it's a good day for writing

Current tuneage: It Ain't Me Babe - The Turtles

Well, it's been awhile since I've written anything and I blame it on a few other projects I've been trying to work on as well (did I mention I was a multi-tasker?) But I'm back and fully focused on my main three projects.

Quick update: an agent that I sent a partial to LAST June finally responded. She wrote back a personalized letter (which I'm sorry to say isn't always the case) that said what she liked about the first three chapters, what she didn't like and even her favorite line. It's always hard to add another rejection to the pile, but I try and remind myself that she merely wasn't the right agent for this particular book. If she's not enthusiastic enough to represent me or my novel then we probably aren't a good match. I'd much rather wait around for the right agent who just loves what I write and is sure she can sell it to a publisher than get an agent quickly who is only half interested (or not at all) just to say I got an agent. Thankfully, this wasn't even one of the partials that I was still counting on, so I still have two partials and one full out. **fingers crossed**

My third novel which I'm in the middle of outlining is kind of at a standstill. I think there's always a few months in between finishing one book and starting a second one where I really don't feel like taking those first few steps. I'm still learning, so all I have is my experience from finishing my first one and starting my second, but there was about a 4-5 month period where I really didn't do much writing. The interesting thing about this break is that, while I'm not really into writing another novel right this second, I'm fairly involved in writing this short story. I've decided not to bother with the outlining. After all, we're talking about an average of 7,000 words (depending on which literary magazines I'm going to send it to) and that seems like so little when compared with the average of 80,000 that I've been writing for the novels. So I'm going to give it a go. I suppose if I get stuck or confused or lost (which is entirely possible) then I'll start an outline.

In the meantime, it's getting ready to rain outside and I can't think of a better kind of day to get a lot of writing done. If only I could sit on a screened-in porch with a laptop and watch the storm come in... now that would make for a perfect day :)