Check in #4.... YABbootcamp

This week... well... it went. Real life got in the way a tad - actually a lot more than I want or care to admit, but some good things did happen.

Goal Update:

First things first, and update on goal #2: I'm happy to report I have a working title! My current project shall henceforth be known as STATIC

*does happy dance* *Muppet flail*

This title was hard to peg - but I think this title may stick - at least until an agent or editor wants to change it. I resisted it originally because that is the first word in the book, but the more I thought about it, not only does static play a pretty important part in the entire thing, but it also serves as a pretty nice metaphor for what Sam, my main character, has to go through as she tries to unravel and understand exactly what is going on around her.

Now as to goal #1:

I think I went into red overload - no reference to static or any other electrical charge intended here. I had gotten to far with edits and changes, that a vast majority of my story was red. To clarify, I utilize and LOVE the track changes feature in Word. So everywhere I altered anything, it either became red, was underlined in red or was crossed out in red.

And before you suggest, I am fully aware that I can change the color of the edits...but I'm a teacher - red works for me... until this week, that is.

So this past weekend, I realized what I had to do. I was so overwhelmed with all the red, that I couldn't see what I still needed to do....

File - Save As - Create new File - Accept all changes - Voila! - no more red - and a shiny new document to bleed all over :)

I am not ready to send anything to anyone, but I feel like progress can be had this week. I am almost to the point where feedback will be needed to let me know if I'm going in the right direction, but there are some holes and elements that I need to fix first! And naturally, my story is shifting again, taking another turn I wasn't ready for.... but I'm trying to let the story tell itself, rather than me force it to tell something it doens't want to.

This week, I also started Mapping everything after the fabulous post on YA Buccaneers. For some...err....most this will probably seem backwards, but right now, as I'm shifting from one genre to the next this is helping me validate where those plot holes are and what I still need to fix!

And now I need to get back to those words....