Friday, November 26, 2010

Query Letter Time!

Ok, here's a new version of my (ongoing) attempts to write a query letter for Troll Wife. I'm not there yet, but in writing this I discovered a little plot hole and was able to fix it. It tied up a loose thread that I didn't know was there. Yay for writing mock query letters!

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It's hard being a young female troll. First off, unless you're really special, you haven't earned a name and everyone just calls you "Troll Wife". Second, it's hard to get work (except maybe as a bouncer) because, hey, you're a troll. Third, you don't have any friends because again, hey, troll.

So when Troll Wife gets accepted into the tooth fairy training program, she wants three things. A job, to make friends, and earn a name. She's not thinking about why tooth fairies collect teeth and she certainly isn't thinking about monsters.

But there is a monster. Oubliette is determined to kill any human that hasn't kept the terms of an ancient pact between the humans and the fae. And any child that has lost a tooth but hasn't received money for it yet, hasn't kept the pact.

As a tooth fairy, Troll Wife has friends, a job, and the tools to continue the long fight against Oubliette. As a troll, she has the ability to actually stop Oubliette. She must choose. Give up everything she is and continue the fight against Oubliette? Or give up everything she's ever wanted and stop Oubliette?

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Cutting and cutting some more

I've been sick since Wednesday. Not the flu, just an icky cold. So what should of, could of, would of been a four day weekend of writing has been mostly a four day weekend of whining, sneezing and sleeping. My husband did the grocery shopping for me, but today I had to do some banking.

While we were out, I figured I'd shave my head. My husband, wise man that he is, only said, "If that's what you want to do, I'll drive you over there". Once there, I backed off from totally shaving my head, and just had her take four inches off. (You've seen my pic, right? Now imagine that with four inches less hair.)

I can't decide if I like it or hate it. I hated my hair before, so even if I still hate it, now there is just less of it to hate :)

Finally! (not what you think)

Well, I'm finally done!

Sadly, not with this round of revisions (though I think I'm really close). Nope, I'm finally done importing Troll Wife into Scrivener and breaking it down into scenes. I have about 20,000 words that I've pulled out of my original draft to be relocated someplace else in this revision.

I'm breaking out the time line again. Obviously, when Oubliette hints that she is attacking faeish, that has to happen before Brux is attacked. But some things aren't so clear. They may end up getting cut from the final draft.

Which means that Troll Wife would be about 75,000 words. Not good. I guess I better find a way to stitch those scenes back in.

Sunday, November 7, 2010

Scrivener Beta 1.3 is out

Just so you know, Scrivener for Windows Beta 1.3 came out this morning! You can find it here, but I believe you have to already be logged in to the forums in order to get there. (I'm sure all the Mac Scrivener users know that 2.0 came out a few days ago.)

Now there is an "About Scrivener" in the help menu, so you can see what version you're working with (very nice). It also fixes the disappearing indents problem and the lag problem. (I didn't notice the lag problem, which was related to how spell check was checking words while typing.) I love that it's fixed the disappearing indents problem. It wasn't a huge issue, but it bugged me.

They think they've also fixed the invisible text problem, but they're not sure, since they were never able to reproduce it. (This was a problem where the last part of what you had written seemed to disappear, even though it was really still there. You could go to "show invisible" and it would reappear, but it caused a few writerly heart attacks until that trick was discovered.

There are lots of other updates and changes listed in the link, but those struck me as the big ones. 

Friday, November 5, 2010

QR Codes

Since I've gotten my Droid, I've been happily clicking at QR codes. It's like magic. My camera sees it, and I get taken to a web page, or download a program, or whatever. After reading an article about how writers could be using QR codes by Sierra Godfrey, I'm totally going to be spending some time creating my own QR code.

For more information about QR codes, what they are, what you can do with them, and how to make one, please check out Sierra Godfrey's post "QR Codes for Writers".

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Today's Word Count

I made today's word count. Too bad about yesterday. Maybe I can make it up a little bit at a time. Now I'm off to bed.