Here I am!!!

Did you think I forgot about you? No way!!! One of my goals this year is to be consistent with the whole blogging thing. So here I am. I had a good time in VA. I love hanging with my girls. We went to dinner and sang in the car and so many other fun things. I think I'm going to carve out time this summer to spend a week down there. My aunt lives in a house surrounded by a creek, a bay and a river. It is so peaceful and I even wrote down there! YAY!

And speaking of writing, here are some numbers for you if you are interested. :) Saturday - took the day off, first one since Jan 3rd. Sunday - 2007. Monday - 4075. Tuesday - 4112. And today - 2091! So yay! again because I have consistently (love it!) hit my goal every day. Woot!!!!

New news!!! I just got a peek at the cover for THE SHAPE OF LOVE and I cannot wait for it to come out. It is gorgeous and I will share as soon as I have permission!!!

Misty - should be smacked for excessive !!!!!!!! use ;)

Cya soon!

I'm going to VA tomorrow morning and I won't be on the internet at all until Sunday night again. So farewell until then :) Have a good weekend and behave yourselves.

Before I go I want to just check in with the word count challenge. I hit 2007 words today so I have kept at a minimum of 2000 words a day since the 3rd. And I'm pretty excited about the story now. I'm taking my laptop with me this weekend so we'll see if I manage to get anything done.

Wish me luck!

Misty

On track

YAY!!! I hit 3000 words today and the strange thing is that it was 3000 words exactly and I hadn't checked word count since 2273. How bizarre is that? But I have met or exceeded my goal for eight days now and am feeling good. I am over halfway done with the book and feeling good about that too. I love getting halfway at least because it feels more like downhill from there. I still have many plot twisties and nasties but I also have a firm idea of how it will all work out and come together nicely. YAY, again!!!

Tomorrow I will hit at least 2000. I have a social engagement during the day (I love the way that sounds LOL) and then I will write in the evening. Then Saturday I am going to be in Virginia, right where I set the fictional town on Martha's Point so I will do a little research and rejuvenate myself in the writing by taking in the scenery and putting it on the page. I plan on writing while I'm down there but we will see. I have two days of writing vacation coming to me, but I'd prefer not to use them.

Ta-ta for now!

Misty

Feeling Good

So I'm keeping up with this goal of mine for the month of January. Every day since the third (which I know is not that long, but I'm still proud) I have hit at least 2000 words. I'm sticking to it and feeling happy. I think I explained before that it is possible to take 2 days off a week without penalties but I really don't plan on taking advantage of that. In fact tomorrow I plan on boosting myself to at least 3000 words for the day. We shall see!

Tonight is going to be a short one but at least I was here trying to stick to my consistent word :)

Have a good night!
Misty

Sunday, Sunday

Had a quiet day with the dh and daughter. Went out to lunch and cleaned the house. Still deciding if I'm going to do any writing today. I'm allowed to take off two days a week during this month of writing and today might just be one of them :) We'll see.

So while the laundry is running and the other peeps in my house are playing video games, I'm doing contest judging. I'm pretty happy with this batch of entries. I've been judging contests for approximately six years now and let me tell you that some of them have been horrendous. I can take misspellings and a lack of commas, but I've had entries where the sentences make absolutely no sense at all and the thoughts are all jumbled. Or the POV switches every other sentence, sometimes in the middle of the sentence. I understand that for some people this is the first writing they've ever done and I try to judge accordingly, but it can be hard to slog through. But as I said, this batch is very pleasant and I am giving some really high marks. Good luck to the entrants :) THe last thing I will say on this right now is READ YOUR MANUSCRIPT OUT LOUD TO YOURSELF. Your brain will supply the words that you THINK should be there. You have less of a chance of making a rudimentary mistake if you read it out loud. If your tongue is tripping over the sentence perhaps you should rewrite it.

Misty

Meeting Day!

