Friday Five-r

1. Two of my favorite bloggers, Jackson Pearce (author of AS YOU WISH and SISTERS RED) and Authoress (Secret Agent mastermind and fellow aspiring published author) are both working on new manuscripts and for a brief couple of days, the three of us were all hovering around the 20k mark. The ladies have now BOTH surpassed me in word count, reaching the mighty 30-40k.

I have everything outlined, I know what's going to happen, but I am not producing the word count that I want! Must. Stop. Tweaking. As. I. Go.

2. Deleting words is harder than writing them. Even though I feel like every paragraph I cut is like pulling off a sticky band-aid, it must be done.

3000 / 19000 words. 16% done!

3. It's been 2+ months since I've sent in my full to Firebrand ... my heart beats uncomfortably fast whenever I think about it, so I don't let myself think about it too often. I'm just hoping, and waiting, and ... honestly, would rather not hear unless it's good news. I'd rather just continue hoping.

4. Coolest thing #1: I got another request!!!! *confetti* Coolest thing #2: I received the request in a comment on my previous blog post! How neat is that? I don't know how Ms. Stampfel-Volpe found me, but I am ecstatic!

5. I got sucked into reading pw.org interviews yesterday. I. Could. Not. Look. Away. The interviews were long and thorough, seriously good reads. I really enjoyed "A Q&A With Agent Molly Friedrich" and even though the following advice is obvious, it still packed a great deal of punch (IMO):

Q: "Tell me what you're looking for when you're reading a first novel."
A: "That's so easy. I'm looking for the first page to be good. Then I'm looking for the second page to also be good. Really! The first page has to be good so that I will go to the second page and the third and the fourth."

Self: Just focus on the first page. Make the first page the best first page in the whole wide literary world. Then, work on the second page.

The interview was 5 pages long. If you don't have time to read it, I'll copy and paste my favorite parts here for you in the next couple of days. Now I'm off to do work and count down the hours till dinner at my favorite Italian restaurant in the City!

Keep writing!