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editing pen name Work in Progress

Progress coming along

Well, I am nearing the final chapters in Novel 1 with outlining; less than a month until the ABNA Contest, and of course I am feeling nervous and worried over whether I will have my novel ready in time to submit to the contest.

Yesterday, the first day of work back, one of my co-workers had asked me if I had time to write over the holidays. Sadly, no, although I suppose I do not regret the inactivity. Those two weeks were spent with my family, making valuable memories in our minds.

Of course, now that I am back in town and have to face reality once again, I realize that I need to make decisions regarding my writing “debut” into the Internet world. Before I left for my parents’ house, a friend of mine actually agreed to the idea of having a pen name for myself–it’d help solve my anxiety over having my full name plastered all over the Internet. I still want a sense of privacy after all. So, I have been brainstorming pen names–something witty yet still close enough to my real name to not alienate those who already know me.

So, because of this idea, and because I have been kept busy since I arrived back in San Francisco on Friday, I have been putting my plans on hold for a little bit. Don’t worry; I will be executing those plans soon enough.

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#amwriting contest editing New Year reflection

After the holidays;

Sorry I was away for the past two weeks. I spent time back in my hometown with my family and didn’t spend much time on the computer at all. I suppose that’s how holidays are supposed to be spent, right?

Well, with the holiday and the time away from the computer, I also didn’t get much progress done on outlining my novel. I’m aiming to enter the novel into the 2009 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award on February 2, so I need to really get going on my editing and revising. I need to get the novel in decent shape for submission.

Another new year is here, and during the final hours of 2008, I was thinking about what I wanted to achieve for 2009. A lot of things happened during 2008, both good and bad; however, as you can see, I survived from all the experiences and managed to learn so much from the past year. I looked over my 101 list I had started last January, and it just amazed me to see the difference in my goals then and my goals now.

It seemed like July was a changing point in my life, since I last glimpsed at my 101 list at that point, and that was also when I was last enthusiastic about posting in this blog and other places online. Will it be the same again this year?

Well, I hope that with this new year that there will be many more changes and experiences to learn from. Cheers to you all for a good 2009.

Categories
#amwriting editing Facebook Internet list Twitter

Taking the Next Step–

Thanks for the feedback on my entry about what I should do to self-promote for my writings/novels. For those of you who follow my Twitter, you may have noticed my Tweet about what I plan to do within the next couple of weeks or so:

  • New email account – I would set up my official email through this new account, just so I won’t be receiving a huge amount of mail at my two existing (personal) email accounts. All writing related mail would go to this account.
  • Set up a Facebook Page – I have been researching ways I can get around creating a personal profile on Facebook again (as you can see, I am really trying hard to avoid that option); apparently, I can just create a “Business” account and I could create a Page for myself. However, I’m hesitant in doing this right away, since I’m not sure I would qualify for a Page; Facebook states that they do not usually check the Pages that are created (unless they infringe upon copyright or privacy issues).
  • Writing Blog – Along with the new email account, I would create another blog specifically for my writing and thoughts about writing. I will probably post short stories and maybe some excerpts from longer works. However, I have heard from a friend that if I intend on getting published through agencies, I cannot post any of my novels online since that would be considered “self-publishing”.
  • Domain? – I’m still questioning this option. For the longest time (well, ever since I began using the Internet as a tween/young teenager), I had wanted to buy my own domain. Of course, back-in-the-day, I didn’t really have real use for a domain, it just seemed cool. Now that I am actually presented with the opportunity to have my own domain to establish myself online as a writer….well, I am a little scared at the thought. Do I want my real name plastered around the Internet? I suppose I could go for a pen name, but I don’t really fancy that idea right now (plus, I was mildly traumatized in the past with having pen names and having family members embarrass me with how ridiculous the names were). Anyway, I am also a little stuck on which domain registration service to go with–GoDaddy or Dreamhost? Any other suggestions?
  • Twitter – I’m already on Twitter obviously, but I suppose it would be helpful to have a separate Twitter for my writing updates…right?

These are all tentative plans of course; even though I want to get started on everything right away, I also want to make sure I am making the right decisions as to where I would launch my presence.

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In other news, I have begun looking over Novel 1 and outlining the chapters. I notice that many of the scenes so far have moved too fast, and some of the chapters have been too short. However, I still feel amazed that I was able to write this whole novel last November; at that point in time, I hadn’t written anything creative in quite awhile. It had been so long since I actually wrote anything that even my closest friends were surprised to hear that I was writing a novel.

Anyway, I still feel surprised and impressed at the prose that I did manage to write during that point in my life; if I compare the two works I completed this year with Novel 1, I feel like they pale in comparison with that novel. Well, then again, all three novels are still first drafts, so…there’s still plenty of room for improvement. Plus, Novel 2 and 3 were written from guys’ standpoints, which is difficult for me right now since I am a woman.

Well, it just takes practice.