I Don't Know What I'm Doing

I don't know if anyone even reads this blog anymore and I never update, but that's mostly because I also have a facebook, tumblr, livejournal, wordpress, etc etc and the list goes on. Granted, I have cut down on the number of accounts I have in the past few years, but new ones always seem to sneak up.

Anyway, what I'm here to talk about now is writing. Yes, most of you know that I like to write in my spare time. I've been writing pretty constantly for the past seven years now. I've published (self-published, whatever) one novel and written over 300 other short stories. I've written six novels, and this year, 2012, is the year I'm finally going to Make. Stuff. Happen. Seriously.

As of Monday, I will be throwing caution to the wind and entering one of my novels in ABNA, the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. Now, I don't expect to get much further than maybe the second round, third if I'm lucky, but of course there's a tiny part of me that's hoping against hope I'll make it to the top three and even win. I'm trying to be realistic, though. My poor little novel. I'm gonna be spreading its wings and pushing it off a cliff! It's a little scary.

In the meantime, though, while that will be going on and I'll be sitting on my hands in antici.... pation, I've also jumped off the deep end into freelance writing. I started about two months ago and I've gotten six jobs so far. In a way, it's awesome because it's getting paid to write, which is one of the things I would love to do full time, but on the other hand, it takes away time from actually writing my own things. I have a list of writing things to do this year, most of which involves editing and rewriting and submitting. But to do that, I have to actually have time to do it.

The novel I'm submitting for ABNA, I wrote it in November. That sounds ridiculously fast considering here we are two months later. In the first two weeks of January, I took hours every day and tore the thing apart and then built it back up piece by piece. I have never been good at editing, mostly because I was always afraid of the delete button, but I bit the bullet and deleted entire sections that had nothing to do with the plot or the characters. I took a chopping ax to the chapters, and managed to fall completely in love with a single chapter (I don't know why I love this chapter so much but I do. It's perfect). I want to get this novel out there, to prove that I'm not just fiddling around aimlessly on my computer. Also, I want to get the eff out of this town and selling a book would get me enough money to do that.

I guess I should go work on my pitch instead of sitting here talking about it, to make sure I do actually get to round two. Adios.