I drew this awesome picture up of my adventures (well, misadventures and battle with the dewey decimal system) in my university library, but after thinking about it I figured that kind of spontaneity might be better left hidden. It was an embarrassing battle. Regardless, current updates:
Break is amazing. Seriously, best schedule ever: Wake up, breakfast, work out, write, go out, sleep, repeat. It's fantastic.
AND it allows for my to do NaNoWriMo round 2! Yahoo! For all of you Non-NaNos out there (once again, do people actually read this? Doubtful....) that's National Novel Writing Month, done during the month of November. You try to pound out 50k words in 30 days and feel super accomplished if you do. I wasn't able to get the 50k I wanted this month due to school work, which is why round 2 is beginning in my life, especially with way more time, no finals, grad school apps, and the like.
And, well, I have a little bit of incentive now.
But first, prayers to all of those who are suffering and hurting right now. My heart goes out to all of the families that lost people in the recent shooting.
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Although it's a terrible transition, now my novel-writing update:
December 18 = beginning of my 30 day adventure, lots of outlining and writing done
December 19th - 8k words completed
December 21st - 17k words completed
December 22 - 21k words completed
Today's December 22. Have yet to hit up the writing world, but that's because I was busy buying Anberlin tickets and scheduling a pedicure. Sue me. Girl time is necessary. So are concert tickets for my favorite band. Besides, this counts as writing. Not my minimum goal of 15 min a day (or preferably a chapter a day), but writing nonetheless. Besides, due to the fact that The Intouchables left theaters again (I really need to stop waiting for the family to get onboard and hit up the movies with me...), I have plenty of writing time tonight. I'll get that chapter out. Woohoo rough drafts.
Anyhow, The Big News. I feel like I should have some sort of dramatic music for that titillating introduction. Bum bum bum. There we go.
I wrote a novel - ACTIONS AND MOTIVES - about 2 years ago when I was living in London. I wrote it in about a month while sitting in my local pub (seriously, best experience ever). I'll give more background if anything ever comes of it (hopefully!). But, I sent out queries, got the form rejections, continued editing and editing and editing (seriously though... I've hardcore edited this sucker at least 20 times), and randomly got this email over Thanksgiving break:
Needless to say, I was stoked. Not only because this was my first positive response, but because I'd given up on even hearing back from this agency. I mean, it had been MONTHS. But then, out of the blue when I was least expecting it - BAM! Good things. Seriously, I might repost my positivity post from my other blog just because it's the way to go about life.
Anyhow, I immediately edited, formatted, and sent those pages out with my fingers crossed, but not TOO much hope. I mean, it was just a partial. Plenty of room for rejection. Besides, I had up to 12 weeks of waiting. I couldn't get too excited.
So I went back to school, had my 22 birthday (talk about shenanigans), powered through those aforementioned finals, the GRE test, grad school applications, and woke up December 14th to a call from my boss asking if I wanted to work early. Um, yes! That meant I got to go home 2 days early! Best surprise ever. So, I got ready to go ride horses (best job ever), decided to check my email, and might have had a small conniption.
But really.
Are you ready? I'm actually not sure if I should be posting this, because there's still plenty of room for this to go, well, the sad, rejecting way, but because no one really reads this, why the heck not? Might as well document:
Seriously?!?! Like I said, unbelievable morning.
So, I won't go into any more details. I still have a long wait ahead of me and I'm filling the time in by working on the sequel, just in case. Might as well get a version of it written up, right? I have to kind of know where I'm going. But, at this point, this is the most positive response I've received so far, and it rocks. I'm on the road to achieving my dream, and it makes me just want to give a shout out to anyone and everyone right now who doesn't think they can achieve theirs.
You can. It just takes some positivity and a lot of willpower, but it's possible.
So, happy holidays and a few selfishly crossed fingers that I might continue to move forward in my own endeavors!
Annie King
(am I allowed to end with my name? It feels so pretentious, like I'm actually writing to people. Hah. I'll indulge myself this once...)
