With Ulterior Motive at a friend's who is an editing whiz (she should do this professionally!) and the Gingerbread Man currently being reviewed and critiqued by friends/fellow writing colleagues, the question is, which manuscript should I tackle next?

It could take a few months before Ulterior Motive is back to me to rewrite, and same with the Gingerbread Man so querying them might actually not be feasible until beginning of 2012. Perhaps that's not a bad thing. With so many literary agent pow...
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This year my writing world has been productive. More productive than it has been in the last 3 1/2 years (basically since I started & finished my bachelor's program). This summer I made it a point to get more involved in the industry. 

 I read from the genre I love to write in and completed the entire Sigma Force series, the entire Millennium series (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series), and tried as best I could to get through Oryx and Crake. I'm all for a apocalyptic stories, whether the ...
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For every writer, the process of creation is different. What inspires us is unique. The birth of a story, the whispers of a character, all come to us in a potpourri of ways. I recently attended a mini-writers conference with a fellow writer and good friend, Eisley Jacobs. The meetup was free--Sacramento Writers Who Mean Business, hosted by these lovely ladies (known as the Michel(l)es) --and the key note speaker was an author of a middlegrade book, Karen Kostlivy. She spoke to us of her journ...
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Wow. This is more rough draft than I thought. Call of Bone was written in outline form about a year and half ago. Not only have I progressed as a writer, but the outline was written so quickly based on a fleeting whim that as I flesh it out I see where some things are not working. Aside from blaring holes, it seems that it will be wordcount short--something I'm sure I can fix easily with my verboseness.

I am telling myself not to get too emotionally attached to the outline, as it's obvious it ...
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Ever take an art class and you're working on your masterpiece, whether it be oil or pastels or even acrylic and you're just not as happy with it if you add just one more thing? Or you try too hard to make it perfect and end up spoiling the art? I feel like that's where I'm at with Ulterior Motive. Currently it's in the hands of three people; one, a writer, another an avid reader, and the third an English major (I'm a glutton for punishment), but despite this, I've already made changes after t...

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