Blog Chain - Where I've Been, Where I Am, Where I'm Going

Once again time for our blog chain, and this topic was chosen by our wonderful Abi, who chose a perfect question to get our chain rolling in the New Year. The fabulous Carolyn posted before me over at Archetype Writing, and the always awesome Sandra will end this chain with her post at Dual Citizenship in SpecFic and Mundania.

Abi would like us to share:

# What writing related things have you done in the past?

# What WIPs are you working on now?

# Do you have anything brewing for the future?

# Are you setting any writing goals or resolutions for 2009?



• What writing related things have you done in the past?



I’ve always jotted stories down…I won an award in fifth grade (I think) for a story I wrote. I got to go to the local college and present it. And I once had a teacher accuse me of plagiarizing a story I wrote because she thought it was so good. My mom had to convince her that I really had written it. Then I stopped writing (aside from school projects) until my senior year in high school. I wrote maybe two chapters of a story; my sister loved it, so did I…I just never finished it. Didn’t write again until my early 20s when I wrote mostly poetry (really bad poetry I should add).

I was very good at papers and essays…stuff for school. But didn’t venture into fiction again until my mid-20s. I sat down one day and started cranking out a novel. It was put on hold for 2 years after my daughter was born. Then I noticed one day that Chicken Soup for the Soul was taking submissions. So I wrote a little something, sent it in, and they published it in two of their books. So I decided to try it again. They rejected my second story, but published the third one. And I thought that if the editors of something so major liked what I wrote, maybe I really wasn’t too bad at it. So I sat down again and finished my novel.

• What WIPs are you working on now?


Right now I am working on a contemporary women’s fiction (for lack of a better term) tentatively entitled SAME MISTAKE, that has been bugging me for years. I figured I might as well go ahead and write it down, since I've been writing it in my head for the last 10 years. I also have a romance WIP that I think I may convert into a YA historical. And of course, I still have some revisions to do to TREASURED LIES, including possibly converting that to a YA as well. And I would really like to finish (or at least make some progress on) a non fiction book that I started a few years ago. I also started ghostwriting a book for my brother and uncle that kind of fizzled when they got busy, so hopefully we’ll get back into that.

• Do you have anything brewing for the future?

Always lots and lots of stuff brewing. I have a huge file full of story ideas. Well, maybe not FULL. But I definitely have ideas for 3 or 4 historicals, one sci fi and one contemporary romance. And I’d like to get back into writing more poetry. It’s not my strong point, but I enjoy doing it.

• Are you setting any writing goals or resolutions for 2009?


Like most of the rest of us, I don’t have a specific goal. My resolution for the year was to just use my time more wisely (see my Resolution Post). My only real goal for writing is just to sit down and ACTUALLY WRITE. Butt to chair, fingers to keyboard, ideas to reality. Well, I do have one specific goal aside from the time wasting thing….to finish one new novel this year. Two would be great (and doable), but I’m not going to get ahead of myself :D

I would also like to post more on my blog, and to make those posts a little more substantial. To help that goal along, I have instituted my How To Tuesdays, where I will post on a writing related How To topic (see How To Do a Little Research below).

But other than that, no firm goals. I can’t control the agent thing or the publishing thing, or even how many words I can get on a page (my kids, husband, cat, and other Real Life moments tend to dictate that). But I do have a goal to try a little harder to use a few more of my spare moments for writing.

Be sure to head to Sandra’s blog to see what writing projects she will be working on this year!