9 am: Ate breakfast. Stared at what I wrote yesterday. Deleted lots of it.
10 am: received proofs for new short story. Began perusing, but was distracted by siren call of internet. Read a few articles, received two interview requests and did them, because, hey, this scene is hard.
11 am: received two rejections. (Yes, published authors get them too.) Exchanged emails with editor, agent, and critique partner about what it all MEANS. (yes, published authors do this too.) Reread what I wrote, and deleted more of it, based on new, rejection-inspired worries. (yes, published authors are also neurotic. Possibly more neurotic.)
12 pm: received new cover for abovementioned short story. Received critique back for entirely different short story. Am re-energized to work on proofs.
1 pm: Finished proofs. Really love that story. Now think rejection was full of crap. Back to work. Write new scene. Think I might even keep it.
2 pm: lunch. laundry.
3 pm: get dinner started. While chopping vegetables, I put on “Blink” (Dr. Who). This is a mistake, I will have nightmares.
4 pm: Am in long email exchange with agent. Involves learning new trick in photoshop. Results quite pretty.
5 pm: Pick Q up from daycare. Hang out with her while she chases Rio around the house, giggling like a madwoman. Rio clearly likes this game, as she can run about twenty times faster than Q, but keeps getting caught anyway.
6 pm: Dinner. We have spaghetti, which is pretty much everyone in my house’s favorite meal.
7 pm: Q takes a bath, then it’s books and bed. Q is really, REALLY into books. Chip off the old block, that one. I chat with my parents, fold more laundry, answer a few emails.
8 pm: Relax with a mug of cider. Read a longform article about child-rearing in The Atlantic. Sort of wish it were a long form article about “childrearing in the Atlantic.” Now there’s a story idea!
9 pm: I start in on a critique I’ve been meaning to get to.
10 pm: send off the crit. Watch more Dr. Who (not as scary, this time). Check on Q in bed, as I hear strange noises upstairs. All I can think about is stone angels right now. For serious. Stupid Dr. Who.
11 pm: read over what I wrote today. Is marvelously little, for having been sitting at this damn machine all day. Promise to do better tomorrow, and consider that maybe I should blog about all of this, you know, to keep me honest. So I do.
I’m just rather snowed under. Deadlines, sick dog, sick kid.
The deadlines are for my last contracted book. It’s with Harper (Balzer+Bray). It’s YA. That’s all I’m saying right now.
The kid has a cold. Nothing serious, but she’s pretty miserable. Still adorable in her miserableness, though, since all she wants to do is cuddle and have books read to her.
The dog is…. middling. We took her to a specialist last week, who did all kinds of tests and ruled out all sorts of serious illnesses (tick-borne, cancer, Addison’s Disease). So now we’re back to the original diagnosis of pancreatitis. Weird pancreatitis. So we just take care of her and wait, and hopefully she’ll recover. She does seem to be perking up some, though. Still not eating the way I’d like.
My mind is going in a million different directions these days.
I’ve been typing all day with one eye on Rio, trying to discern from every little sigh and moan and how long she’s been napping and how much she’s been eating, how she’s feeling and if she’s getting better. It kills me that we aren’t sure what’s wrong, and so we aren’t sure if what we’re doing is helping or what would indicate recovery (other than eating). She’s been eating, some, though certainly not as much as usual, and everything appears to be in working order. But I can’t see her liver and her liver is what is worrying the vet. She seems low energy/spirits today, but it has been gray and snowy out, which always signals “nap day” for my pup. She did rouse herself this evening to go bark at the squirrels in the backyard, and when I came home tonight she was standing on the back of the couch, tail wagging, and watching me through the window. These are things she didn’t do while sick.
But her nose is dry. And she left chicken in her bowl. And she still seems sad. I don’t know if she’s still fighting off the illness or she’s just mad at us for leaving her in the hospital all weekend.
I’m also dealing with other major household diversions of the non-Rio variety. I think it may be time for some outside writing dates. Jess, Lavinia, call me.
