What's Happening? (Just Don't Call Me Rerun)

Ah, probably half the people reading this won't get that joke-- I guess I'm showing my age. :)

Today is probably a good day for an update since it's the last Monday of the month.

I spent most of last week out sick. I was on a cycle of: sleep six hours, awake one, sleep six hours, repeat ad nauseum. I did manage to get a little bit of revision done on my novel (and gained a permanent spiral-binding mark in my forehead from repeatedly falling asleep in my notebook). Strangely enough, a lot of stuff "clicked" in my novel and a lot of the pieces fell together like a jigsaw puzzle. All it took was a week of fevered delirium and now: my characters all have motivation, my antagonist and the sub-antagonist are clear and clearly motivated (previously, the only explanation for their behavior was, "Well . . . they are just jerks;" now they are jerks for a reason); the love triangle has a deep reason for existing.

I'm going to spend the rest of the week revising the novel and then set it aside, whether I'm "done" with the first revision or not. I'll pick it up and start revising again in June.

May is Story-A-Day-May, so I'll be working on writing (or starting, more accurately) a new short story every day, Monday thru Friday, for the whole month. By the end of the month I hope to have at least twenty-two short stories started (at least 1500 words each). Weekends, I'll be working on revising & editing my neglected, so-close-to-being-ready short story, "Sympathy for the Devil" (humorous urban fantasy). I hope to have it ready to submit by the end of the month.

The only other "unfinished" project right now is a story still waiting for publication. "Inhuman Resources" (humorous urban fantasy) will be in the anthology, Zombidays: Festivities of the Flesheaters. The publication date has been pushed back a few times, but hopefully it will be out soon.

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This week's links for writers:

Excellent guidelines for writing/revision
Hunting Down the Pleonasms

40+ Free Tools for Authors

Excellent writing advice and really, really great writing prompts
Start Your Novel

How to Get Published Flowchart

Top 25 Reasons Your Submissions are Rejected

Suggestions for the tackling the revision process
The Revisions Process: Part Two

What do you need to do to be "a writer?"
Writer Reality Check