Faeries, Elves, Chickens and Manuscripts

Well. I feel sheepish. (Baa.)

I signed up to do this Nablopomo for the month of August where you post something every day on your blog. Um. It's already August 4th (my mom's birthday, by the way) and it's the first day I've even remembered to post anything. Ai-yi-yi.

So a recap of stuff that happened since August 1st: I recuperated from 9 hours at Faerieworlds on the 31st of July.






I took the kids to the library and to Blockbuster and spent a huge amount of time typing up my manuscript and tweaking the format. Willamette Writers Conference is this weekend so I'm freaking about preparing for that.

August 2nd found us back at Faerieworlds



and by the time I got back home I was crumbly, hot and headachey. More work on manuscript in the evening.

August 3rd was yesterday and I took the kids to swimming lessons, went and picked up our raw milk from the farm, hit the library again and researched agents and publishing houses for the rest of the day.

My mom-in-law, Anna, came over, I played Banangrams with her and Robert and printed out a selection of the manuscript to take to our critique group.

Group was great. It's a strange mixture of inspiration, discouragement, and hope. My book is still very rough draft and the whole structure needs to be changed. It is written in chronological format right now, and it really needs to be organized thematically instead. I need to write another hundred pages or so, and there are other subjects that need to be addressed.

This all can't happen by Thursday, of course. So, mostly I'm working on the hook and my pitch. I also want to finish researching and spinning my pitch to specific agents and their houses.

Today, I visited with Anna in the morning, talked to her about the book's theme, took the kids swimming (lessons), sent Pebbles (one of our roosters) packing,

(Bless his fuzzy little heart; he started crowing yesterday and we can't have roosters in the city. Fluffball, the white chicken you can see a tiny corner of in the photo, is also a rooster. But we're pretty attached to him, so he's going to a friends' house on the 22nd.)



checked the mail, made lunch and started reading a book I'm dying to read but stopped myself after three pages because I simply can't justify reading right now.

Before I go to the conference I need to:

pack
charge batteries
gather business cards, a briefcasey thing to hold the first fifty pages of my rough draft (3 or 4 copies -- I'm thinking insanely here, but it's fun) and my agent research
I need to go grocery shopping so Anna has food the kids will actually eat without giving her too much grief
journals and laptop
get my allergy shot, chiro appt and massage done
and continue to take kids to swimming lessons, have a SpiralScouts business meeting and a Firehawks Hearth meeting at the swimming pool on Wednesday night.

Making some yogurt before I go would be nice, too.

Sheesh.

I think I'll go write now.