I also just have too many darn projects on my plate right now. Plus the siren call of promotion for my upcoming releases, website updates, reviews that have just started trickling in, and the awful chirp of twitter @replies.
Is it any wonder I’m going a little nuts?
Oh, for a writing retreat. Unplug, get out of the house, put my head in one project and FINISH it. Then again, this whole thing with Rio started the last time I left town, and I don’t like leaving while she’s still under the weather.
Yesterday, I posted about my 2011 goals and how I was doing on them. Today, I’m posting about my goals for next year. I’ve divided them into three spheres: work, home, and family. My goals this year are much more ambitious than last year, when I was at home full time with an infant.
Home:
Declutter bedroom: If you’ve been paying attention, this has been on the to-do list for quite some time. I’m kind of a tough customer when it comes to saying goodbye to clothes — even if they’re clothes I never wear anymore (like my office wardrobe, when I haven’t worked in an office since 2006).
Organize attic, basement, and spare closet: the downside of all the reorganizing we’ve done in the rest of the house is that certain areas of the attic and basement have become catch-alls. I know a lot of the stuff in there is not needed anymore, and I should toss it.
Get rid of unused furniture: Also a long-held to-do. This includes one dresser in the guest room and one dresser in the master bedroom that have both sat empty for months… and yet there they sit, taking up valuable real estate. I need to get my act together and Craigslist the darn things.
Resod yard/rip out side garden: This is SB’s pet project for spring.
Fix fence: We really need to get on this. We’ve been dragging our feet for almost two years now. What happened was a tree fell over on one corner of our chain link fence and pulled the whole thing out of whack. The gate hasn’t latched right since, but since it’s just one corner and we don’t want to replace the whole fence, we’ve had a tough time finding someone who wants to do that little job. (Every fence company I call quotes us replacing all the fences on our property). This is par for the course in home repair I’ve found. We have one cracked floorboard — but all the repair folks won’t do anything for us unless we let them rip up our entire floor. It’s ridiculous. You have to either become a DIY expert or get taken to the cleaners for every tiny piece of home repair.
Plant herb garden: I’ve already started on this with winter hardy rosemary and sage.
Plant veggie garden: I’m grateful for all the success I’ve had with tomatoes but I’d really like to start expanding my repertoire. However, everything else I’ve ever tried has been middling to full-on bust, including: lettuce, zucchini, squash, cucumbers, radishes, strawberries, and bell peppers. The hot peppers were okay, but we rarely ate them.
Keep working on that Ent.: I spent days ripping down vines last spring and I don’t know how much good it did — most of them grew back. This year I’m going to try attacking it in winter. Maybe when they’re dead/dormant it’ll be easier to detach them.
Fix bushes in front yard: Some of them are starting to look super raggedy and our last attempt and trimming/shaping didn’t go too well.
Fix refrigerator ice machine: see above re: repairmen as to why that hasn’t gone over so well yet.
Do at least two other home improvement projects. I have a few potentials on my list.
Family:
Spend quality time with Sailor Boy: And that means more than just being couch potatoes in front of Netflix once Queenie’s gone to bed. If we’re going to be couch potatoes, it should at least be in the pursuit of finally finishing Portal 2’s 2-player game.
Spend quality time with Queenie: Somehow, I think this will be the easiest resolution of all to keep, if only because Q herself actively pursues QT with us at all hours.
Put Rio in agility (or similar) classes: This is part of my “Rio needs more QT” resolution. I also think she needs to spend more time with other dogs. Ever since we lost Gracie and stopped fostering, she’s been pretty dogless, and while in Florida for Xmas with my parents’ and brother’s dogs, it showed.
Take Rio for a hike at least once a week: I miss our hikes.
Take a family vacation: This is a biggie. We haven’t been on a real vacation since before Queenie was born, and she’s getting to an age where she might have fun on a vacation. We just have to decide what to do.
Put Queenie in swimming lessons this summer. I think she’ll love it! She loves swimming here in Florida.
