Caroline M. Yoachim

Officially Texan

Well, after several long days of driving, I arrived in Austin on Monday night. Here’s what I’ve learned so far:

– Texas is HOT.
– The speed limit from El Paso to Austin is mostly 80 mph. You can make pretty good time driving across Texas.
– If you’re trying to get somewhere in Austin, go in the opposite direction, then make a U-turn. It is impossible to go somewhere by moving toward your destination.
– Tacos here are cheap and tasty.
– Airconditioning is good.
– Giant swarms of crickets are icky.
– …

Write-a-thon Wrap-up

I’ve finished my write-a-thon goal of six chapters in six weeks. Yay! When I was setting my goal, a chapter a week felt like it might be too easy, almost like cheating. BUT I knew the end would be crazy with moving, and that this year was not the time for aggressive write-a-thon goals. Next year, I’ll set myself a bigger goal. Under the circumstances, a chapter per week (especially this last week), was plenty for this time around.

Chapter six: 3,300 words
Total words: 18,500 words

A big thank-you to all of my sponsors!! Clarion West definitely appreciates …

Sub Away, Rejection, WaT final stretch

This week:
Submission #57 (to Strange Horizons, my 6th there)
Rejection #47 – 44 days, from Heliotrope. I’m a bit more disappointed about this one than usual, since the story was under consideration for a long-ish time for the market, and I had my hopes up. Oh well.

* * *

The end of chapter six is in sight, hopefully I can crank it out this morning, and then spend the bulk of the day finishing off the surprisingly large amount of packing that still remains. This week has been a rough one, WaT-wise, with all the pre-move …

And a partridge in a pear tree…

Today:

1500 words
4 boxes packed
1 submission sent
and an email rejection from The Town Drunk.

So today we finally got started on packing. The problem with packing is not so much the actual packing of items into boxes (I like that part, it’s a bit like 3d tetris) but the sorting. Do we really want to move this book/stack of papers/thingamajiggit, or can we recycle/donate/etc it? Does this need to come with us on our drive, or does it go into boxes for the moving pods? *sigh* I do feel better that we’ve at least …

5 down, 1 to go

My husband passed his dissertation defense yesterday (Yay Peter!!) and after much celebration and merriment yesterday, I settled back into writing today and finished off this week’s write-a-thon quota.

Wordcount for the WaT so far: 15,200 words

Chapter five wrapped up at just over 2,800 words, which means I’ve only got one chapter left to complete my Write-a-Thon goal of six chapters :)

(Slightly delayed) WaT week 4 update

Well, after a bout of productivity early on in week 4, resulting in the completion of chapter 4, my novel-writing stalled out. I’m not to worried about it, as part of the delay was due to me wanting to revise and ship out the flash story I wrote last week. The first couple days of this week I’ve been more-or-less back on track, and I’m now about 1500 words into chapter 5. Which means I’ve got about a chapter and a half more to meet my goal.

Upcoming distractions: my husband defends his dissertation (tomorrow) and we’re moving (end of …

A rice crispy treat. As in, the wooden spoon is my treat for making rice crispy treats.

Horror Sub for Friday the 13th

Sub# 55 – I revised the flash story I wrote earlier this week and subbed it to Noctem Aeternus. This is my first sub there, and it’s a newish market. If you’re into horror, go check it out (http://www.michaelknost.com/). They haven’t started putting out issues yet, but they will have quarterly PDF issues starting next January, and subscriptions are FREE.

Productivity

Finished off Chapter 4 for the write-a-thon this morning. This latest chapter is 3100 words, which brings my total wordcount up to 12,400.

I also wrote a flash story this morning. The idea has been knocking around in my head for a couple weeks now, so when I finally sat down to write, it went really quick.

Write-a-thon Week 3 update

Well, this is the end of week 3, and the official midpoint of the write-a-thon. Wordcount summary so far:

Week 1: 3400 words
Week 2: 2800 words
Week 3: 4600 words

This was a fairly productive week, wordcount-wise. I managed all of Chapter 3, and the first half or so of Chapter 4. Everything is rough rough drafty, but there’ll be plenty of time to polish later.