Messy Notes
My test readers are done with my manuscript (Thank you, all!) and helped make it a better work. Now it’s in the hands of those professionals who actually make a living selling books. I’m sure they’ll find ways to improve it, which is a good thing.
Meanwhile, I’m back to work on a young adult fantasy that I started some time ago. First, however, I had to reorganize my notes because they were an absolute mess. Usually I’m very, very organized, so I was surprised to see just how sloppily I’d left my jottings. The trouble came when I was working out different outlines in a notebook and just turned pages as I abandoned certain plotlines. I should have ripped out the pages, but I didn’t, thus I really had my work cut out for me when I revisited them later.
Actually, I suppose I could say that the trouble really started when I chose to write my outlines on paper at all. I usually do everything on my computer specifically because it’s easy to cut and paste, etc. Must have had a reason for trying the outline freehand, but darned if I can remember what the reason was.
So let that be a lesson to myself — and anyone else who may choose to heed it. Don’t drop work for awhile that’s in a messy state. Makes it slow-going to get started up again.
Happily, I’m done reorganizing and back to writing (Finally!) and I’m having fun again. I like this story a lot and hope to finish it this summer.
It just came out Tuesday and, so far, it’s a really fun read. I’m a little more than 100 pages into The Last Olympian, the final book in the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series, written by 
Another book which I just loved and read, oh, probably six months ago now, was The Graveyard Book by 
She spoke on a slew of issues, including how the economy is affecting acquisitions, which I found particularly interesting. Kendra assures us that publishers are still acquiring books (after all, that is what they do), although they’re being pickier and taking fewer risks. As such, she encourages authors to aim for specificity in their work: in hook, plot, target audience, and, later, the agent or publisher to which you submit.
Okay, I know that I sound like an old fuddie duddie when I say, “Oh my, where did the time go? Another year come and gone!” Well, dangit, that’s exactly how I feel, and I just cannot believe that another year’s rolling ’round. 
But not everyone does it well. There are angry critics who reject everything they see. There are unhelpful critics who expound without explanation. There are sunshiny, happy critics who see toil behind every work and inevitably praise every effort. Finally, there are objective, helpful critics who judge a work systematically and with professionalism.
I’ve been posting for several days now on the speakers at SCBWI-WI’s fall retreat. The two I’ll highlight today were informative and funny, and their ideas were excellent.
Illustrator