Kitty Murry

Ready. Set. WRITE! is a summer writing intensive that encourages goal-setting and accountability, and provides an opportunity for us to cheer each other on wherever we’re at with our writing projects—planning, drafting, revising, or polishing.  This year, your RSW hosts are Alison Miller, Jaime Morrow, Erin Funk, Elodie Nowodazkij, and Katy Upperman.

How have we already come to the end of summer?! And – more importantly – to the end of Ready. Set. WRITE! This has really been a fantastic summer of revising and writing and I thank Alison, Jaime, Erin, Elodie and Katy for hosting RSW. As always, motivation in the form of accountability was a wonderful formula for progress. 🙂

My goals for the summer were:

• Finish this round of revisions for TWoHF by the end of June (I have a beta reader patiently waiting!)  DONE! And I got wonderful notes back from my beta reader and I have made good progress in the last few weeks with her notes in hand. Even though I accidentally added a new character in what was supposed to be the last round of revisions. Oops!
• While waiting for notes back from my beta reader, write at least an hour a day on another WIP I started on a while ago and am anxious to get back to, tentatively titled FALLING. I didn’t do this but I actually decided to go back, instead, to a trilogy that I started a really long time ago that keeps calling to me. So, this goal really just shifted to a different MS and I made some great headway doing more planning and re-reading of that old MS. So I’m calling this one a success, too.
• Get back to blogging more and interacting with others on their blogs more often! Thanks to the entire RSW concept and crew, I did do this. Most weeks I had a goal of visiting at least 10 other bloggers and (most weeks) I achieved that goal. It was wonderful to see all the progress being made out there.
• Spend ZERO time watching TV (okay, maybe at least cut back to a couple hours a week). Well, I did okay on this most weeks out of necessity. It was a busy summer.
• Spend ONLY one hour a day on the internet! Hahahaha… let’s not talk about this one!

So, I know that for this last post, the theme was supposed to be “Manicures and Manuscripts” but I gotta tell ya… I’m just not a nail polish kind of girl. 🙂 I thought about letting my daughter do my nails – she re-paints hers just about every other day. But then I ran out of time. I look forward to seeing all the creative “Manicures and Manuscripts” posts out there and sorry I’m such a party pooper!

I hope all your RSWriters had a wonderfully productive summer. I’ll leave you with this fun picture of my Charlie (and his girlfriend Tinkerbell) that I put together with words this last week. It was National Dog Day, y’know. I hope your summer was full of perfect moments like this one.

Ready. Set. WRITE! is a summer writing intensive that encourages goal-setting and accountability, and provides an opportunity for us to cheer each other on wherever we’re at with our writing projects—planning, drafting, revising, or polishing.  This year, your RSW hosts are Alison Miller, Jaime Morrow, Erin Funk, Elodie Nowodazkij, and Katy Upperman. All the details are HERE.

1.  How I did on last week’s goals: I didn’t do an update last week or set any goals. It’s been a wild and crazy coupla weeks! I had jury duty, a major deadline at work and my kids start school today (see photographic evidence – sort of – below). I’m hoping to get back into some semblance of normalcy this week.

2.  My goals for this week.

• Edit at least two chapters each day in TWoHF.
• Walk at least 10k steps each day.
• Visit the blogs of at least 10 other RSWers.

3.  A favorite line from my story OR one word/phrase that sums up what I wrote/revised: I got nothin’. I really didn’t get anything done this week. 😦

4.  The biggest challenge I faced this week (ex. finding time to write): Time and stress. As mentioned: jury duty this week. Ultimately, I didn’t get picked for the jury but I was there for an entire day for jury selection. And it was federal jury duty so I had to be in downtown Minneapolis at the crack of dawn on Thursday, which is about two hours away from my home so I stayed overnight the night before at my sisters. Which meant making sure my family was all lined up for everything they needed to get to the next day (my youngest had her very first tennis match!). Jury selection was kind of a fascinating process but I’m really glad I didn’t get picked for the jury. The case is supposed to go through the end of this week.

5.  Something I love about my WiP (TWoHF): Um, I can’t help but think I’ve said this before but I love how much my MC grows over the course of the story.

A photo of my darling daughters who did not want their “first day of school” photo taken…

How did your week of writing and/or revising go?

