Writing Progress... I AM FINISHED!!!!!!!!!

February 1, 2007.


1002 pages.

273,072 words.

some 22 months later...

I am happy to say . . . I AM FINISHED.

Yes... I have finished my romantic suspense SWEET HEAT manuscript. I am DONE.



I have finished the first draft, that is... I have to do a lot of cutting, revising, editing etc... I ain't smart enough to figure all that out, man.

But I ain't worried about all that.

I am just happy to be DONE. I can honestly say that I am able to put togther a bunch of words and make a story out of it. Even chocked it full of twists and turns and turns and twists.

This was MUCH harder than writing my dissertation. Humph.

I finished it all up sans my laptop. I was feeling a bit shell shocked without it (especially since ALL my music and photos are on it, too), but I came up with some bootleg tactics to get my writing done. It is being repaired right now (It has been gone for over two weeks!! UGGH!!!) I may have to buy a smaller second laptop eventually. I have used the busted one so much that some of the letters have rubbed off.

Goodness graciuos.

I have a few readers that have hung in there for close to two years... reading, whining, acting silly, getting all pissed off at me. (That ish was funny! Remember peeps, these were imaginary characters!) My bootleg "work-for-free" editor Ol' Mean Ass Cynthia was thoroughly pleased with the ending. My other bootleg "work-for-free" editor Sunshine wasn't all that happy because the ending turned out to something she didn't expect. She didn't have much to say to me yesterday.

I was sad about that. (Yeah right!)

She can go sit on a TACK, she can.

I like the ending, and that is all that matters. I HATE happy predictable endings. Give me a happy UNPREDICTABLE ending any day... Or a sad ending... I like that!

Interestingly, one of my coworkers, a light-eyed chick who my brother Milk and Cookies feens over (yeah, I'm talking about YOU, Melissa) enjoyed it so much that she wants me to just keep it going.

My answer to that was #&*$@&@*# !!!!!

Yeah... you figure out what that means. But there are about 10 lil' offshoot stories that can jump off of this manuscript. I will most definitely be thinking about that.

But right now? I just want to enjoy the fact that the first draft is DONE. I am doing a lot of re-reading and printing these days. I won a manuscript edit late last year, and I need to send it off.

When she gets it, I know she gonna be like... WTF?????

Oh well... I need the help something terrible. I am interested in what is said about it. Hope to have it all printed up and thrown in a manuscript box by the 15th...

And that's the immediate plan for now.

So I want to give a shout out to my critiquers - Ol' Mean Ass Cynthia, Sunshine, Regina, Que, The Darth Sista T, the Good Sista, Hen-Dog, Gigi, Cowgirl Cre, Tisha, Alex, LadyBug Mocha, Melissa, my book club sista Kim- We have all been in heavy discussion from the get go, almost two years ago. A bunch of ya'll have bitched me out, made helpful suggestions, asked A LOT of questions that made me think HARD, and just overall helped me trudge through it all...

You didn't have to do it... but you did. And for that I am thankful.

What's next for me? Sending this thing off to have it edited. I will work it out from there.

Right now, I am writing one short story a month, and I have a little Science-fiction idea that I am working on. (It is set in a rural area, so I am doing a little traveling next weekend to Ol' Mean Ass Cynthia's country ass hometown to do a little research.) A couple of the offshoot stories from the Sweet Heat manuscript are on my mind, so I am working on those, too.

There was a manuscript that I was working on before Sweet Heat. I got a 100 pages into it and decided that it was just too complicated and I needed to write something simpler and shorter (What a laugh!). I will post parts of that old manuscript on my blog, since I don't plan on doing anything with it, because it is quite, um interesting...

All I gotta say is that I feel like a HUUUUUGGGGE weight has been lifted off OFF MY SHOULDERS!!!!

***LadyLee exhaling hard***