Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Happy Holidays!!!!





Happy Holidays to Everyone Who Writes to Me and/or Comments or Reads This Blog Silently!

 These are my three demons kids who begrudgingly happily posed for a quick Christmas shot. We have the official White House portrait, but this was just a quick one that I think captures them more naturally. The boys look just so enthralled with the camera.

I love this week between Christmas and New Year's. I like the quietness of everything, love the blizzard and the snowed in slowness of these days. I finally got to some writing yesterday, after all the ho ho stuff, and I made a list of what's on my desk. It reads:

Chapters 1 - 4 of a paranormal YA (early YA)

Chapter 1 of an adult novel with an outline

Chapters 1, 2 and 3 of a YA

Revision of Middle Grade about 60 %  done

Page One and Outline of a YA novel with a boy protagonist

So that's five things I'm working on. Yikes. No wonder I get lost when I sit down to work. I need more weeks like this with no work and no demands.

Do other people make lists of what they have or what they're working on? Probably not since this is not a sane way to write. I'll bet most folks go chapter by chapter with one, possibly two pieces.

Actually, my house has lots of "begun" projects that have been tinkered with and sort of abandoned. I have every intention of painting those shelves, stenciling that cool old bookshelf, organizing Christopher's baby album pictures now that he's just turned 19.

So this is my writing resolution: no new and shiny chapters until I finish all five of these. Yup, that's right. I am publicly humiliating myself so I don't begin yet another writing project. It clutters up my brain and I suffer from terminal tinkering which means I don't finish stuff at the pace I would like. I can abandon one or more of these wip's, but I can't start a new one until I see these through either to a manuscript or fodder for the compost heap.

So along with being able to identify a muscle in my body without a CT Scan (that is my physical resolution), I am going to have to identify these five beginnings into some kind of ending. I may be a little late with some holiday stuff, but with these resolutions, I'm starting early.

Do you have any writing resolutions for 2011?

9 comments:

Mary Witzl said...

Making lists IS sane! I've gotten so disorganized lately that I haven't even managed to do that. And believe me, I am the Queen of Unfinished Projects.

I've got an adult novel beta-read and 95% finished, an MG currently being beta read and also 95% finished, three started-but-never-finished YAs (including one with a Dad so much like the one in The Shape of Water that, at the very least, I'll have to change his religion), two memoirs in perpetual states of revision, a collection of short stories, and a MG/YA I'm hoping my agent will soon send his first edit of. My writing resolution for 2011 is to finish the adult novel and almost finished MG -- and get SOMETHING published! But that goal is in the lap of the gods.

Happy 2011 to you and your family!

storyqueen said...

I usually work on a couple of things as a time...but only when I am drafting. I am amidst revision right now and it is all I can do to keep anything in my head.

At all.

I will be glad when this one is finished.

Good luck on your books!

Shelley

Anne Spollen said...

What is a beta read? Remember, be patient with me: I hang out in libraries, grade papers, do laundry and read some blogs - I'm not too up on anything (really, just ask my kids)

But happy 2011 to you and yours, Mary!

Drafting is fun, Shelley. You really can just start tons of stuff. Revision is when I need to focus. Then again, I wrote "Shape of Water" after an agent contacted me about turning a story into a novel - I couldn't focus on the story, so I just kept writing chapters for Shape. Writing habits are so weird, aren't they?

Marcia said...

I have three half done projects, not five, but otherwise I'm right with you. It's time to finish instead of doing the interminable tinkering, and define -- er, identify -- a few of those flabby muscles.

K.C. Shaw said...

Happy 2011! That's a hilarious picture--I love that your daughter is obviously having fun having her picture taken, and your sons are just as obviously, well, not. :)

Good luck with your goals in the new year! I need to sort through my own goals and figure out what I can realistically accomplish too.

Anonymous said...

That's an ambitious list.

I can only keep track of 2-3 projects at a time.

Happy New Year!

Anne Spollen said...

Three is a lot to keep track of, Marcia. I'm working on two simultaneously, but three gives me panic attacks. I just tinker with the other three.

Emma is a young 12, K.C. And her brothers put up with someone resembling me doing things like stopping T ball parades to take pictures so they're more exhausted by their mother's photo shoots.


And realistically and accomplish need to learn to live in the same sentence with me...

Happy New Year, Medeia! So far, no one has said they can only do one project at a time, so maybe I'm not as nuts as I seem.

Anonymous said...

Hi,

Thanks for sharing this link - but unfortunately it seems to be down? Does anybody here at annespollen.blogspot.com have a mirror or another source?


Cheers,
Mark

Glynis Peters said...

Happy New Year!

LOL, I love the pic.

I wrote a list but have lost it, I am not good with lists! LOL