Ready. Set. WRITE! is a summer writing intensive that encourages goal-setting and accountability, and provides an opportunity for us to cheer each other on wherever we’re at with our writing projects—planning, drafting, revising, or polishing.  This year, your RSW hosts are Alison Miller, Jaime Morrow, Erin Funk, Elodie Nowodazkij, and Katy Upperman. All the details are HERE.

1.  How I did on last week’s goals:

• Work an hour a night/five nights on revisions for THE WITCH OF HIGHLAND FALLS. Not good. See my excuse below in “biggest challenge.” I think I put in about three hours on revisions this week. 😦
• Walk at least 10k each day. Let’s not even talk about this one…

2.  My goals for this week.

• Edit at least two chapters each day in TWoHF.
• Walk at least 10k each day.
• Visit the blogs of at least 10 other RSWers.

3.  A favorite line from my story OR one word/phrase that sums up what I wrote/revised: As mentioned, it was a bad week so maybe a good summary would be: zippo! Or … nada! Or … goose egg!!

4.  The biggest challenge I faced this week (ex. finding time to write): Time! I did the math on all the running I did this week (literally all over the state) and I spent 27 hours on the road. My office is about five blocks from my house – this kind of windshield time is unprecedented for me! Some of it was work-related but mostly kiddo-related (getting them to and from camps). Things will calm down this week.

5.  Something I love about my WiP (TWoHF): My MC takes off on her own at one point in a VW bus. Doesn’t that sound like fun?

How did your week of writing and/or revising go?

Ready. Set. WRITE! is a summer writing intensive that encourages goal-setting and accountability, and provides an opportunity for us to cheer each other on wherever we’re at with our writing projects—planning, drafting, revising, or polishing.  This year, your RSW hosts are Alison Miller, Jaime Morrow, Erin Funk, Elodie Nowodazkij, and Katy Upperman. All the details are HERE.

1.  How I did on last week’s goals:

• Continue to tweak the blurb for THE WITCH OF HIGHLAND FALLS. Yep! Now I’m just going to let it sit a good long while.
• Work an hour a night/five nights on revisions for THE WITCH OF HIGHLAND FALLS. Yes, I accomplished this but there is still a ton of work ahead. I accidentally added a new character. And this was supposed to be my last round of revisions!
• Walk at least 10k each day. Accomplished five of seven days.

2.  My goals for this week. Busy week ahead = simple goals!

• Work an hour a night/five nights on revisions for TWoHF.
• Walk at least 10k each day.

3.  A favorite line from my story OR one word/phrase that sums up what I wrote/revised: A good summary would be: everyone needs a conscience talking to them every once in a while! Especially the bad guys who have such potential to be good guys. 🙂

4.  The biggest challenge I faced this week (ex. finding time to write): Motivation and concentration. I sent one kiddo off to camp this week so I was thinking I’d have lots more time, which – in a way – I did. But I also find my mind wandering to her a lot this week, wondering how she’s doing (nine days away, including a five-day canoe trip into the wilderness of Canada is a lot for a 12-year-old!). So I found it hard to concentrate. She comes home Wednesday!

5.  Something I love about my WiP (TWoHF): I love the idea of this new character that I accidentally introduced. Even though it’s going to add a bunch more work, I think it is going to be tremendously helpful to the story arc for one of my main characters.

How did your week of writing and/or revising go?

Ready. Set. WRITE! is a summer writing intensive that encourages goal-setting and accountability, and provides an opportunity for us to cheer each other on wherever we’re at with our writing projects—planning, drafting, revising, or polishing.  This year, your RSW hosts are Alison Miller, Jaime Morrow, Erin Funk, Elodie Nowodazkij, and Katy Upperman. All the details are HERE.

1.  How I did on last week’s goals:

• Continue to investigate cover design options for THE WITCH OF HIGHLAND FALLS. Yes! I made some decisions on this.
• Continue to tweak the blurb for THE WITCH OF HIGHLAND FALLS. Yep! I’m still going to let it percolate a little longer.
• Work an hour a night/five nights on the overall plan for complete outline and changes for all three MOSAIC books. Yes! I did some character development exercises this week that were really helpful, too. I got great insight into my villain in book two. Yahoo!
• Visit the blogs of at least 10 other RSWers. Yes! And – at the risk of repeating myself – may I just say that you are all amazing? 🙂
• Walk at least 10k each day. Accomplished five of seven days.

