Stalling

Today's Mood: Calm. Today's Music: Ava Maria (just got back from a Catholic Funeral) Today's Writing: Weelllll..... see below. Today's Quote:

I'm a little afraid to start writing in case I screw it up. -Sarah McElrath

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Am I stalling? I'm not sure. I mean, one could say that all this character developement is a necessary part of the story. After all, it helps to know a person's past in order to know how he/she will react to events in the future. But I suppose there comes a point when endlessly drawing pictures of my characters becomes a form of stalling--a way to put off the actual writing. And why would I want to do that? I love these characters. I'm excited about this story. I even have several scenes already in my head. But that, in and of itself, is the problem. I'm afraid to screw it up. I love these characters too much to mess with them. It's good in my head--what if when I write it down, it isn't as good? I know, I know--I need to get over it. I need to write knowing that it won't be good enough, but that's okay because that is what revision is for. I DO know. Yet today I drew instead of writing. However, today's drawing (queen bitch) was the last of the main characters. Tomorrow I have no excuse. Although I was thinking maybe I should outline....

Submitting Articles

Today's Mood: industrious. Today's Music: Dixie Chicks--Taking the Long Way. Today's Writing: 2 query/cover letters and research (which involved both cutting things out of magazines and meeting a strange man for coffee) Today's Quote:

Keep writing. Keep doing it and doing it. Even in the moments when it's so
hurtful to think about writing. -Heather Armstrong

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Submitting articles to magazines is a frustrating thing. First off, I'm never exactly sure which one would be the best one to submit to. Then there is the issue of writing a cover letter. Top that off with trying to figure out exactly who to address it to, and the whole experience is complete frustration. This week I made myself submit one of my essays even though I'm not holding out much hope on it actually being published. I can't quite decide if I am simply a masochist or just a determined writer. Maybe they are one and the same.

I also wrote up another cover letter for my first manuscript. I didn't print off the manuscript yet--I'm still trying to decide if I should send it out again even though I still have 4 queries out there. Of course, they've been out there since July so it's not like I'm rushing things here. I'll probably just send it out. What the heck. You can't win if you don't play, right?

The researching for my next novel is definitely more fun then submitting. I was having fun cutting eyes and noses and hairstyles out of magazines to "create" my characters. In the last novel I kept forgetting what eye color each character had, so this time I decided to come up with a picture (more or less) of each character. On the top of a sheet of paper I put his/her name and then go through magazines and cut out a picture of eyes the color of that character--nose, hairstyle, clothing....and glue those body parts on the sheet of paper. I write down the height, weight, interesting habits, physical characteristics, and any other unique things about that character. In the end I hope it helps to have that to refer back to as I write the book--if nothing else it's fun and I got a great picture of Orlando Bloom.

Anyone writing out there? Anything interesting going on? Done any submitting? Character profiling......? Hello?