First Read Through and New Year's Resolutions

I'm just about finished reading my book for the first time, start to finish.  I definitely have quite a few edits to make but there are both parts that I feel are extremely amazing, and parts I feel that really need work.  The amazing parts really do make me feel good though.  I would read a whole section thinking 'I wish I knew what I was doing the day I wrote this part because it's such better quality writing than the next page or two'.

I'm totally a New Year's Resolution type gal so, of course, I have a few ready for this upcoming Jan. 1st.  I will just go ahead and make a list for you...

1.  Make every effort in my power to get my book published.
2.  Make every effort in my power to get a good job.
3.  Enjoy exercising again (this past year was my first ever that I stayed active on a regular basis all year, so it has lost a lot of that 'fun' quality since becoming so routine).
4.  Do yoga more often (3-4 times a month, at least).
5.  Meditate more (5 times a week, at least).

My average amount of time of actually following my annual resolutions is only about 4-5 months, so I was worried about putting the first two resolutions on the list for fear that I'd quit on them just to stay consistent, but I figured number 2 is in crucial need of getting accomplished in month 1, and hopefully number 1 won't need more than 4-5 months (that's probably about when I'd get discouraged enough to quit for a while anyway).  Whew, that was a long sentence, but I think it makes sense.

So with the Christmas holiday coming to an end, and the New Year just around the corner, I'm really spending a lot of time daydreaming about what I want my 2013 year to look like.  The number 13 has always scared me, so hopefully this year gives me a reason to reevaluate why I let superstitions get the best of me.

No matter what happens in the coming year, I'll always remember 2012 and my final year in my 20s as the one I finally wrote my book :)

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!

17 Days :D

I will be finished writing my FIRST EVER FULL BOOK in only 17 Days!!!!!  You know, as long as I keep writing a thousand words a day for 17 days (and I'm way too excited about this book to slack off this close to the end).  It's moving along wonderfully too.  Some last minute decisions were made on the ending today too...things that will help for the next one.  There will probably be about four total, I think?

I can't wait to edit it enough to be able to start submitting it to agents.  Holy crap am I excited about this entire thing...it makes my skin tingle.

Changing the subject...

It's definitely the holiday season in the Dillman household.  My husband got me my Christmas present yesterday and was able to wait about 30 whole minutes before he had to give it to me (he did wrap it though).

A DSLR Camera!!

YAY!!!!  And I'm already having a ton of fun with it :)

                ~~~~Merry Christmas!!!!!!!!~~~~~~~

I also got a wifi SD card...which I purchased for myself a couple of days earlier.  It's called an Eye-Fi SD card and when it's used in a camera, it automatically uploads the photos taken with the card to the program of my choosing (iPhoto, please).  It has been working flawlessly and is really changing the way I use my camera.

So all in all, today was a really excellent day.  In fact, this weekend has been really amazing.  I can't even express how excited I am that I'm finally accomplishing a goal I have wanted to achieve since I was single-digit aged.

50,030

Ahhhh!  At the start of November, I decided that in honor of NaNoWriMo, I would use the writing vibes from the thousands of writers in the world to get my book to 50,000 words.  I was at somewhere around 30,000 words at the start of the month (keep in mind, that's a little over 3 months worth of work on this project).  Tonight, as I'm sure you have guessed, I made it past my goal!!  YAYYYYY!!!!  And not only that, but I'm a whole crapload closer to finishing my first ever full-length novel!!!

So yea, lots of !!! these in this post.  SOOO...I wrote a whole bunch of stuff right here...well, about two longer sentences that made up a paragraph...and they're all gone because I wrote some dashes that looked like an arrow pointing at those explanation points in the beginning of this paragraph and it turned the whole paragraph into a weird internet code that I had to delete.  Whoops! Moving on...

 
Now that I'm this far into the book --and I'm just repeating myself here-- I'm worried it'll be awful.  Then I'm worried that it'll be amazing.  Then I'm worried again (and most often) that it will be just terrible.

I have a friend who is all willing and eager to read it.  I'm going to go through and do one edit before I let him though, but it has been really nice this whole time knowing that someone is going to give me real live feedback before I send it off to agents.

Once the manuscript does hit either the digital mailboxes or the physical snail-mail versions, I'm going to expect some heart break and humility.  It's hearing about books like 'The Help' that gives people like me fairy-tail type dreams though.  The common theme in this type of business is that it's totally normal to get rejections left and right until someone finally bites.  That could be after the 50th rewrite, but it doesn't mean I ever really have to give up on this particular story that I've had my heart set on for nearly a decade.  Persistence.  It's the motto I've used for my jewelry business, which has seen a real boost in sales lately (thank you Christmas).  And it's the motto I'll definitely use for this, which has been a dream of mine for at least 10 times longer than the jewelry business.

Either way, I need to get to bed now.  I wasn't even supposed to finish this many words today.  I ended up writing about twice my average because I couldn't sleep.  The story itself is really developing perfectly though and I think it's about to get even more fast paced.  I might see more late night writing sessions in the future?

New goal....
FINISH it before 2013...because 13 is a super unlucky number.  Hopefully that doesn't affect me getting someone to buy this thing but I don't want to take the chances that it'll affect me finishing it.... :-/