Work:
Promote the six new releases and four reprints I have coming out in 2012. Yes, that’s how many I’ve got in the US alone. I have a few foreign releases planned as well. Schedule forthcoming.
Pursuant to previous, update website!
Finish Major Secret Marketing Effort for FDSTS #1. I’m actually haflway through that.
Finish MSMEfFDSTS#2. Barely started on this one.
Finish new book. About half way through this as well.
Finish Secret Project #1. Have been making good headway here in Florida.
Finish Secret Project #2. Or, you know, start it.
Attend at least two writing-related conferences. Not sure which yet.
Get invited to at least one short story anthology. Putting that out there in the universe. I love me some short stories, and I have a pretty good track record so far.
Follow up with co-conspirators re: Secret Project #3. Hear me, co-conspirators? I haven’t forgotten!
Well, that was a week. I was sitting at my computer, twittering, when the earthquake started. At first I thought it was a truck passing closely outside. Then I noticed my tomato trellises shaking away and as the vibrations grew stronger, I put it together. (Yes, that’s a B.A. in Geology, why do you ask?)
You know how they say animals feel these first? Rio didn’t even wake up.
We didn’t sustain any damage and we’re all fine, here.
A few days later, everyone started panicking about the hurricane. Where I come from, people prepare for hurricane season the same way people up north prepare for winter. It’s a given that when you hear a storm is coming, you make sure you have fresh batteries in all your flashlights, a bunch of grillable/ready-to-eat food, a full tank of gas, and a few gallons of water, just in case. The large-scale panic, I think, was entirely media-generated. Hurricanes are bad and dangerous and this one hurt a lot of people, don’t get me wrong, but the shelves empty of flashlights and batteries and red wine were a little shocking to me. Pick up some staples, and make sure you have flashlights and water. Thanks to the fact that Sailor Boy and I are part of the 9/11 Generation and we live in our nation’s capital, we’ve got a permanent “emergency cabinet” in our house (which reminds me, I need to add stuff for Queenie to my jump bag.)
Even my parents, who have lived in hurricane-central for over twenty-five years, called me to report whatever piece of yellow journalism they were hearing on the news. We were all set — but we were lucky. Our power didn’t even go out. (Compare to July 2010, when an unnamed storm knocked out power to our house for a week.) We stayed indoors all day Saturday, and now there are little leaves and twigs all over my yard, but Sunday was gorgeous. We even took Rio for a hike in the park (the creek was running way high).
The moral of the story is, respect the weather, respect natural disaster,s be prepared, and for goodness sake, Don’t Panic.
In other news, remember when I posted these stats of For Darkness Shows the Stars? Turns out they were a little premature. No, I haven’t suddenly decided to add zombies. But I did have to do a little rejiggering of the chapters during the last round of edits. so now the chapter count stands at 43 and the unchapter count at 21. To compare: There are 26 in Ascendant and 27 in Rampant. There are 21 chapters in Under the Rose, which is the longest secret society book, and the one whose length is most comparable to FDSTS (see sidebar).
That’s a significant difference, to me. I wonder if it will feel so different to readers.I think sometimes I get overly obsessed with things like chapter breaks and chapter headings and the titles of various internal parts of my novel that readers don’t really care about. I suspect a significant number of readers never read the “confessions” — let alone the chapter titles — of the secret society books.
But of course, there are all kinds of crazy ways that I’ve learned readers read books over the years. Some read all the dialogue first and then go back and read the narrative. Some read the first few pages and then the last few pages and use that as a barometer to decide whether or not to read the book. Some buy all the books in a series and then hold off reading them until the series is complete. Some always skip the prologues, or never read the chapter titles, or refuse to read anything set in italic, or only read chapters with numbers divisible by six.
Some of these reading habits make me wonder how the reader in question can ever make sense of a novel.
Me, I’m a straight through, don’t skip a word kind of reader. I would never dream of skipping a prologue or a text block or a sex scene — the author put them there for a reason, and if I skip it, I’m missing something they designed to be part of the whole. And because I read that way, I write that way, too. I mean for all the words in my books to come in a particular order, and to be read in that order. I think you’re missing something if you don’t, but that’s the way my brain works.
