Laura's blog

I have to confess that I didn't really set goals for this week. :( I have a friend's wedding coming up this Saturday and a week-long vacation to visit relatives after that, so I've been a bit preoccupied. However, I have been doing things! :) What I'm reading Needful Things by Stephen King. I just finished The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm by Nancy Farmer and After the Snow by S.D. Crockett. They were both fantabulous and are now on my mental Favorites shelf. Needful Things is starting a bit slow, but I don't mind. Stephen King usually does that when he's writing about a small town. I personally thought the prologue was unnecessary, but I can see why he put it in there. So far, I'm enjoying the leisurely pace as I get introduced to the characters. What I'm writing Speaking of prologues, I just re-wrote the prologue for The Book. My intent was to clarify some points of confusion that my critique partner had pointed out, and to make the conflict cle...

It's Wednesday again, and this post is coming a little late. Sorry about that. First, let me check in with my writing goals: - 1 review so far - More of Contracted written - Still haven't transferred those pages from longhand to computer - Still need to start that Prologue edit. What I'm reading I'm finishing up After the Snow , and I'm about halfway through The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm. I also got the Nook book of Mrs. Cavendish's Home for Boys and Girls . Sometimes there are those books that you need to stay up all night reading. That was one of them. Also I was afraid that I would have nightmares if I didn't finish it (I may have nightmares anyway).  I'm pretty sure it confirmed every suspicion I had as a child that there was a Great Adult Conspiracy and that Santa was really an evil taskmaster and if you weren't perfect and good, he would take you away and force you to work in his toy factory. (I at one point believed that his "e...

This week's writing goals: - Write 2 Examiner reviews - Do another page on Contracted - Transfer longhand pages into The Other Book (which I did not do last week) - Start editing  The Book as per CP notes Last week was not the greatest for meeting my writing goals. I did write a whopping 30 pages of Contracted and I resisted editing The Book , but that was it. I left everything else to the last minute -- but when I ended up doing yardwork literally all of Saturday, I couldn't finish them. The weird thing is, it's a lot harder to write 30 pages of new material than it is to write a couple of 500-word reviews and copy some stuff down that you already wrote. I don't know why I avoid these seemingly simple and quick tasks. I think I assumed they'd be simple, so I left them to the last minute. That's a major flaw I have -- leaving things to the last minute. "Know thyself" means being able to admit your flaws as well as take pride in your streng...

GUYS. OMG. Stop what you're doing and READ THIS BOOK. Yeah, I'm wigging out a bit. This review will be more on the informal side. I regret getting the ebook version only because I can't lend it to friends and family. I think my brother would like this book. I think it's a book that adults, young adults, and new adults (whatever that term is supposed to mean) would like. I'm flipping out this Friday because yes, it really is THAT AWESOME. I mean, look at the dedication: "This book is dedicated to the rule breakers, the troublemakers, and the revolutionaries. Sometimes the hand that feeds you needs a good bite."  My synopsis: Kira Walker became a medic because she wanted to make a difference. But on the maternity ward, all she does is watch the future of the human race die, one baby at a time. Most of humanity was wiped out in the Partial War, when the organically engineered supersoldiers called Partials rebelled and released the RM virus. ...

It's Wednesday again. What's up, everyone?  My writing goals for the week: - Do 2 Examiner reviews (0/2) - Keep working on Contracted - Resist the temptation to further edit The Book - Transfer my longhand pages of The Other Book to the computer version.   This is a bit less ambitious than last week's goals, thankfully. I've also met last week's goal of "write 5 pages on another project" with Contracted. Hooray! What I'm Reading I'm reading The Ear, the Eye, and The Arm by Nancy Farmer, an MG science fiction novel set in a future Zimbabwe. I LOVE it. I'm also still working through After the Snow , which I also love. However, I didn't feel as strongly about The Reformed Vampire Support Group , and I'll probably review that this week. It was one of those books where I felt betrayed by the ending. It had so much promise to both be hilarious and explore moral and existential problems...and it fell a bit short on both counts....

GUYS. OMG GUYS. You'll never guess what happened... I finished Edit Round #4 of The Book!  And not only that -- I reached my word count goal! WOOO ME!!!!! What that actually means: Since late December, I've been editing a 113,591-word novel. My goal was to get it down to 100,000 words. Which I did -- it sits at 100k exactly. I successfully cut 13,591 words. Holy shit. To be honest, I had some serious doubts at the beginning of this editing process. Most of the words I cut were deleted or changed scenes, unnecessary dialogue tags, redundancies, and 13,591 other little things that really add up. To be brutally honest, it could probably be snipped and slimmed a bit more -- I bet I could take another 1,000 words off.  If you ever embark on an editing adventure, I recommend you chart your progress with Excel. Every day, I put the date and the word count. Every tab was a different round of edits. When procrastinating, I calculated my average word-cutting rate per da...

Time for another Wednesday check-in post for Ready. Set. Write! Writing Goals -- mid-week progress: - I've written 1 book review. - I'm about 2/3 of the way through my fourth edit of The Book. - Haven't started my new outline. I'm waiting till the edit's done. - I've written nothing on any other project. Oops.   What I'm Reading I just finished Archer's Goon by Diana Wynne Jones and Partials by Dan Wells. I'm halfway through After the Snow by S.D. Crockett, and I just started Mila 2.0 by Debra Driza. I need to get to the library soon and pick up I, Robot or just find my copy of Xenocide , which I had started years ago before losing. The reading theme lately has been post-apocalypse and sci-fi. What I'm Writing Let's do this a bit differently. You all know I'm on my fourth run of edits on my main project. But what about all those side writings I've had to put on hold? I'm not technically "writing" them right...