What a week it has been. Wow!

I'll say it again. Wow. What a week it has been.

Saw my mentor the very lovely Louise Cusack a fortnight ago to sit down with a mind to layout the 2010 writing plan. Having finished my edits on Firewalker I was umming about what next. I have six ideas that perpetually play around in my head and figured a break (for awhile) from the Elemental Worlds was a good idea. Louise agreed and without further ado, I began researching, mulling and forming ideas for a book from the kernel of an idea. The goal was to start the dirty/zero draft beginning of March. The goal is still there, however it may now be slightly delayed.

On Wednesday morning I opened my emails and discovered I had made it into the 2^nd round for the RWA Australia Emerald award. I was floored. Completely gobsmacked, speechless and stunned. I stayed like that for most of the day. I think writing this post it is only beginning to sink in as I realise I now have until the 17^th to get Firewalker scrubbed and polished and sent back out again.

It was the first time I truly felt like I may be doing something, albeit small right. My goal for 2009 was to write and edit and submit a book to the Emerald. Purely for the feedback it offered after the first round (I actually had to go look up what happens next on Wednesday much to my partner’s amusement). Making it to the 2nd round had not really been on my radar. The warmth and support given by members of RWA has been amazing and I am truly humbled by it all. 

So, Firewalker is back in front of me and I’m madly getting it ready for my two readers. Then it will be a life of red frogs, coffee and no sleep as I absorb their feedback and embrace the art of polishing (it's a challenge even in my housework lists). This was the plan for Firewalker – only to be done in two months time. My pushy salamanders, mermaids and elementals are making themselves heard.

Congratulations to the other wonderful ladies who have made the 2^nd round with me. I know we are all now heads down not coming up for breath except for occasional feeding.

Reading Challenge Specifics

For those of you interested in the how-to of the challenges here are the details below.

For the library challenge go over J. Kaye's Book Blog to sign up.

I've decided to aim for the Stepping It Up level (75 books). Given the amount of research and reading I do I think I should get there. Be interesting to see. 

For the spec fic challenge I'm going for the highest level - Obsessed. Given the majority of books on my TBR pile fall into this category I'd be surprised if I did not make this one.

Reading into the New Year

Wow. The first month of a new year has nearly passed me by. January always feels like that. One minute you’re looking at a calendar full of new shiny opportunities, next minute you’re wondering where in heck January went. For me it is summer, maybe that’s part of it. Like August in the northern hemisphere, January here is the month where lengthy school vacations occur (school in the process of resuming depending on which state one is in), everyone runs away for holidays/vacations and makes resolutions which most of the time don’t last past the first couple of weeks.

For me, New Year more often than not occurs around the Winter Solstice (Dec. 21/22). I feel a build up of energy and wonder what will be around the corner. By the time January 1 finally occurs, I’m already thinking of the year to come.

So, what is 2010 going to bring. Changes. A lot of them. They’ve already started happening and some I’ll post about. Another thing I’ve decided to do, in the interest of my online life is to commit to some reading challenges (if I ever work out how to set them up here). I’m always reading. My current TBR pile by the bed is hovering around the 75+ book mark (it’s down from about 90ish).

Without further ado these are the challenges I’m committing to as a reader for 2010.

The first is the Speculative Fiction Challenge. So much of what I read can be stored under this umbrella. I’m going with “Obsessed” . I found this one through Eleni’s Library (thanks Eleni).

The second reading challenge I’ve chosen is the Library one. I borrow a lot of books and make my librarians work hard. I don’t always use fiction and am curious to see the record grow over the coming year. This one I found through SuziLove & Eleni – thanks ladies….I think!

I’ve also set myself the challenge to aim for a blog post a month. That shouldn’t be too difficult….she says on the last day of January J

October Biting

This whole blogging thing has taken awhile to get my head around, as can be seen by how long between posts. There were also a couple of crazy-busy months thrown into the issue as well. The idea of starting a blog at a busy time, not necessarily a wise one.

It’s given me time to think do I want to keep it going or not? The answer is yes. I enjoy following other blogs, personal and professional ones (my Google reader gets very long very quickly if I fall off the cyber-wagon) and I’ve watched and learned from them. Even as I’ve broken my own rule of being consistent with a minimum amount of posts I find myself thinking of various ideas and things to discuss.

Today I went public over on the RWA Australia blog doing a Blog Bites with Anita Joy. I agreed awhile back and it has taken me some time getting to it. It’s fun to do and I enjoyed answering the questions. I’m definitely feeling my way with what I’m comfortable with in the online world. Sure, I have a Facebook, Myspace and Twitter account, but was I ready to commit myself to a blog or website? I figure a blog is a baby step to this answer. A website? No, not yet.

Must be something about doing the 50K in 30 days that appeals to my inner blogger. I’ve signed up, for the first time, to NaNoWriMo aka November madness. I’ve ummed and aaahed over doing it for years and this year after my June experience have jumped on in.  The idea is to write a book in a month, or at least a partial book.

This time around my mermaid, T’Alinth is finally getting her say. She has been with me since this whole writing journey started. I think she was one of the first characters that would not leave me alone (she is such a pushy, petulant little thing). It has been her that propelled me over the edge into the writing world when I was too nervous to be around other writers (that is a whole other post).

As I write her story, I will continue to revise and polish FireWalker, the book I wrote back in June. It’s going to be a busy and very much writing focused month (but why do I think being busy a month before the craziness that is December is beyond me). Since writing takes centre stage (instead of being overseas, attending conferences) so will Luna Quirks.

Storytelling

The plan was to blog weekly and already I've veered away from the plan. There is a good reason for it. I’ve been busy. Finishing the draft for FireWalker. Yay!

I made the deadline, with a couple of days to spare, being prepared for the meeting tomorrow with my mentor. For a day or two in there, I thought I wasn’t going to make it. Going away for the long weekend made it dodgy. I surprised myself and wrote while away. Only had one day off last week and that was due to the 6 hour drive on the back of a lack of sleep the night prior.

My tally for the first week for the RWA NaNoWriMo was about the 16,000 mark. I knew it would be high and this week balances that with only about 9,000ish. There are still days left so we’ll see. The tally I set includes playing with a novella. I’ve yet to decide which one I want to play with. So many ideas, only so many hours in a day.

I was very fortunate to be one of the guinea pigs for the now very popular and successful Year of the Edit series of workshops run by the Qld Writer’s Centre. We had the very talented Kim Wilkins as our tutor. I’m pulling on my notes from that year to work on the scene map and commencing the structural edit for this book. I know a lot of people would say it needs to be ‘frozen’/placed in the drawer etc for a bit but I’ve discovered I’m an odd duck. Well, I already knew that but as I discussed the story with my partner, (who also write) he was amused to see how I really do not have any memory of writing some of my scenes. Even ones with my favourite characters are forgotten about. It means as I edit I am reading my story with a ‘first time’ overview. To edit a story detached and methodical are two words that are heard over and over and well, over again.

It leads credence to my theory I am first and foremost a storyteller. If I had lived a few hundred years ago, I would have been quite happy being a travelling bard, telling the stories, slightly different each time. Possibly, I may have had to be male as well, but that is another post for another time. Now in this day and age, stories, to a degree, need to become a static document, captured in time for repeated reading pleasure. It will be interesting to see how detached I will be as in the past my modus operandi was to abandon the baby aka story altogether. It was told, out of my head why would I want to look back at it?