"Old" People Writing for Teens V

Bookgirl2021

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I hope everyone is having a great holiday/lead up to the holidays! I'm trying to get a round of revisions started to pass the time during my holiday shift, and feeling slightly overwhelmed as I look at all my notes and beta notes and..... Don't even know where to start. So I guess I'll "start at the very beginning; a very good place to start." :greenie

How is everyone?
 

Bookgirl2021

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Well, I got about 16K revised, so I did okay. I've got 74K to go. And I worked on a scene in my current WIP, too. I think I got about 1000 new words there. My goal is to have either revisions or a first draft done by the first week of the new year. I'd love to have both, but that's not likely.

I realized I need to be working on something writing related. Otherwise I'll go completely mental. The fact that I haven't been doing much the past year explains why I've been struggling so much mentally.
 

Netz

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Well done for your progress, Bookgirl! :Thumbs:

Btw, has the end of your username always been 2021? (I know it's been numbers, but I've just noticed they represent the upcoming year. Is there a special significance for that if you chose those numbers back in 2008 when you joined the site? Don't worry about answering if it makes you uncomfortable, though - I'm just curious! :greenie )
 
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Bookgirl2021

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No special significance, although hopefully I'll start a graduate program in the fall that will lead to the career I desperately want. So it could end up being significant, just not intentionally. The numbers were randomly generated on a different site years ago, and I liked the feel of it. I've used it ever since.
 

Netz

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No writing here, but I made some Danish pastries today. (Spoiler: I don't bake, so this was a huge achievement and something I'd been intending to try since we first went into lockdown all those months ago. Better late than never! Lol!)
 

Bookgirl2021

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Oooh, those sound good. I love Danish pastries. ...Also Danish butter cookies, marzipan, and rice pudding (rice cooked in milk with sugar and almond flavoring, with slivered almonds, whipped cream, and cherry pie filling).

I'm proud of myself for having been productive the past month. Not quite as much as I would've liked to have been, and I may end up condensing or cutting 50% of what I did, but... Still an achievement. 33K rewritten/revised. ...3K of that already cut.
 

CoffeeBeans

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Happy 2021! I promised myself I would try to appear more regularly here even if using AW takes *ages* on my computer. I miss you all!
 

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Is it still bad for you, CB? It's sped up a little for me since we last chatted. I also tend to multitask when I'm on AW, though, so I don't notice *as much* when it takes a millennium.
 

Netz

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Happy 2021 - let's hope it's better than last year!

Pages are usually slow for me as well, but I understand there are going to be upgrades on the website soon (end of the month??) so hopefully things will get easier. :)
 

CoffeeBeans

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hehe well, I had to log in twice and reload once to get that message posted. I swear it's some incompatibility between me and the system....So right Netz! It's not *that* high a bar, is it?
 

Bookgirl2021

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Me!

...Not that I've been doing anything writing-related in months! About the same time AW went down, actually. Life just got in the way. Since it's been down, I was let go from the job I loved, put on desk work only by the doctor at my other job, which meant I was only working 10 hours/week (Workers' Comp was making up for the other 19 hours until a couple of weeks ago), and had a trip to the ER. But it isn't all crazy and not great; I got into grad school, and will start in the fall! Also, last week I was offered a full time, salaried position with another company, and it comes with benefits, PTO, mileage reimbursement, and a phone and computer stipend! Also I'll get to make my own schedule once I'm done with training. I have a month left at my other job (the one where I'm only working 10 hours/week), but I've taken the next two weeks off to use up the PTO I earned during the 2-3 months I was working full time in the fall.

How's everyone else been?
 
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RaggyCat

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On/off poster on this thread but I'm here! And very pleased to have the forums back. I'm submitting my latest MS to my agent tomorrow so no doubt I'll immediately be crazy and start going wild on the Internet to fill the void.

And oof, Bookgirl, that sounds an exceptionally busy time for you! Glad you've had some good stuff to offset how hard you've been working.
 
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CoffeeBeans

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*hugs everyone*

I have missed you all SO much. I've spent the last year poking at revisions with no motivation and writing 100K+ of well-received fanfic. Clearly, I just go right off the rails without my AW friends.

How are you Sage?? How's everyone else??
 

Sage

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Nothing wrong with 100K of well-received fanfic!

I wrote my Sisyphus story and that was it. My NaNo died on the vine. But my plan for this year is to finish out Paranormal Bromance with a third book (yes, I know, I should fix the first book first) and finally let my boys be together...or not? I'm working on how to make the mechanics of the romance work satisfactorily.
 

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I've never really written much/any so I'm very entirely not used to this level or readership or interaction. I have learned some things about myself LOL

Ooh a third one! That's fun. I'm not sure I remember, the second one left it as "sort of but not really"?
 
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Sage

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Yeah, it left Blake questioning (which is a big step for him, tbh) and Ren revealing that he only kept from exploring those feelings because he believed Blake would never be open to it.

The biggest problem is that Blake will keep aging and Ren will continuously be a sixteen-year-old ghost, so the hurdle to get over is how to make a satisfactory ending to this relationship that still honors the magic system. I have some ideas, but some of them really veer off from what little plan I had for the third book. I'm pretty sure that the three workings (spells) that combined to keep Ren in his current ghost form will be instrumental in fixing the ghostly problem, and the solution to it is on the tip of my brain. Like I can feel that it's just right there when I think about what went into the mythology of why Ren is a ghost, but I can't fully grasp how to use it.

I did write a little story that may or may not take place in the third book, and it was fairly easy to write, so that feels like a good sign.
 
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CoffeeBeans

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🤞 It does sound like you're really close to getting there!

Now that we have AW again, I need to remember how to write a query. I did do an SCBWI Agent-Editor Day via zoom, and it actually went pretty well so.... hopefully this will be something that can go somewhere.
 

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Since the "watched threads" is so different from the User CP, I saw a back cover blurb thread I made for H/V and was enjoying going through it. I did work on a couple of query cries on Discord, but I'm pretty rusty, no lie.
 

Netz

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I haven't done any proper writing for aaaaages, so you all have my admiration for putting your fingers to your keyboards! The last thing I wrote relating to an existing ms was probably for Sage's short story competition here last year. I've jotted down some ideas for things, but haven't progressed much further than that so far. Ah well, I'm reminding myself that we all have different seasons and to be kind to myself. :)

I'm liking the extra smilies we have here, as well as the 'Like' option for posts. And it's great that the board has speeded up considerably! :D
 

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I'm not sure how I feel about the Like button. I really loved the reps and that you could (if you wanted) leave secret messages. Likes are too easy, IMO. Reps were like, "yes, I really care about what you had to say and maybe wanted to comment on it."

But everything will take some getting used to. Trade off for having a forum that works