You know, I just realized I had kind of forgotten about this journal. Oops. I'll try not to do that again.

I've been sending out queries and the like lately. I got a "no thanks" from Byline for a query for a website review. On the same premise, I got a go-ahead from Writers' Journal! I'm still pretty excited/pumped about it.

I now have three website review columns published with the OWFI Report, the official newsletter for the Oklahoma Writers' Federation, Inc. My hope is/was to be able to convert these into paying gigs. It's looking like that is a real possibility. We shall see.

I have changed this journal from being only about Confessions of a Fat Chick to being about any writing project I have going at the moment. Right now, that includes website reviews.

I read.

A lot.

Probably more than I write.

Recently, I read a new book. It's Love @ First Site bye Jane Moore.

It is, honestly, very similar to CFC. It took the wind out of my sails. Yes, as Mom says, that means it's a good idea. But for a story to be that close???

I don't know.

So.... In that vein, I am putting CFC on hiatus. I'll eventually get back around to it, but probably not for a while. In the meantime, I've revived "The Lady Bard," a fantasy story I started a while back and couldn't figure out how to work it. I figured it out the other day and have been going full force on it since then.

It has been quite a while since I posted here. It was before the conference, I know. That was almost two weeks ago now. Wow!

Anyway, I obviously haven't updated here in a while. Why not?

There's nothing to update. I haven't written much of anything since I've been back from the conference. My time has been spent visiting friends in the hospital, going to funerals (two so far :( ), and catching up on transcription.

I hope to get back to Confessions of a Fat Chick soon. Somebody give me a swift kick in the pants if I don't.

The past couple days, I've been thinking a lot more about CFC.

As it is right now, with this single plotline revolving only around Erin and her perceived problems, there isn't enough to sustain it through a whole novel.

Her family is about to make a big intrusion. Either via divorce or illness, I don't know. But it should make things more interesting and help move things along better.

With everything going on this past weekend, I didn't get very much done on CFC. I sure didn't get my synopsis and query done. What I did get done was handwritten. I just now typed it in. Now I have only one more section to go and chapter 3 will be finished and I can get it sent to my betas.

I'm sitting at 4,800 words right now.

All I'm going to say is....

This date isn't going as badly as Erin's first one did. Though it will, ultimately, turn out to be a lot worse in the long run.

So I've been doing some thinking. (Yeah, I know. Dangerous activity.)

There is only one more meeting for the local writers' group before the conference.

I am actively working on CFC, halfway through chapter 3.

My thing is... If this is what I'm going to pitch in two weeks, I need to have the synopsis and a query letter done. SO...

The plan is to work on that tonight, take it to the meeting tomorrow, get feedback, and make any necessary changes.

Sounds easy as pie, doesn't it?

Except for one little thing:

I am TOTALLY winging it. I can no more tell you what will happen in the next chapter than I can predict the future.

I do, however, know what the two key scenes at the end will be, so that is a plus.

I think I have been spazzing myself out. At the OWFI conference in May, I have an appointment with an agent. I've made no secret of the fact that I want to get CFC ready for that. At least a good-sized chunk of it.

But in keeping that in mind, I've been getting quite anxious. When I get anxious over a project, I don't do very much on it. I can't do that. I've got to keep going on it!

I guess I need a good swift kick in the butt to get me over it. *s*

Right now, though, I'm standing at 4000 words. Not bad but not good as far as my goal goes.

Progress is progress, though, and I'll take whatever I can get.

Here is the updated word count for CFC.

3,500 / 70,000

About 5% done.

Wow. It seems so extremely insignificant when I look at it like that. lol.

I've spent the last day and a half in our Ardmore office working with Mom & the girls who work there.

Since there really wasn't much going on in the evenings, I worked on Confessions of a Fat Chick. Chapter 2 is finished. I'll be sending it out to my beta readers in the next day or two.

Once I get it off of my memory stick (those things freakin' ROCK!) and on my computer, I'll give you an updated word count.

I'm a few lines into chapter 3. I need to figure out exactly what happens here. Chapters 1 and 2 were easy enough because I of how I set things up in the first chapter. Chapter 2 was almost a direct result of everything in chapter 1.

Hmmmm.... That would still work in 3. :)

Today, as I said in a post in jennipps, I was at my Grandma's house. I didn't have a computer.

Correction.

