Saturday, August 21, 2010

I did it!


Last night I finished my current work-in-progress. I began writing a middle grade novel on July 30th, so I've been working on it for 21 days. Believe me, I have enough laundry and dust to show for it. Of course, this is just the first rough draft. Now comes the revision process, so it's hardly finished in that respect. Right now it's 30 chapters long with 49,535-words.

For the past 3 weeks, I've struggled with a title. I write mostly picture books and sometimes I come up with a title before anything else. Titles weren't a problem for my other two MGs stories, but it sure was for this one. For a long time, I had no ideas. And then last night it hit me out of the blue ...

ENCROACHED

It's such a weird feeling finishing a story like this. I don't know how to explain it. It's a happy feeling, but it's also a "Well, now what do I do?" feeling. I'll be busy revising as well as trying to come up with a synopsis and blurb. If someone were to ask me what my book was about, I could tell them, but I don't know if it would be too long, too short, too detailed, or too little detail. I figured I better start working on that.

So anyway ... I'm pretty happy!

23 comments:

  1. Congratulations!!!

    I'm doing the ~happy dance~ with you~

    love the title!

    Good luck w/ your new work and revisions.

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  2. Wow! Three weeks to write a middle grade novel? That's amazing!

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  3. Rena, that is a whole lotta words in a short time.. I am proud to know ya!
    I like one word titles and Encroached sounds unique and interesting!

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  4. Congrats! I like the title...good luck with the revisions. I deep in revisionland myself.

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  5. SOOOOOO impressed with your speed! Isn't it a great feeling to have a draft? Congrats!

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  6. Wow! That is a lot of words in a short amount of time...Great job! Congrats!

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  7. Speed writing!
    Best wishes with the polishing process.

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  8. Wow, Rena. That is SUPER fantastic! Kudos to you for working so hard on this. That's incredible....what you've done. :)

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  9. Congratulations! May I take a pinch of your writing focus? I have clean clothes but no finished ms!!

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  10. That"s good going. Keep at it and all the best.

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  11. Congratulations on finishing the first draft. You've worked hard and accomplished a lot in such a short time! Good luck with the revisions.

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  12. I am so happy for you! CONGRATS! I had no idea before you told me this on facebook that you were writing an MG novel. :)

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  13. You wrote almost 50,000 words in 21days?!?! Holy moly! Congratulations!

    Regarding synopsis, Kater Cheek and I share an agent and she guest blogged for Kate today. Check out her guest post http://ktliterary.com/2010/08/guest-blog-by-kater-cheek/
    She gives a great step by step on how to write a synopsis. Like going chapter by chapter and then writing one sentence that describes the action in that chapter. Sounds like an awesome way to break it down.

    Good luck!

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  14. congratulations! You must have really been inspired to write this story to finish it so quickly. I've heard that the story's tag line should be around 20 words.

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  15. Congratulations to you!!!

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  16. Wow, Rena, you are amazing! What are you eating to have the energy to churn out that many words in that short time? HUGE congratulations! :o)

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  17. Grats Rena, I'm proud of you. :)

    Gale

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