Write1Sub1--Month 12: December + 2011 wrap-up

I had hoped to shoot off one or two more new short stories before the end of December but didn't really expect to pull it off as a result of my goals for my newly written novel.

The switch has been made I'm afraid; I'm back in novel-writing mode and have no intentions of participating in W1S1 2012--the short story edition.

I'm very happy with my SS output last year succeeding smack-dab in the middle of my goal of 12- 24 new stories for the year. The final number was 18 (not including a rewrite and a film idea adaptation). Yay!

I think about 7 of them actually have sell-able potential and would like to sell at least 2 this year. There's one in particular I plan to keep pushing until it's sold before probably even working on the others since it's the only one I think is really good.

Anyway, December was indeed dominated by my recent NaNovel--writing/rewriting/revising.

My editing slowed down by mid-month, and instead of having the first coherent draft ready as planned, I had shaped up just slightly over half of it. And this was just for the online edits.

I also ended up printing out each chapter and making edits there then typing them up, chapter by chapter (up to today in fact). But finally, after having broken my promise to have the reading draft ready by the 15th, then the 25th, I gave the first 14 chapters to beta/co-writer on the 29th--didn't want the new year to meet me stalling, and I'd hoped with him on my tail, I'd have more fire to finish.

Today, I still have the last chapter to fix and two chapters ended up combining in the online editing pass, so now the work contains 19 chapters instead of 20.

And somehow, with all the editing--the adding and subtracting--it has remained 50k. Thank goodness it's YA and I can get away with that word count.

Right now, with what the beta has read so far, he and I have a difference of opinion on a few matters; one of which is quite frustrating because it's major, but these issues are best pounded out at this stage while I'm still molding and exploring.

I'm also still doing a lot of research on various aspects while waiting for my writing books to arrive so I can really fix it up in the next pass.

I'm also fighting the urge to query; I'm too excited, believe so much in this idea--but I'm not ready to send sample pages so I just keep telling myself to cool it, then immersing myself in research.

I'm definitely still on the path to being able to query it sometime this month though.