the movie business' ability to make something wholly original and exciting, it really made my week.  BIRDMAN guys.  Just go see it.

What are you celebrating this week?

Interview with Dahlia Adler

Last week I was lucky enough to be part of Dahlia's cover reveal for Last Will and Testament.  This week she's been kind enough to stop by and answer a few interview questions.

So, welcome to Fiction and Film, Dahlia!

• If you could swap places with one of your fictional characters for 24 hours, who would you choose to be? Why? And what would you do that day?

Probably Josh Chester, from my Daylight Falls duology. I'd go full-on Party Like a Rock Star, which for him is, like, a Tuesday. He pretty much gets away with everything, and has everything thrown at him. I wouldn't want his life forever, but for 24 hours? Yeah, I'd take that.

• In what way is your story unique compared to other books in this genre?

Last Will and Testament is a Contemporary New Adult Romance, and it's definitely sexy, but I think it places a more unique emphasis on other relationships, too. Connor's also far more of a beta male than you usually see in NA, and Lizzie far more of an alpha female. Sexual experience has nothing to do with anything in this book; he's not her first (by a long shot), and he hasn't ruined her for other men. They're just people who shouldn't like each other at all but really, really do. Nobody has a tragic secret, nobody punches anyone...no one even has a tattoo. Yet. 

• What part of the story was the most fun to write? The most challenging?

I love writing romance and I love writing fights, so a lot of this book went verrrrry smoothly for me! The scene in which Connor and Lizzie have sex for the first time was probably my favorite to write, even if I was more than a little paranoid people were reading over my shoulder on the subway. 

The most challenging for me, as it was in Behind the Scenes, was writing scenes between the siblings. I don't know how I always end up writing these big sisters, since I'm the baby of my family, but I always struggle with them. 

• Which of your characters is most like you?

Ally from Behind the Scenes, hands-down. She's intellectually curious, emotional, often irrational, sarcastic, and so badly wants to be okay with things she isn't. I've seen reviews where people attribute a lot of the conflict in BtS to miscommunication, but it isn't that; it's that she genuinely wants to feel the way she says she does. That's very much me. I've been trying to make it less me since publishing it. Now I'll actually e-mail or text friends and say "I hate that I feel this way, but."

• If you could have one superpower, what would it be and how would you use it?

The ability to read/write/understand any language, and I would travel the world with no limits on communication, read my friends' books in foreign languages, read great works in the original... I love languages so much. My characters tend to also, as a result!

• If you could reenact a scene from any book (not necessarily your own), what would it be? Who would you choose for your scene partner(s)?

There's a scene in my critique partner Gina Ciocca's upcoming YA Romance, Last Year's Mistake, that involves saltwater taffy. I'd take that scene with Ian Harding, please.

• Tell us something we’d be surprised to learn about you.

I have a lot of fears - closed-in spaces, heights (if they're steep; I don't mind actually being on the billionth floor of a building, but I get so nauseated looking down), driving, getting old, that I'll be a sucky parent someday, that I'll publish a book I regret... In some ways I'm a confident person, and in some ways, I'm a train wreck. It's amazing what occupies my mind in a normal day.

• What other interests do you have outside of writing?

Back before alllll my time was taken by writing, reading, and blogging (plus my actual dayjob), I used to do a lot more traveling, which I loved. I'm really hoping to return to Europe next year for my first time since my honeymoon. I also used to do a lot more cooking, but my husband's really picked that one up hardcore since law school, so he does most of ours now.

• Do you have a nervous habit when writing?  A guilty pleasure when writing?  (example: chew a pen to death or have a stack of Hershey’s kisses while you write)

This is so gross, but I can chew through packs of gum while writing, and by the time I get up, there are just notepapers full of chewed-up gum everywhere. It's usually my "I'll do this instead of eating something really bad for me" thing, but I go through it so fast I usually end up eating something else anyway. I also love Gushers when I write, but those I eat like a normal person. And I'm a compulsive note-taker. My desks are always covered in post-its or turned-over business cards with ideas or names all over them. Basically, I'm a mess.

Weekly Goals 27-10-14

It's a short week for us this week because today is Labour Day and a holiday.  Which of course means cramming all the regular work into one less day...  Although I am working both weekend days next weekend, so that may be an opportunity to catch up if need be.  Unless it rains...

This week is all about NaNo.  I need to get myself very well prepared because I am working both those weekend days and won't get any writing time in.  Which means I'll need to catch up on the Monday and Tuesday.  So I need to know how my book starts.  Which I do.  But I still haven't decided if it will work better as the diary entries I initially thought the book would be made up of, or more conventional narrative.  I may try a few hundred words each way during the week to see which feels more comfortable.

So basically my only goals this week are to make it through my day job and to feel ready to write a lot of words fast by next Monday.

What are your goals for the week?

Celebrate the Small Things 24-10-14

This post is part of VikLit's blog hop, Celebrate the Small Things. Head on over there to join up! 

So, what am I celebrating this week?




It's a long weekend!  Yes, I do still have to work tomorrow, but then I get 2 days in a row off.  That doesn't happen very often, so I'm definitely celebrating.

I caught up with a good friend last night for the first time in ages.  It was fantastic to talk to her again.  I really must make more of an effort to see my friends.  It's so easy to get sucked up in work and kids and writing and just not make the time for the people you really enjoy spending time with.

I've been a mentor for the Nightmare on Query Street contest that's coming up.  It's been really fun seeing how the two writers I was assigned have taken my critique on board and made their entries sing.  I can't wait to see how they fare in the contest. 

NaNo is only a week away and I still haven't done anything useful to prepare for it.  I definitely need to get on that one, don't I?  Or then again, maybe not...  I'm not a planner at all.  But perhaps I need to figure out my main character's name, at least.

What are you celebrating this week?