WIP It Good

It’s time for the WIP It Goodblogfest hosted by DL Hammond and Elise Fallson, which means it’s a special Friday post.

Hi everyone from the bloghop! If you’re looking to swap beta reads/critiques and don’t detest first person present tense, I’m here.

WIP Title: COLLAPSE

Word Count (projected/actual so far): 90,000/90,000

Genre: YA Dystopian/apocalyptic

How long have you been working on it?: A little over a year.

Elevator Pitch (if you came across an agent in an elevator ride, what couple of lines would you use to summarize your book): The world is ending. Society is crumbling. Cassidy, however, isn’t going anywhere any time soon.

Brief Synopsis (250 words or less): World temperatures are sky-rocketing and society is on shaky last legs. Cassidy is witnessing it all firsthand. But she isn’t the type to let a little thing like the end of the world do her in. Of course, the life she once knew is gone, replaced with something vastly different from high school and a boring suburban life. Bullies used to be a problem for her. Now she’s slightly more worried about being gunned down by people she once called “neighbor”, and whether or not her brother will die from an asthma attack because they can’t get to a doctor. Her father says keeping the family safe at the expense of everyone else is the right thing to do and she believes him…except for the one niggle of doubt when she sees the people gasping their last breaths in triple digit temperatures. It may be a question of who breaks first, her or the heat.

Are you looking for a Critique Partner?: Yes!

Are you looking for a Beta Reader?: Also yes!

WIP It

Like the Devo song. They were on Futurama. That’s how I know them.

One of my 2012 goals was to join in more blogfests. As you may or may not recall, I did one, which was less than I did in 2012 and thus a total failure for me. Not that I’m broken up about it, but still. It’s pretty weaksauce on my part.

Anyway, I finally found one that made me get off my lazy butt and join! DL Hammons and Elise Fallson are hosting the WIP It Good Blogfest on May 31^st. On that day, everyone shares the following:

WIP Title:

Word Count (projected/actual so far):

Genre:

How long have you been working on it?:

Elevator Pitch (if you came across an agent in an elevator ride, what couple of lines would you use to summarize your book):

Brief Synopsis (250 words or less):

Are you looking for a Critique Partner?:

Are you looking for a Beta Reader?:

And we meet up in hopes of finding new CPs and Beta Readers, something I mentioned I was looking for.

This is perfect : ). I hope to see you there!

Betastic

It’s that time in my book’s life cycle where I have to send it out into the cold, cruel world (you’ll see what I mean in Saturday’s post) to be brutally slaughtered. I mean critiqued. Isn’t it weird how slaughter is laughter with an s at the beginning?

Anyway, I already have one really good beta reader (did you know I forget words all the time? Because I didn’t), and I’m not worried about losing her. I beta read for her and when she published, she sent me a copy of the book. I think that’s like getting married for beta readers. She was the first person who read COLLAPSE besides me and her notes gave me plenty of ideas to make things, in a word, better.

How I would love to believe that this one critique is all it needs to be mind-bendingly awesome. But it might be prudent to find other people willing to read it. I just hope I have the same luck as I did when Julie first asked me to beta read for her and promised to return the favor. My other interactions with betas has been…unfortunate. To sum up, one fell ill, one disappeared from the internet, and the third just hated my MC.

So. That’s where I am right now. If anyone is interested in beta reading/critiquing, let me know. So there are no surprises, it’s a YA dystopian and written in first person present tense. I know, how trendy. But it’s how I like to write. I’m always happy to return the favor, as long as you don’t disappear on me. Then I might have to hunt you down.

Websites for Writers

Chris Kelworth at the Kelworth Files came up with a great idea. So great is it that he dedicated a whole section of his blog to it! 

What’s his idea? Critique groups! Me, I’d love one. I have some great crit partners already, but this is one of those things where you can’t get enough. Well, maybe you can but I haven’t yet.

I’ve already been over there and I suggest you go too. Because the more people there are, the more groups there will be for the people! That makes sense. I think. In some circular way.

Also, the contest is still going on. A free book. A $25 gift card. Sign up. Please. Pretty please. You don’t have to be from the US to get the book!

Polishing and a Request

Now that I've finished sewing up the plot holes, I'm working on the actual writing in my book. It's hard! I think the read aloud is helping with it some, and searching for words that end in -ly tends to cut down on adverbs (how I wish Word had a feature to search word types), but there's only so much one set of eyes can see. If you've been working on a project for nine months with few interruptions, you tend to lose your objectivity.

Does anyone out there enjoy dystopian/post-apocalyptic and feel like reading a semi-polished,unpublished novel? Because I've put off getting outside opinions long enough. It doesn't have to be a full crit or anything (although I could probably use a few of those, too) just an opinion on readability and coherence. And I'm always happy to return the favor, either now or at a later time. If you are interested, you can contact me via my profile (scroll down a bit and click on link under my pic).

And now, back to the read aloud...

More Scheduling

Starting tomorrow, I'm going to do "Favorite Fridays," where I highlight some of my favorite, not writing websites and other things (books, movies, television...whatever I can come up with). I figure, hey, the weekend is coming, so you might as well have something else to distract you from writing.

Anyway, in writing news, I'm still busy editing my post-Apocalyptic-ish YA novel, but I still don't think it's ready to be submitted yet. While it's good, I worry about things like "do the characters' actions make sense?" and "are their voices distinct?" I definitely need more opinions from beta readers and critique partners. I haven't had any luck finding new partners yet (although my friend Choices will be up on her feet and ready to read soon, I hope) and was wondering if there were any good websites out there to connect CPs and readers. I've looked at a few of the forums on Yahoo (I think it was Yahoo anyway) but didn't have much luck there.

Boring post today, I know. The next one will be fantabulous, I promise.

...aw, nuts...

I didn't get picked as a semi-finalist at Brenda Drake's blogfest. : (  I know I'm supposed to accept it and move on (there really were a lot of good entries that left mine in the dust) but I'm still bummed about it. It's from a MS I've been working really hard on and it's never easy to see something lose when you've put so much effort into it.

A lot of people said they liked my entry, which is nice, but I think I would've liked more criticism. If I ever want to improve it further, I need a crit partner or something. If only good ones weren't so hard to find! The last time I traded an MS for reads, I took the time to put in some critiques only to get nothing in return except anger that I didn't like the first scene.

Okay, that's enough bitching for today. I'm going to do a little more editing (still word hunting; so far I've removed 200+ was's, 100+ got's, and dozens of unnecessary had, has, and have's). Then I'll probably go crit partner hunting, so I'll need a tranquilizer gun and some duct tape...

Tune in tomorrow, when I'll be back to interesting content. Word nerdery's afoot!