Writing, Writing, and More Writing

I sat on the editing comments for a while and now feel that I can agree with a few more of them. Apparently it's hard to take criticism for something you feel passionately about. Go figure. But as the editor pointed out in the beginning, these are suggestions. I don't have to take them. However, many of the points made are valid and so, I will most likely incorporate several of them. It's been a good learning experience.

I've joined some writing groups, entered a couple of writing contests, and followed a few writer's blogs, at my editor's suggestion. One I particularly like is Mike Wells' Blog. He has some great tips on writing, and I plan to follow his formula for writing a synopsis for my book. I'll try it out here.

Mike says the basic formula is this:
"Hero finds herself stuck in situation from which she wants to free herself.  Can she achieve goal, or will  villain stop her and cause her to experience disaster?"

Then you insert the appropriate characters and situations from your own book to make it work. I'll do that now:
"Hailey Ames finds herself hunted by an evil that shadows her. Can she and her new friends from the unusual circus run fast and far enough for fate to lose her trail? Will Hailey be able to make choices that will ultimately save her and her friends, or doom them all?"

Hey I think that works! It's only a few sentences but it summarizes the book pretty well. I'm going to use it for my publication synopsis. Thanks to Mike for the advice!

For now, Hailey and her friends are currently on the back burner, simmering under the weight of their edits and cooking a bit longer before I decide if they are done. Then I will continue on the second in the series, which takes place a few years later, as does the third after it. However, a new story idea came to me last night when I was trying to go to bed, and I woke up itching to get it written down. So I started that this morning and suddenly have written 5,000 words already. I'm really happy with it though.

So that's it. Once I publish Sideshow I'll post a link here, on my Facebook, Twitter, and etc. Hope everyone is doing great!