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Monday, December 10, 2012

WIP Madness Week 2: December Check-in

Welcome to yet another week of WIP Madness! Did you conquer your goals over the last seven days?

I've been keeping very busy with freelance work, so my word count isn't as high as I would like it to be, plus I sidetracked one day to make some edits on a past MS so I could query yet another agent...

Ah, queries. Don't we just...love them? :) Are any of you querying right now? How many rejection letters have you accrued? (I used to print mine out and staple them to my cubicle walls before I ran out of space/moved. I wonder how many I have now...)

An author at one of David Farland's workshops once told me that you can't stop querying a book until you've hit the triple-digits with query letters. I've taken that to heart, but I'm fairly convinced that there aren't 100+ agents/open publishers who accept epic fantasy (at least not in America alone, ha!)

Yes yes, I know. Stop rambling and get onto the giveaways.

We have two separate winners, one for Poison Study, and one for the Annwyn's Blood giveaway that posted last Wednesday.

The winner of Poison Study is...


Amy Beck!

Amy, shoot me an email at CNHolmberg (at) gmail (dot) com with your mailing address and I'll ship you your prize!

The winner of Annwyn's Blood is...


Shannon Lawrence!

Shannon, my friend Michelle Eging will be contacting you with your e-copy of the book. :)


Keep writing WIPsters! I for one am asking Santa for a publishing contract!

25 comments:

  1. I'm finally getting over my cold. I hope to begin being productive today. Hey, a girl can dream right?

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  2. I was querying, but put it on hold b/c of the Holidays - I'm picking up again after New Years. I haven't sent too many letters yet, so the rejection numbers are still low, but I know they'll start to add up in the next few months.

    I got a little bit of writing done, but mostly read this past week. Once I finish the book I'm on now, I'm jumping back into some rewrites.

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  3. Oh yes, Santa! I want a contract, too!

    Like you, Charlie, I didn't get far in the word count, but I'm really ironing out those first few pages of this WIP and getting my characters and plot in line. A lot of thought and a little writing and unwriting and re-writing...

    Merry merry, Wipsters!

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    1. When you get it, it will be so worth it! Those first few pages are the WORST!

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  4. A good Monday morning to all! I love December but its days and weeks are spinning away so quickly. Not a lot of serious writing happened during the past one, but I continue to putter my way through a revision, AND I made Christmas cards, wrote our annual family newsletter and have everything ready to mail today. And it isn't even the postal deadline yet! Yay!!!

    One rejection came in last week to the only query I had out. I've been dragging my feet about querying for the last couple years, so haven't accumulated many. No promises, but I'm hoping to find renewed determination for that process in the New Year.

    This week's goal? Not an ambitious one, but just to continuing reviewing and revising.

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    1. Sounds like you have been busy with Christmas fun! It's an accomplishment to get ANY writing done this time of year. Good on you!

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  5. Ah, querying. I need to hit my own revision big time in January and start querying...again.

    Last few days we've all been sick. Hope to finish my copy edits so I can send them back to publisher. I'd love to have a copy of NO GODDESSES ALLOWED out by my birthday!

    Right now also reading more Cybils nominated books. Lots of dystopian novels for this year.

    My goal for this week is to find the time to get in at least an hour of writing on my sequel. The holidays are crazy, busy. I just need to schedule time in for 'me'. Sometimes that's hard to do with all the holiday schedules.

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  6. Still holding on to my sanity. That's the goal for the month. I'm journaling every day. That's my writing goal for the rest of the month. Thanks for all your support. ^_^ Carry on, Wipsters!

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    1. Oh man, I am right with you. If I could have counted my journaling word count for NaNo, I would have hit that baby right out of the park. Peaceful, healing thoughts are headed your way!

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  7. I haven't started querying yet, but I did hit the 25,000 word benchmark in my first WIP. I'd like the finished product to be somewhere between 90k and 100k, though, so I still have a long way to go.

    This is finals week at school, so I probably won't be too productive until at least Friday. Still, I'd like to hit 50,000 words by the end of the month.

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  8. I was struck down by a nasty cold that is going to seriously hamper my ability to make a triumphant return to Sword School at the end of this week. :(

    I had some more beta-reading feedback to give, and I struggled with wanting to do that and wanting to work on my own stuff. Being sick makes a girl more selfish, I suppose. ;) But that's done, and I really need to get to my revisions. Which I'm doing today, since I have this day off whether I'm sick or not.