2.  My goals for this week.

Just last night I got a critique on THE WITCH OF HIGHLAND FALLS from another fantastic CP. This was from someone who hadn’t seen it since the very early stages and only the first few chapters. Her insight after all other rounds of revisions are going to be invaluable! So, this week’s goals are all about TWoHF!

• Continue to tweak the blurb for TWoHF.
• Work an hour a night/five nights on revisions for TWoHF. (Stretch goal of however much additional time I can wrangle. I’m so excited to dig into these revisions!)
• Visit the blogs of at least 10 other RSWers. I’m not going to hold myself to this one this week because it looks to be crazy at the beginning of the week so I don’t know how I’d get around to everyone until, say, Wednesday. Ugh!
• Walk at least 10k each day.

3.  A favorite line from my story OR one word/phrase that sums up what I wrote/revised: To sum up: even the bad guys have their reasons! 🙂

4.  The biggest challenge I faced this week (ex. finding time to write): Feeling like I wasn’t really moving forward on the MOSAIC books since I mostly worked on a lot of character development and outlining – but no actual writing or revising. But I know that this will be helpful down the road so it was worth it.

5.  Something I love about my WiP (MOSAIC): Planet-hopping! (And did I mention the aliens?)

How did your week of writing and/or revising go?

Ready. Set. WRITE! is a summer writing intensive that encourages goal-setting and accountability, and provides an opportunity for us to cheer each other on wherever we’re at with our writing projects—planning, drafting, revising, or polishing.  This year, your RSW hosts are Alison Miller, Jaime Morrow, Erin Funk, Elodie Nowodazkij, and Katy Upperman. All the details are HERE.

1.  How I did on last week’s goals:

• Continue to investigate cover design options for THE WITCH OF HIGHLAND FALLS. Still no progress on this. 😦
• Work on a blurb for THE WITCH OF HIGHLAND FALLS. Done… however! Y’know, blurbs can take longer to write than a whole chapter sometimes. 🙂 I “finished” the blurb but I’m still not sure I’m completely happy with it. I need to let it sit for a few days or a week.
• Work an hour a night/five nights on the overall plan for complete outline and changes for all three MOSAIC books. Yes, I worked at least an hour a day/five days on this but I still have a long ways to go.
• Visit the blogs of at least 10 other RSWers. Done! And I continue to be inspired by all of YOU!
• Walk at least 10k each day. Pretty close (better than last week, anyhow!)

2.  My goals for this week.

• Continue to investigate cover design options for THE WITCH OF HIGHLAND FALLS. (I mean it this time!)
• Continue to tweak the blurb for THE WITCH OF HIGHLAND FALLS.
• Work an hour a night/five nights on the overall plan for complete outline and changes for all three MOSAIC books.
• Visit the blogs of at least 10 other RSWers.
• Walk at least 10k each day.

3.  A favorite line from my story OR one word/phrase that sums up what I wrote/revised: “Slow and steady!” For my re-write of the three MOSAIC books, I want to have a really good outline done before I jump in. This makes me slightly crazy because I would like to just jump in!! But, I think in the long run it will pay off. I think the reason I never finished this trilogy before was because I got to a certain point and didn’t know where I was going. I’m not going to make that mistake again! So, I need to continue to move ahead – slow and steady – with my outlining before I can get back into the writing.

4.  The biggest challenge I faced this week (ex. finding time to write): Time! Lots of stuff going on this week, including a weekend camping trip. This coming week looks better.

5.  Something I love about my WiP: My characters spend lots of time out in the woods, hiking, searching, running for their lives, eating bad berries….

How did your week of writing and/or revising go?

Ready. Set. WRITE! is a summer writing intensive that encourages goal-setting and accountability, and provides an opportunity for us to cheer each other on wherever we’re at with our writing projects—planning, drafting, revising, or polishing.  This year, your RSW hosts are Alison Miller, Jaime Morrow, Erin Funk, Elodie Nowodazkij, and Katy Upperman. All the details are HERE.