There are no chapter titles in FDSTS — a first for my original novels. I felt like between the parts, and the quotes, and the unchapters — well, it was starting to get a little busy in the header arena. I don’t miss them. They were right for my other series, but simple numbers are right in this case.
Enough of that. You guys are going to be SO SICK of hearing me talk about FDSTS before the book comes out next June.
Next. June. Ugh. Kidlit publishing moves at a glacial pace, y’all. When I wrote Secret Society Girl, I turned the draft in August 31, and it came out in May of the following year. At least this isn’t as bad as Rampant, though, which had a 12 month wait time after proofs. One day, maybe I’ll be patient enough to write a book and not announce it until the ARCs come out.
Hahahahahhahahahhaha. Good one.
Yes, there will be ARCs of FDSTS. Sometime this fall, I hear.
This is what I’m doing to distract myself until then:
reading a lot
writing a lot
I am very excited about my new project. I am jamming it full of all kinds of things I’ve been interested in recently. Pets. Frocks. Swimming. Banter. And of course, fabulous names.
First, an update: Had a marvelous time at a family wedding this weekend in Buffalo, NY. Q did too — and aside from the gorgeous bride (my lovely cousin, Kelly), I think Q might have been the belle of the ball. Fortuitously, she was already dressed in the wedding colors of black, white, and hot pink; she crawled all over the dance floor before the music started and — judging from my family’s online picture albums, she had approximate seventeen thousand photographs taken of her. All that and she went to the Buffalo zoo, rode a merry-go-round for the first time (not a fan yet), met a baby gorilla exactly the same age she is, ate a pickle (SO a fan), had peanut butter toast, and very clearly and distinctly said “Da-dee” for the first time in reference to Sailor Boy (Sailor Boy disagrees with me on this one).
All in all, an excellent adventure.
In other news, I think I may be dropping out of Camp NaNoWriMo. My word count tracker thingy says at my current rate (which averages out to 662 words a day) I’m on pace to finish in mid-October. Actually, mid-October is a great pace for me to draft a novel. But I haven’t written anything in five days, AND I will not be writing anything for ht next week, as I’m busy with copyedits for FOR DARKNESS SHOWS THE STARS. Still, I’m glad I was able to “go to camp” for a week, because I got nearly 10k done on a new proposal.
But good luck to all the rest of you. I’m cheering you on from the sidelines!
As I’d suspected, I didn’t get much writing done this weekend, leaving me approximately one day behind in NaNo goals.
I would hope to catch up this week, but that might be difficult, given my plans and the possible disruption made evident by reading my editor’s Twitter stream:
Kristin_Daly: Reading c/e’d MS of @dpeterfreund’s For Darkness Shows the Stars. Goodness, I absolutely love this book. Romantic, heartbreaking, beautiful.
When I get my copy edits, those will be priority number one.
The rest of the weekend was pretty uneventful. Queenie is in a nap-resistant phase. She spent most of Saturday afternoon loudly and crankily insisting that she didn’t need to take a nap, but this mama does not take no for an answer, and we had “quiet time in the crib.” Then, she slept the whole way to a family party we attended in Virginia. She was lovely and charming the whole time, though, and played beautifully with her 2.5 year old cousin, who was the only other baby at the party. I think she was quite the hit.
On Sunday, she had a three hour nap, but I think she was still tired out from the party and the late bedtime the night before. We spent most of Sunday afternoon driving around town looking for a new pool floatie for her, since we tore a hole in her other one. Q loves her pool floatie above all things, except possibly Rio. But then it ended up raining, so we wouldn’t have made it into the pool, anyway.
Wild times Chez Diana, huh?
Feeling unproductive, once we got home I roped Sailor Boy into a discussion about how best to display some of the beautiful artwork we have collected but never use (we have four beautiful paintings chronicling our lives together that were a wedding present). We progressed as far as making newspaper hanging guides and taping them up on different walls of the house and deciding we didn’t like their configuration.
