Egging Myself On … and Not Fooling Myself

Pam Baddeley, Writer Posted on by
Keyboard image by Johan Larsson

Photo Credit: Johan Larsson via Compfight cc

Well it’s been a pretty positive Easter holiday. Finally went through the notes from the book doctor at the Writers’ Workshop Getting Published day and applied those to the Green Magic synopsis, covering letter and Chapter 1 (plus handled the knock on effects on scenes in Chapters 2 and 3 as well).

Then, worked on getting that other novel’s synopsis down to a page. What a painful exercise. But got there in the end, and did a covering letter. Now need to print all that off plus the first 3 chapters, and read it through carefully, as the submission needs to be hard copy. But am feeling positive about making progress on a long held goal.

So my goals for ROW80 round 2 are:

  • Get the novel submitted (to the publisher that still accepts unagented submissions)
  • Work on my WIP and get the characters to the ‘Rocks and Water’ scene

And here is the first set of blogs for round 2:

End of Round One. Seconds Out ….

Pam Baddeley, Writer Posted on by

Well, it  wasn’t an entirely successful three months. On the positive side, I did get a few interim goals done, the kind that kept cropping up during the period.  I just didn’t make much headway on the main goal, progressing my WIP.  Am determined to get back to that soon. The Squidoo writing is going to take more of a back seat for now, though I am determined to break into that or one of the other sites, as an income stream for the future, to support my fiction writing.

Anyway, here is the last blog round for this time, it all starts again on 1st April.  Are they trying to tell us something?

 

Not to Be, Oh Well, Never Mind ….

Pam Baddeley, Writer Posted on by

As one door closes another opens, isn’t that how it’s meant to go?

Heard yesterday I didn’t make the Quarter Finals/Third Round of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. Judging by the two Vine reviewer reports, one in particular just didn’t ‘get’ my book and was not a fan of science fiction. Anyway, at least the pitch was judged by Amazon editors who thought it was good enough and it’s always been the pitches I think I’m bad at so it’s ironic that the book fell on the opening extract.

I won’t go into those reviews further, but from what’s said on the ABNA forum, I think it would have gone through with a more targeted readership. I didn’t expect to win, but it would have been nice to have had the extract and blurb etc posted on Amazon for people to download for free and hopefully give feedback on.  That would have been a valuable experience in its own right, so it’s sad not to have had that.

So I got straight on with one of my ROW80 goals after that and polished the story for Mslexia and sent it in for their competition last night.  So now the remaining goals for ROW80 are:

  1. Get my characters to the ‘Rocks and Water’ scene.  This really needs attention now as this goal has been almost totally neglected for weeks.
  2. Get a package together to the publisher who wants a one page synopsis.  That’s had me stumped so I need to look at what the book doctor did on the first paragraph of another novel’s synopsis for an idea of the sort of thing that might be slashed.  Looks like whole subplots and characters have to go, so it won’t give a very faithful impression of the book.  I always feel that people will turn round and say how can you have written something 150,000 words long based on this synopsis – I think that once happened, simply because of having to cut so much to meet an arbitrary synopsis length.  A long book like this should be allowed a couple of double spaced pages, but you can’t argue if that is their rule.

Anyway, here’s the rest of the ROW80 blogs for this round:

Writers’ Workshop

Pam Baddeley, Writer Posted on by

Yesterday I attended a Writers’ Workshop event, which was interesting as I’ve not been able to make their weekend events in York. There was some interesting food for thought and I took lots of notes.

I had a useful book doctor appointment with a published author who gave me some good tips for a covering letter and synopsis for ‘Green Magic’ and also something to change at the very beginning. Also, said some nice things about my writing ability that helped my confidence.

Still spending far too long on Squidoo writing and there’s currently a huge bust up going on, which I won’t go into here, but I am currently wondering whether to continue. Again it has interfered with my fiction writing. And I missed the ROW80 mid-week report again partly because I had zilch to say.

Anyway, here is the latest round of blogs.

Oh Dear, Another Dry Spell

Pam Baddeley, Writer Posted on by

Not much to report this time as working on Squidoo has blanked out any free time for the WIP. There’s a lot of keyword research that has to be done to try to get Google traffic. The initial positive results have ebbed away somewhat as it turns out that positive comments and likes by fellow Squidoo writers ‘wear off’, so my first lens (article) has slumped right down the ratings and none of the others ever got anywhere near a good rating. Ho hum. I’ve decided I won’t do the ‘homework’ each week; it’s better to study the keyword side and try to get traffic to them and hence improve their ranking and maybe generate some sales/income. Anyway, it’s something that has to take a long view.  It isn’t a short term goal.

In all this, I missed the mid-week report-in! Darn!

Meanwhile, I need to polish that story I was going to send to the Mslexia competition. And work out how to write a one page synopsis of that very long novel …..

