The Final Push

This has actually been going on for a week now, but I figure I could post about it.

I'm officially writing like a crazy person in an attempt to make progress before grad school. I have a summer ahead of me to write, submit, and finish before I go to grad school and my time gets sucked down the drain, so I'm determined to at least make some serious progress in the next three months, either by traditional publish, epublishing, or both.

What this entails:
- I'm submitting like crazy. I submitted Death's Aria to around 30-40 people last Friday, and I'm only just starting.
- I'm editing like crazy. I've been burning through Death's Aria edits the past few days. I'm also adding a chapter to Aeon to make it more "novel" length, and submitting that too.
- I'm writing like crazy. Specifically books I started and didn't finish. Empty Pages being the primary one, but recently I'm determined to finish A Straight Cut (aka "Canyon Story"). That one I'm hoping to have done by the end of the week, even if it's got 10 chapters (at least 20k words) left.

The longer version is that I'm working heavily on finishing A Straight Cut, which will also include going back and adding two chapters, as well as editing current content to fit the "new" ending. The ending ultimately hasn't changed, but some of the situations around it (tying a few things together better for the finale) have been altered, which will require some edits. All for the best, if I think so. This book is kind of Lord of the Flies meets child slavery meets Nathan is killing off everybody Game of Thrones style in the Third act, so it should be interesting. It's quite a dark YA, but that's clearly all the rage these days, so I forsee good things. Also, probably the most entertaining couple I've ever written, which is actually why I picked it back up again. It's good to re-read your stuff over a year later and decide it's actually pretty good.

Empty Pages is struggling a but, but that's because I wrote my characters into a not-as-interesting situation; once they get out of it it'll pick up (and the situation will probably get axed or at least shortened in edits). I enjoy that story's overall meaning, but the actual story itself is bogging me down. Anybody ever have that? It seems to be a constant problem for me: I want my stories to have deeper meanings beyond the actual characters running around doing whatever, but sometimes I get too hung up on the meanings. Ah well.

Nobody likes a long blog post, so that's it. I'll update this more. Maybe. I make promises I don't keep, too, so watch out for that.