Which brings me back to writing. Sometimes, work is being done even if the word meter isn’t climbing. I know that goes against the spirit of NaNoWriMo style drafting, but one must also remember that NaNo is about writing for the fun of it — it was designed by hobbyists — and occasionally, this business is not fun.
So, while my girl was resisting admitting that boy was she cranky and needed to take a nap, I was resisting admitting that however cute the scene I’d just written for my WIP, it took the characters in a direction I wasn’t entirely comfortable with. I have long known that, nine times out of ten, “writer’s block” is a name for having taken my characters and a story in the wrong direction. Hence — backtrack. So though my NaNo counter says I only wrote ~500 words or so this weekend, when you consider what I deleted, I’m still moving forward with my story.
And while Sailor Boy and I didn’t get those pictures up on the wall, we did achieve something: figuring out where the pictures DIDN’T belong. It’s okay to try to do something and fail. I put something in my book that wasn’t working at all, that was holding me back from writing the story that it was supposed to be. So I took it out. To the outsider who sees our blanks walls, it looks like we haven’t hung our paintings. To the outsider who sees my wordcount, it looks like I haven’t been writing. But I know I’ve been moving forward.
Sad face. I only did 900 words yesterday, which means I’m falling behind on my little NaNoWriMo graph thingy. You guys, it’s telling me I won’t finish until September 2. Oh, the horror.
In better news, I think I solved some of my problems. To start with, I started typing in a different name for my male main character. He’s decided to be someone else entirely. This is not without precedent for me. I also put in a big bracket (i.e., a [FIX THIS LATER] bracket) and kept typing, which helped some, too.
I don’t know how much I’ll actually get done this weekend. After all, Queenie is babbling away beautifully in the next room, and Rio needs to get a long walk in the park, and I wanted to go to the farmer’s market with my best friend, and there’s a party tonight, and we STILL have babyproofing to do…
I think if I can manage to do a few hundred words a day this weekend, I’ll be okay. I just have to make up for it next week. Somehow.
First off, I did 2.5k on my WIP yesterday, bringing my NaNo total up to 8127. Snoopy dance a go-go.
8127 / 60,000
It’s going pretty well. I still totally love my heroine, and think she could happily stand alongside the likes of Veronica Mars, LaDonna Batiste-Williams, Gemma Teller Morrow, and Gloria Pritchett. Her love interest… eh. I think he’s taking me a little while to warm up to. Which is okay. After all, I wasn’t even thinking about Poe at this point in Secret Society Girl.
Though I’m not doing a four-book series this time. Hmmmm…
I think it’s his name. I’m having the most terrible problems with his name!
Also, while shopping this morning, accidentally stumbled across a killer Halloween costume (for $6.99), and since I’ve been lobbying Sailor Boy pretty hardcore to let me throw a Halloween party this year, I knew it had to be mine. It called to me from across a crowded thrift shop.
Oh, frocks.
And speaking of surprises, look what came in the mail yesterday:
These are the Simplified Chinese Secret Society Girl & Under the Rose I sold back in the summer of 2007. Two. Thousand. Seven. When I was a simple single gal and Queenie was just a sparkle in Sailor Boy’s eye and Rio was just a sparkle in the eye some Toller in Canada. When there was no such things as killer unicorns and I lived in a one-room apartment and almost no one had a smartphone.
Publishing is a strange, strange business. Anyway, here they are, and man, are they gorgeous!
These are the headings. I don’t know if it says “Under the Rose” or “Diana Peterfreund”. But whatever it says, it does so with thorns!
These are the little widgets on every page. The one on the bottom is Secret Society Girl, and I like how it kind of looks like a tattoo — you know, to match their tattoos. The one on the top is Under the Rose. Note the little high-heeled ankle boots. I guess that’s to denote it’s chick lit? So adorable!
I love them. I hug them. I wish I read Chinese, or that I knew someone who did.
These are my first foreign editions to utilize different covers from their U.S. counterpart. What do you think? The black makes ‘em kind of badass, huh?