I didn't have my computer and I don't have a laptop except the one Mom uses for work. And she actually had that with her, so I didn't have it anyway.

I wrote out the next scene for chapter 2 of CFC. I need to type it in, but that most likely won't happen tonight. I'll do it sometime tomorrow and let you all know the new wordcount soon after.

Mom's watching TV and not clamoring for the computer. That means I get to write. :)

And after today, I actually feel like it. At this time last night, I still felt too rumdum from how things went yesterday. I can't believe how much smoother it's still going with the switch from 3rd to 1st person.

I'm now at approx. 2500 words.

Slow and steady wins the race, but does it get enough done for me to take to the conference? We shall see.

One of my beta readers read through chapter 1 for me and made some wonderful suggestions. She also suggested that I might want to consider writing CFC in 1st person instead of 3rd.

Since I was only a couple paragraphs into chapter 2 at the time, I redid those in 1st person and have continued to do so.

It's flowing smoother. I don't feel like it's a struggle to do this part I've been working on.

So I owe you (you know who you are :) ) a very big thank you. :)

I'll post a word count update later this evening.

I had to go to Muskogee and help in our office there with seeing patients for Social Security claims. I don't really know how, but I managed to finish chapter 1 and begin chapter 2 of CFC. If I remember my word-count correctly, I'm pretty close to 2000 words.

Still a LONG way to 60-80k.

In related news, I'm going to a conference in Oklahoma City around the first of May. I got the confirmation e-mail today about an appointment with Daniel Lazar from Writers House at some point during the conference.

I want to pitch CFC to him. If I am to do that, I need to have the majority of it done by then.

Wish me luck.

I think CFC will probably be my best chance at getting the attention of an editor or agent. I am going to a conference at the beginning of May in Oklahoma City. I hope to have a big chunk of it done by then. It seems to be the most marketable so far.

I did something I had decided I wasn't going to do with this until it was relatively finished.

I sent the first few pages out to some people and read it at the local writers' group meeting yesterday. I got good feedback, especially for it being a first draft. I was pleasantly surprised. I might just be on to something here. :)

I haven't talked about CFC to very many people. The first few were family members who like to read and thought I should write something like what they read.

My smart-ass remark?

"I'm going to write a book called Confessions of a Fat Chick."

At first, I wasn't serious. But the title stuck with me and I started working on it. And now? Obviously I'm working on it. But yesterday, my Grandma even asked if I had ever started working on it!

I don't think I'll let her read it. lol. She's a bit to preachy and this would definitely set her off on a soapbox or two.

Thanks to talking/posting with a friend from the Absolute Write Water Cooler, I actually settled down and got some writing done. I could actually do more, but Mom's bugging me to use the computer (she wants to play Bejewelled 2), so I'll go ahead and call it a night.

Right now, I'm at almost 1500 words. I'm not going to open it up again just to give an exact word count.

Erin has been pushed in a direction she wants to go but isn't sure she has the confidence. That's all you need to know at the moment. :)

Erin's roommate finally has a name. She's Jerica.

So far, I have almost 1,000 words done on Confessions of a Fat Chick (known as CFC from here on out).

I had honestly hoped to have at least double that since I seriously started working on it this week, finally. But... Events came up that prevented that.

The way I see it is this: Progress is progress. And progress is good, even if it produces something that is ultimately scrapped later. It aids well in character development and knowing what the hell is going on. You really wouldn't want to know all of that. Trust me.

The current work I will be reporting on here is a novel tentatively titled CONFESSIONS OF A FAT CHICK.

I will not be discussing actual characters or plot. My mind equates that type of discussion with the actual writing. Why, I don't know. But any time I engage in such discussion, the work never gets written.

I will discuss problems, word count, and possible ideas.

I tell you this only to avoid (hopefully) questions along the lines of "what is it about?" or "what happens next?"

I will start the actual updates next week.

Current wordcount is: 0 / 85,000

I started this blog originally on Blogger. Due to problems with their service, I am moving it over here to LJ.

I started it as a report of my foray into the wilds that is NaNoWriMo.

However, instead of letting it sit empty and ignored until October and November this year, I decided to put it to a different purpose.

Welcome to Jen's Progress Report. I will post updates of current works in progress here, whether they are fiction, nonfiction, mainstream, or fantasy.

You get the idea.

Happy reading.