    Except I also find myself working on a second project, one that is way out of my typical wheelhouse. But mostly because I need to create and not just revise. So I'm letting myself do that. But revisions, too. I *would* like to send SOTS out to the requesting agents in January.

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  9. Hey all! It's been a while since I've been around. I wanted to share that I finished the first draft of my WIP in November (My first novel)! Yay! It ended up at 148,066 words! ...I either have a lot of cutting to do, or I need to add a bunch and turn it into a trilogy or something... I've been going over a lot of advice about how to go about the editing process. I think what I'm going to do is first go through and make an outline of what I have (I'm a discovery writer, so I don't have that...) so I can see the big picture of what it turned out to be. I have a few scenes I need to add, and a few that need extensive changes. Once I do that I'll take a short break from it and do some line edits and polish it up a bit before I send it off to beta readers. (I'm actually a lot more stressed and overwhelmed by this whole process than it sounds...)

    If anyone has any other advice for me, that'd be great. :)

    In the meantime, I've read a few books. I've missed that. Actually, I've been devouring them this week. Anyway...Yay, I finished!!! ...Now what?

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    1. Congrats on finishing your first draft! This is a massive, massive accomplishment... I hope you celebrated!

      My editing procedure is that I set the book aside for awhile and let it marinate, and then I go back and read the entire thing as quickly as possible to I can see how everything gels together. Once I've completed that read-through, I go through again and start making notes and changes. Best of luck to you!

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  10. I don't have a count, but I'm pretty sure my query rejections hit the triple digits before finding an agent. So, yes, I have been there.

    I'm plugging away at a revision of an older manuscript. My husband when away for 4 days, and I revised 17 chapters in that time. Which makes me think that it may not be parenting that is hindering my productivity on a usual week. (sorry, DH, but true).

    Anyway, I'm thrilled with my progress. Still hoping to stay on schedule to get through this baby by the end of the month.

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    1. Haha, I wrote most of my first novel while my husband was away on Coast Guard deployments. I certainly know this feeling!

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  11. Yay! Thank you!

    Ugh, queries. Not looking forward to starting that. Well, i sort of am, but due to what it means, not due to the actual writing of queries and getting rejections part.

    Shannon at The Warrior Muse

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  12. I'm with Shannon. Would love to be at the querying stage - meaning I have a completed, edited draft. I'm about a year away, I'm afraid. Best of luck to those hot on the publication path! Goals? Writing routine and sticking to the routine.

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  13. Yep, I had loads of rejections before my first, and also my second agent.

    I've had a great writing week and hit 43.5k on the WIP. I'm on track to finish the draft by the end of this month. Hoorah!

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  14. I have been steadily plugging away on my new project, and I'm really beginning to enjoy it--which is always the most important part. What I've found is that nothing happens when I force it; I just have to let go and let it happen naturally.

    Ah, and querying. Like JRo, I had loads of rejections on my first manuscript with my first agent. I lucked into my second agent without having to query, but I have yet to get that book deal, so it's a constant cycle of writing and putting myself out there! Never ending... ;)

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  15. I'm not querying these days, as I've put both my query-able novels on the back burner for a while. Word-wise, I'm doing a little journalling and a fair bit of mulling as I gear up for a return to Revisionland in January. :)

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  16. Congrats to the winners!

    HAH...on the queries. I have a a few hundred of them. Right now I have a few picture books with an agency (requested from a query so that's good!). Have two others out there, have not heard anything back. And am gearing up for another round of querying!

    Mostly reading these days and last week, too...all for the cybils and let me tell you there are some pretty gosh darn books out there!

    Will be rounding this week out with reading reading reading and some writing tween that. Have a new novel I am sketching out, would like to hopefully, maybe have it outlined by out next check-in. WIP on everyone!!

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  17. I'm in the querying stage right now on one of my picture books. Gosh, it can be frustrating. Especially when you have interest by several agents, only to have them eventually pass, one by one. :( I'm like, "NO! Wait, I promise! Everything I write is just like this!!" *Sighs*

    Hope everyone has a great writing week!

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    1. Candilynn, you lived in Japan? (Tried to find your blog, but only found your Google+). I LOVE everything Japanese, so I want to hear about it!

      Hope your queries start looking up. I feel like I'm in a similar boat right now!

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  18. I fully expect you to hold my hand throughout the querying process, Sis. But till then, still have a few dozen pages to finish revising...

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