1.  How I did on last week’s goals: (SPOILER ALERT: NOT GOOD!)

• Continue to investigate cover design options for THE WITCH OF HIGHLAND FALLS. Nope. This endeavor came to a standstill this week.
• Finish my re-read of the partially finished manuscripts for books 2 and 3 of MOSAIC and start putting together an overall plan for complete outline and changes. This was about the only thing I did accomplish this week. I finished the re-read on both and barely got started on the planning.
• Visit the blogs of at least 10 other RSWers. Check! Go you amazing writer-folk, go!
• Walk at least 10k each day. Epic fail on this.

2.  My goals for this week.

• Continue to investigate cover design options for THE WITCH OF HIGHLAND FALLS.
• Work on a blurb for THE WITCH OF HIGHLAND FALLS.
• Work an hour a night/five nights on the overall plan for complete outline and changes for all three MOSAIC books.
• Visit the blogs of at least 10 other RSWers.
• Walk at least 10k each day.

3.  A favorite line from my story OR one word/phrase that sums up what I wrote/revised: “Sludge.” This week, I feel like I’ve been walking through sludge with this re-read of books 2 and 3. Again, I still like the story and the characters. However, these are manuscripts that I worked on a few years ago and they are really bad. It’s been hard to re-read without jumping in to make changes.

4.  The biggest challenge I faced this week (ex. finding time to write): The aforementioned “sludge.”

5.  Something I love about my WiP: Aliens!! 🙂

How did your week of writing and/or revising go?

Ready. Set. WRITE! is a summer writing intensive that encourages goal-setting and accountability, and provides an opportunity for us to cheer each other on wherever we’re at with our writing projects—planning, drafting, revising, or polishing.  This year, your RSW hosts are Alison Miller, Jaime Morrow, Erin Funk, Elodie Nowodazkij, and Katy Upperman. All the details are HERE.

1.  How I did on last week’s goals:

• Continue to investigate cover design options for THE WITCH OF HIGHLAND FALLS. Check! Investigation continues this week.
• Finish my re-read of MOSAIC and start to figure out what overall changes I’ll need to make. Check! I finished the re-read but am realizing that I’ll need to re-read the partially finished books 2 and 3 in the series to really figure out all the changes.
• Revisit SAVE THE CAT by Blake Snyder and put together a beat sheet for MOSAIC. Check! By the skin of my teeth. 🙂 I just finished the beat sheet last night!
• Visit the blogs of at least 10 other RSWers. I didn’t make this. Last Monday was booked from start to finish. It’s hard to be motivated to visit the RSW blogs on Tuesday when you know you are a whole day behind everyone else. 😦
• Walk at least 10k each day. Very close! There were only two days I didn’t quite make it to 10k.

2.  My goals for this week.

• Continue to investigate cover design options for THE WITCH OF HIGHLAND FALLS.
• Finish my re-read of the partially finished manuscripts for books 2 and 3 of MOSAIC and start putting together an overall plan for complete outline and changes.
• Visit the blogs of at least 10 other RSWers.
• Walk at least 10k each day.

3.  A favorite line from my story OR one word/phrase that sums up what I wrote/revised: Since I didn’t really do much actual writing this week – mostly re-reading and outlining – I’ll just sum it up by saying: “happy.” I’m happy to find that I still love this MS, it’s characters and overall plot. Lots of work ahead, though!

4.  The biggest challenge I faced this week (ex. finding time to write): Distractions and being able to fall into a good routine. Oh, and on Saturday my computer was giving me attitude and I lost hours that could’ve been productive! Grrrrr.

5.  Something I love about my WiP: I like the action that happens in this story. My MC is a woman of action and she jumps in to help out at a moment’s notice.

How did your week of writing and/or revising go?

Ready. Set. WRITE! is a summer writing intensive that encourages goal-setting and accountability, and provides an opportunity for us to cheer each other on wherever we’re at with our writing projects—planning, drafting, revising, or polishing.  This year, your RSW hosts are Alison Miller, Jaime Morrow, Erin Funk, Elodie Nowodazkij, and Katy Upperman. All the details are HERE.

