Re: NaNoWriMo — I wasn't going to do it, but…I signed up. Why? Because I'm incredibly excited about All the King's Women. (It's got a king with an inferiority complex, a harem full of Machiavellian women, a courtesan and a hot alpha hero.) I want to finish the first draft in November. Although I'm ultimately aiming the story to be about 100k long, the initial draft is going to end up somewhere between 75-85K.

Re: MySpace — I soooo wasn't going to make an account, but I succumbed. If you want to friend me, feel free.

Re: guest blogging — I blogged about breaking rules to promote Devil Falls w/a Angelle Trieste. Check it out here.

I'm done with revising The Last Slayer for the moment. Which means Agent thinks it's ready to be shopped around, and I'm happy with it, too. I can't thank her enough for all the suggestions and notes on how to make the story better. I really think the entire story hangs together so much more cohesively now.

Coincidentally (or otherwise) Colleen Lindsay blogged about revisions / rewrites and ego landing. I'd never heard the phrase “the ego has landed”, but it's from a blog post by Del Rey Editor-in-Chief Betsy Mitchell on revisions / rewrites. It look like there are many writers who are very resistant to revisions / rewrites, even if they're going to make the story better, because they're so convinced of their own brilliance or something.

I hope I never become one of those writers. Agent, May and Hero Material have my permission to smack me hard when my hat becomes too snug for my own good.

Finally! After several days of endless rain, we have beautiful sunny weather! Yay to October!

I started working on the outline for All the King's Women. I wasn't going to do one, but I realized that maybe I should, esp. since it's nothing like I've ever written before (historical fantasy romance). I spent most of the day filling out character sketches. Tomorrow, I'll be working on the basic setting info sheets.

BTW — Hero Material found this on the Internet. Very cute. No animals were harmed in it, I don't think.

Last night, I finally wrapped up The Last Slayer revision and emailed the entire manuscript to Agent. May threatened to send ninjas after me if I continue to sit on it and tinker with it, so it had to be done.

I'm feeling accomplished since it was the most difficult round of revision I've ever done. But at the same time I think it made the story better. Hope Agent feels the same way as well. (Not about the difficult part, but about the it making the story better part! ;) )

Status: Am feeling a bit better about life in general. I realized that I had a little more cash than I initially estimated, so that makes me feel relaxed about it, somewhat. (see below for why)

I'm convinced that there's some kind of evil retrograde somewhere.

Why?

My RAM died. The merchant's being as difficult as possible with the return.

My dishwasher died. It needs to be replaced, most likely, since the current unit's old. This is a completely unexpected and unplanned expenditure, but it must be spent.

Yesterday, my site died. It was the new plugin I installed for WP, and it killed my blog. MySQL refused to import my back-ups. I almost died until I found a file that it would import. If you see any errors on the site, please let me know!

Despite it all, I'm trying to stay optimistic. I'm going through the latest draft of Slayer. I can't believe I missed some of the continuity errors that occurred when I made some changes to the story. I was 500% embarrassed when I discovered them. :oops:

One thing that's really difficult for me is the amount of work that is required for the newly added materials. Unlike some writers who I envy, I'm not the most polished writer. It takes me a while to get it to flow just right. So the new materials take several days before they're on par with the other more polished scenes.

Currently I'm using iPod Touch to review my manuscript. I downloaded an app called Files. It works great for me because it can read *.doc and not destroy all my formatting. (I'm very particular about formatting.) So I'm saving money on paper & printer cartridge. The price of paper went up about 50-100% in Japan, depending on what grade, size, etc. So I'm trying to find ways to reduce the amount of paper, etc. I use as much as possible. Does this mean I'll never print my entire ms? Nope. I like to see stuff on papers. I catch different things on different medium. But Files is one of the tools I can use.

It was one of the hardest things I've done for the project, but I managed to insert a completely new chapter into The Last Slayer without ruining the continuity and so on. It's about 16 pages long, but I spent over four days to write it because I kept going back to add, fix, delete, rewrite, etc. etc.

Two more big chapters to go, another read-through, and I'm done. *whew*