Book Reviews and Writing Tips

Book Reviews and Writing Tips

Thursday, January 28, 2010

I Entered The ABNA Contest For The Third Time

Well let me tell you it's been a long two months for me. Trying to get my book finished in time for the contest and dealing with all my family issues. I lost one of my dear cats on the 7th of Dec. so that was a blow but he was 17 years and 7 months so had a pretty long life. Now his brother pines away for him, poor thing. They were from the same litter. He has lots of medical problems anyway so I've had my hands full.

Then the announcement for the contest came, which I was expecting, so it was onto polishing and more polishing. And the polishing was after I had to add 30,000 words to the manuscript in two weeks. It was a story I had originally written as a short story in 2005 and wasn't long enough for the contest at its present length. Of course I could have taken the easy route and just entered the one I did last year since they let self published books in the contest this year but I wanted to enter something new. I've been burning the midnight oil on all that and am completely wiped out.

I'm entering Y/A this year - my first year to do so - but it was the only thing I had finished enough that I could polish in time since I opted to enter something new. Hopefully I'll make the first cut but what will be - will be. At least I'm entered and can catch up on my 700 emails now. Oh my! A daunting task since I have to read them all. I'm so behind on my email that I should be ashamed of myself. I owe notes to a few people but they know what my writing life is like. Thank goodness. Of course my house needs a good cleaning too etc. etc. etc. And I have three manuscripts left to read and review since I promised that before the holidays. You know how it never ends. Sometimes I think I bite off way more than is do-able but that's just me. I do eventually get to it. I'm glad most people are understanding.

I guess I'm hopeless because I'm already jotting notes down for the next book. Sigh... I guess they'll join all the other notes I keep in my writing folder for now.