1.  How I did on last week’s goals:

• Make initial contact with at least five potential editors. I actually didn’t make contact with five potential editors but I did make some progress in this area and made some decisions. 🙂
• Start investigating cover design options. Done! Just some initial investigations. There are so many options out there! Yikes!
• Figure out which project I’m going to work on while I wait for WoHF to come back from my beta reader. Done! I started a re-read on MOSAIC (tentative title). This was my very first project and it’s meant to be a trilogy and I bit off more than I could chew at the time. But the characters and story have always stayed with me. I want to give it another try.
• Visit the blogs of at least 10 other RSWers. Done! I’m so inspired by all the progress being made out there! Go, go, go!!!
• Spend one hour a day or less on TV. Done. Mostly. I may have cheated a couple days. 🙂
• Spend one hour a day or less on internet. Ha. I’m dropping this goal in the future and admitting defeat. Of course, part of the problem is that when you are investigating potential editors and cover designers, you end up spending gobs and gobs of time online just for those activities.

2.  My goals for this week.

• Continue to investigate cover design options for THE WITCH OF HIGHLAND FALLS.
• Finish my re-read of MOSAIC and start to figure out what overall changes I’ll need to make.
• Revisit SAVE THE CAT by Blake Snyder and put together a beat sheet for MOSAIC
• Visit the blogs of at least 10 other RSWers.
• Walk at least 10k each day.

3.  A favorite line from my story OR one word/phrase that sums up what I wrote/revised: Here is part of a tornado scene from MOSAIC:

Trevin and I reached the old man at the same time. We each took an arm and started hauling him back toward the safety of the building. Suddenly, as if the cyclone had eyes, the tip of the monster started edging back toward us. It had gone past Annie’s and had been on a predictable easterly path.

Until now.

4.  The biggest challenge I faced this week (ex. finding time to write): I was back at work this week after a nice two-week staycation. Settling back into a routine in which I have minimal time for writing/revising was the biggest challenge.

5.  Something I love about my WiP: I’m so enjoying getting back into MOSAIC. In the first half of the story, my MC gets metaphorically punched in the gut over and over – finding out that people and things aren’t what she thought they were. I love to watch how tough she becomes!

How did your week of writing and/or revising go?

Ready. Set. WRITE! is a summer writing intensive that encourages goal-setting and accountability, and provides an opportunity for us to cheer each other on wherever we’re at with our writing projects—planning, drafting, revising, or polishing.  This year, your RSW hosts are Alison Miller, Jaime Morrow, Erin Funk, Elodie Nowodazkij, and Katy Upperman. All the details are HERE.

1.  How I did on last week’s goals:

• Spend at least one hour, five days on reviewing and revisions in my WIP. Yes! I did really well on this. I finished a full read-through of my MS and sent it off to a beta reader yesterday (a whole week earlier than anticipated! 🙂 )
• Visit the blogs of at least 10 other RSWers. Yes! And then some! It was great to get out there and say howdy and cheer each other on.
• Spend one hour a day or less on TV. Oh dear. Um, I did manage to do this on some days, but not all. I have a habit of just turning on the TV for “background noise” and then I sort of space out and don’t get anything else done! Ugh!
• Spend one hour a day or less on internet. Yeaahhhh…. no. I did better than I usually do (thanks again, Freedom app!) but I did not keep it to one hour a day.

2.  My goals for this week.

• Make initial contact with at least five potential editors.
• Start investigating cover design options. (Any of you indie authors have suggestions for me?)
• Figure out which project I’m going to work on while I wait for WoHF to come back from my beta reader. I had thought I was going to go back to FALLING (tentative title) but I am feeling a pull from another MS that I started a realllllly long time ago. I still love the characters and the story line. It may be time to go back to that one.
• Visit the blogs of at least 10 other RSWers.
• Spend one hour a day or less on TV.
• Spend one hour a day or less on internet.

3.  A favorite line from my story OR one word/phrase that sums up what I wrote/revised: Here is the very first paragraph of my WiP:

The woman in the corner whined in an unearthly, inhuman tone. I shivered in the New Orleans heat. I wished she would stop. But then again, I had wished for her to stop shrieking a few minutes ago. Now that she had, I knew the end was near.

4.  The biggest challenge I faced this week (ex. finding time to write): Well, there’s that TV addiction I mentioned above! To be honest, I’m more worried about this coming week. I had two and a half weeks off from work and I go back today. It was really nice to have such unimpeded writing/revising time in the last couple weeks. Now it’s back to reality!

5.  Something I love about my WiP: I love the way my main character grows over the course of the story. Of course, I guess that’s the whole point of a good story, right? But she goes from this timid, confused little girl to a strong, independent young woman. Love that.

How did your week of writing and/or revising go?