I know I've said it before but I'll say it again - I love my local writer's group through RWA. We have such a blast when we are together and I love the energy. Today we had to sit in a very very very small room for all our members, but it was still fun :)

And then I came home and met my goal while my parents to my kid to the local Farm show. She loves to watch the baby ducks slide and apparently there were some huge bunnies there!

So I'm two for two days on over 2K a day and I have about 36K words to go, maybe more. Wish me luck!

Misty

YAY!!!

I'm back up and running!!! My wonderful, wonderful, fantabulous husband fixed my laptop and I am back into the land of writing! I started with my goal today at my friend Alfie CWABy book in a month. The goal for me is 2K a day. You only have to hit the goal five days a week but I plan on doing all 7 to get the next Ivy done. I hit my goal at about 4 this afternoon then pulled together all the stuff I need for my writer's meeting tomorrow. I still have time though tonight and I might write again. We shall see :)

I'm really looking forward to getting this project done and moving on to the next thing. I adore writing Ivys but it can be nice to be done for the year before the next one ;) I have no idea what my next project will be. It will depend heavily on what's going on with my writing. But let's take it one step at a time LOL. I'm getting ahead of myself already!

On the new book front too, I heard from the publisher Rida today and hopefully we will have the book sometime after the beginning of Feb so keep your eyes peeled for future updates.

Have a great evening!

Misty

Squat

As in I have done squat today :( My laptop is on the blink. I can type for a while but then if I close it to go do something like take a break, when I get back the whole screen is white. It whites out too while I'm typing and then I lose everything I've written. So now I'm scared to write any more words for fear I will lose it all. VERY FRUSTRATING!!! So I may end up doing my story on the Alpha Smart or my desktop though I am loathe to use either one. Sigh.

In better news I got my haircut and I really like it. I also signed up for a class with Lori Wilde whom I love. She's teaching high concept writing. I took her Romance Writing class through ed2go and ended up buying her high concept book and working through it myself. But now she is teaching a class to go through the book and I'd like to see if I got the lessons right.

I might also be participating in a write a book in a month challenge again this month. So lots going on and hopefully good news will follow behind all my hard work :)

Misty

Updated Website

This year is all about goals. My first goal has been accomplished and I'm pleased as punch :) I updated my website at www.mistysimon.com. It still has a few bugs with a template issue, but I'm pleased. I realized when I was in there that I hadn't updated since July of 2006. Oops! That is way too long to go without any updates. I didn't even have info on Something Old, Something Dead on there or Reignited. Bad Misty!!! No biscuits again for me! LOL.

Today, I'm getting my hair cut and starting on rereading the Harry Potter books from 1 through 7. I've never done that before, read straight through so I'll be interested to see if I catch everything this time around.

And I'll be writing this afternoon. I started out with a good 1,000 words yesterday and am aiming for 3K a day going forward. Hopefully I can get back up to speed since it's been a while.

Wish me luck!

Misty

New Beginnings

So my on the word train thing didn't pan out the way I thought it would. I got off the word train pretty quickly and honestly just took a break. My poor brain had turned to mush, no kidding. I wrote approximately 320,000 words from Jan to Dec 2007 and it rebelled on me when I asked it to write any more. But that's okay. I got a lot of good stuff done last year and am now rested and looking forward to what I plan on doing this year. First up is finishing Frame and Fortune. I have roughly 20K on it at this point, maybe a little under that. If you read my last post you'll see that Ivy's are normally about 60K so I have about 40K to do this month. I want to have it out the door to the publisher no later than the end of January. Sooner if possible. We'll see :)

In other news, my anthology with the lovely Vicki and Vicky should be coming out here soon and I will update as I get more info. You're not going to want to miss this one since it is shape shifting domestic animals :) YAY!!!!

And finally, this year I have chosen three words that will describe my year. They are Persistent, Consistent and Focused. What are your goals or words? Let's see if we can stick with them.

HAPPY, HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ONE AND ALL!!!!!!!!!!!

Misty