Merry Eight Days Til Christmas!

Uh, oh. 

Did you know that Christmas is only eight days away? And, okay, seven shopping days, because our family starts the party on the 24th. Gah! I finally went shopping yesterday, though. Go me. Got--sort of-- done. Granted, I did some shopping online and there will be gift cards. 

Anyway. I spent last week cleaning up my NaNo manuscript. I participated in this Entangled Smackdown thing through the Savvy Authors website. The group I was in, Dead Sexy, won--which means that our imprint (Dead Sexy is the romantic suspense line) scored the most points for showing up and suiting up--and the authors who participated earned the opportunity to compete for the chance to be published by Entangled. 

We got an email last Monday from editor Nina Bruhns that said something along the lines of Hey! Send what you've got, with your beat sheet and a query letter, and one of you will get published.

To which I said to myself, You've got to be freaking kidding me.  Not only is this not finished, the story changes directions sixteen times in the 68,000 words I have written. 

Not to mention how many "that's" and "her eyes looked" and "her fingers felt" there are in there.

But hey...what do I have to lose? Okay, maybe I could get my email automatically added to the Dead Sexy spam list, but otherwise, what do I have to lose? 

I enlisted the help of my friend Laura, who graciously looked for as many overused and misspelled words as she could find (why don't I notice the spellcheck suggestions myself?).  I managed to edit SOME of the manuscript. I put together a beat sheet that explains the story I'll be telling once I've rewritten the thing. Wrote a real live query letter and sent the whole mess off. 

And now I have renewed motivation to get back to work and finish this book! I think I'll be buying a few more gift cards to finish out the Christmas shopping, and see if I can hire an elf to do some wrapping so, I can "wrap" things up on my book. HA HA HA. I crack myself up.

Merry Almost Christmas and Happy Belated Hanukkah, and Joyous Whatever Else You Might Be Celebrating! 

6477 words, but does any of it really count? Does anybody really know what time it is?

I didn't really think I would reach self-flagellation this early, but here I am.  I realize that everything that I have written so far is just backstory.  Which is important, but I shouldn't start my novel with it, so I have to start again with wherever the action really begins, right? So does that mean that I'm going to have to be totally honest and pitch these first 6,000 words?  Uh, NO!  I'm saving them, I might need them later.  I'll try to avoid too many flashbacks within flashbacks, but I think they can be tucked in here and there.  

Besides, this is an internal editor-free zone, right?  I think maybe I'm just having a Bad Science Day because I lost my cell pellet this morning (never mind, it would take longer to explain than to just repeat the experiment). 

I'm also a little tired because I went to see Bob Dylan play last night.  Wow, that was really something!

That's him, there to the right, with the guitar and the dorky hat.  It was a very Bob Dylanish kind of a show.  What this means to me is that noone could understand a single word he sang, but we all rocked out anyway because even those of us who don't know all the words can look them up online, and it's just cool to see Bob Dylan.  My oldest son went with me (it was his idea, everyone say "awww", but he just wanted me to go so I would pay for the tickets) and I think he might have been less than impressed, but it was a good time anyway.  

Old Bob played alot of the old Bob songs; you know what they are.  My favorite is Tangled Up In Blue, because it's kind of a love song (at least I think so, even when I know what the words are, I'm not always sure what he's trying to say).    He also did a few swingy/bluesy/rockabilly kinds of things that were newer and very nice.  His voice sounded a bit better on those, too, perhaps because they were written for a 60+ year old voice instead of a 20 year old voice. 

It's funny, I saw Bob play with Tom Petty and the Grateful Dead WAY back in the day (like 1986, on the fourth of July, in Buffalo, NY) but interestingly, don't really remember what they played. Shocking. 

1354 down, 48,646 to go!

I started my NaNo Novel!  I fretted all day yesterday about getting started and how hard this is going to be and why do I want to do this anyway, I don't have the time. Then I wound up having to get up at 3:30 this morning to take my husband to the airport, so hey!  I have a couple of extra hours, so I got started.  Just do it.  I should sellt that to a shoe company, Just Do It.  I could be a jillionaire marketing genius. 

I logged on to NaNo (my user name over there is teriannestanley, add me as a buddy!) and updated my word count, but my little blue meter thingy didn't move much.  I mean, I'm 2.7% of the way there, for heaven sake.  I want some credit! 

I might be a little over stimulated from an excess of halloween candy, but I'm raring to go.  At this rate, I won't be out of ideas for another three days.  Shoot, by the end of the week I'll be done and published! 

Oh, and I had a brilliant idea last night.  I'm going to do a "grammar item of the week" post.  Every time I remember, for the next however long I care, I'm going to research an issue in grammar.  I was reading something, somewhere, about how spelling was not standardized through out much of written history (probably even less so in pre-written times, huh?).  So that made me start thinking about spelling and grammar, about punctuation, all that kind of stuff, and wondering who decides what is "right"?  Strunk and White?  Mr. Webster?  Bill Gates?  I mean, we hear every year about new words or new usages being entered into our lexicon ("friend" is now more of a verb than a noun).  What about punctuation?  What about those little smiley things :) at the end of a terse text message meant to soften the tone?

I'm going to start with my favorite, the ellipsis...  Stay tuned...