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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Because 2011 will be the Year of the Query, I've been doing the usual lather, rinse, repeat polishing and editing of the first of the two manuscripts I want to submit. The first being Ulterior Motive. I've not touched it since my rewrite of earlier in the year, looking at it with fresh eyes has helped my discerning editorial and growing writing skills continue to chop it into a flowing, tightly written story. 

I've also come to realize that reading it in paper form, rather than at the computer...
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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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A dirge of bloated brass and gut-rattling bass is playing as I march a quasi funeral parade with Brandt Bogue to the Boneyard Bayou. Call of Bone is going to purgatory until I can figure out how to better make use of the story line. 

I'm not being lazy.

I promise.

I'm not blaming writer's block on the unwillingness to focus harder on the story. It's just that it simply isn't going to work the way I want it to. And if I'm going to keep up with my "make as many manuscripts marketable" for my Query...
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Ulterior Motive is as done as it's going to get. After revising it further, tightening it up and tweaking sections (not to mention finding lame grammatical errors and correcting them) UM is now 104K. I'll wait for the consensus to come back to see if there's further points I can edit.

I had to finish fleshing out the new story idea (Political Thriller) and my outline for the Zombie Apocalypse as those two things were preventing me from focusing on the very end of UM.

I am so excited to dive in...
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Hijacked, Shanghaied, blind-sided, utterly off-track.

I'm in the midst of editing Ulterior Motive when out of NOWHERE a story hits me. A political thriller! A place of turmoil, two governments who deny any involvement in the assassination of a deputy foreign minister, and an American foreign affairs diplomat is thrown into the middle of it and suddenly finds herself the scapegoat. Hunted as an assassin, an unlikely ally comes to her aid, only to find himself shut out by his special forces team...
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We are always on a path of continual growth and I can honestly say I've had my own personal writing breakthrough. It came after reading four different suspense thrillers this weekend. Actually, I should say, re-read. I've not been able to read for pleasure in so long that I went hogwild in the genre of manuscript I'm trying to publish. It was a smart thing to do, because I realized, in comparing my own writing to these authors, who bookish and "telling" my writing can be. Instead gently leadi...
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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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What a feeling of accomplishment! Since I'm out of state on business for The Job, there is a lot of down time--down time I took full advantage of. Twelve hours of uninterrupted focus, Ulterior Motive is has been refined into a final draft. One more reread, reviews by friends, and it'll be the first I query in 2011.

I was able to focus with lots of coffee and good music (thank you Pandora!).

Because word count was such an issue, I was able to shave UM from 114K to 108K. You might think, holy cr...
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I am so into this edit and revision of Ulterior Motive it's all I've been able to think about. Along with the need to slash some serious word count down, I'm also trying to subjectively look at the plot. Finding and answering loopholes, addressing character depth, evaluating tonality, and cutting verbose passages.

I'm half-way through the edit/revision and have killed about 2500 words. I need to kill about 10K more. I see where there is opportunity to do so, which is a good thing. I always wo...
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I have always said I write what I would want to read. I love the story about Caitlyn and Paul, the challenge of building believable characters who pop to life from the pages and creating their backstory that makes them relatable. In dumping the prologue, and bouncing ideas off my sounding board, Jill Afzelius, I decided to create a different, more relevant prologue from the point of view of a mysterious stalker.

Gone are the 11 pages that outlined Caitlyn's tumultuous backstory in a dream-lik...

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There comes a time when you're so immersed in a project and you realize you're not getting any further because you're not seeing the whole picture--the end result--that you need to move on. Like a puzzle you're trying to put together. You've been looking for the pieces for so long that all the fragments of the image look the same and your trying to cram pieces in that don't fit. That's how I've been feeling with The Last Scion. After cutting away so much and needing to revise it once more to ...
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I learn something new about the writing industry, the craft itself or about myself almost every day. From the business aspect, to learning the wisdom of others in the process, feedback on manuscripts (and, because I'm not an English Major--all kinds of grammar and structure goodies), to my own limitations and abilities to help me grow. Using social networking like Twitter has helped me connect with others like me, those whose successes I can't wait to realize, and industry professionals who g...

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