Anyway, here is the current ROW80 round:

 

Small Steps

Pam Baddeley, Writer Posted on by

Squidooed again to some extent in the last few days, but I now have 5 lenses published, plus one in progress.

Meanwhile, the requirement for a one page synopsis by the publisher still has me stumped.  I’ve struggled mightily in the past to get it down to two pages.

Therefore, I looked at my other goals.  The story I would have sent to Mslexia’s comp is far too long, though I have worked out a second choice.  Just need to sit down and polish that one.

I finally today got an hour or so to work on the WIP and completed a scene.  Not much progress, but given that it’s taken me weeks to get back to it I’m very pleased.  I would have done more but this is a tricky part of the novel and I’m trying to work out the sequence of events.

OK, on with the ROW80 blog hop:

Through to Round 2 of Amazon Breakthrough!

Pam Baddeley, Writer Posted on by

Got an email on Wednesday night from the Amazon folks with a link to check if I’d got through the first sift on the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.  Turns out I made it through on my category – YA – to Round 2.  This was based on pitch only, so as well as being pleased to have made the first hurdle, it gives me more confidence about doing pitches.

I’m not going to start jumping up and down yelling “Yipee!” yet as I’ve been in this position on the first BritWriters and a number of other large competitions.  But it is a boost to my confidence.

Meanwhile, I’ve made zero progress on my goals because of a) spending loads of time on Squidoo lenses as they keep setting me ‘quests’ and b) when I checked what the publisher wanted, it turns out that the submission must include a one page synopsis.  Having spent a lot of time and effort in the past to produce a 2 page synopsis for this 167,000 fantasy epic, I was aghast at seeing this so I haven’t found the strength to tackle it yet.  And lack of time and energy left over from Squidoo has prevented me from working on the WIP.  I am going to have to back off from Squidoo.

Anyway, here is the latest ROW80 blog list:

Did I Miss One?

Pam Baddeley, Writer Posted on by

I think I might have broken my steady record of posting on ROW80.  Up to last Sunday inclusive I had always made the deadline, even if I just got in on the last day.  But I don’t see a link on Wednesday’s Linkys.  The reason for this glitch is I’ve been Squidooed as in spending loads of time trying to do lenses.  This got really bad when I received an email from the Squidoo folks to say I was a ‘promising lensmaster’, and inviting me to join a RocketSquids boot camp where challenges are set, to do a new lens each week to a brief.

I have duly completed this week’s task to produce a lens about a product I own using the Amazon Spotlight module and also carried out a lot of work on my real second lens which I would have published today except I hit a bug in the ebay module.  I’ve reported it, but as the good folks are volunteers, it may be a while before I hear anything.

Despite all this, I actually completed a goal on my ROW80 list, namely I did get together the submission package for the workshop and sent that off.  I should have reported that in the missed Wednesday update.

So my latest goal list is:

  1. Get my characters to the ‘Rocks and Water’ scene.  This really needs attention now as this goal has been totally neglected for weeks.
  2. Get a package together to the publisher
  3. Identify and submit a short story to the Mslexia short story competition

That’s it for now unless I come up with another unofficial goal.  I do want to publish that lens of course, but hopefully someone will come back and I’ll be able to do that so I won’t add that to the goals.

OK, here’s the list of ROW80 particpant blogs:

Finally Did It!

Pam Baddeley, Writer Posted on by

After a mammoth concentrated effort, I finally managed to post my first ever Squidoo lens! I am so so pleased to have finally done this given the interface which is not WYSIWYG so it turns out to be laid out a bit differently when you finally publish, and the messing about with HTML to try to position pictures and captions. There are still some minor glitches in that area but it is so much better than I thought it would be last week.

So here are my revised goals again for ROW80:

  1. Get my characters to the Rocks and Water scene that I wrote some years ago.
  2. Get together a submission package for a publisher who still accepts unagented submissions.
  3. Finish and publish a Squidoo lens

Now that I have met number 3, I need to add a new one I’ve acquired which is to get together a package for a workshop I’m going to be attending.  That one should have been on the list all along but got pushed to the back of my mind with everything else that’s going on.

Right, here are the links to the blogs of the other ROW80 participants:

It’s Friday Night, it’s Crackerjack – er, no it’s not ….

Pam Baddeley, Writer Posted on by

Gosh! Darn and other expletives. Well, time to check in with ROW80 and unfortunately apart from some further research on a Squidoo lens, including identifying creative commons pictures and roughing out where they go in the lens etc., not much actual writing progress has been made. It’s one of those periods when life throws a lot of distractions at you.  Still, that’s what ROW80 recognises so I hope those nice folks will forgive me.

OK, here’s the list of other participants, have fun checking out their blogs.

A Round of Words in 80 Days Badge